The House of Wolves (House of Wolves #1)(59)

“Gotta ask. Did it feel good?”

“Soooo good.”

“But wasn’t it a dumb thing to do?” she said.

“Soooo dumb.”

She asked all the right questions, but then I knew she would. She asked why I thought my brothers had turned on me the way they did.

“It wasn’t really a turn. They’re right where they always were when I had something they wanted.”

Near the end, she wanted to know why I’d put myself through this for a team I’d previously wanted no part of and from which I had walked away, planning never to return.

“Because it was essentially my father’s dying wish that I run it.”

“And he must have thought you could handle the job,” she said.

I smiled.

“Maybe there’s another way of looking at it, just in light of everything that’s happened since I took the job,” I said. “Maybe this was Dad’s way of punishing me for walking away from him the way I did.”

One of the last shots was of Oprah and me walking and talking down on the beach, standard stuff for a show like this. We were both miked up, the ocean behind us.

“What’s your message to people who have read and heard about you before this,” Oprah said, “but are only getting to know you tonight?”

“I’d ask them to evaluate how I’ve done the job since I started calling the shots,” I said. “That’s all that should matter in the end. How have I done my job, and how have the coaches and players done theirs? Everything else is just noise.”

“How many games have the Wolves lost since you truly took over?” Oprah said, fully aware of the answer.

“One.”

“Wasn’t it Bill Parcells who said that you are what your record says you are?” Oprah said.

“Pretty sure it was.”

“One last question. Do you think you’d be getting this kind of coverage and this kind of pushback if you were a man?”

I smiled again.

“Let me turn this around and ask Oprah Winfrey a question. What do you think?”

The ending was Oprah alone, staring into the camera.

“Jenny Wolf is every talented woman who has found herself getting tackled from behind,” she said. “But look at how she’s turned the Wolves around. Look at the way her team has responded to her.”

Dramatic pause then.

“So if she does get voted down this week in Los Angeles, I guess we all need to ask ourselves what the other owners are afraid of,” Oprah said. “Besides a strong woman.”

I closed the laptop and poured myself a small glass of white wine, the bottle having been sent up by the hotel when I checked in. It was five thirty by now, which meant that the first half of the Oprah interview had already aired back East. I had no interest in checking the internet to see how people were reacting.

I knew I might win over a big chunk of viewers tonight. Maybe even a majority of the viewers. But they weren’t voting on Wednesday. My target audience was the thirty-one other NFL owners, the same audience I’d be addressing in one of the Wilshire ballrooms tomorrow morning. But most of them, I was afraid, because of everything I’d been hearing for weeks, had already made up their minds about me.

I was about to head for the shower, get myself dressed and ready for the owners’ reception, when I heard the knock on the door and opened it to see a bellman standing there, almost hidden by the huge bouquet of flowers in his arms.

I showed him in and went looking for my purse to find some tipping money.

The bellman set the flowers down on the coffee table in the living area of the suite and said, “The general manager wants you to know he apologizes. These were supposed to be waiting for you when you checked in. That was clearly specified when they were ordered some time ago.”

I told him to tell the general manager not to worry and gave him a big tip. He left. The flowers had to be from Cantor. If they weren’t from Cantor, they had to be from Ryan Morrissey.

Or maybe Bobby Erlich had ordered them, celebrating the Oprah interview before it had even occurred, without any worry about jinxing it or spiking the ball too soon.

I opened the card.

Hey, you.

Figured I better get this arrangement sent before I forgot.

You’re gonna kill it tomorrow.

Hey, nothing can stop us now.



It was signed:

Thomas





Sixty-Seven



I HAD ONE MORE good cry about my brother Thomas.

In that time, I gave up waiting to hear from Bobby Erlich. I took a quick shower, repaired my face as best I could, got into the same dress I’d worn the day I’d been introduced as the managing owner of the Wolves.

At THEBlvd Privé, an extension of the Wilshire’s garden restaurant, there were two bar setups and white-jacketed waiters serving appetizers. By the time I got to the reception, it seemed like most of the other owners were already in attendance.

“It’s just a meet and greet,” Bobby Erlich had said. “Just make nice with the other boys and girls, and please don’t punch anybody.”

I told him I would be on my best behavior, and he said, “Low bar.”

I got myself a white wine and sat down at a table alone, seeing heads turn in my direction as I did. I pretended to wave at someone. Then I smiled and waved in the other direction, also at nobody. I saw Joel Abrams, the commissioner, in deep conversation with a man I knew was Lew Wyatt, the owner of the Rams. Cissy Meriweather, who had inherited the Seahawks after her husband died, was with them.