Angel’s Share, East Village. 2:47 am, August 30th, 2021

The taxi pulling up exactly on time, a lone passenger tilts his head to see the upper floors of the surrounding high rises before daring to even reach for the door handle. Just another Sunday night, no different than those before where he had stupidly — he tells himself in retrospect — exercised this team perk. It had been over two years since he’d left the post that afforded him a reason to visit the upstairs establishment and he had no more interest in reliving his experiences inside these anonymous brick walls than he did explaining that “left the post” meant unceremoniously fired. But here he sat, staring through the rain-spotted glass up to vacant windows waiting for his change from a currency-challenged driver who seemed unaware that there are no paper notes between ten and twenty dollars. Confusingly handing back a wad of bills to the passenger, the driver did not respond as this serious fare impatiently yanked back his cash and opened the door of the Yellow Cab with a grunt.

“Guessing you weren’t one of you who was a surgeon back in your home country, eh?”

He stepped up on the sidewalk and the taxi jerked forward and sped away from the curb. He felt a sense of shame for his statement. He could never tell if it was this building, this city, or simply the association with the worst job choice of his life but his behavior here was a record of actions for which he was wholly embarrassed. He hadn’t thought about it for years but was now making a note to check if the gash he’d put in that table near the window was still visible.

One plum highball for old times sake was all he had promised his former colleague. And one plum high ball for old times sake would be all that he would consume. His life was different now. It was better. And it was better because his lifestyle no longer brought him to places like this at times like this.

He had ignored the calls to return when Todd Bowles had reached out just days after the New Year. It was easy to remain distant as Bowles pursued a successful Super Bowl run through January; a professional accomplishment for which he was genuinely proud of his former Head Coach but was undeniably jealous to see done with a roster he would have never been able to construct. Never sharing this bitterness with Bowles, when the Super Bowl festivities were complete and the offseason began — for Bowles, not himself, as his nearly thirty years with the league was officially behind him now — Bowles’ calls became more frequent and, before his wife would begin asking questions, he just begrudgingly acknowledged his Final Responsibilities and booked his flight to The Big Apple. Now staring at the entrance, he wondered if he should enter or wait for Bowles arrival here. A glance down the block at a homeless African American man sitting on a bench answered his question.

He took the stairs.

Reaching the landing and standing outside the entrance door for first time in years — and the last time in forever, he swore — he felt disgust at his attraction to the door. This place had stolen years of his life and now he stood almost giddy with excitement at the opportunity to swing open that door once more. Would his favorite waitress still be there? Would she remember him? He remembered her. He remembered her scent. He remembered how once, after another of their Thursday Night Football losses, his wife had abruptly gone to “visit her sister” and —

A firm hand landed on his right shoulder.

“Mike Maccagnan. My dear friend. Thank you for coming.”

Maccagnan’s plan to play this down evaporated in the softness of former head coach’s voice. He wanted to groan a noncommittal “Let’s get this over with,” but stood momentarily in silence instead. It took everything for him to hold back tears. He did not turn around.

“You got me out of here so, you know, it’s the least I could.”

Todd Bowles, clearly aware of the traps this place presented even after one received their New York Football Jets pink slip, carried nor showed any emotion. He was a man on a mission.

“Let’s get this over with, Mike.”

Together, for the last time they each silently hoped, Todd Bowles and Mike Maccagnan entered Angel’s Share and approached the hostess.

“Hello, Lin Sue.”

“Coach Bowles,” her smile beamed with a mixture of surprised sincerity and pleasure. His need for assistance, however, had vanished. His attention was immediately jeopardized by a wide-eyed man at the corner of the bar raising his voice in an attempt to maintain the attention of a bartender who clearly wanted to move on to serving other customers.

“So I walked out on the birth of my child and spent countless hours in the profession and for what?! To be a stable boy for Woody while he dicks off for Trump?!”

Approaching the boisterous patron, Bowles met the bartender’s eyes as the excitement of seeing two former regulars turned to disappointment as the bartender realized his nonverbal cues for them to come to the other side of the bar — or another table exactly anywhere else in the establishment — carried no weight. The man in the corner was dipping his finger deep in the highball glass to fish out a maraschino cherry.

“This was the first place I enjoyed a Luxardo cherry myself, Adam.”

The man dropped the cherry back in the glass and spun around, meeting Bowles gentle smile with a wide-eyed look of confusion of a drunk man. The reason: he was terribly drunk.

“One plum highball, barkeep, please…for old time sake.” Maccagnan waved to the bartender, who regretfully placed the tumbler on the bar top and added one perfectly clear ice cube. It was his purpose, of course, but the bartender couldn’t help but think everyone would be better off if the man who put that gash in top of their nicest table did not again get comfortable drinking here.

Adam, displaying just how drunk he was, tried to call his new order to the barkeep but exerted little more than a mumble of drool before nearly sliding off his seat. His two visitors balanced him back on his chair and swiveled him around to let the bar support his weight.

“What…happened?”

Bowles looked to Maccagnan and smiled. He spoke with an empathetic gentleness.

“J-E-T-S.”

Adam cocked his head in preparation for the response to his prompt. “Jets?”

“Yep. That’s all. Now tell me, you have your photo?”

A glint of familiarity from his droopy tired eyes. Bowles smile fell from his face as the drunk reached into his coat to retrieve the artifact. This had been far too long a wait to retrieve a man who could have been released in January. Bowles looked to Maccagnan who had walked over to the bartender and was delightfully chatting while watching the assembly of his libation. A side eyed glance from the bartender told Bowles that he could do little more to delay completing and serving this drink.

“We need to go. Now.”

He grabbed Adam by the collar and yanked him up to stand on two unstable but functional feet. Bowles peered around, feeling an energy pulsing through the crowd. He did not sense it was any way directed to his party but, nonetheless, he didn’t care to stick around to discover the specifics. Adam dropped the framed picture on the ground.

Bowles saw the entrance door open and two men approach the hostess. The murmurs of the conversing guests prevented their conversation from traveling to the bar but Bowles squinted his eyes in an attempt to adjust his inner ear to pick up as much of the conversation as possible. “You see, we’re with the New York Jets and….not sure who….a meeting here…sounds….no, first visit of many, I hope…”

The hefty man was noticeably pleased with the hostess’s pitch welcoming him and his associate to the venue for the first time. The associate, a bald man who appeared less excited about this experience, was relaxing more with each glance he took about the room. By the she had pivoted and swept her long toned arm before the two men, inviting them to follow her to the establishment’s private seating area, both the bald man and the hefty man were poorly stifling eager grins, nonchalantly making themselves comfortable in their new surroundings. The hair on the back of Bowles’ neck stood up because he knew the guests were studying the new patrons. But how did he know? He could sense it.

Shifting his hand from gripping Adam’s collar to more conspicuously leading him by the arm, Bowles led Adam down the bar as the barkeep dropped the blackberry garnishment into the highball generating a satisfying fizz. Maccagnan reached for this glass but was immediately ushered towards the exit along with Adam. Frustrated to see his drink being returned behind the bar, Maccagnan tried to jerk him arm from Bowles but succeeded only in stumbling and bumping an older gentleman who was getting up from his booth. Maccagnan embarrassingly apologized to the man who nonchalantly waved off the indiscretion as he adjusted his tie.

“Maybe just buy me a drink next time.” The man headed towards the entrance to the private seating area, the same as three other well-dressed guests from different tables were now migrating. Bowles did not stop moving his feet.

The energy pulsated though the men. Bowles focused only on the march to the door, Maccagnan snapped back to realizing the gravity of the situation. Even drunk Adam noticed…something.

Smoothly passing by the unmanned greeting station, Todd Bowles, Mike Maccagnan, and Adam Gase exited Angel’s Share. They stood in the lobby staring at the plain wooden door with a semi-sunflower handle they had all pulled too many times. “Hey,” Adam started, already sobering up, “I think you bumped Eric Mangini back there.”

“Oh yeah? Weird. I know it’s college season but I swear I saw Herm Edwards in there too heading back to that private room. Must be some kind of…I dunno.” There was, for as far as Maccagnan could think, absolutely no good reason for either of these men to be in there.

Bowles was uninterested in anything more than inventorying the situation and completing this extraction. But he felt a sense of panic realizing all three men in their party were standing empty-handed when the door opened to a concerned hostess who expressed relief at their presence.

“Special delivery?” Bowles looked her dead in the eye. She bit her lower lip and nodded, holding out a butcher paper wrapped parcel but showing deliberate care to not step outside the boundaries of the establishment. Bowles did not budge. She waved it at him in her outstretched arm, signaling that she could carry it no further. Maccagnan stepped forward, took the package, and was surprised to feel an enthusiastic hand slap his shoulder.

“HOW THE FUCK YOU DOIN’ BOYS?!”

Bowles bared his teeth. Gase looked back and forth between the men, wide-eyed as ever. Maccagnan had no place in this meeting of head coaches and accepted that his work here was done, slipping away down the stairs as no one was focused on him in the least. He was hailing a cab in the cool city air before he realized the package was still in his hand hand.

When the cab pulled to curb, he fell into the backseat exhausted and homesick. “La Guardia, please. I’m out of here. One way.”

The driver looked at him through the rearview mirror. “La Guardia. With surgical precision.” He turned up the late-night sports talk radio station, partly to punctuate their conversation but mostly to bother the tired fare trying to get comfortable in the backseat. “They are talking about the man responsible for fixing our beloved Jets,” he offered as an explanation.

Maccagnan watched the building vanish around the corner as the taxi accelerated through a yellow arrow. Relieved to be forever gone and knowing what came next, he pulled at the loose end of the string, causing it to unknot and fall to his lap. He carefully unwrapped the object and sat listening to radio jockeys discussing Zach Wilson and, with great confidence, boasting why Robert Saleh and Joe Douglas may be the luckiest men on earth at this very moment. He laughed, slowly running his fingers over the engraved vines of the walnut frame as he stared at the image before him. He disagreed but was now consumed only by his goal of getting home so, as far as the New York Jets were concerned, he did not care.