Hardball

by CD Reiss

  I squeezed his hand. “You’re not boring.”

  “Whatever you say. Tag second.”

  I leapt forward and landed both feet on second base and cried victory. “Stand up double.”

  He high-fived me. “Nice play.”

  He tapped second with his toe and took my hand so we could continue to third.

  “Okay, so my parents loved me,” he said. “They gave me everything, and they were at the end of their rope. My mom… one day she took video of me flipping out so she could show me what I looked like. Maybe if I could see it, I would catch myself before I lost it again, right? And knowing she was doing that, seeing her with that little camera? I went… crazy.”

  He shook his head, his expression changing from mild amusement to shame to horror to courage to dismissal to guardedness in flashes so quick I had no idea how he was feeling. He stopped at the midpoint between second and third. Though he turned to face me, he looked up at nothing in the stands.

  “So I hit my mother.”

  I felt how difficult it was for him to say it. If he had told a million people before me, you’d never have known it because it seemed so hard I could have been the only person in the world he’d told.

  “I was in sixth grade, but I was big. It was the low point of my life.”

  I squeezed his hand. He’d been in sixth grade. Eleven or twelve years old, yet he carried it like a dead weight on his soul.

  “And the cameras,” I said, leading him to third. “You remember that when they’re on you.”

  He pointed at two spots in the stands. “There and there.” He pointed up at the announcer’s booth. “There.” He turned to the scoreboard and walked backward a few steps. “There and there. A couple more. When I’m playing, I’m fine. But as soon as I talk, I hear the way I screamed, and I feel like I’m that out-of-control kid again.” He barely paused, glancing at me then away. “You think I’m crazy.”

  I tagged third. “No. Crazy is thinking you had to hit your mother. Sane is making sure you don’t do it again.”

  He tapped the base and put his arm around me, walking me home and holding me tight.

  “I did,” he said. “I got it together.”

  “What did you do?”

  “My dad wrestled me down, but it had all gone out of me. My mother had a bruise on her cheek and that little bit of video. It did the trick. I saw myself, and I hated it. I got my shit together. I took my meds. Kept a journal of how I felt until we hit the right ones. I let my parents set routines, and I stuck to them. I played baseball because I needed something to fill my time when hockey was off, and it was…” He put his hand on his chest and directed it outward as if the world expanded from it.

  “Less chaotic,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  We made our way to home plate. The sky was fully blue now, and the birds of Elysian Park had quieted a little.

  “I was good. I was at home with baseball. But I set my routines, and I need them. I can’t… I can’t play without them.”

  He didn’t say anything else until we got to home plate and stepped on it at the same time. He put his hands on my face and looked at me directly, as if putting a tunnel of attention between us. His thumbs rested on my cheeks.

  Why hadn’t I seen it the night before? Or an hour ago? Why hadn’t I put it all together from the exhibition games and the spring training video? He was coming apart at the seams.

  “You,” he said. “You threw it all in the fire. Things started collapsing right before you, and when you came, everything went to hell. It’s you. I denied it because if I let you in, I had to start over. I tried to bend it around to not want you. But I can’t deny it anymore. There’s no center without you.”

  I was breathless. I wanted this, heart and soul. I could fall into him in a blink and lose myself in him in a breath. I wanted him, but it was too much. He was asking me to be the conduit between him and his talent. To be responsible for his center, his routine, his very sanity. I didn’t know how to be a man’s center. He brushed his thumb along my lower lip.

  “I’m just a regular woman. I’m not special.”

  “I disagree.”

  He kissed me, flooding me with his needs, commanding my body’s response while my mind was drowning in its own questions. I had no resistance in me.

  “Will I see you tonight?” he asked.

  “Dad and I always watch opening day together.”

  “I figured. I got him a seat too.”

  “Wait! What? Where?”

  He motioned thataway. “Behind the dugout.”

  Oh.

  My.

  Fucking.

  God.

  I was about to gush, but he cut me off. “If you want a skybox—”

  “No! God, no. It’s too far. You read my exact wish.”

  “I want to see you in the stands for every game. Can you?”

  “I’ll try, Dash. I’ll try.”

  I wanted to discuss the finer points of traveling while holding down a job, but he kissed me, and I figured I’d let the details take care of themselves.

  forty-three

  Vivian

  To say Dash Wallace played brilliantly on opening day would have been a gross understatement. To say he owned the field and commanded the game would have been closer but not quite descriptive of the way his confidence turned into action.

  After they’d won with the starting shortstop coming up to bat four times and getting a BB, two line drives no one could touch, a stolen base, and a two-run homer over the left field fence, the announcers Dad played on his phone asked each other if he’d been joking around during spring training. They wondered how the guy who’d swung at everything but what he was supposed to managed to keep up the act for two months.

  I knew it.

  VIP parking was worthless. I couldn’t leave in the eighth inning of the blowout. I had to stay until the end since, you know, I was sleeping with the shortstop. Dad and I were stuck in the traffic out of Elysian Park, which was always ten times better than the traffic onto the freeway.

  Dad let me drive his car. His knees were aching after the long day of getting the house back in shape.

  My phone buzzed in the center console again.

  “What’s happening with this thing?” Dad grabbed it.

  “Dad, really?” I didn’t want him to see the texts between Dash and me. Awkward.

  “He says he knew it.”

  The traffic opened up, and I went right on Sunset. “Please don’t scroll.”

  “Knew what?”

  “I have no idea, and I’m driving. So forget it for now.”

  “I’ll ask him.”

  Knew what?

  “Dad, really?” I snapped the phone away.

  Ding ding.

  I couldn’t look. I was going thirty on Sunset, and the lights were synchronized for a westward trip, so there would be no stopping at a red.

  “Let me see,” Dad said, hand out.

  All I needed was for my father to see something about Dash’s tongue on my pussy or the way I sounded when I came. So I pulled over.

  “I’m looking,” I said. “But back off.”

  “I’m a curious man, and that was some game he played back there.”

  “It was.” I put my back to the driver’s side door and tilted the phone just a little so I could see his response.

  You’re my lucky charm

  I didn’t answer it. I pulled away from the curb and thought about it.

  His lucky charm. That was a nice thing to say. Everything about it was right and good, and I should have been happy. It was nice to be needed. It was nice to be the good thing in a man’s life. Baseball was very important to him, and if I was the charm that made him play better, no matter how ridiculous that was, it should have made me happy.

  But it didn’t.

  I must have looked pensive or something, and I was so in my own head about the responsibility he’d laid on me that I didn’t think about my father’s reaction.<
br />
  “That guy’s a putz. That’s it with him. You’re done.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not letting him in the house. Do you hear me?”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “What do you mean why? You got that look on your face. The one you had when he was a putz last time. I don’t have the stomach for it. I’ll kill him first.”

  “Dad—”

  “I know I’m getting old—”

  “It’s not—”

  “I’ve had it.”

  I tossed the phone in his lap. “Don’t scroll up. Just look at the last two, or you’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”

  He looked at the screen. “I’m strong as a horse,” he mumbled, putting on his reading glasses. He looked at the screen again.

  “Don’t scroll,” I said.

  “He’s lucky.” He replaced the phone in the console and folded his hands in his lap. “I’ll let him live.”

  I worked really hard not to laugh at the idea of my semi-mobile father murdering Dash Wallace—trained athlete—with anything less than a firearm. He loved me.

  I dropped my hand over his and squeezed it. “It’s going to be all right.”

  “Why do you have that look then?”

  The most obvious answer was “what look?” but I didn’t want to lie. I knew what he meant. I changed the subject instead. “Do you want to eat at Café Sid?”

  “No. I have a stomachache from that thing they called a frankfurter. It tasted like salted Styrofoam. Why are you the lucky charm? And why did you get a long face when he called you that?”

  I made a left off Sunset so we could go home. “It’s a lot of responsibility. And I’m afraid if he has a losing streak or something, it’s going to be my fault.”

  “Your fault?”

  “Well… that he’s going to blame me.”

  “Oy. I’ve never seen two people make up so many problems.”

  We shot west on Beverly, but I couldn’t take it. I wasn’t making up a problem. If I was going to be in his life, I was going to be more than a rabbit’s foot on his keychain. I pulled over in a red zone and snapped up my phone.

  I don’t want our relationship to be contingent on your batting average

  I was a hundred percent sure he was still at the stadium, talking to the off-camera press. I tossed the phone in the back. I didn’t even want to be tempted by it.

  “Oh, no,” I said, pulling around the corner of our block right around three in the afternoon.

  A Volvo was parked in our driveway. Parking in someone else’s driveway was a big no-no in our neighborhood and usually the result of a sense of entitlement or an honest mistake. I could see someone leaning against the driver’s door, and once I got around the car, I could see who it was.

  “Crimeney.”

  “He’s fast, that guy,” Dad said.

  I pulled up behind the Volvo. The car’s color was a deep, molten gold, and Dash Wallace was tapping on his phone. He put it in his pocket when we got out of the car. He ran to help Dad but was brushed off.

  “I’m fine, Mr. Four RBIs.”

  “I had a good game.” He looked at me with half a smirk.

  “That’s a flashy car.” Dad swung his cane at it.

  “It’s a Volvo.”

  “It’s gold,” I interjected.

  “It’s insoluble.” He fell into step next to me. “And it’s yours.”

  He put his hand over mine, clasping it. I felt the hard box of the key in his palm. When I pulled my hand up, the key was in it.

  I stopped. “Dash.”

  “Let’s take it for a spin.”

  I stopped, looked at it then Dad, who was at the door, jingling his keys. My mouth was open. I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to accept it. My car was worth four hundred dollars, and it needed a three-hundred-dollar tune-up.

  “Go!” Dad dismissed me with a wave. “Go with your khaver. Buys you a car.” He shook his head, mumbling, “Couple of mensches here.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “A minute ago you were a putz. Mensch is a big improvement,” I said.

  Dad opened the door, waved, and shut it without even asking if I wanted to come in. I faced Dash, my khaver—boyfriend. Out of my league yet somehow in my life.

  “I want to talk about my batting average,” he said.

  “Me too. And I’m driving.”

  forty-four

  Vivian

  I’d never thought much of Volvos. It wasn’t a Mercedes or a Porsche or anything. But I got it. As soon as the engine hummed to life and the RPMs cooled a split second later, I knew why it was a gold Volvo. It was safe. The sweetness of his gesture melted my corners into curves.

  The driveway went around the back alley and onto a side street.

  “You know I can’t accept this, right?”

  “Head north to Sunset. Take it east.”

  “Hello? Did you hear me?”

  I headed north. The turn signal had a low, deep clicking sound that felt more expensive than the high-pitched clack of my Nissan’s signal. The dash lights were crisp yet easy on the eyes, and the leather smell was ambrosia. All of the finest details—there to piss me off.

  “Yes,” he said. “I heard you.”

  “Well?”

  “Well what? You’re just uncomfortable with the size of it. The expense. And I’m uncomfortable with you driving that piece of shit you have in the driveway. So one of us is going to have to get over it, and since it’s a matter of life and death over fifty-five miles an hour, I win. Left on LaBrea to Hollywood.”

  “Where am I driving? Can you tell me? I was raised here. I might know the place.” My voice was saturated with irritation. When I looked at him, he was smiling. “What? Why are you grinning? Is there some kind of problem? Do you not take me seriously?”

  “I do. I’m sorry. Barnsdall Art Park.”

  He turned away and looked out the window. I knew it was because he was smiling. Even when he reached for my knee, then my thigh, he looked away.

  “Stop smiling,” I grumbled.

  “Can’t.”

  “Were you this irritating when we met?”

  “I was charming. Very charming.”

  “Where did Mr. Charming go?”

  “That guy didn’t have staying power.”

  “But Mr. Irritating? He’ll stick around?”

  “Unfortunately. Go up to the top please.”

  I went past the gate at Barnsdall and up the hill. His hand crawled up my thigh, and my body had the usual response, which was something between highly aroused and melting into lava.

  I parked.

  Barnsdall Art Park sat atop a low hill in East Hollywood. Frank Lloyd Wright had designed and built a residence with a theater and art gallery overlooking two sides of the city. Because the parking lot was the only piece of the puzzle at ground level, the park was historically underused, making it a great place for a pro baseball player to walk around without being recognized.

  He put his arm around me and led me over the grass. A few couples and trios sat in the stone alcoves, chatting and laughing in the late afternoon shadows. He led me to a ledge overlooking the north side of the park, in view of the Hollywood sign and the high contrast lighting of the setting sun over the hills. He brushed dirt off the top of the stone wall and offered me his hand.

  I took it and sat on the ledge overlooking the city. He hopped over, onto the side of the hill.

  “This is nice,” I said.

  He stood and wedged himself between my legs. “Vivian?” He linked his fingers together at my lower back.

  “Dash.”

  “Seeing you behind the dugout meant a lot to me. I want you to be at every game.”

  I put my forearms on his shoulders and locked my fingers together. “I want to be there, technically.”

  “Technically?”

  “I have work until the middle of June.”

  His expression was hard to read it changed so fast. But w
ith the narrowing of the eyes and the tightening of one side of his mouth, I knew he hadn’t considered my job an issue. Maybe he didn’t consider it a job worth staying at in money or satisfaction. Both. Neither. Something else entirely.

  Then I felt his fingers tap on my back, and his gaze went deep into the middle distance.

  “You’re counting,” I said.

  “I have seven weekday away games between now and June 10th.”

  “And? You think I can just take those seven days off?”

  “Yes.”

  “As what? Sick days?”

  “And after that, you just travel with me.”

  “That’s nuts.”

  It was. How many red-eyes was that? How many mornings would I show up at school on no sleep? And how was I supposed to get away with that? Teachers only worked nine months a year, so unless we were actually sick, we were expected to show up.

  “Listen.” He pecked my lips before continuing. “You give notice now, and they have all summer to find another librarian. They’ll be fine.”

  I pulled back. “What? No. Dash, really, I’m not quitting.”

  “Why not?”

  What the hell? Had he lost his mind? How could he even pretend to not understand the issue here? It was so obvious to me that he was asking me to give him everything that mattered to me in exchange for… what? I didn’t even know what was on the table.

  “I’m not ready to change my life all around,” I said.

  “We change each other’s lives. That’s what we do.”

  “A couple of months ago, you couldn’t even commit past March. Now you want me to quit my job and leave my father so I can travel with you?”

  He couldn’t step back much because of the slope of the hill, but he backed up as much as he could and put his hands on my thighs. Mine were folded in my lap.

  “I know,” he said. “I don’t blame you for being cautious. But I want to reassure you that I’m serious.”

  I took his face in my hands and put my nose on his. He was a good man. A sincere and worthy man. I had a million reasons to drop everything and run away with him and only a few very important reasons to refuse. “I know you’re serious.”