by Holly Kerr
We finish the fajitas with M.K. forking up the last of the chicken as I eat the last of the cheese.
Being lactose intolerant is a form of torture for me. Luckily I have handy little pills so my insides don’t feel like they’re about to explode.
“I should warn you,” the waitress says as she clears our plates. “The last couple of weeks, there’s been a couple of baseball teams that have been coming in. Nice enough guys, but loud, and kind of rowdy. You’re looking like you’re having a heart to heart, so maybe you’d want to finish before they get here. They make it hard to hear. And some of the younger ones tend to get obnoxious.”
“I’m not ready for obnoxious young guys,” I say. “Or any guy. Let’s get out of here.”
Because we don’t stay for another drink, it’s still early when we say goodnight, turning in opposite directions. We’ve gone to Tex-Mex places all over the city, but Originals Ale House on Bayview Avenue is my favourite because it’s in the middle, between our places, and we can both walk home.
As I stroll along the sidewalk , I see the Uber unloading my neighbour. “Hello, Mr. Cullen,” I say politely, waiting for him to finish climbing out of the low-slung car. As he settles his cane on the uneven sidewalk, I fight the urge to help him.
He would not like that because he does not like me.
The front doors are smack beside each other, close enough that I can hear when Mr. Cullen goes out at night. He goes out a lot for an elderly retired man.
Mr. Cullen nods his white head. “Flower Girl.”
“Yes, I do work with flowers, but the name’s Flora in case you forgot.”
He grunts a response. I still slow my pace as we head up the shared front walk. The two of us have a acrimonious relationship. I feel a sense of responsibility for Mr. Cullen because of his age, but he’s always rude, except when I’m with Cappie. The man loves my dog, even taking him for walks when I’m stuck at the store.
“Watch the game yesterday afternoon?” he demands gruffly, like I’m in for punishment if I didn’t. The only thing we have in common is a shared love of baseball.
Luckily I have the right response. “I had it on the radio at the store. Can you believe the comeback?”
“They might have something to show for this season after all.”
We reach the doors and Cappie barks a welcome from inside. Because I know Mr. Cullen is waiting, I unlock the door and the bulldog bursts out, straight for my neighbour.
“He likes you more than me,” I grumble.
“Do you blame him?” Mr. Cullen mumbles with a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “It’s recycling tomorrow,” he reminds me.
“I’ll get your bin if you watch the dog,” I say. Cappie lifts a leg against the container by Mr. Cullen’s door, the one I put there last year, the flowers mirroring my own container.
He never says anything when I do his flowers, but there’s usually a treat for Cappie after I finish.
I wheel his recycling bin to the curb, along with his compost, and hurry to pull mine out, not wanting to leave the older man in the chill night air longer than I need to.
“Goodnight, Flower Girl,” he says as he turns to his door without a thank you.
“Goodnight, Mr. Cullen.”
“I don’t see your man around anymore.” He throws the words over his shoulder as I whistle for Cappie.
“That man won’t be coming back anymore,” I say. “Unless it’s to get his stuff. Then he’s out for good.”
Mr. Cullen nods slowly. “He wasn’t good to the dog,” he says gruffly.
“He wasn’t,” I say with surprise. “Did you know, he wouldn’t let Cappie into the bedroom? He said he couldn’t sleep with the snoring and Cappie’s farts disgusted him. He suggested I look at getting him an enema to sort out his digestive problems. Who does that to a dog?” I reach down and stroke Cappie’s silky ears.
“You both are well rid of him,” Mr. Cullen says and steps into his house without another word.
Dean
Weekends have been the hardest.
Evelyn and I would walk over to Starbucks on Saturday afternoons, between her hair appointments, or spa trips, or pedicures. We would do something with her friends in the evening, usually dinner at a fancy restaurant with huge plates and not enough of a serving to fill me up. I’d drink too much wine because I had nothing in common with her friends and wake up Sunday morning with a headache.
I wake up early Saturday and the day looms before me. I’m going to the Jays game at four with Clay, but I have absolutely nothing to do until then.
I debate going through Evelyn’s things, packing them up in the empty boxes I picked up from the liquor store, and even go so far as to open her closet. But the scent of her things hanging perfectly on the padded hangers backs me up. There’s no point of me helping her leave. If she wants her things, she can damn well come and get them herself.
I wonder when that’s going to be. It’s been seventeen days and I still haven’t heard from her. It’s like Evelyn dropped off the face of the earth.
If I knew for absolute sure that she’s disappeared into some black hole, it would be easier. Now, I wonder when she’s going to show up, what’s she’s going to say. Whether she’s going to want to get back together.
That one haunts me more than I thought it would. And I’m embarrassed to admit that my response to the hypothetical question changes from day to day.
I knock one of the boxes off the bed. I would not take Evelyn back today, even if she got down on her hands and knees to beg me. And that would never, ever happen, because Evelyn isn’t the begging type, nor did she like to get on her knees.
It all comes back to sex. When I start thinking about Evelyn and sex—or lack of it—I come back to my night with Flora. And then I end up hard and have to do something about that.
Being active helps take my mind off of Evelyn, and lack of sex and last time having sex, so along with taking more shifts at the training facility, I’ve started running again, something else Evelyn didn’t like me to do. She said running was hard on my knees and joints, and that spinning, or even yoga would be more beneficial.
I laughed the first time she suggested yoga but like the dutiful boyfriend I was, I went along with it when she signed me up for a hot yoga class. I lasted the ninety minutes, leaving the studio dripping with sweat and more tense than when I started.
I’m a ballplayer, not some kind of new-age yogi.
The therapist Evelyn made me talk to suggested I pushed myself too hard in baseball trying to gain my father’s approval. I don’t mind blaming the old man for everything, but I know it’s not the truth. I’m the only one to blame. Making the big leagues was everything to me and I took every advantage to show them what I had. First on the field, the last to leave, I practised pitching every chance I got, even when the coaches told me to take a break.
I was big and strong and no one gave any thought to how the constant pitching was doing serious damage to my arm.
The official name was medial epicondylitis, otherwise known as thrower’s arm. Surgery and rehab had physically fixed things, but it was the bitter temper tantrum that had screwed my chances of ever playing again. With the attitude I developed after I got hurt, I don’t blame any coach for not wanting to take a chance on me.
Running helps me stop thinking about that too.
It suits me. I’ve already noticed my jeans aren’t as tight anymore around the waist For once I’d like to weigh myself, but Evelyn took her $250 scale.
I lace up my shoes, stick in the AirPods and set out. I have my route, a healthy 7k that takes me around the neighborhood, past the little strip mall including a bakery that tempts to stop in.
For the first time I notice a flower shop with huge containers of orange flowers beside a dry cleaners
After I loop back home, I see Mrs. Gretchen doing the slow walker roll to the waiting Wheel-Tran bus.
“Hi, Mrs. Gretchen.” I wait on the sidewalk for her, know
ing she’ll only fight me if I try to help, trying to breathe normally.
“Dean!” Mrs. Gretchen has practically adopted me in the last few weeks. As much as she tends to prod into my life, for someone with no family in the city, it’s nice knowing that she cares.
It’s sort of like having another grandma.
“Dean,” Mrs. Gretchen calls again. “Isn’t he a big, handsome boy?” The question is directed to the driver of the Wheel-Tran, who grunts in response.
“Where are you off to this morning?” I ask with a squeeze of her shoulder.
She keeps pushing her walker towards the bus, forcing me to walk along beside her. The driver must think I’m going to take care of her since he hops back into the driver’s seat. “I’m going to play pickle ball.”
“Pickle ball sounds fun,” I say, not knowing what she’s talking about.
“I’m the top-seeded player in the club.”
I glance at her walker. “Good for you.”
“Don’t you snigger at me, young man. I’m surprisingly spry for my age.”
I chuckle at her tone, and the use of young man. “I’m sure you are, Mrs. Gretchen.”
Once I see her safely in the Wheel-Tran, I head inside and straight to the shower. As I’m stripping off my damp T-shirt, I happen to glance out the window. The bedroom is at the back of the house and I can see into the neighbour’s backyard.
I notice the dog first, the white-and-brown bulldog wandering around the yard.
I’ve always wanted a dog, but the life of a professional ballplayer made it difficult. And life with Evelyn made it even more difficult to even suggest it. I smile as the dog sticks his head in the freshly turned soil.
Then I notice the girl on her hands and knees by the garden, carefully removing a plant from a container. I watch her for longer than I should, admiring the slim figure in the shorts and T-shirt. Her face is shaded from the ball cap.
Finally I step back from the window with a grimace. I better make it a cold shower. Maybe I should take Clay up on his offer to introduce me to someone.
~
I don’t say anything to Clay at the game because it’s enough for me to get over the sensation of being in the wrong place. I stare down at the lines in the green turf, remembering what it felt like to walk across it in my cleats. The smell of being on the field, the sounds of the fans.
The birds, trapped in the Rogers Centre, would fly overhead, waiting for the roof to open to escape. I always felt sorry for the birds until Kevin Pillar pointed out that they ate better living under the dome, always able to find leftover fries and popcorn.
I watch Borucki make his wind-up on the mound, with a muttered curse when he doesn’t make his pitch and Aaron Judge hits it out of the park.
“You can’t give them anything good.” I lean back in my seat and finish my beer, watching the big Yankee round the bases in his easy, loping stride.
I want to hit the ball so much it hurts. The need to have a ball in my hand, to throw a four-seam fastball up and away is worse, though. It’s painful coming to games, but it’s like some kind of drug for me. I need to be here, to take in even a little bit.
Evelyn never liked me going to ball games. I thought at first that it was because she understood how difficult it was for me to be at the park but not on the field, but now I know it’s because she was trying to exorcise the sport from my life.
Good to see it didn’t work. I’m doing much better at exorcising Evelyn from my life. Still on the not-taking-her-back side of the coin toss today.
“I met a girl,” Clay says in the bottom of the fifth when I’m grinding my teeth with frustration at the score.
“No.”
“I did,” Clay says, confused.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me now she has a friend.”
“I’m sure she does but I’m not about to set you up with her, at least not until I go out with her first.”
“The friend?”
“No, the girl. Amy. She’s a dancer.”
I raise an eyebrow. “What kind of dancer?”
Clay chuckles. “What kind do you want her to be?”
“The kind who gets paid to dance?”
“I think that’s the point of being a professional dancer—to get paid.” He laughs again. “No, she’s not a stripper.”
“I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“Do you blame me? The one time I meet a nice girl, one I could see bringing home to mom, she disappears and I never see her again.”
Smoak is up to bat but I turn to Clay instead. “What are you talking about?”
“M.K. That girl from Vegas.”
My mouth hangs open and I fill it with a mouthful of beer to hide my astonishment. “Really? That was weeks ago.”
“I know. It’s really pissing me off that I can’t stop thinking about her. I never even touched her.”
I touched Flora. I did more than touch her.
I’ve never told Clay and I wonder if I should. Not that it would do any good. It might sound like I’m bragging or rubbing it in that I got action on the worst night of my life, and he got stood up.
Maybe it wasn’t the worst night of my life. I met Flora. We had some laughs; there was a connection, more than when I started with Evelyn.
But I’ve never heard from her, so that puts it in the worst night category again.
“I didn’t know you were so hung up on her,” I say after struggling to come up with the right thing to say.
“I’m not. I could have been, though. She was something special.”
I don’t argue with him. I don’t remind him that he spent all of an hour with her in a crowded bar. Besides, I knew Flora was special the first time I laid eyes on her, right after she headbutted me in the back.
It’s the first time I’ve admitted it to myself. I always felt guilty, like I was cheating on Evelyn even by talking to Flora that night. But now that the pain of losing Evelyn is fading the regret of not finding out more about Flora has only grown.
“I even checked for her on Facebook,” Clay admits. “There’s a lot of M.K.’s, most of them men. I found one I thought might be her, but she had a weird thing about cats, plus she was in Florida.”
“She might be in Florida.”
Clay shook his head. “I don’t know. I like to think they’re somewhere in Canada. They seemed like good Canadian girls. This is pathetic, isn’t it?” He finished his beer and crushed the can. “Want another?”
“I’ll come with you, stretch my legs.”
We head up the steps, both too disheartened even for a losing Blue Jays team. I don’t bother turning around when there’s a roar from the crowd until Clay clutches my arm. “Holy shit, bro, that’s her!”
“Her who?” I turn in time to see a picture of a cheering blonde flash across the JumboTron.
“Your Flora.” Clay points. “She was right there.”
The way my heart skips a beat only makes me feel worse. “Probably just a girl who looks like her,” I say, continuing up the steps.
“She was with two guys,” Clay insists. “Short hair, but it looked like her.”
“It’s because we were talking about them.” I stop at the top of the stairs and look around. “Even if it was Flora, which I’m sure it wasn’t, there’s forty thousand people here. There’s no way we could find her, even if she wanted to be found.”
Chapter Eleven
Flora
M.K. groans when we sit back down. “I hate it when you wear that shirt.”
I laugh and raise my beer. “Because you know we’re getting on the JumboTron.” I haven’t worn the tight tank with the sequins to a game in a while, but every time the shirt shows up, I get on the JumboTron.
I forgot how much I love being at a baseball game. I watch the games on TV but there’s something about being at the Rogers Centre, hearing the sharp crack of the bat, the smell of popcorn and peanuts and spilled beer drying on the concrete under the seats. The noise of the fans, the chee
ring at a good hit, the moans of disappointment at a strikeout—there’s nothing like it.
“Atta girl,” my cousin Patrick crows as he flips his longish hair away from his face. “The world needs to see this face.”
“The world in here was looking at her boobs,” Adam points out. Adam works for M.K. and he and Patrick may or may not be dating. It varies with whom you ask, what time of the day and whether Patrick has had enough caffeine to give a truthful answer.
It’s obvious that they like each other, but these two gay guys play more games than a room full of petty girls.
“We haven’t come to a game since April,” I point out, passing M.K. a long rope of licorice. M.K. and I used to go to a game a few times a month. “Why not?”
“I’d like to blame Thomas because I find it fun blaming him for everything, but I think it’s because you’ve been working too much,” M.K. says in a reproving voice.
I roll my eyes. “I’ll remind you I was working in the new garden today, but I stopped in time to come here with you.” Smoak cracks a fastball over the fence and I leap to my feet, almost losing the licorice. “Yes!”
“You hire people to work at the shop for you. Including him.” M.K. points to Patrick when I sit back down. “What good are they if you’re there too?”
Patrick is my brother Oliver’s oldest son, who works part-time for me as well as goes to art school. He’s Ruthie’s size and strong, and is a big help with the manual labour.
As I shift in my seat, I realize I should have called Patrick to help me this morning. If I don’t stretch out my back, I’m not going to be able to move in the morning. At least I got something accomplished. This was my second day working on it, but already half of the garden is planted.
My garden musings are interrupted by Adam tugging my licorice from the other side of Patrick. “Can you catch a ball that fast?” he asks.
