| |
Something cool, with long tarantula-like digits, landed on Del’s shoulder. He shrugged it off. It returned, gripping harder this time, eliminating any hope he might resume his dream. His eyelids parted grudgingly, disclosing a bronzed arm leading up to a smooth, hairless chest.
“Dude, it’s gone.” Edsell was crouched next to the bed in just his boxers. There was a hint of panic in his hoarse whisper.
“What’s gone?”
“The Prop. It’s not in the fridge. I checked everywhere.”
Del rolled onto his side and aimed an elbow in the vicinity of his closet. “It’s in there.”
Edsell eased the French panels open, dropped to both knees, and scanned the mess that had collected over the season’s first seven weeks. He snatched a tall plastic tumbler from the back of the closet and plunged his fingers into it.
“What the fuck?” he demanded, lifting a small glass vial from the melting ice.
“What if Ginny saw it in the fridge?” Del asked.
“She wouldn’t know what it was.”
“She’s not stupid. She can read, at least.”
“She wouldn’t even care if she knew.”
“Well, Bear might. Good chance he’ll be over sometime if she’s staying here all week. I kept picturing how that might go down when I was lying here last night.” Trying to sleep, he wanted to add. And failing because of the bed springs shuddering so furiously it sounded like a runaway mine car was about to crash through the wall. The playful shrieking and muffled laughter had paused only briefly before picking up a second—or was it third—time. It reminded Del of himself and Dana in her suite at Central. The quieter they tried to be, the louder they got. Until her suitemate moved out unannounced, clearing all her belongings one evening when they were at the movies.
Unable to sleep, he’d fetched his pad and begun roughing up some of the highlights of the past week, a practice he’d abandoned over the winter. But there was no Sir Del without a Damsel Dana to entertain. There was just a more massive version of his former self, flattening a fastball. Two of them in one game, in fact. In the old days he could have spun a triumph like that into an eight-panel strip worthy of the Sunday comics. But knowing she would never see the drawings snuffed his creative spark. In the end he’d crumpled the page and shut the lights off.
“He’s not going to come in and start poking around the fridge.”
“Why take the chance?”
Edsell’s casual attitude toward even simple precautions had been excusable in Mexicali. Here it only served to rekindle Del’s paranoia.
“What about the—”
“They’re in there. Behind my suitcase.”
Edsell crawled into the closet and pulled two syringes from a plastic grocery bag. He bit the cap off one and plunged it through the rubber membrane of the Propionate. “You want yours while I’m at it?”
Del rolled onto his stomach and hiked the hem of his shorts up over his left buttock. Edsell counted to two and drove the needle in. Del winced so hard the muscles in his abs tightened. It had hurt a lot worse the first cycle, when they had both been tentative with their injections. Quick and firm was the secret. He generally did his own shots now, but if he was honest it was better having someone else give them. He had a propensity to hesitate on himself, knowing what was coming and where, and he always seemed to hit the same sore spot.
He declined an invitation to accompany Edsell and Ginny to the diner across the way and willed himself back to sleep, only to be awakened an hour later by the banging of his bedroom door against the wall by his head.
“Sorry.” Edsell, arms wrapped around a dorm-sized refrigerator, curled his foot around the base of the door to stop it from swinging. “Sleep on. Don’t mind me.”
“What is that?”
“Like it? Lady in the next building was doing a lawn sale.” Edsell dropped his load in the mouth of the yet open closet. “Twenty bucks. Works great.” Lowering his voice he added, “Better than a cup of fucking ice.”
“So Ginny knows?”
“Yeah. She helped carry it.”
“Jesus.”
“Oh, that? No, no, no. I just told her you wanted to keep snacks in it, for at night.”
Del stared at him, disbelieving anyone would be satisfied with such a transparent lie.
“She’s not all suspicious like you, bro.” Edsell knelt and plugged the cord into the wall. “Don’t worry about it.”
Del stocked his new appliance with sports drinks, orange juice, and fresh fruit, initially just to build a plausible screen behind which to hide the Propionate. As the week progressed, however, he tapped into his provisions, preferring the solitude of his room to camping on the recliner as Edsell and Ginny fondled each other on the couch. Last year their quasi-public displays of lust hadn’t bothered him; he’d had Dana back home. Now, reluctantly single, it grew wearisome. Seeing them intertwined triggered uncharitable thoughts. It was a short journey from “If she only knew about that chick in Mexicali” to “You don’t deserve her, dude.”
Who did then? Himself? Certainly he’d always gotten on well with Ginny. She told off-color jokes about reproductive organs and took trash talk as well as she dished it, better frankly on both sides of the transaction than many guys in the locker room. They’d developed something of a brother-sister relationship, to the point where she felt comfortable coming to the breakfast table in her panties and tank top, never acknowledging if he took too long of a look as she entered the room.
Edsell was attentive when she was around, which was virtually every day during spring training. But the moment they migrated north to New Britain, he adopted his single persona again—minus the part where he brought strange girls back from the bars at night. Del never heard him on the phone with her, rarely saw him emailing her. It was as if their time apart was stitched together with occasional text messages. And somehow they were both okay with it. The infuriating part was Edsell gave no indication at all that he appreciated how good he had it.
Nor had he once deigned to thank Del for the steady diet of fastballs he’d seen this spring. Slotted fifth, between Skeen and Del, Edsell seemed to come up with runners in scoring position nearly every at-bat. No coincidence then that he was pacing the Eastern League in RBIs with thirty-nine through the season’s first forty-four games. Opposing moundsmen had to pitch to him, because Del was gaining a reputation as a legitimate power threat. With eight home runs he was already just three shy of his career high, despite having been walked thirty times, most on the team. Unlike Edsell, and Skeen for that matter, Del had no one protecting him. The seventh spot in the order was reserved for whoever was catching, most often Regan Flint, a defensive-minded backstop with enough strength to pop an occasional ball out but no patience to force the favorable counts that might earn him more opportunities to do so. With pitchers inclined to work around Del and take their chances, even the strikes he saw were rarely where he liked them.
What was the point in crying about it? He was hitting better than ever, right? In college when he allowed his games to dampen his mood away from the field Dana used to rub her index finger against her thumb, squeaking and squawking like an out-of-tune violin. Once, on a road trip to Western Oregon, he’d found a violin keychain in a gift shop. The following week he goaded her into complaining about her chemistry lab partner just so he could break it out and pluck the plastic strings with his forefinger. When her purse was stolen from her car a year later it was one of the first things she rattled off to the campus cop taking the report, right after her wallet and driver’s license. “Oh, and my violin.” He could picture her playing it tonight as he moped about his spot in the lineup.
Del flipped his phone open and navigated to the photo album, tabbing back through the spring in Florida and winter in Mexico to the last one he’d taken of Dana, seated on the rolling lawn overlooking the Ballard Locks a week before they’d broken up. He’d caught her off guard, a stray strand of sandy blonde hair winding across her lip as her tardy smile raced into place before the shutter clicked. Not her best by far, but the one he had looked at the most in the months since, occasionally imagining what she might say if he were to call. Would she answer? She hadn’t the night after she gave the ring back. Or the day he left for Mexico. He’d given up trying then.
What would she be doing tonight? It was nine-thirty back in Seattle. Probably watching Lost. She definitely wouldn’t answer then. He flipped his phone closed. It felt warm against his palm as he lay atop the covers. The creaking started up again through the wall behind his head. It had been so quiet he’d assumed they’d gone to sleep by now, what with Ginny’s early flight home barely six hours off. On the pretense of timing them he checked the clock on his cell, coaxing it to life every time the screen faded black. When it hit 1:00, he watched his thumb, acting almost of its own volition, tap a succession of tiny keys. Dana’s number appeared. His pulse quickened, heart thumping so hard he could feel it beating through his thumb as it rested on the Talk button. He closed his eyes and pressed it.
The phone rang. Twice. Three times. The fourth was interrupted when the call was at last answered. Then silence. Del’s throat clenched as he fought for words. “Dana?” It came out dry and barely audible, like a boot crunching an autumn leaf into the lawn.
A woman’s voice responded. Distant and muffled, as though she was speaking from the bottom of the Grand Canyon. “We’re sorry. The number you dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please check the number and try again.”