Unwritten Rules Page 17

  “Fastballs. Then some curves. I got the Rapsodo going too.” She nods to the portable video system they have to analyze pitches. “Phone’s mostly for backup, in case they just want video.”

  Zach doesn’t ask who “they” is, instead squatting down behind the plate and thumping his glove. She throws him a few warmup tosses and then sends him a fastball.

  It’s a slow fastball—probably sitting somewhere in the mid-seventies but practically glacial since he catches pitchers who hit triple digits. But it’s not terrible either: Well-aimed, movement that would entice hitters to chase, more refined than what guys throw in high school, though at about the same velocity. A good pitch for an amateur, one better than what he would see in a rec league game, maybe even as good as one thrown in an independent league game. Strange to see from someone who isn’t a baseball player.

  She throws him a few more, and he fields them, tossing the balls back like they’re playing catch. She holds up a hand after ten pitches. “Now for curves.”

  Her curveball is—Zach’s caught a lot of good curveballs over the years, Braxton’s Cy Young–winning curveball first among them, and hers is good. Good in a way that makes Zach whistle. It sits somewhere in the mid-sixties, sufficiently slow to play off her fastball, but floats, looking relatively harmless, a pleasant butterfly of a pitch, before making a sharp, devastating drop.

  “Jesus,” he says, after a particularly good one. He gets up, drawing a cup of Gatorade from the cooler, handing another to Morgan. “I’m glad I don’t have to face that.”

  Something in the way he says it makes Morgan twist her mouth, and she towels her hands, applying rosin and clapping it off. “I have a spike curve too, if you’re still up for it.”

  She throws her spike curve, named for the way the pitcher’s finger sits in a spike against the ball; it comes in harder than her standard curveball with an even sharper break to it. The kind of pitch, if he tried to hit it, he probably couldn’t.

  But when he tells her so, she just shrugs. “Sure. Thanks for doing this.”

  “You gonna let me know what this was about?”

  “No. Not yet anyway.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It’s early June when Courtland, Oakland’s manager, calls Zach into his office.

  “Sit wherever you like,” he says, as Zach navigates between two chairs stacked with papers before standing in front of the desk, which is also piled high with papers. “The pencil necks don’t think us old guys know how to open email attachments.”

  There’s an ancient coffeepot on a table behind his desk, along with the largest container of Maxwell House Zach has ever seen. The pot has rings of coffee in it, the fossilized remains of late nights and early mornings. Courtland offers him a mug from one of the ones scattered around the room, some that look more or less clean, some with remnants of days-old coffee in them.

  “I’m good, but thank you, sir.” The clutter forces Zach to stand almost at attention, arms tight by his sides, and Courtland probably keeps the place that way to shorten conversations he doesn’t care to have. Possibly like this one.

  “Morales has the next two against Cleveland. Just wanted to let you know.”

  “He’s, uh, starting two this series.”

  Courtland shoots him a look that makes Zach want to crawl into the nearest pile of papers. “I’m aware of that, son. We’re considering how to better balance your workloads. Keep your legs fresh and all.”

  He gives a wave of dismissal.

  And Zach wants to argue—to say he’s been deep in game-planning with D’Spara, that he’s hitting almost as well as Eugenio. Wants to argue, and can’t without making the situation worse, so eases his way back into the hallway, careful not to disturb the piles of paper around him.

  He doesn’t ask Eugenio about it until after their game. They’re driving back to Zach’s condo, late enough that there isn’t much traffic.

  Zach rolls down the back window an inch to bring some cool air into his truck. “They say anything to you about why you’re starting the first two against the Spiders?”

  Eugenio is leaning on the window half asleep. The game went into extras, and he caught all of them. “No. Why?”

  “Just thought it was weird.”

  Eugenio grunts, adjusting how he’s sitting, closing his eyes.

  When they get back to Zach’s condo, Zach has to wake him up, shepherding him out of the garage to the elevator and then into bed. Eugenio’s awake enough to kick his shoes off by the door, but asleep enough that he’s going to pass out in his clothes.

  Zach takes his glasses off, his keys from his pocket and his phone, which he connects to the charger Eugenio leaves there.

  Eugenio mumbles that he’s cold and that Zach should come to bed to warm him up.

  “Be there in a second, baby.” And Zach kisses him before going to brush his teeth.

  “I can talk to D’Spara if you want,” Zach says the next morning. They’re drinking coffee out on Zach’s rooftop patio, the kind of whole-bean stuff that he didn’t buy before, Eugenio arriving one day with a burr grinder and a lot of opinions about buying pre-ground coffee. “Tell ’em I’m good to start today or tomorrow, if you need a game off or something.”

  “I’m fine.” Though Eugenio slept through his phone alarm and practically fell out of bed when Zach’s alarm went off, complaining it sounded like a tornado siren.

  “You sure?”

  “They won’t take it well if I start saying I’m being overworked.” Eugenio yawns, draining the rest of his coffee mug.

  And Zach doesn’t say he’s going to be out of rhythm if he’s underworked, left to rust on the bench every two games out of three, mostly because there isn’t anything either of them can do to fix that.

  It’s a bright Oakland morning, the kind where they can see the fog shrouding San Francisco across the Bay. Eugenio’s wearing a pair of sweatpants he stashed in Zach’s dresser and one of Zach’s team-issued T-shirts, too tight across the shoulders and too long on him, Zach’s last name stretched between his shoulder blades.

  Zach’s neighbors have been coming up for the past few days, doing sun salutations while he and Eugenio try to keep their eyes open. Two arrive now, waving hello, unfurling yoga mats and beginning their stretches.

  “Could you turn or face the other way?” Zach says, lowering his voice.

  “What?”

  “You’re wearing my shirt. They can probably see it.”

  Eugenio cranes his head, trying to see what’s printed across his back. “You think they’re gonna tell someone?”

  Zach’s neighbors are both women in their fifties who co-parent an English bulldog Zach sometimes sees them taking for walks. He doesn’t think they’ll say anything.

  But they might complain to the condo board if they think Eugenio’s living there and Zach isn’t paying for an extra parking spot, especially when Eugenio’s truck is in the guest parking more often than not. Or when Eugenio routinely violates the building’s no-smoking policy, sneaking out onto the patio at night and leaving charred rings of ash where he grinds his cigarettes to put them out. Neither of which is a discussion Zach particularly wants to have publicly.

  “If it doesn’t matter, just turn around,” Zach says.

  Eugenio does, rolling his eyes, scooting his chair, which scrapes on the concrete floor of the patio. “Now the sun’s in my eyes.”

  “For real?”

  “Sorry, I’m just really fucking tired.” Eugenio drinks the rest of his coffee, hand enveloping the Proud Parent of an Honor Roll Student mug from when Aviva was in high school. “They want me to do a rookie profile with the East Bay Tribune.”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s rookie profile season. All the PR folks love a rookie profile.”

  “Stephanie’s been pretty adamant about it.”

  “She gets that way,” Zach
says. “Mostly because it’s of guys she hasn’t had to yell at before. Usually.”

  “It’s going to be me and her and some reporter. Gordon said he might swing by if he’s in the area.”

  “So, you, Stephanie, some reporter, and eighty to a hundred of Gordon’s closest friends and relatives.”

  “He probably won’t. Once he figured I wasn’t going to burn his condo down, he stopped checking on me. But Stephanie mentioned having, like, an angle other than just being a ballplayer.”

  “Yeah, she also loves an angle.”

  “What was yours?”

  She asked Zach if he wanted to talk about his hearing aid, about the challenges that came from playing with hearing loss—or despite it, as she phrased it. But she didn’t ask about it again when he answered a flat no.

  “Growing up an O’s fan. I’m really not that interesting. Plus, I don’t know what I’d have to do with you having an angle anyway. You’re interesting enough for two people.”

  Eugenio glances over at Zach’s neighbors, who are both in downward-facing dog poses, angled toward them. He leans over, taking Zach’s mug and setting it on a little rattan table, and then wraps his hand around Zach’s forearm, squeezing once, twice, before releasing it.

  “What was that for?” Zach asks.

  “I figured they might notice if I kissed you.”

  And Zach’s sure whatever expression he’s wearing is just as likely to give them away: something too affectionate for his rooftop in full view of his neighbors. He schools his face back to neutral, though it’s difficult with the way Eugenio is looking at him, like he might kiss him anyway.

  Zach hasn’t looked at his phone in a while, but the sun is up higher, and they should probably get going to the park. It’s an afternoon game, the kind where they’ll be in shadow for parts of it, and he doesn’t envy Eugenio having to catch Hayek’s sliders, even if Zach is unhappy being benched.

  “So, you’ll do the profile?” Eugenio asks. “I figured, I don’t know, the angle could be us being a tandem. You’d just have to come, hang out, talk about how well I’m hitting. I’ll talk about how well you’re catching.” He picks his mug back up. “And I could use someone else there. The media training was basically just horror stories about stupid shit players have done over the years.”

  “Did I figure highly in it?” Though Zach mostly avoids doing extra PR, both from awkwardness and the irrational fear that being on camera will make him confess all his secrets, including the one currently wearing his shirt.

  “Apparently, you and Gordon are the only ones Stephanie doesn’t have to yell at.”

  “It might be obvious that we’re—” Zach gestures between them “—you know. Together.”

  Eugenio looks at him from over his cup of coffee, eyebrows raised.

  “I mean...” And panic begins to coil itself around Zach’s spine. “I didn’t mean, um, if we aren’t...”

  Eugenio smiles, though there’s a perplexed crease between his eyebrows. He lowers his voice. “Zach, of course we’re together.”

  And Zach can’t look at him for a second, instead focusing on the skyline across Bay; the fog is burning off, the city ready to admit the morning sunshine. “Oh,” he says, finally. And he’s a little overwhelmed, unsure of what to do. So he reaches for Eugenio’s forearm, wrapping his hand around it and squeezing twice. “Okay.”

  * * *

  Stephanie corners him after the game. It’s an ugly loss, one where Hayek and Eugenio never really got on the same page; one where Hayek and anything like pitch command never got on the same page. He walked two batters in the first inning and another two in the second, and even the best framer in the world couldn’t make what he was throwing look like strikes. The kind of ugly baseball loss that Eugenio is answering for next to his stall, reporters’ phones and recording devices stuck in his face.

  Stephanie is almost as tall as Eugenio, at least in the wedges she’s currently wearing; her hair is bright pink this week. She’s also smiling. Or, Zach revises, showing her teeth. “I hear that you’re gonna be in Morales’s rookie profile.”

  “I don’t need to be, if that’s a problem.”

  “I think it’s a great idea. Two Oakland catchers who’re hitting the cover off the ball, one who’s maybe gonna be rookie of the year and the other who Baseball Prospectus is busting a nut over.”

  Eugenio being part of the R-O-Y chatter isn’t surprising: his performance this season is turning heads. Zach hasn’t heard anything much about himself other than that a few beat writers, and his mother, noticed his reduced playing time. “They’re what?”

  “I didn’t actually read all the gory math details, but the short version is, yes, pitch framing, good. I can send you the article if you want.”

  The cluster of reporters around Eugenio begins to disperse. Even though it’s only about nine o’clock, he looks like he’s going to fall asleep against his stall, un-showered and still in his uniform pants, shadows under his eyes.

  “When did you say this was happening?” Zach asks. “The profile, I mean?”

  “Thursday.” She amends it to, “After this series. It’s weird how you guys never know what day of the week it is.”

  “I thought today was Thursday, with it being a day game and all.”

  Zach’s been at Gordon’s condo maybe a dozen times during the season. Once, the first time he gave Eugenio a ride back from the ballpark, and Eugenio insisted he come up for the tour, which mostly consisted of them making out in the overdecorated living room, Eugenio’s back pressed against the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  Another time early in the season Eugenio cooked for him: shredded beef with black beans, rice, and plantains, and another tarte tatin.

  “I don’t actually know how to make many other desserts,” he admitted, and laughed when Zach laughed, and kissed Zach when Zach kissed him. Zach slept over and woke up to Eugenio in the kitchen, and he slid Zach a cup of coffee and a plate with leftover tarte.

  “You were right,” Zach said, stomach warmed from the coffee and from the way Eugenio kissed him on the side of his neck in greeting. “It is better for breakfast.”

  The condo itself is a converted loft space, big open floor plan, a kitchen that even Eugenio agrees is oversized, marble countertops and an island the size of a continent. A decorator’s sense of what a young guy with a lot of money wants a place to look like: chrome, succulents, a robust multitiered entertainment center, and an enormous television.

  Stephanie encouraged Eugenio to get a cleaning service to fix the place up, which he didn’t. But when she gets there, holding two cups of coffee, both of which are for her, she looks around. “This looks great. Like a real human being lives here.”

  She still insists on doing a walkthrough, pausing at Eugenio’s bedroom. “They’re bringing a photographer, so put away your bongs and whatever.”

  The room is mostly occupied by a king-sized bed that Eugenio and Zach sometimes share. A few of Eugenio’s things sit out on the nightstand: phone charger, a book he borrowed from Zach that Zach hasn’t read, a tub of Vicks VapoRub he sometimes uses if his hips are sore after a game. And Zach wishes he swept his own things into the nightstand drawer, because there’s a phone charger on his side of the bed, a graphic novel that he’s reading. He stands there, feeling sweat bloom in the blast of the aggressive air conditioning, like Stephanie is going to ask about them. She doesn’t.

  They sit in the living room, Zach and Eugenio on opposite sides of a miles-long sectional, while Stephanie runs them through do’s and don’ts.

  “Fans love hearing about players’ friendships. If you’re out golfing together or whatever the G-rated version of picking up girls together is or whatever, be sure to mention it. Just—” she looks from Zach to Eugenio, as if expecting to be disappointed “—keep it clean.”

  “Is there a set of questions or anything t
hey’ve sent in advance?” Eugenio says.

  Stephanie shakes her head. “Sorry, no canned answers. But we can run through a few things if you’re feeling apprehensive.”

  “Okay,” Zach says, “um, shoot.”

  She asks them a series of rapid-fire questions.

  What they most admire in each other’s game. “His patience at the plate,” Zach says, as Eugenio says Zach’s game-calling skills.

  What they like about playing on the same team. “Getting to plan our approach to opposing hitters together,” Eugenio says. Zach agrees, hoping his face doesn’t give away what they usually do after late-night game-planning sessions on the road.

  What they learned from one another over the course of the season.

  And Zach is expecting Eugenio to say something like when to call for a slider or what to do in a two-strike count. “He always has time for other players, especially the younger pitchers on our staff,” Eugenio says. “Just to have that kind of patience, especially when I’m feeling frustrated. That’s something I’ve learned.”

  “Oh,” Zach says, a little dumbstruck. “I didn’t...” Everything else he was about to say sounds hollow, so he just says, “Eugenio’s really good at explaining all the analytics stuff. Math isn’t my favorite thing, but he’s patient even when I’m missing something obvious or it takes me a while to get there.” And he doesn’t look over at Eugenio, but he can see him in his peripheral vision, the reflection of the recessed lighting off his glasses, the shape of his smile.

  “See,” Stephanie says, “you’ll do great. If you’re really stuck, I’ll try to throw you a life ring or something. Plus, it’s a new person and if she pisses you off, she knows you won’t answer her texts all season.”

  Zach assumed it was going to be the normal East Bay Tribune guy, who’s been writing about baseball since Zach was in elementary school and hasn’t ever said anything to Zach about his hearing aid.

  “Hey,” Zach says, when Eugenio gets up to go to the bathroom, “I’d prefer if she didn’t ask me any questions about my hearing.”