Fire Season (Unwritten Rules) Read online

  Glasser puts down a perfunctory sign for a high fastball. It’s not as if Reid really throws anything else. He could prolong this—tic, fidget, all the little motions pitchers do to get into the right mental state to actually play. Put off his inevitable failure if only for a handful of seconds.

  A bad brain kind of thought, one his therapist tells him to thank and let float away, like he can cure self-doubt by releasing a mental balloon. He can’t, though, no more than he can let go of the nervous beat of his heart under his ribs.

  He winds up and fires. It’s an eternity before the ball arrives at the hitter’s bat. The hitter swings, making contact. A crack different from if he got it on the sweet spot of the bat. A fly ball. A one-pitch out.

  It’s easy, deceptively easy. Reid re-rosins his hands to ground himself. To stop his brain from dumping whatever feel-good chemicals accompany baseball when everything’s going right—the kind he’s learned not to trust.

  Another Houston batter comes to the plate. This one tests him, bringing the count full. But he makes soft contact, resulting in a quick, careless-feeling out.

  At another time, in the distant universe when Reid still could throw triple digits, when his shoulder didn’t flare in the mornings, he might have ridden that feeling through another out, then after the game, into all the pleasures baseball offered off the field. Now the only things waiting for him are curt texts from his mom acknowledging he’s in Oakland, and a midrange hotel room that smells like carpet cleaner.

  The next Houston hitter—their tiny fireplug of a shortstop, with a strike zone like the edge of a piece of paper—fouls off the first pitch Reid throws. Then another. Two quick strikes.

  Glasser puts down a sign for a fastball. The same as Reid’s tossed this entire inning. A pitch the Houston batter must know is coming, but swings at anyway, missing.

  And that’s the third strike: a one-two-three inning.

  Reid’s heart hasn’t calmed down by the time he gets to the dugout. A few guys slap him on his chest and back. Braxton reaches to tap him by his ear, where his hair meets his ball cap, fingers cautious against the skin of his hairline, though he gives a slight smile when Reid doesn’t brush him off. “Some throwing,” Braxton says, then amends to, “some pitching.”

  “Stop, you’re making me blush.” Though Reid is glowing from exertion and success.

  Glasser’s there too, sitting on the bench, slugging back a cup of Gatorade, his mask tipped up on his forehead.

  “You ever gonna call for anything but my fastball?” Reid jokes.

  “Well, you only got the one pitch,” Glasser counters, “so it’s kinda limiting my options.”

  “Yeah, but it’s a good one.”

  Glasser shrugs, the kind of I guess shrug that’s a necessary pin in Reid’s mood, a reminder that baseball feels good right up until it doesn’t.

  He goes back into the clubhouse, retrieving an ice pack for his arm, his bracelet for his wrist, and a couple bottles of Gatorade. He’s still keyed-up, adrenaline-drunk. Another feeling his therapist tells him to name and release. That too high is more dangerous than too low, especially alone, with the cases of beer they buy players for after the game.

  He toggles the glass beads around his wrist, then removes himself back to the dugout, nudging Braxton in the arm with a blue Gatorade. Braxton takes it, thanking him, and shifts over enough to give Reid space to stand next to him. Up close, he’s somehow impossibly larger than his listed height, the kind of size that could be intimidating but on him works. His hands wrap around the skinny railing, tensing and relaxing as he watches the game. He’s still not wearing a ring. He does the same thumb-against-finger rub he did before, like he hasn’t just forgotten a ring at home but is practicing not wearing it.

  “Damn,” Reid says, after Houston’s reliever throws a particularly nasty slider. “Making the rest of us look bad.”

  “You ever throw much breaking stuff?” Braxton asks.

  “I used to have a hell of a curveball back in the day. Nothing like yours, but I could hold my own.”

  “What happened?” And Braxton asks it like he doesn’t know, like maybe he forgot whatever fleeting interest he had in Reid’s pitching and didn’t bother to google him. Something both liberating and slightly insulting.

  Guys linger around the dugout, the coaching staff, their manager. None of whom Reid particularly wants to discuss his now-lifeless curveball in front of. “You know, things change. People change.”

  Braxton opens his mouth like he’s about to ask; Reid prepares excuses. Obfuscations. Or worse, the truth, and that’ll probably be the end of their easy comradery.

  None of which he gets to say, because Braxton just nods and shifts where he’s standing so he’s closer to Reid. It’s warm compared to the evening air, an atmosphere gathering between them. Braxton smells like spray sunscreen, chewing gum, the particular odor of ballpark dirt. Like baseball and all the things Reid missed during his year not playing.

  Oakland’s pitcher makes a particularly nice toss. Reid taps his hip against Braxton’s in acknowledgment. “Feels good to be on a winning team.”

  Braxton gives him a slight tilt of a smile, one that’s as much of a victory as those three outs against Houston—one that makes Reid want to press his already tenuous luck.

  * * *

  After the game the next day, Reid makes his way across the clubhouse to where Braxton’s sitting, an ice pack strapped around his shoulder. Braxton has his jersey off, belt already loosened, and uniform pants unbuttoned. The fabric of his undershirt displays the generous topography of his chest and stomach.

  “That was some fucking throwing right there,” Reid says.

  Despite the ice pack, Braxton’s face flushes. “Thanks, man.”

  “Thanks, man? You’re gonna throw a game like that and then ‘aw, shucks’ me like I’m some asshole beat writer?”

  Braxton’s flush deepens. His light brown beard is still scraggly. Reid’s seen pictures of him without it. His hands itch like he wants to rediscover the shape of Braxton’s jaw. Something Reid should definitely, definitely ignore. But impulse control hasn’t ever been his strong suit.

  He sticks his fingers in his mouth, blowing the kind of whistle that stops clubhouse conversation. “I don’t know how you guys do it in Oakland, but after a win like that, I’m not sleeping for a while. Anyone who wants to come out with us, meet here after the scrum.”

  A few guys nod their agreement, a few more when he repeats the directive in Spanish.

  “Us?” Braxton says.

  “You’re coming too, baby. Not an option.”

  For a second Braxton looks like he’s going to refuse. “I... Yeah, okay. Let me go shower.”

  Reid convenes a group, some guys in sweats and T-shirts, some in collared shirts that’ll be too thin against the evening cool.

  Braxton joins them, hair damp from the shower like he rushed through getting dressed. He’s somehow larger in his street clothes than he is wearing his uniform, with a solidity that makes Reid regret inviting the rest of the team.

  “Where’re we going?” Braxton asks.

  “I found a place.” Reid drops the address in the team group chat: a bar, something unavoidable for the time of night it is. And Reid doesn’t have a problem with the smell of alcohol—or the taste of it—but he also slid his bracelet on his left wrist, just in case. Like he can ward off more than the evil eye.

  He takes a rideshare so he doesn’t have to deal with parking. Inside, it’s the kind of bar with a million beers on tap, pool tables, and booth seating. The black-and-white tiled floor is slightly sticky as he walks across it. Guys have already dispersed themselves to various corners, some drinking, some trying to talk to a group of women, others yelling at various highlights playing on TV, including those of their own game.

  Reid orders his usual, then tips the bartender
the cost of a drink when he says it’s on the house. Tables line the perimeter of the room. He situates himself at one, listening to the familiar chatter of players after a game.

  Braxton comes in a few minutes later. He orders a beer, drinking it and wiping the foam from his upper lip, then surveying the room until Reid waves him over.

  “I thought it would be louder,” Braxton says, when he slides in the booth.

  “Didn’t think that was your scene.” Because the bar isn’t quiet but also doesn’t have the throbbing pulse of a club. Better than the unbearable silence of Reid’s hotel room. He figures most guys’ll have two drinks and then split.

  One of their outfielders disagrees, calling for a round of shots. The bartender delivers a set from a tray of them. Reid studies his, then pushes it over to Braxton’s side. “All you.”

  “I’m sure it’s drinkable.”

  “That’s kind of the problem,” Reid says. “If we’re gonna be friends”—and Braxton’s eyes flash at that—“then you should probably know.” Because this part of the conversation is the hardest. The I’m a... like a self-affixing label. One Reid doesn’t like but serves as a convenient shorthand. He rubs the beads of his bracelet, then pushes the sleeve of his Henley up even farther, revealing the tattoo on his forearm. “I used to drink.” He touches one side of the semicolon tattoo, before hopping his fingers over it. “And now I don’t.”

  “Oh.” Braxton looks around at the bar they’re in, at his own beer sweating on a coaster.

  “I’m not one of those alcoholics who can’t be around it. Just one who doesn’t drink.”

  Braxton doesn’t say anything for a while, a silence that stretches into awkwardness. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say here.”

  He says it with enough sincerity that Reid laughs. His ever-eager heart rate slows. “Shit, that’s better than half the folks who look at me like I might fall off the wagon if I so much as smell a drop. This is seltzer, by the way, in case you want to buy the next round.”

  “Sure, I guess I can afford that.” Said amusedly but without that joking quality some guys get when Reid tells them, like his sobriety is either the universe’s comeuppance or something to be tested through badgering.

  “You can ask if you want,” Reid says. “I don’t hate questions about it. Except from reporters.”

  “Is that what Elbow Patches meant when Stephanie had to run interference?”

  “Elbow Patches?”

  Braxton motions to his own elbows, one puckered with the long scar that pitchers get from surgery replacing the ligament there. “Because of the jacket.”

  “You think he ever washes that thing?”

  “Who’d know in a clubhouse?”

  Reid laughs. “Yeah, that’s what he meant by my ‘history.’ Most teams act like it’s not more or less public information, then get all shocked when someone asks about it. But Stephanie sat me down and made me list out the stuff I didn’t want to talk about, then told me I could tell any reporter who did ask to go fuck themselves. Politely.”

  “She’s good about that.” Braxton runs his thumb over his ring finger.

  Reid nods to his hand. “You just split up?”

  “What?”

  “You have a tan line.” He reaches for Braxton’s left hand, thumb against the light band of skin interrupting his tan. Braxton has pitching calluses on the edges of his fingers; he lowers his eyelashes fractionally when Reid taps him on the hand. “And you sometimes do a thing—” He mimes the same motion Braxton made a second ago. “Sorry. If you want to tell me to go fuck myself and stop asking about it, that’s cool.”

  “It’s okay. I haven’t told anyone on the team yet. Stephanie knows, but no one else.”

  “Shit, that really sucks. Unless—I mean, I don’t know the circumstances.”

  “No, it sucks.” Braxton thinks about it for a minute. “It really sucks.”

  And Reid remembers that feeling, like a spot pressed over and over until it bruised. The relief of even talking about it with someone else, though most of his talking had been on his grandma’s couch as she watched baseball on TV, aiming the full force of Yiddish curses at the New York Gothams baseball organization. “How long you been apart?”

  “Officially or unofficially?”

  “Yeah, I hear that. My divorce took either an entire year or ten minutes, depending on how you count.” Because he came home one day to find his stuff in boxes, a neighborhood kid there holding an envelope with divorce papers. And he asked for Michael Reid Giordano in a semi-officious voice that cracked halfway through. It would have been funny if Reid didn’t almost start crying. “She pretty much put my stuff out on the curb.”

  “Wow.”

  “I mean, I was a shitty husband.” And Reid taps his forearm again, another before and after.

  “How long since it happened?”

  “Two years since the divorce, give or take, though we were separated for a while before then. Longer than that for when I officially quit drinking.”

  “I, uh, would have assumed it was the other way around.”

  “Yeah, people do tend to assume that.”

  Because most people think drinking ends your marriage. They’re wrong. Lying ends your marriage. Moving every year to play for a new team for no money ends your marriage. Waking up in someone else’s bed with no memory of how you got there ends your marriage.

  “I’m gonna go hit the head,” Reid says. He nods toward the shots sitting near Braxton’s elbow. “Would you mind getting rid of those?”

  And maybe Braxton will be gone when he gets back or holding a tented receipt and a set of excuses about leaving. It’s happened before. It’s easier to tell himself he’s better off. But that kick of hurt gets him every time. So he walks away and tries not to look back.

  Chapter Five: Charlie

  Charlie studies the shots. Drinking them will make his breath smell like beer and midtier whiskey. Giordano might mind, if he leans in close the way he sometimes does when he talks, hand on Charlie’s arm for emphasis. A possibility like a bloom of heat. But he might also mind if Charlie attracts attention from their teammates in an attempt to return them. So Charlie downs one shot, then the other, turning the glasses over on the tabletop like an accomplishment.

  It’s not great whiskey; he rinses the taste from his mouth with his beer. The bartender comes over, asking if they want another round, and takes his order for another beer, a seltzer with lime for Giordano, menus for a taco place that delivers when Charlie asks if they serve food.

  Giordano looks faintly surprised to see Charlie still there when he gets back. And maybe he should have left, like there was a cue he missed, though perhaps not when Giordano sits back down and snags one of the menus the bartender left.

  “I was thinking about getting something to eat,” Charlie says. “You want anything?”

  “Whatever you’re getting, get me that too.”

  “You sure?”

  “I mean, you look like you can eat.” Which Charlie heard a lot growing up, though it’s different when Giordano adds, “It ain’t exactly a bad thing.”

  The bar has gotten crowded. Charlie cools his face with the condensation from his beer glass, a few droplets of which rain on the menu on the table. When he puts the glass down, Giordano’s looking at him expectantly. “I was gonna get the shrimp tacos,” Charlie says.

  “In that case, can you get me the chicken? And see if they’ll leave off cheese or sour cream or whatever.”

  “Lactose intolerant?”

  Giordano smiles. “Something like that.”

  Charlie gives their order to the bartender. He contemplates an additional beer on top of the two he already drank and the shots that normally wouldn’t touch him. They do tonight, limbs a little looser, hands uncurled at his sides.

  One of their outfielders follows hi
m back to their table, insisting Giordano slide over, talking excitedly and drunkenly about his latest attempts at bow hunting, something they both mostly nod at.

  “Not big on hunting?” Giordano says when the guy peels off.

  “Not really,” Charlie says. “I fish some. Well, I drink on a boat mostly.”

  “Same.” Though he quickly clarifies that he means the former. “I grew up in Jersey and my family spent time down the shore. I always liked being out on the water.”

  “I figured from the accent.”

  “Oh, you think that I got an accent?” Giordano says, mockingly serious, and he does an imitation of Charlie’s drawl.

  He talks then, about his family in New Jersey. “Italian Jewish. Both yelling-based cultures, so I come by all this honestly.” And he laughs loudly at that. About his grandma being one of those Gothams fans, who gave him his first baseball and told him to go outside in the street and play. How he grew up dreaming of her being a fan of whatever team he played for.

  About how his cousin from his dad’s side once showed up to Thanksgiving with a still-frozen turkey and cans of pureed pumpkin instead of the food she was supposed to bring. How everyone thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

  “Except, she was the kind of drunk that only people who have substance use issues realize. Sober-drunk. Enough to hold it together, not enough to make plans. But you feel confident as hell things’ll work out. I should know. I sure did that enough.”

  “Oh.” And Charlie can’t imagine going out on a ball field drunk. “Did you, um, drink during games?”

  Giordano shrugs. “I could lie to you and tell you I didn’t. I don’t do that anymore—either the drinking or the lying.”

  Their food comes, the bartender bringing containers, along with the shouts from their teammates outraged Charlie hasn’t bought the rest of them food. They eat with the single-mindedness of ballplayers, Giordano picking off bits of cheese and dousing his taco in the little plastic cup of salsa that came with it. “This is good,” he says, around a mouthful.