Unwritten Rules Read online

  Around them, players continue to greet each other, giving the sort of back-slapping hugs that Zach and Eugenio have, conspicuously, not tried, one that would confirm if Eugenio still smells the same: like cologne and the cigarettes he sneaks when he’s having a bad day. He looks good, like he was at the barber recently, a neat fade to his sideburns. Like he got a few years of good nights’ sleep, even if he’s been on a bunch of New York nightlife websites that Zach definitely doesn’t follow, connected with this or that actress or musician.

  “Here.” Eugenio points to the chair next to where he’s sitting, which Zach eyes, wondering if he’s only talking to him now because of the forced proximity of the game. “I was gonna go get another.”

  He holds up a mostly empty beer, the kind of craft thing he used to drink and convinced Zach to try, even if Zach thought it tasted like soap and flowers. “You want one?”

  Zach’s tempted to tell him to go ask the bartender for an entire bottle of bourbon, or possibly a swimming pool full of it. “No, I’m good, thanks.”

  Eugenio goes over to the bar, where the bartender looks like he’s giving him the same spiel about bourbon he gave Zach, except this time it ends with him handing Eugenio another beer and a napkin on which something is obviously scrawled.

  Eugenio comes back holding his beer, napkin wrapped around it, condensation making the ink feather. But he sets his beer down and then wads the napkin up, making a dead-on throw into the nearest trashcan with the accuracy of someone who’s caught more base stealers than Zach has this season. “How’ve you been?” he asks, sitting down in the chair next to Zach, like they’re just two former teammates catching up.

  “You know.” Because what else is there to say about living in a half-decorated apartment in Miami playing for a half-good team?

  “Not really, Zach.”

  “First All-Star Classic.” He shrugs, like there’s not more to it than that.

  “You’re not excited?”

  “I might not even get to play.” Zach’s probably the fourth or fifth catcher down on whatever endless depth chart governs the game. Certainly below wherever they have Eugenio, who’s having a career-best year. Not that Zach has been following it. Or checking his stats. Or watching his interviews.

  “Thought you’d be good with that,” Eugenio says. “All of the good parts, none of the effort.”

  It hangs there for a second. For a long second. And it’s gotta be a joke—has to be—considering they’re sitting around drinking, surrounded by other ballplayers, in a clubhouse that for once doesn’t stink, about to go play on national television. Talking to each other like that’s just something they do.

  “Fuck,” Eugenio says, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Yeah, no worries.” Zach waves his hand like he’s brushing it off. He fumbles around for what to say next, cuing up the stuff ballplayers talk about when they get together—the season, the weather, the pitching matchups—before casting each one away. As if there’s something that will soothe the bruised feeling of what Eugenio said, a feeling like taking a thumping pitch off his chest.

  Next to him, Eugenio is drinking his beer. Zach doesn’t study his face, the angle of his nose or the possibility of his lips, not in a clubhouse filled with fifty other players. Not when it’s been almost two years since they had a real conversation. Not with how that conversation ended. “Do we need to game-plan with the pitchers?” Zach says, finally.

  “I think we just need to be sober enough to know which way the mound is, though—” Eugenio nods over to where a player for the Millers is already swaying to the music with the confidence of someone not quite sober “—maybe not.”

  “You haven’t been planning with anybody?”

  “If it’s like the last time I was here, no one really expects us to take this seriously.” A reminder that, unlike Zach, this isn’t Eugenio’s first time as an all-star. That his career really took off when he left Oakland for New York. That this is ordinary for him.

  “You mean, you’ve already game-planned with the Gothams pitchers,” Zach says, and Eugenio rewards him with the flash of a grin, a slight shrug of confirmation.

  Zach fumbles in his pocket for the schedule again, but it doesn’t say anything different from when he looked at it before. Sit and wait and wonder when he can go back to Miami where he doesn’t have to deal with Eugenio’s over-preparation or the way his beer bottle wets his mouth. Or that he’s looking at Zach like he wants him to say something, though every word feels slippery, just beyond his grasp.

  “We could go look around.” Eugenio gestures to the tunnel leading from the clubhouse to the dugout.

  And Zach needs to get out of the dim clubhouse lighting, the din, the airlessness in his lungs. If they’re going to have a conversation, or an argument, it would be better to do it away from a clubhouse full of the all-star players, most of whom are also all-star gossips.

  Outside, it’s a nice day, sunlight picking out the glints of red and blond in Eugenio’s hair. He has another tattoo, one Zach can just see the edge of through the long armhole of the sleeveless T-shirt he’s wearing, an outline of something. And Zach wonders what else has changed since they last talked to one another with anything more than a passing grunt during a game. Wonders who else has seen that tattoo and in what context.

  If they’re why Eugenio looks so well-rested or why Zach gets occasional text messages from him asking when they’re going to meet up for dinner, always immediately followed by a Sorry, wrong person. Texts he can’t bring himself to delete, even if he should.

  They walk around the perimeter of the field. It really is a little bandbox of a place, every long fly ball a home run. It’s smaller than the cavern of Swordfish Park, and if Zach played at a place like this, he might actually have twenty homers to his name at this point in the season the way Eugenio does.

  “Glad I don’t have to call games here,” Eugenio says, like he can tell what Zach is thinking.

  “Glad I don’t have to call ’em in New York.” Because Gothams Stadium is loud and raucous and full of people from Queens.

  “It’s not so bad. But, yeah, the noise can be a little much.”

  There’s a pause, a long enough one that Zach’s half-tempted to try to make an escape, though that would mean retreating back into the relative darkness of the clubhouse, away from watching Eugenio drink his beer in the sunlight. “Listen—” Zach says, right as Eugenio says, “I was wondering—”

  “Uh, you first.” Zach waves his hand, relieved when Eugenio continues.

  “I was wondering, a bunch of us are going out after the game. If you want to come.”

  “Really?” Zach asks, before he can stop himself. He glances around, like Eugenio might have asked him out of some misplaced sense of politeness. A “hey, we got room for one more” instinct that led him to continually update reservations back in Oakland.

  Because he expected something else. An argument, an old one like a reaggravated injury. Or a reminder why they haven’t spoken in two years, after Eugenio left him in a beach house on the California coast and then the team entirely after demanding a trade. Like he couldn’t even stand being in the same city as Zach.

  “Are you, uh, sure you want me to?” Zach asks.

  “I wouldn’t have asked if I weren’t. Unless you already have plans with your family?”

  “They couldn’t make it. You know how they are about me paying for them.”

  “Then you should come.”

  And Zach imagines them all packed into a restaurant, ordering steaks and bourbon and all the food most players don’t usually eat on their meal plans. There’ll probably be enough of them that he’ll spend dinner struggling to hear in the noise, not being able to track half the conversation and having people think he’s stuck-up. “It’ll be loud.”

  “I’ll sit next to you.” Eugenio always did that, before, w
hen they went out together, sat next to Zach in a group or across from him when it was just the two of them. He’s being insistent, like he planned this, like Zach is the one being weird or difficult. Like they’re friends.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Zach says. Because it’s one thing to stand in the sunlight of the stadium, a pace apart. Another to be pressed together, surrounded by other players. A reminder of how things were in Oakland and aren’t anymore.

  Eugenio starts to say something else. But he’s interrupted when the league’s social media team spots them.

  The social media people are a matched set, Carter and Caitlin, like unfortunately named twins. And they seem young to Zach, even if he’s only about five years older than they are, faces unlined from not working out in the sun or squinting in the deep shade of the roof of Swordfish Park.

  And of course, two former teammates reunited at the All-Star Classic is too good an opportunity for them to let go of. “Just a quick video,” Carter says. “Something authentic.” They hold up their phone a little threateningly.

  “Authentic” apparently takes a long-ass time and a lot of coaching, at least for Zach, since Eugenio shows off every inch of his New York sports media training, smiling and gamely answering questions.

  “Okay, let’s run through this,” Caitlin says, “once in English with both of you, and then we’ll do yours—” she nods to Eugenio “—in Spanish too. So, when was the last time you guys saw one another?”

  “Oakland,” Zach says, which isn’t an answer, especially not when Eugenio says, “We play each other a bunch during the regular season.”

  “Let’s focus on your time in Oakland then.” And Zach wonders if the grounds crew can come out and dig a ditch for him to crawl into, and then possibly bury him. “So, again, when was the last time you guys played together?”

  “We were in Oakland for a long time,” Eugenio says, like two years constitutes a long time in a sport as enduring as baseball.

  It leads to the next question, about what they miss most about playing on the same team. One followed by a long pause. “Oh, you know,” Zach says, finally, “not worrying our pitchers are gonna give up free hits to this guy.”

  “You’ve both been in the league a while,” Caitlin says. “What would you say is your biggest career moment?”

  “Probably playing for the pennant last year,” Eugenio says. “Even if it didn’t turn out how we wanted.” And he laughs, like losing the league championship series in six games is something that can be brushed off.

  “Zach, how about you?” she says. “You’ve been in the majors for seven years. What would you say the highlight has been?”

  And Zach thinks back to his seasons in Oakland: A loss in the division series. Another loss in the division series. A heartbreaker of a loss in the Wild Card game. His time in Miami, the highlights of which have mostly been being able to go to the grocery store without being asked for his autograph.

  “Uh,” Zach says, “I’m here, I guess. So that’s pretty cool.”

  Next to him, Eugenio’s forehead creases a little, before he schools his face back to a pleasant, handsome neutral.

  Carter chimes in, saying they’ll mention that Eugenio’s hit twenty home runs this season when they film the clip for real. “Think you got twenty more in you?”

  “For sure.” Eugenio mimes his swing. It’s the same swing he’s always had, that compact quick-handed swing that elevates the ball just right. The same one he does during games when he takes one of the inexperienced Swordfish starters yard on a pitch Zach called.

  “Sorry,” Zach says, because Carter is saying something.

  “That’s a good question,” Eugenio says. “When we first met. I think it was spring training about three years ago. Right, Zach?” And he asks it the way he used to, when Zach couldn’t hear something a teammate or an interviewer said, something he misses now that he’s on his own with Miami media.

  “Yeah,” Zach agrees, “spring training. Your first big-league camp.”

  “This guy taught me everything I know about framing.” Eugenio elbows Zach in his ribs, like this is something they just joke about. “Though he might regret that now that we play against each other so much.”

  It’s a cue for Zach to say something funny or witty or charming or anything, but his brain feels like it’s been replaced by an unwavering blank, dull and uninteresting as the roof at Swordfish Park.

  “Do you?” Carter says, with the tone of someone who spends all their time on the futile task of trying to wring articulate answers from inarticulate ballplayers.

  “I mean, who doesn’t have regrets?” Zach tries to smile at that, to shrug it off the way Eugenio did. Something easy. Marketable. Unflavored by truth. “If I had to do it again...” He trails off.

  Carter smiles at him indulgently, already on to the next topic. And Zach pretends he doesn’t see Eugenio looking at him, like he wants to know what Zach was going to say. Like Zach has the answer to what he’d do differently. Other than everything.

  Chapter Eight

  March, Three Years Ago

  Their next framing practice goes better. It’s midmorning, sun hot in the bright blue bowl of the Arizona sky, though the forecast most players are focusing on is the certainty of minor-league cuts, which are coming at some point that afternoon.

  Zach came out of the last session with bruises that looked like hickeys, and he got shit for it in the clubhouse, especially when Eugenio looked the same. Their second baseman whistled loudly enough to make Zach’s hearing aid distort and asked what they’d been getting up to together. And Zach considered telling him to fuck off, but that might invite further comments, so just shook his head and went to find Morgan for his lifting session.

  Zach watches Eugenio drink two cups of coffee, fast—his tongue must be total sandpaper since they were hot when Zach handed them to him—before setting up to receive pitches. There’s the familiar silver foil of a pack of cigarettes glinting on a chair; he hasn’t yet smoked one, though Zach bets that he will at some point, given how this is going.

  “You’re scooping your glove,” Zach says, when Eugenio catches another pitch, dipping his mitt down and then bringing it back into the zone.

  “It’s just hard to retrain my stance. Like, I’ve been catching this way since Little League. I have to retrain everything or...” He doesn’t finish. Doesn’t need to finish. The or hanging over him like it’s hanging over every other guy who’s hoping to stay in big-league camp for another day, rather than being reassigned. “How am I supposed to throw guys out from this position?”

  “Don’t think of it as learning a totally different stance.” Zach demonstrates, shifting from a traditional primary position to having his right knee under and left leg out to allow him to frame, cycling to a higher stance for throwing out base runners. “Marti’s got some drills if you want.”

  Eugenio gets up and turns off the pitching machine before it can pelt another ball at the fence. And then does the same series of positions that Zach did, once, twice.

  Zach probably doesn’t need to watch him in order to tell him to make his movement more fluid—there’s no reason, no baseball reason, he should. But he does anyway. Eugenio is shorter than he is; he makes up for it with the strength in his legs, the muscles that strain against the confines of his shorts, the solidity there that scouts refer to as lower-half thickness.

  “Looks good.” Zach tries, and possibly fails, to keep his tone clinical. “Smooth.”

  “Yeah?” Eugenio is smiling, and it’s warm enough out that he has color high in his cheeks. And fuck, Zach hasn’t smoked a cigarette since he was thirteen and snuck one outside of a friend’s bar mitzvah, but he wants one now, if only to have something to do other than look at him.

  “Yeah.” Zach’s voice sounds a little rough. “Now you only gotta do it about a thousand more times.”r />
  Eugenio laughs. “Yes, Coach.”

  “Next time, I’ll bring a clipboard and a whistle. I mean, if you’re into that sort of thing.” And Zach turns slightly so that he’s admiring the verdant green of the outfield grass and not looking directly at Eugenio’s response. Can’t see if he’s looking at him like he can’t believe Zach just said that, a position Zach firmly agrees with, face going hot. He wonders if Eugenio’s going to think something of it, or say something, or just chalk it up to Zach being under-caffeinated and corny.

  Eugenio goes over to the cooler and pulls two cups of Gatorade. He hands one to Zach. “This desert air,” Eugenio says. “You sound like you could use it.” And he gestures to his throat to indicate that Zach is parched.

  “Uh, thanks.” And he drinks his Gatorade.

  “Okay,” Eugenio says, a few minutes later, “I think I’m ready to try again.”

  Zach sets the pitching machine to throw low strikes, and Eugenio catches the first one, glove diving and pulling back up. And then he does it again. And again.

  “Hold your glove steady,” Zach says.

  “I am.” The pitching machine throws another ball, and Eugenio fields it, though his glove twitches as he does. “Fuck.”

  “Here.” Zach clips his gear on, and he gets down, squatting next to Eugenio, turned forty-five degrees from the pitching machine, which is probably going to pelt him with something during this. “I’m gonna—”

  He circles his hand around Eugenio’s wrist, thumb against the texture of veins in his forearm. Eugenio’s skin is smooth, a little dry from the Arizona air, the hair on his arms prickling against Zach’s palm. Eugenio didn’t wrap his wrists with tape, the way he does during games, and Zach wishes he did, if only to provide some film of protection between them, even if it wouldn’t mask the pulse of blood in his arm, the answering one in Zach’s temple.

  He leaves sufficient leverage so that Eugenio can move his elbow back and forth to absorb the impact of each pitch but can’t move it along a vertical axis. “Move your body, not your wrist.”