Unwritten Rules Read online

  “It must kind of suck that they’re making you help me,” Eugenio continues. “If they end up with only one of us on the roster.”

  Zach doesn’t know how to respond to that. Because it does suck for him, being guaranteed a roster spot and then possibly having it denied. For Eugenio, having to displace him in order to make it. For whatever other catcher the team might slot into the roster: one of the ones from double-A or a late-in-spring-training free agency signing.

  But it’s different, having it out there, something actually articulated between them and not just hanging over Zach’s head. He shouldn’t be surprised that Eugenio knows; he’s smart, and even so, you don’t have to be a genius to do roster-moves math, no matter how much front offices like to pretend that you do.

  “You weren’t expecting me to actually say it,” Eugenio says. “I’m not nervous about it, when I’m at the ballpark. Or I am but it’s easier to forget. And then I go back to my place and I can’t think about anything else.”

  “So you decided to come over and make me fancy dessert instead?”

  “You did invite me.”

  He asked Zach, when they first met, what he could do to make it easier for Zach to understand him. And Zach watches the drag of Eugenio’s mouth, his tongue against his lower lip, how his eyes look, images from the TV flickering across his glasses, the way they’re sitting close, like they’re breathing the same breath. It would be easy to lean and close the distance between them, to slide his hand between Eugenio’s waistband and shirt. To see what his mouth tastes like, if he has that same singular focus when he’s naked in Zach’s bed.

  “You should...” Zach begins. His tongue is dry, his throat, from the heat from the oven, from what’s pouring off Eugenio, up close, in the dark. “You should probably go check on that. I haven’t used that oven before. It could burn or something.”

  Eugenio gets up from next to him, thigh brushing against Zach’s as he does. Zach picks up his beer; the condensation is wet against the back of his neck. He cracks the window, night air blowing in.

  “It’s ready,” Eugenio says. “It just has to cool off. So we have some time.”

  “It might cool down faster outside.” And Zach must imagine the flicker of disappointment on Eugenio’s face before Eugenio picks up the pan, wrapping it with a dishtowel to insulate his hands from the heat.

  They eat at the picnic tables on the shared patio, illuminated by floodlights that Zach hopes don’t attract stinging Arizona wildlife or anyone from their bullpen prowling for late-night dessert. Their teammates have, unsurprisingly, left a bunch of stuff out on the tables, bottles of ketchup, a pile of napkins, some of which blow around like ghostly white leaves.

  It’s cool out, and Eugenio complains about it until Zach lends him a long-sleeve shirt to wear over his T-shirt, too long in the arms and tight in his shoulders, one of the team branded ones with Zach’s name stretched across his back.

  “This is really fucking good,” Zach says around a mouthful.

  “Thanks. Though it’s better for breakfast.”

  “You gonna leave me the leftovers?” Though at the rate they’re eating, there won’t be many. “You should, uh, bring this around. I know the other guys on the team would appreciate it.”

  “All the other guys aren’t teaching me how to frame, Zach.”

  Most guys in the clubhouse just call him “Glasser,” a few shortening it to “Glass.” Something that feels different when it’s just the two of them together. “It’s not a big deal.”

  “It kind of is.”

  Zach doesn’t really flush, but he feels his cheeks go warm, and he looks away from where Eugenio’s eyes are magnified by his glasses or his efficient hands are resting on the table. It would be easy enough to reach across, to rub his thumb over the ridge of his knuckles, an unsubtle invitation. To imagine that that is something Eugenio would want, that Zach can have. To imagine what it would be like if Eugenio meant any of the things he was saying the way Zach wants to hear them. Easy enough, except for the span of the table sitting between them, one laden with all the reasons he can’t.

  “Thanks,” Zach says, after, when he’s standing in his half-lit kitchen, watching Eugenio clean up. “You’re pretty good at that.”

  Eugenio turns, chewing his lip. “It helps, you know? Like if I do the same things in the same order, I get more or less the same result.”

  In the game earlier, Gordon hit what would have been an infield single, if not for the funny hop the ball took off a rock or a patch of hard dirt on the otherwise manicured field, scooting past the other team’s center fielder and turning into the world’s messiest triple.

  “So not like baseball?” Zach says.

  “Yeah, exactly.” Eugenio is smiling. His eyes flick to Zach’s, like Zach might ask him to stay.

  But there’s a loud, wall-mounted clock, one that announces that it’s late. Eugenio glances at it. “I should probably get going.”

  “You good to drive?” Though Eugenio only had one beer and that more than an hour ago. “You can crash on the couch if you want.” For a second, Zach contemplates the possibility of it, Eugenio staying there, Zach getting up in the middle of the night to find him awake. Zach inviting him to sleep in his bed, because he sleeps better with someone next to him.

  A fantasy, one as improbable as fielding the last out of the World Series. It vanishes when Eugenio says, “No, I’m good.” A disappointment, an inevitable one, made worse by the way Eugenio is looking at him, like he’s expecting something else in the way of a goodbye.

  “Here, let me get the door,” Zach says.

  Eugenio collects the bags he brought and Zach’s repeated thanks and goes. And Zach stands out on his porch for a long time after he’s left, well after the taillights of Eugenio’s truck have faded into the darkness.

  Chapter Nine

  It’s midmorning when D’Spara comes by the bullpen, chomping on Tums and frowning vaguely.

  “Work with him on his tipping.” He nods to where Johnson is out on the tilted bullpen mound, preparing for their throwing session.

  They get set up, Zach squatting, and Johnson going into his elaborate windup, still young enough that he has to contort his limbs in order to generate the power necessary to throw. Some baseball hack once wrote that Braxton, early in his career, had a delivery like casting a half-busted fishing reel. Johnson looks the same—both the contortions and the potential for greatness.

  “You’re fluttering your glove,” Zach says, when Johnson is about to deliver his curveball. “The last two fingers in particular. You don’t on your fastball.”

  Johnson goes into his windup and he does it again, his glove’s exaggerated leather fingers wiggling.

  “Here.” Zach gets up, grabbing a pack of the neon stickers he wears on his fingernails so that pitchers can see his signs. He slaps two on Johnson’s glove. “Keep an eye on how those move.”

  Johnson does, practically putting his nose in his glove.

  “I didn’t say sniff ’em,” Zach says.

  “It’s hard, keeping my hand steady.” Johnson’s next pitch goes wide of Zach, and Zach doesn’t bother to do anything other than watch it as it bounces. He throws another, and this one goes even wider than the first. And then another. Once is a coincidence, but three times is probably a pattern, and Zach unfolds himself from his crouch. “Try wiggling your glove on your fastball instead.”

  Johnson does, wiggling his glove in an exaggerated movement. But he delivers his fastball where Zach had indicated he should, and that at least is progress.

  “Feels weird,” Johnson says, after a while. “A little like I’m, I don’t know, lying somehow.”

  “I think it’s called deception. I hear that’s important for pitchers.”

  “Must be kind of hard, lying all the time.”

  And that makes Zach stop, because clea
rly the kid has something to say and has been waiting for an opportunity to say it. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He tries to keep his voice even, wondering if Johnson knows, how Johnson knows, like Zach doesn’t keep his phone locked, doesn’t clear his browser history daily, doesn’t delete his text threads and hide whatever apps in a folder called “utilities” that requires a passcode to access it. A hot wash of anxiety, one that begins in his stomach and elevates into his chest.

  “Just that I heard some of the front office guys talking about how much they’re making. Like, their salaries. I shouldn’t say anything about it.” Johnson grabs a drink and gulps half of it down in one swallow. He doesn’t seem to notice that Zach’s heart rate spiked or that it settles now. “I’m just grateful for the opportunity to play. Some guys dream their whole lives of being here.”

  It’s bullshit, the kind of bullshit that players spout at beat reporters and not their catch partners, and Johnson knows it, because he continues. “But we aren’t getting paid. And my bonus covers some stuff, but it’s not enough to send home. There’s this loan company that’ll give me an advance.”

  “Do not take out a loan from those fucking sharks.”

  “Yeah, Miss Morgan told me the same thing when I asked her. I’d play better if I wasn’t worried about it. If I didn’t have to go and work another couple hours every night. I said something to Coach—”

  Zach winces.

  “I know it wasn’t a good idea. But I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Jeez, kid.”

  “And I met this girl. I’ve been going to that church. The one with the service in Spanish. We’ve been talking.”

  And Zach can only imagine what nice, church-going girls talk about with young future pro-baseball stars. He doesn’t think he needs to talk with Johnson about, like, marriage or using protection, because however much they’re paying Zach, it is not enough to have that conversation.

  “About workers’ rights and unions and stuff.”

  “Oh,” Zach says.

  “I didn’t really understand some of it. But it sounds good, the way she explained it. When it comes down to it, it’s just not fair. They get so much, and we don’t, and it just doesn’t sit right with me.”

  “Yeah, I hear you. But you can’t be talking about this around the clubhouse either. The front office-types, they don’t like it when guys make a fuss or stand out. They got a whole camp full of players they can replace you with.”

  “Sara Maria says that it’s pretty messed up that they call guys replacement-level or whatever.”

  “I’m not saying it’s not,” Zach says. “I’m just telling you that you can’t talk about it here.”

  Johnson looks around the bullpen like he’s checking for listening devices or hidden cameras.

  “I just meant at the park,” Zach says. “Say whatever you want in church. And look, if you need something, just ask, okay?”

  “I don’t like taking charity for what I’ve earned.” Johnson’s standing a little straighter, and looks older, somehow, face shadowed by a passing cloud. After a minute, he seems to realize what he said and deflates. “But, um, thank you.”

  “You should bring her around. Get her to come watch you pitch.”

  “Yeah?” Johnson goes a little pink. “You think she’d like that?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “When you’ve brought girls around, did the other guys give you a hard time about it?”

  “Guys give each other shit constantly. But, uh, probably not? If she’s someone you’re serious about.”

  “She is.” Johnson says it with a definitiveness that makes something in Zach’s gut flare, a little ember of jealousy at the idea of just meeting someone and bringing them to the clubhouse. To have them sit in the stands and cheer for him and go home after. He douses it with a swig of Gatorade.

  “Well, if she does come to see you,” Zach says, “you can’t tip every single one of your curveballs. So, let’s focus on that.”

  * * *

  When Zach gets to the bullpen a week later, there’s another guy in catcher’s gear. One he doesn’t recognize.

  “Uh, hey.” Zach glances around for Eugenio or Marti or D’Spara, for Johnson or Giordano or any of the pitchers still not yet relegated to minor-league camp.

  The guy—who’s almost as tall as Zach is when he springs up—offers a hand, demanding a handshake, his palm as leathery as a mitt when Zach takes it. He’s older, probably in his mid-thirties, creases at his eyes and on his forehead, and he has the look of someone who’s played the game for a long time. “Francisco. Everyone calls me Frannie.”

  Zach introduces himself. “Have you seen anyone else around?” Because someone’ll know why the hell there’s a new guy in the bullpen with no warning.

  “Joe said he’d be back in a few minutes.” It takes Zach a second to register that Joe is D’Spara, whose first name Zach always thinks of as being Coach.

  There’s a white bag sitting by the shelf of stretch-out straps, food inside still warm, so Eugenio has been there recently. Zach takes it out and eats, chewing loudly.

  Frannie goes through standard catcher’s stretches, facing away from Zach, and Zach googles until he finds Francisco Medrano, erstwhile catcher for the Crowns organization, who bounced around affiliated ball for a while before spending a few seasons playing in the Mexican leagues.

  There’s an article about his attempts to return to the majors, one titled, “The Pitcher Whisperer,” that discusses his ability to calm volatile young pitchers, to call quality games, even if he’s now too old to spring up with Eugenio’s enthusiasm to catch base runners. He’s an unsigned free agent, though possibly—and Zach’s breakfast goes leaden in his stomach—not for long.

  Frannie’s moved from stretches into fuller warmups, like he might go play a game, even though theirs isn’t scheduled until later. The clipboard where they hang the lineups is zip-tied to the fence, and it sits empty, yesterday’s gone, today’s not yet posted. Even if it were and Frannie is on it, there’s no guarantee of being anything more than a showcase for a new catcher the organization can bid farewell to if things don’t work out, like a one-night stand who leaves with a promise to text.

  Still, Zach waits. Chews his lip. Starts his stretches. Drinks his coffee. Texts Eugenio to see where he is and if he wants his espresso. Considers the sun reflecting off the mountains in the distance, all the forces of geology and coincidence that shaped them.

  Eugenio finds him, snagging his coffee cup from its holder and drinking quickly. He pulls out his phone from where it’s stuck in the pocket of his shorts.

  A message appears on Zach’s phone. I was going to text you. Eugenio nods toward where Frannie’s still going through his warmups. Didn’t know what to say about him though.

  Zach shrugs. Frannie must know they’re talking about him, since the quickest way to get attention in a clubhouse is to try not to attract attention. He glances back once before continuing to do lunges.

  What’d dspara say? Zach texts back.

  Just that they know each other from way back when. And that they’re gonna try him out to see if he’s a good fit.

  Well fuck

  “I know, right?” And he sits down next to Zach. Up close, Eugenio smells like his morning coffee, no cigarettes yet, and the astringent odor of his cologne. He missed a patch shaving, a little island of stubble on his otherwise smooth skin that Zach wants to put his mouth on. Wants to and can’t. So he drinks his coffee and breathes through his nose, and tries to think about the stillness of mountains. Instead, he feels only their slow erosion, hand itching to reach and find purchase on Eugenio’s thigh.

  What should we do? Eugenio texts him.

  Zach pauses, thumbs over the keyboard. When he looks up, Eugenio’s looking back at him, the edge of his tongue pressed against his lower lip
, and Zach focuses on that, on the shape of Eugenio’s words as he says, “We should maybe go see about fielding drills.”

  Zach follows him out of the bullpen, out across the green practice field. But Eugenio doesn’t stop, instead going into the training complex, through the narrow set of hallways and to a room that holds various piles of equipment. They stand there for a second, surrounded by shelving, watched by buckets of baseballs, gleaming white and not yet muddied with the particular brand of New Jersey riverbed dirt they coat all the game balls with.

  “What are we gonna do?” Eugenio asks.

  “They might be testing him out for triple-A.”

  “Sure, I always get a guy called the Pitcher Whisperer to work with my marginal fifth starters.”

  “I take it you found that article too.”

  “I don’t want to spend another year going up and down from the minors. I’ll be twenty-eight in July—” which means that he’s only a year younger than Zach, and old for a rookie “—and I don’t want to waste any more time.” Eugenio grabs a ball from one of the stacks of them and then throws it with full force into a rack of unlettered jerseys, sending them swinging on their hangers. And again. This one caroms off a wall, ricocheting and hitting a stack of bats, one of which rolls onto the floor.

  Another pitch, and Eugenio’s hands—steady behind the plate, smooth, quiet—are shaking.

  “Hey.” Zach reaches for the ball Eugenio is gripping. He takes it from him and sends it rolling, his fingertips brushing into the callused basin of Eugenio’s palm.

  “Do you ever want something so much,” Eugenio says, and his mouth is close at Zach’s ear, breath warm on the skin of Zach’s neck, chest pressed into Zach’s shoulder, “it almost feels like you’re choking on it?”

  Zach doesn’t answer, not out loud, not trusting his voice not to shake like Eugenio’s hands are. Just nods, once, again.

  “And the closer you get to it, the more out of reach it feels.”

  “Only,” Zach says, “only all the time.”

  And that’s when Eugenio kisses him.