fifteen
Dash
I had no idea what the fuck I was trying to do. I was a man who had control of his impulses, who knew what he wanted. A man who had made fucking decisions about his fucking life, not a fourteen-year-old with an amateur pituitary gland.
But I’d kissed her the whole way down to her car, and now, an hour later, I still stood watching the spot where it had been. A Lexus was parked there now, but all I saw was that deathtrap of a Nissan. I’d never cared about teachers’ salaries until I saw that car.
I could still smell her pussy on my fingers. I didn’t want to jerk off. I wanted her. I wanted to want her as much as I wanted her to just disappear so I could live my life.
I wasn’t supposed to have a girl in LA, but I’d figured it wouldn’t be a big deal if it ended in the spring. Then I’d agreed to continue past that. Well, I’d agreed to not dismiss the idea. I’d keep up my end of the deal with her. I wouldn’t end it definitively or give it an expiration date. I couldn’t imagine I’d have any interest from Arizona though.
But man, she was something. I got in the shower to get the sweat off me and took one last whiff of her before handling the soap.
I didn’t chase after women generally. They chased me, which was convenient, or I did without. I didn’t do without very often.
I wasn’t an asshole. Or maybe I was. I didn’t want to get attached when all I did was practice and travel, and nothing was going to come before the game. Nothing. Being clear with myself about what I wanted from a woman was a virtue, not a sin. And I was honest with every one of them every time. It was easier that way. I was a shitty liar.
Getting involved with Vivian was a rule-bender, but she had something.
I jerked off anyway.
By the time I was dressed, I was late. I had an assistant to help me manage my time with the team, but when I was alone, time management was a struggle. I lost track of how long things took and wildly over- or underestimated any amount of time that could be measured with a clock. I was only good with split seconds.
I rinsed out her coffee cup before leaving, rubbing along the place where her lip had touched.
Get it together, weirdo.
She wasn’t completely broken or completely whole. She was guileless without being naïve. Vulnerable and strong at the same time. A locked box with a tiny window that let me see something shiny inside.
When I was a kid, I had been obsessed with two things: locked doors and baseball. Baseball remained endlessly interesting, but the locked doors didn’t fare as well. Eventually I found out that they usually didn’t have anything exciting behind them. The size of the locks, the hiddenness of the door, the warning signs to stay away and be careful added to a curiosity that ended in disappointment. The places they hid held garbage bins, dull offices, shelves full of nothing I cared about.
But I had to find out what was in there. It would be nothing at all. She wasn’t half as special as she seemed. No woman could be. But I had to find out—just in case.
I was only human.
“Why you looking at the floor, Wallace? You going left on me?”
We were at the Joe Westlake’s annual general manager’s dinner, and there was a penny on the carpet.
I picked it up and brandished it for Youder. “Heads up for good luck.”
The GM’s house was a palace north of Sunset in Bel Air. Wives, girlfriends, players, and kids mingled with the game’s heavy hitters. An invitation to the dinner came with the most expensive skyboxes, and I was supposed to mingle. I usually did all right. I wasn’t anxious with people, just cameras.
“Joe made a casual offer,” Youder said, checking to make sure the room was empty. “It’s pretty good.”
“For you to stay?” I tried not to look as if Santa had just come in June, but that was what I felt like.
“No, to leave, asshole. Of course to stay.”
“Because you’re not going to lead the league in double plays without me, and you know it.” I swirled my vodka around the glass. What had Vivian said about drinking? And her mother? The details eluded me, but I put the glass down.
“My wife wants to stay. She’s got no need to freeze her ass off again. And she has friends.”
Youder didn’t have friends outside the team. None of us did.
“You should stay, dude. It’s not even about baseball anymore. It’s about your life.”
“Coming from you, that means exactly nothing.”
“Fuck you. Is Duchovney here?”
“Nah. He’s…” Youder shook his head. “His knee’s not getting better fast enough. He’s low.”
“Low” was a nice way of saying he was too depressed to get out of bed. We were all used to working our bodies to the point of exhaustion, and between the lack of physical activity and the prospect of never playing again, a bad injury crashed us emotionally. No one talked about it, but it was a fact.
Randy swaggered over. He was in his second year with us. He was young and cocky with a terrible (or great, depending on how you looked at it) reputation with the female population of Los Angeles. “Hey, you seen Shawn? He’s been training with Edwards.”
I didn’t care. Not about Shawn or Edwards or what any one of my teammates was doing to get in shape for spring. I was in the mood for neither camaraderie nor pissing contests. “You know what? I’m going to slip out of here.”
“That time of the month?” Randy asked.
“Cramps are killing me.” I gave Youder and Randy hugs with loud claps on the back, and I left while things were looking up.
Sunset Boulevard was a constant traffic jam from Silver Lake to Beverly Hills, but west of that, it was a winding road with few traffic lights and nothing to see on either side. It was easy to lose yourself thinking about what you wanted to do to a certain librarian’s body, the prospects of a winning season, making an effort to forget what had happened to your sister’s pin, whether or not you should call your parents tomorrow or the next day, the clusterfuck the avocado tree had started, the librarian, the season, the pin, your parents, avocado, Vivian, baseball, pin, parents, tree-sex-life-Daria-momdadtreefuck—
The car moved sideways, and I turned the wheel, thinking that would fix the way the car slid across the road as if it were on a sheet of ice. I knew what to do on ice. I’d grown up in Ithaca. But turning the wheel didn’t do anything, and my brain registered the crunch of metal and the force of impact a split second later.
Professional athletes were freaks. The average height of a pro basketball player was six foot seven. Football players were built like bungalows. Baseball players had hand-eye-mind coordination that was hard to measure but just as freakish.
Which was how I’d felt the car moving before the sound of the crash registered. I’d been T-boned from the side street and was moving sideways into oncoming traffic.
Not really much I could do but skid.
And hit the brakes.
And turn off the car.
Took as much time to do as to step left once, calculate the trajectory of the ball, catch it, move my right hand to the glove, take it, calculate the speed of the runners, line up the throw, execute.
Thup.
It was done.
Blink. Blink.
Silence.
Fingers. Toes. All wiggle. All move.
My head turns.
My name is Dashiell Wallace.
It’s Thursday.
Someone is screaming.
It’s not me.
The passenger side door is an inch from my elbow.
I get out.
I can stand.
Walk.
Make words.
I can carry her out of the way of traffic.
Call 9-1-1.
Assess her injuries like an Eagle Scout.
Relay the information calmly.
Convince her she’s going to be all right.
Walk away.
When the paramedics tell me I’m the luckiest guy in the world, I believe them.