Matt Stallworth

I pulled into a parking space in front of Twilight Records. A few large raindrops pelted the windshield and streamed down to the hood. I glanced out the window at the blackened sky.

Fucking great.

Nothing seemed to be going right the past few weeks, professionally. The Rangers and the Yankees had me in a pressure cooker, and it tore me apart on the inside. I’d fully intended to wait until Kelsey got home from work, and then I was going to tell her everything. I couldn’t go another day keeping it from her and I didn’t know if it was the contract situation weighing me down, or the fact that I’d withheld the information from her for so long. It had started to make it impossible to enjoy any time with her.

Sitting at home by myself, without her there—it played out over and over in my mind until an hour had gone by and I found myself sitting in the car. Maybe if she forgave me for keeping it from her, we could deal with it together.

I opened my door and headed up toward the entrance of the record store. The very place where everything started was potentially going to be where it ended. Telling her at work wasn’t a good idea, but I couldn’t wait until she got home. Nerves riddled my body—unrelenting anxiety. I’d never felt this way in my life.

I walked between two trees that grew up from square cutouts of dirt in the sidewalk. They lined the street on both sides and towered above. I’d made up my mind that if Kelsey was all-in, I’d stay. If she couldn’t forgive me, I’d be a Yankee next year, because I didn’t know how I’d still live knowing she was merely miles away and I couldn’t be with her.

I walked along the sidewalk and was roughly fifteen feet from the door when a lightning bolt streaked across the sky above me. Thunder rumbled overhead and shook the ground beneath my feet. I looked up at the sky and a sheet of water cascaded down upon the city.

I stood there and shook my head as the rain soaked me from head to toe. “What a nice fucking omen.”

I yanked the door open and sauntered in with less than one percent of the confidence I’d had the first time I went through the same door. Some bells chimed as it closed behind me and I stared around at the empty store.

“Kelsey?”

Crickets.

What the fuck?

The old man who owned the place walked from the back more slowly than I’d ever seen any person move in my life.

Our eyes locked, his much redder than mine. I’d seen him twice and waved in the past, but had never actually spoken to him. It was always in passing, once when Kelsey got off work, and the other time I’d dropped her off before heading by Ethan’s.

“Oh. It’s you.” He said the last part as if I were some vile creature from a fantasy novel.

“Excuse me?”

“The ballplayer. That’s you. Right, sonny?”

“Yeah, hey, look, is Kelsey here?” I wiped my shoes on the hemp rug in the doorway.

“She hath exited on the winds of scorn.”

I stood there, dumbfounded. “Huh?”

“I said she is not currently present, though her spirit-child always remains here and is ingrained in this oasis of artistic integrity, sir.”

No wonder she always complained about not understanding this quack-job. “So she’s gone?”

“That’s what I already told you—twice.” He walked across the store to a box of donuts and opened it up. “Care for the nectar of the gods?” He held up a glazed donut at me.

“Umm, no. I mean, no, thank you.” I canted my head slightly. “Do you know why she’s not here? She doesn’t usually leave work, right?”

He narrowed his ridiculously stoned eyes at me. “Of course I know. Truth is not hard to find here.” He held his arms out to his sides.

Kelsey worked for a cult leader. I knew she had a flaw somewhere, but I didn’t have time to play this game with donut-munching Helter Skelter.

“Why’d she leave? And where’d she go?”

“Oh, I believe you should point a finger at yourself, to ascertain the reason for her departure.”

“She left because of me? Like she was going to go find me?”

He shook his head and took a bite of the sweet nectar.

“Oh no, sonny. Do you remember a time when a king of kings was ousted from his throne, because he had reached the highest level of glory, but one man found he had cheated?”

I started to worry I might fail my MLB drug test just by standing in the room with this guy for five minutes. My patience wore thin and I shook my head. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You don’t understand metaphors that involve your beloved profession?”

“That shit was a baseball riddle?”

“I feel enlightenment may not be out of reach for you on this glorious day where the goddess of water blesses and enriches the earth.”

I had to solve his goddamn riddle, because this was getting me nowhere. “Okay, so someone cheated, let’s see—Black Sox, Pete Rose, and pretty much every player in the nineties.”

Twilight grinned as if he was happy someone was finally trying to understand him.

I continued to think through the riddle out loud. “King of kings, what the fuck? Ousted? Like thrown out of the league.”

“Your guess is close in proximity, a stone’s throw one might say.”

“Thrown out of a game?”

“Eureka!” He did some form of Latin dance steps and then spun around like Michael Jackson and shot his arm out to the side.

Fuck my life. Kelsey could drive to Los Angeles before I figure this shit out.

“Okay, a king of kings got thrown out of a game.” King of kings? I stared up at the ceiling of the place and it hit me. “Was he a Royal?”

“Eureka!”

“Okay, okay. Oh! The pine tar incident?”

“I doff my invisible cap to you, fine sir.” He pretended to remove a nonexistent hat and did some kind of curtsy maneuver like a teen debutante.

Part of me was a bit ecstatic I’d figured it out, and part of me wondered what the fuck that had to do with Kelsey. “So what does that have to do with anything?”

“Do you recall when George Brett ran from the dugout?”

“Sure. Every baseball player and fan has seen the tape on that.”

“You saw the raw energy and emotion on his face, yes?”

“Yeah, he was a pissed-off son of a bitch. I thought he was going to put that guy in the dirt.” I still didn’t understand what the fuck he was getting at.

“Your life mate—yes, I have seen your spirit energies, and they are in harmony—ran from this very spot.” He nodded to a spot a few feet in front of him. “She dispersed with the same energy and appearance as the aforementioned.”

I glared him down. “You put me through all of that, just to compare the looks on their faces?” I started toward him.

Twilight didn’t flinch or even look concerned that a pissed-off man twice his size was headed in his direction. “Your energy was off-color, sonny. It was necessary.”

“Why was she mad?” I stopped a few feet away and looked down at him over my nose. “And how do you know so much about fucking baseball?”

He glared at me like I was an imbecile. “Because I’m an American.” He bowed his chest out.

It was probably the most violent thing he’d ever done in his life.

“But why was she mad?”

Twilight held up an index finger and walked sideways over to a large stereo system that appeared to run all the speakers in the store. He turned it on.

Voices blasted through the speakers, an AM channel. I recognized it the second it came on the air. It was an ESPN talk radio show.

She knows.

My blood ran white-hot and my body started to tremble with anger.

Twilight walked over and waved his hand in a vertical loop like he was outlining me. “This energy field is unusual for you, sonny. It needs to be regulated back to homeostasis before you will find the results you crave.”

“Are you telling me to calm down?” I gritted my teeth.

“Never reason with emotions. Your aura is out of equilibrium.”

“No shit!” I shook my head and looked around the room for a moment, the place Kelsey loved more than anywhere else in the world. As much as I hated to admit it to myself, the nutjob beatnik in front of me was right, even though he could’ve said it all in about a tenth of the amount of words.

Fuck it.

“So what, then? How do I return my, what—aura or energy field—back to equilibrium?”

“First, just breathe. Exhale the anger and fears from your person.”

I caught myself about to be frustrated with him again, and I exhaled a long breath and tried to ignore all the goddamn riddles. “Okay, so I need to be calm to think through this and reason it out before I go see her? Anything else?”

His mouth turned up at the corners. “There is one other thing that can aid you.”

I stared into his half-hooded Cheech-and-Chong eyes. “And that is?”

He twirled around and reached for something I couldn’t see, and then completed the spin with an arm stretched out in front of my face. It was a glazed donut and he held it up in the air like Frodo about to chuck the ring into the fires of Mount Doom.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

He smiled his ass off, almost as if he knew he was fucking with me. Maybe there was a hint of normalcy in him. “The nectar will guide you to what you seek.”

I shrugged. “Fuck it. It can’t hurt.” I snatched the donut from his hand and took a bite. Something in it tasted funny. The sugary sweetness covered it well, but I swallowed before it registered in my mind. “No, you asshole, I—”

He cut me off. “It will be right, and truth shall find you. The bread of the earth will no longer be with you in the third fortnight from whence your agreement shall be signed in the blood of your pen.”

“What the? What is a fortnight?”

“A fortnight is fourteen revolutions of the goddess mother earth.”

“You mean a day?” I did the math and he was actually spot on. I wouldn’t be drug tested for six weeks after I signed my new contract. Still, now if I found Kelsey I’d be high as a fucking kite, because whatever this dude was on was not some weak-ass shit that high-schoolers smoked. I started to protest and he waved a hand in front of my face.

“It will guide you.”

“Do you know where she went?” I tossed the donut back in the box. One bite would be plenty enough fucking nectar of the gods.

“Put yourself within her mind.”

“Jenny?”

Twilight smiled.

I froze and looked down at the floor.

“What are you waiting for, brother?”

“I don’t know. This all hit me at once.” I balled my hands into fists and took in deep breaths in an attempt to compose myself.

Twilight walked over and put a hand on my shoulder. “Look at me.”

He actually sounded normal for once, and I almost bought into it until I looked up at his stoned eyes and saw his bearded face. My legs were Jell-O at the thought of hurting Kelsey.

“Do you love her?”

I nodded immediately.

His bony fingers bore down into my shoulder and he smiled. “Then what are you waiting for, brother?”

I bolted for the door and hauled ass through the rain. Once seated behind the wheel, anxiety smashed into me once more from every possible angle.

I can’t drive if I’m high.

I sat there for a brief minute. Eating weed wasn’t the same as smoking it. The shit had to take a while to kick in. Ethan’s house was only ten minutes away, no highways needed. If Kelsey called Jenny, she would’ve left work. It’d be the most likely place to find them.

I hauled ass in that direction.

I pulled up in front of Ethan’s house, and Kelsey’s car wasn’t in the driveway.

Shit!

I beat a fist on my steering wheel and the horn went off by accident. “Fuck.” I looked straight ahead, just staring at the garage door and noticed the blinds pop up and down in the corner of my eye. It was in one of the upstairs rooms.

Someone is here.

I ran up to the front door and buzzed the high-tech intercom shit Ethan had. There was a camera up above and I looked up at it while I shoved both hands in my pockets.

It was like watching a movie on repeat, only last time I’d brought Jenny to the house to reconcile with Ethan. A rustling sound and some static came through the speaker.

“Who is it?”

“You know it’s me, Jenny. Can you open the door?”

“Matt, I’m sorry. She doesn’t want to talk to you right now or see you.”

I heard a sniffle in the background. It had to be Kelsey, and she sounded hurt. My stomach churned.

“Please. I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

I looked back up at the camera and suddenly my body started to feel heavy, and everything started to play out in slow motion. For a second I thought I could actually hear the rain cutting through the air.

Fucking nectar.

“I’m sorry, Matt. It’s not up to me, and she just doesn’t want to see you right now.”

I heard Jenny attempting to hold her hand over the mic. It almost sounded like she was pleading with Kelsey to talk to me.

My eyelids grew heavy. The weed was kicking in full force. I shouldn’t be here. Not in this condition.

I pushed the button to speak. “I, umm…” Fuck, why didn’t my words work?

“Yeah, Matt?”

“I have to go. I don’t feel so great. I need to leave my car in the driveway.”

I heard a “What the hell?” in the background.

“I’m so sorry. I have to go.” I stumbled by my car and grabbed my phone out of it. I tapped on the Uber app and there was a driver a block up the road. I somehow managed to pay and walked up the street to meet him.

By the time I got there I was fully baked, at like 10 in the morning. I climbed in the back and told the guy where I lived.