thirty-nine
Vivian
I only knew I fell asleep because I woke up, and I woke up hard. Morning Stretch was on TV. Seven women in leotards, kicking and bending.
And up and down and kick and up and down and kick and knock knock knock and up and down and kick and bang bang bang and kick and tap tap tap and up and down and—
Tap tap tap.
I bolted up. Someone was knocking on the window behind me. It looked out onto the driveway. I peeked out past the curtains.
“Dash, you asshole.”
He stood just below the sill, smiling in the blue morning light. The sun was barely up. I had gunk in my eyes and sleep saturating my system. I opened the window.
“I read lips, you know,” he said.
“What are you doing here?”
He had on a hoodie and sneakers. He’d never come to see me looking like that. Even in my half-sleep, I noticed the difference in the way he dressed had nothing to do with how beautiful he was.
“Did you wear what I told you to wear?” he asked.
“What?”
I’d been dreaming. I remembered it as he was finishing his sentence. Something about shoveling dirt over a hole filled with books. All my romance books. I shook the sand out of my brain.
“I’m wearing sweatpants, same as you,” I said. “Why are you here?”
“I forgot how sexy you are in the morning.”
“Who’s that?” came Dad’s voice from behind me.
I turned. He was in boxers and a T-shirt, hoisting a baseball bat over his shoulder.
“Dash.”
“Did you tell him it’s five thirty in the morning?” He lowered the bat.
“He’s wearing a watch. I think he knows.”
“There something wrong with the front door?”
I turned back to the man in the drive. “Dad wants you to come in like a normal person.”
“Coming around,” he said, projecting his voice. He stepped forward and whispered, “But you’re coming with me now.”
“After I shower.”
“Nope.”
He jogged down the driveway before I could respond. We met at the front door. He looked crisp and clean and ready for anything. Ten percent of my brain was still on the couch.
“Dash. What are—”
He craned his neck to address my father, who was leaning on his bat. Dad’s hips hurt. He never knew what kind of day he was going to have until he woke up in the morning.
“I need your daughter for a few hours.”
“Take her. Just don’t break her.”
“Funny, Dad.” I put my hand up to Dash, ready to explain the desperate need for a shower and a change of clothes, but I didn’t have a chance.
He grabbed my wrist and tugged. “Come.”
“Seriously, I need to wash up.”
He yanked me out the door. “No time.”
I grabbed my bag and let him pull me to his black Volvo. “We’re not seeing people, are we?”
“It’s five thirty in the morning. Only priests and bakers are up.”
He opened the door and tried to kiss me. I gave him my cheek.
“This is all you get when I don’t brush my teeth,” I said.
“Very considerate of you. Get in.”
I got in, and he got behind the wheel and handed me a bottle of water from the center console.
“Drink. You’ll feel as good about your mouth as I do.”
I took a long swig. I did feel a little better, but I was still going to withhold kisses out of playful spite just to see how long I could resist.
He sped down San Vicente, which was empty, and onto La Brea.
“Where are we going?” I turned on his radio. He had a hip hop station loaded, and I left it but turned down the volume. Hip hop was all right sometimes.
“Echo Park.”
“The King of Elysian Park going to show me his empire at sunrise?”
“I have to if I want to get you to work on time.”
“Lucky you, I’m off all week for spring break.”
He smirked as if he wanted to say something he couldn’t. I was just glad I’d showered before bed.
“You asked me a big thing yesterday,” I said as he stopped for a red light. We’d be on the freeway in a minute, and this was his last chance to take a long hard look at me.
“I did. And I still want you to travel with me. It’s not that big a deal.”
“I’m sorry?”
The light changed.
“Lots of players do it. When someone’s important to them, they just make arrangements.”
He meant it wasn’t a big deal to him. I had a few dozen responses, but I held my tongue. I didn’t want to tell him I had third graders who were less self-centered or that I was glad it wasn’t a big deal for him since that made what it meant to me as irrelevant as he thought it was.
I tried not to get mad at him for being a jerk or at myself for not having a big, important life.
“You nervous about this afternoon?” I asked.
“Why would I be nervous?”
His tone was just a little sharp. I didn’t know if he was aware that I’d seen Spring Training Report or if he cared.
“Opening day. Duh.”
The hills of Elysian Park grew in the distance.
“Yeah, well, I’m kind of glad spring training’s over. I’m ready to get out there.”
“How did it go in Arizona?”
“You saw the exhibition games.”
What did I have the right to say? What was my role here? We’d been broken up during that time, and we hadn’t even mentioned his poor performance. We’d been too busy ruining my good underwear.
But he was kind of asking, wasn’t he?
“Were you feeling all right?” I didn’t know how else to put it.
He surprised me by smiling. “No, not at all.”
“Bellyache?”
“Yeah, a two-month bellyache called Vivian-itis.” He exited at Elysian Park and wound through the back ways.
“Shut up.” He was making my face and neck tingle again.
“Symptoms include desperate longing and an inability to do anything but feel like a douchebag. Patient can’t do shit on the field but stand there like an ass, wondering what the fuck he’s doing with his life. It’s chronic. No known cure.”
“We’ll try to manage the symptoms.”
He pulled up to a back gate where a security guard sat by a portable wood stand. The guard was older than dirt, with a big smile and a bounce to his step as he approached the driver side.
“Number nineteen!” he exclaimed. “You’re early. Grounds crew isn’t even here yet.”
“I know.” He handed the security guard his license. “I’m just making sure it’s all there.”
“I think you’ll be pleasantly unsurprised.” He crouched to look through to me. “Hello, miss. Do you have a license you can show me?”
“Oh, sure.” I fished it out, and he went to his little stand and wrote down our license numbers. “I still don’t know why I’m here.”
Dash rested his head against the back of the seat, eyes running up and down my body and landing on the bare ankle over my Keds. He stroked the bone and the skin along the edge of the sneaker. “If I tell you, it’s going to be weird.”
“I like weird.”
“Good.”
The guard handed back our IDs and hit a button on a little grey box he’d taken out of his pocket. The chain-link fence swung out.
Dash pulled forward.
Dodger Stadium was not a suburban, outer-city stadium. It had landed like a spaceship in the middle of the densest part of the city, with a huge forest of a park on the west side and the concrete crease of the Los Angeles River on the east.
The south crescent of the stadium was three hundred acres of sixteen thousand parking spots. I’d seen the lot full, clothed in darkness and spotted with floodlights. I’d been stuck in it for an hour, trying to get out after the eighth inning of a late-season blowout and during meaningless mid-season games. If there was a better way to plan for the exodus of sixteen thousand cars, no one had come up with it in time for Dodgers Stadium.
But that morning, the lot was empty as a winter’s day, its grey as uninterrupted as a Christmas sky. The stadium below looked shoved into a corner like an afterthought. I took a deep breath. I’d never come in this way. Never seen the structure from that angle on such a clear morning. It was both diminutive and majestic.
“It’s overwhelming,” I said.
“You should see it from the field.”
He twisted down into the lot, and everything fell back into proportion. After a few more checkpoints, we pulled into the back of the stadium, where an empty spot waited among many. The sign at the head said “Dash Wallace #19.”
“It must all be worth it for your own spot at Dodger Stadium.”
“Money’s pretty good too.” He shut off the car but didn’t move.
I waited. He tapped the wheel.
“Why am I here?” I asked gently. “It’s hours before game time, and you have plenty to do, I’m sure.”
“Trust me.”
Did I trust him?
He hadn’t earned it.
But I did. I needed to. The alternative was unspeakably dreary.
“We’re already at the stadium, slugger, and the sun’s barely up. I must trust you.”
He pulled back and took a look at me, eating me for breakfast, before getting out and opening my door. I took his hand and stepped out. When my little rubber sole hit the asphalt, I’d accepted a challenge I didn’t think any living woman could meet.