epilogue
Vivian
I missed games sometimes. I still had my job, and it wasn’t glamorous or lucrative, but it was important. I had a father who needed me, and sometimes I had something else I had to do.
So I walked the bases when I could and made the first pitch whenever possible, but sometimes I missed games. I watched from the TV in my little apartment or at the bar with my friends. I heard them on the radio in my car on the way to Echo Park to catch the fourth inning.
But I’d never miss a second of the World Series. Especially not the seventh game of a nail-biter. And of course, my man’s talent was all his, and walking the bases with him while he had our sex somewhere on his body was no help to him at all.
But for the World Series? We figured it couldn’t hurt.
It was close from the first game to the seventh inning of the seventh game. The Boston Red Sox bullpen had never been better, and Los Angeles had to bring their best for every game.
I hadn’t spoken a word to my father, Francine, Larry, or Dash’s parents in two innings even though they surrounded me in the seats behind the dugout. There was nothing to say. We were all too wound up.
They’d been tied at one since the third inning, and both teams had come close to scoring. Right now, the Sox had three men on base with two outs. No one was breathing. Rodriguez had been traded to the Sox in September to get them through the playoffs, and now he was up. The same guy Dash had caught when he landed on his wrist. The hairline fracture had healed by the All-Star break, but I’d never forget how worried he’d been, how lucky he was, and how close he had come to ending his career.
I couldn’t take my eyes off Dash, legs spread between second and third as though he could go either way. I watched him every second of every game, the way he moved and when. He chose a direction before the ball even left the pitcher’s hand, and he was right about where the ball was headed every single time.
In the seventh inning of the seventh game of the series, Dash stepped right then took half a step back before the bat connected with the ball and went flying three feet to his right. He took another step and caught it, making it look easy, and retired the side.
We breathed.
I’d seen a hundred games that year. Nine hundred innings. When the fielder caught the final out of the side, he tossed the ball on the ground or to the ball boy and trotted over to the dugout. Dash looked at me and tipped his hat every single time. Every single time, I waved.
He didn’t this time. He just stayed on the field. His teammates started back, but he stood there, tossing the ball, catching it, tossing, catching.
The PA system shuddered with the announcement of the seventh-inning stretch. Usually they played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and did some scoreboard games.
“What’s he doing?” Dad asked. “Is he losing it?”
“I don’t know.”
The scoreboard went black, and the announcer’s voice blasted out of the PA system.
“Number nineteen, Dash Wallace, has a request.”
“Uh-oh,” Francine muttered.
I knew she wasn’t talking about the game. She’d come because the World Series was fun, not because she cared.
“Uh-oh what? Do you know something I don’t?” I asked.
Steve Youder ran out to the field and tossed Dash another ball and something black I couldn’t see. Dash caught them both and juggled. He’d tried to teach me how to keep those balls in the air, but I just dropped all of them and we laughed.
“All I know is I was supposed to make sure you stuck around for the seventh-inning stretch.” She put her arm around me and squeezed as if keeping me in place, and I looked up.
My face was huge. On the stadium monitor, my hands flew to my mouth to cover my blushing cheeks but not my eyes because Dash was looking at me.
He came toward the section I sat in, and words scrolled over my face in billion-point type.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
He got to the rail, and Francine pushed me forward while holding me up.
“He’s crazy,” I said, clutching her forearm.
“Hell, yeah.”
The field was five steps down, and she made sure I got there.
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
Then, flashing under my big, blushing moon-pie face:
Say yes.
He waited for me at the railing, and when I got there, he caught the two balls and a little black box. He was sweating and dirty, holding out the open box with scrapes on the heel of his hand from sliding into second in the fifth.
The ring was stunning. Three diamonds across, as clear and perfect as his eyes.
“Marry me, sweetapple.”
I was too stunned to utter a word.
Francine elbowed me.
“It’s gorgeous,” I said.
“You’d better answer. I have to get on deck.”
I paused, not because I didn’t know what to say but because I wanted to run this moment over my tongue and teeth, have my senses give it form. But though baseball fans were terribly patient with balls and fouls, in matters of marriage, they apparently had no time for delay.
The chants of “Say yes! Say yes! Say yes!” started in the centerfield bleachers and rolled to the first base line until I couldn’t put it off another second.
“Yes, Dash. Yes. Without a doubt, yes.”
He plucked the ring out and tossed the box over his shoulder. The crowd went wild in a deafening roar, and after he’d slipped it on my finger, he kissed me over the railing. We held each other, one of us on the field, one off, locked at the lip and heart as Los Angeles cheered us on.
THE END
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