TEAM ROMANCE: Day 14, "Encyclopedia of Baseball Metaphors, Entry 'Relationships'"
Title: Encyclopedia of Baseball Metaphors, Entry "Relationships"
Author: jadelennox
Team: Romance
Prompt: “She was the last one.”
Pairing(s): Kowalski/Vecchio
Length: 2,600 words
Rating: PG
Warnings: Potential for future animal harm.
Author's note: Without Slidellra's eleventh hour beta of much win, this story would be nowhere near as good.
Summary: "Hey, you weren't complaining about the fucking Sox fans last night," said Ray, leering. / Kowalski's grin showed blindingly white teeth. "Sure I was. I was complaining that you weren't going deep or hard or fast. You know, like the White Sox lineup."
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
"Relationships". Encyclopedia of Baseball Metaphors. Ed. Samuel Tsoza. 5 vols. Chicago: Sage, 2009.
The 2008 World Series historically pitted the Chicago Cubs against the Chicago White Sox. The Crosstown Showdown came to a high-tension head in 2008 when, for the first time since 1906, the North Siders and South Siders played against each other in a World Series. The Chicago Cubs, down 0-3 after Game Three, had a spectacular comeback and won the next three games handily. As the city prepared for Game Seven, the police hunkered down for the expected fights and riots between fans of the opposing teams. However, they found that the city reacted unexpectedly. Instead of Cubs and Sox fans at each other's throats, Chicagoans were so gleeful at fielding both teams in Major League Baseball's championship that, in general, opposing fans were getting along unprecedentedly well. Sox and Cubs fans, usually segmented into separate bars, sat together to watch the beginning of Game Seven. Whatever the outcome, it would be good for Chicago.
Benny had been gone for years and Welsh still kept giving them all the crazy cases. Ray figured it was because Welsh missed Fraser and wished he were still in Chicago, but Kowalski insisted it was because Ray and Kowalski could solve all of the crazy cases.
"A guy in a purple dress stealing livestock," he said to Kowalski as they ate at Doctor C' s. "And the lieutenant tells me ‘Just the case for you and your special talents, Vecchio’. What did I do to deserve this?"
"If you don't want to be known for solving nutcase crimes," Kowalski replied, digging into his goat curry, "maybe you shouldn't have arrested Caruso last week."
"Caruso was a triple-murderer, Kowalski," groused Ray, taking a bite of jerk catfish. "He needed to be arrested."
"Sure," said Kowalski, agreeable. "But he was also a what-do-you-call-it, a Civil War buff. And when you arrested him he was wearing a stolen uniform and a corset. And he'd broken into a pajama factory where he was lining up blue flannel pajamas and gray flannel pajamas on the mannequins and setting them up as a, a --" He waved his fork in the air, sending a piece of curry flying. "You know, a reshowing of the Battle of Antietam."
"I was there, wiseguy. I remember how I arrested him."
Kowalski grinned, and as always, the sudden flash of his smile made Ray lose his train of thought. "Sure, but you seem to have forgotten the key element. You plus batshit lunatic criminal equals incredible arrest record."
"Lucky me," Ray replied. "Look, I just want to arrest this clown so we can get home in time to watch the game."
"What, you're excited to watch the Cubs win in a shutout?" asked Kowalski, finishing his curry and reaching for his Coke.
"Fuck you, and fuck the tiny-testicled Cubs," said Ray.
"Hey!" said Kowalski, glaring. "There is no freakin' proof that they're using. And you stand behind a team whose manager calls a reporter a 'fag'."
"That reporter was an asshole, Kowalski," said Ray.
"He called him a fag, Vecchio," said Kowalski, getting up in Ray's face. "What kind of self-respecting faggot are you, anyway, standing with that scumbag?"
Ray leaned forward, too, until they were almost nose to nose. "What kind of self-respecting Polack meatpacker's kid are you, supporting the goddamn Cubs like a rich boy?"
"Fuck you," said Kowalski, glaring.
"You wish," said Ray, and something changed in Kowalski's face, aggression shifting to heat with the manic speed with which Kowalski's emotions always moved. Though Ray's face probably changed, too, as he thought of the sex they hadn't been having, staying up too late every night to watch the game before grabbing a precious few hours of sleep, resting up for another day of chasing mobsters and goat thieves. One way or another, the series would be over tonight, and things would go back to normal. Or what passed for normal with the two of them. "Finish your lunch, idiot. So we can arrest this guy and fight about the game at home."
Kowalski sat back and quirked his lips. He slurped the last of his Coke and pushed back his chair. "Come on," he said, switching to business-mode. "Let's go find our weirdo."
"I don't see why we're on this one," Ray complained when they were in the car, as they followed their burglar's trail from the ransacked goat pen behind the tiny Park Manor bungalow to the Yankee Candle store that had lost a single box of black licorice-scented pillar candles. "How is this Major Crimes?"
"When Alderman Lyle's pet goat gets stolen, I guess it's a major crime," said Kowalski. His phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket to look at the caller ID without slowing the car. "Yeah, Frannie, what?" he asked, flipping it open. He listened for a moment. "Okay, thanks," he said, and then turned to Ray, taking his eyes once again off the road. "We got a new one," he said. "Two buckets of Crayola sidewalk chalk stolen from a toy store a couple of blocks north. Witnesses say it was a guy in a purple dress with a goat." He shook his head, bemused. "Frannie says the goat ate an entire Playmobil pirate ship."
"For Christ's sake," said Ray as Kowalski turned the car toward their most recent crime scene, but really he was pleased. No murderers, no guns -- just an afternoon driving around Chicago with his partner. Not so bad, really. "You know," he said. "I'm not the only one responsible for Welsh giving us all the Fraser-style cases. You've done your share of arresting homicidal clowns and lute-playing terrorists yourself."
Kowalski shook his head, running a yellow light to pull up in front of their toy store. "Fuck, yeah," he said. "I don't know why the Basque separatists thought it was a good idea to travel around with the Renaissance Faire. Hell, I don't even know what a Basque separatist is."
Ray shuddered, remembering May Venzor, wearing plate mail and mounted on a galloping horse, aiming a lance at Kowalski. "Watching Stella make a case against that woman was terrifying," he said.
"It was a thing of beauty," agreed Kowalski. "I guess it still pisses her off when people besides her try to kill me."
"I don't know, she doesn't mind so much when I threaten to," drawled Ray.
Kowalski parked the car and turned to look at Ray, throwing his arm over the back of Ray's seat. "That's just because she wants to watch," he said, waggling his eyebrows. "I guess Venzor almost making me into shish-kebab wouldn't have been a turn on, except for Venzor." He smiled wryly. "At least she was the last one for a while," Kowalski continued. "Since then it's been all boring crap: murderers in furry suits, and that diamond thief with the snake fetish." He got out of the car and Ray followed.
"He dumped a sackful of snakes on you," he said. "That's hardly boring."
Kowalski laughed. "They were rubber, Vecchio."
"I didn't know that at the time," said Ray, and Kowalski touched his shoulder briefly as they walked into the toy store. Ray leaned imperceptibly into the warmth.
"Yeah, but they were. It was fine. I was fine."
After the toy store ("It's not the stolen chalk I mind, it's the damn goat. You know how much that pirate ship costs? And the smell!") it was the hippie food co-op a few blocks north, reporting stolen bags of ginger, ginseng, and asafetida.
"Who would've thought goats had a thing for gluten-free brownies?" asked Kowalski as he maneuvered the GTO around the drunken revelers parading with linked arms out of a sports bar. "Gah, fucking Sox fans."
Ray really didn't want to fight about baseball right now; time to distract. "You weren't complaining about the fucking Sox fans last night," he said, leering.
Kowalski's grin was sudden, and showed blindingly white teeth. "Sure I was. I was complaining that you weren't going deep or hard or fast. You know, like the White Sox lineup."
"Funny," said Ray, looking straight ahead and concentrating on not putting his hand on Kowalski's thigh, because damn it, they had a rule about groping on duty. "I remember that more as 'Oh, Ray! Oh, Ray! Faster, you well-hung Italian stallion!'"
Kowalski snorted. "See, like I told you," he said. "Complaining."
Ray would have tempted to break the goddamn no-groping rule just to show Kowalski the difference between complaining and whimpering, but then the call came in from Dispatch about the break-in at the knife store, and suddenly it looked like this crime spree might actually become a Major Crime, and he refocused. He exchanged looks with Kowalski when it looked like their burglar was headed to ground in Boystown -- the last thing they needed was another queer lunatic making headlines -- but in the end of the guy's trail continued north into Wrigleyville before disappearing into a sewer.
"Why is it always the sewers?" complained Ray, as he climbed gingerly down the slimy ladder.
"I never had to chase crooks into sewers until I was you," groused Kowalski, putting out one hand tentatively to maintain his balance on the curved floor of the tunnel.
"I never had to, either, until I met Benny," said Ray, and Kowalski laughed. It made his face beautiful even in the dim light of the bare bulbs on the tunnel walls.
"Figures," he said.
Ray stumbled and almost slipped into a puddle of he-didn't-want-to-know-what, but Kowalski reached out and grabbed his arm before he could fall. "Steady," said Kowalski, and left his hand there for another minute, even though the path was clear now.
After a few minutes, their tunnel opened up into a dry, candlelit cavern that smelled of licorice and burning chamomile. "What the --" Ray started as soon as he saw the light, but he cut himself off when he rounded the doorway and saw the whole room. The tableau would have been the most surreal thing Ray had ever encountered in police work, if it hadn't been for the years of Freak Patrol with Fraser and Kowalski. A bespectacled man in a Cubs hat and a fringed purple robe looked up, wide-eyed and frozen, poised with a frantically bleating goat in the middle of a circle of flickering black candles.
"Put down the knife, kid," said Ray, edging around to the right. He saw Kowalski slipping to the left in perfect synchronicity. The guy looked at both of them, darting his eyes back and forth, and Ray wondered if this was going to turn into a knife fight after all. I'm getting too old for this, he thought, and was just steeling himself to go for the weapon when the guy gave a dejected sigh and dropped the bejeweled decorative knife to the ground. The clatter was startling in the echoing cavern.
"Chicago PD. You're under arrest," said Kowalski, slipping up behind the guy and cuffing him. "You have the right to remain silent, although personally I would really like to hear what the fuck you are doing with an alderman's goat under Wrigley Field. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law, and both of us can personally assure you that the Assistant State's Attorney is an incredible hardass so I wouldn't give her any shit if I were you. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning, but you do not have the right to have a goat present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. An attorney, not a goat. Now who the fuck are you?"
The kid hung his head. "Steve Bartman," he said despairingly. Ray frowned, trying to remember why that name was familiar, but "shit!" exclaimed Kowalski, jerking involuntarily and pulling Bartman's arms back suddenly. "Ow," said Bartman, but he sounded oddly resigned.
"You're that guy!" said Kowalski.
"What guy?" asked Ray.
"Yeah," said the guy. "I am."
"What guy?" asked Ray again, trying for patience.
"This guy," said Kowalski, seemingly struggling with some emotion. "This guy, Vecchio, in 2003, at the Marlins game, this guy caught Alou's ball, and, and..." He trailed off, looking for words.
Light dawned on Ray. "You're the fan interference guy. You caught that ball and kept the Cubs from going to the World Series."
"That's me," said Bartman, and drew in on himself as if he were expecting a beating from Ray.
"Don't worry about him," said Kowalski to Bartman. "He's a Sox fan. He won't kick you in the head. He won't even let me kick you in the head."
Ray was looking back and forth from Bartman, to the goat, to the licorice-scented candles laid out on a carefully chalked pentagram, then back to Bartman. "So the goat," he said carefully.
Kowalski glanced up, realization sweeping over his face. "The goat," he repeated. "The goat and the incense and the knife, all under Wrigley Field."
Bartman shrugged. "I was trying to fix it," he said. "I figured if I sacrificed a goat I had a chance of breaking the curse. I need the Cubs to win the World Series. I need to fix Chicago. I need to fix my life." His face crumpled as if he were going to cry.
Kowalski tilted his head. "The goat," he said to Bartman. "Sacrificing a goat under Wrigley Field. You think it would work?"
Bartman twisted his head around to look at Kowalski. "You said he's a White Sox fan," he said, jerking his cuffed hands to point clumsily at Ray. "And a cop. He won't let us."
But Ray's attention was all on Kowalski. Kowalski, who had ceased glowering at Bartman, and now looked hopefully, almost hungrily, at the goat. Kowalski, who'd bullied his way into Ray's family, into his mother's good graces, into Frannie's confidence. Kowalski, who intruded on Ray's attention and concentration until he couldn't think about anything else. Kowalski, who was the real freak magnet in this partnership, no matter how much he insisted it was Ray.
"We have to return Flossie here to the alderman," Ray said slowly. He thought of eighty-eight barren years without a World Series win, about how good it had felt to break that dry spell three years before. He thought about with going to games with Pops and Maria and Frannie, on those rare occasions when the old man was sober.
"Kowalski, toss me your phone, would you?" Kowalski threw his phone to Ray without a moment's hesitation. Ray flipped it open and scanned through the frequently-dialed numbers until Doctor C's popped up on the screen. He looked up and met Kowalski's eyes, which were warm with love and trust. There he stood, a man who rooted for the fucking Cubs, who mocked the Sox mercilessly, who'd "unintentionally" spilled beer on Ray's White Sox World Champions 2005 t-shirt last week. Ray dialed.
"Hey," he said when Doctor C's picked up. "Vecchio, Chicago PD. Who do you call around here to buy a goat?"
The look on Kowalski's face was worth any number of World Series rings.
**
THIS POLL IS NOW CLOSED. ANY FURTHER VOTES WILL NOT BE COUNTED.
Poll Vote for this story
Author: jadelennox
Team: Romance
Prompt: “She was the last one.”
Pairing(s): Kowalski/Vecchio
Length: 2,600 words
Rating: PG
Warnings: Potential for future animal harm.
Author's note: Without Slidellra's eleventh hour beta of much win, this story would be nowhere near as good.
Summary: "Hey, you weren't complaining about the fucking Sox fans last night," said Ray, leering. / Kowalski's grin showed blindingly white teeth. "Sure I was. I was complaining that you weren't going deep or hard or fast. You know, like the White Sox lineup."
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
"Relationships". Encyclopedia of Baseball Metaphors. Ed. Samuel Tsoza. 5 vols. Chicago: Sage, 2009.
The 2008 World Series historically pitted the Chicago Cubs against the Chicago White Sox. The Crosstown Showdown came to a high-tension head in 2008 when, for the first time since 1906, the North Siders and South Siders played against each other in a World Series. The Chicago Cubs, down 0-3 after Game Three, had a spectacular comeback and won the next three games handily. As the city prepared for Game Seven, the police hunkered down for the expected fights and riots between fans of the opposing teams. However, they found that the city reacted unexpectedly. Instead of Cubs and Sox fans at each other's throats, Chicagoans were so gleeful at fielding both teams in Major League Baseball's championship that, in general, opposing fans were getting along unprecedentedly well. Sox and Cubs fans, usually segmented into separate bars, sat together to watch the beginning of Game Seven. Whatever the outcome, it would be good for Chicago.
Benny had been gone for years and Welsh still kept giving them all the crazy cases. Ray figured it was because Welsh missed Fraser and wished he were still in Chicago, but Kowalski insisted it was because Ray and Kowalski could solve all of the crazy cases.
"A guy in a purple dress stealing livestock," he said to Kowalski as they ate at Doctor C' s. "And the lieutenant tells me ‘Just the case for you and your special talents, Vecchio’. What did I do to deserve this?"
"If you don't want to be known for solving nutcase crimes," Kowalski replied, digging into his goat curry, "maybe you shouldn't have arrested Caruso last week."
"Caruso was a triple-murderer, Kowalski," groused Ray, taking a bite of jerk catfish. "He needed to be arrested."
"Sure," said Kowalski, agreeable. "But he was also a what-do-you-call-it, a Civil War buff. And when you arrested him he was wearing a stolen uniform and a corset. And he'd broken into a pajama factory where he was lining up blue flannel pajamas and gray flannel pajamas on the mannequins and setting them up as a, a --" He waved his fork in the air, sending a piece of curry flying. "You know, a reshowing of the Battle of Antietam."
"I was there, wiseguy. I remember how I arrested him."
Kowalski grinned, and as always, the sudden flash of his smile made Ray lose his train of thought. "Sure, but you seem to have forgotten the key element. You plus batshit lunatic criminal equals incredible arrest record."
"Lucky me," Ray replied. "Look, I just want to arrest this clown so we can get home in time to watch the game."
"What, you're excited to watch the Cubs win in a shutout?" asked Kowalski, finishing his curry and reaching for his Coke.
"Fuck you, and fuck the tiny-testicled Cubs," said Ray.
"Hey!" said Kowalski, glaring. "There is no freakin' proof that they're using. And you stand behind a team whose manager calls a reporter a 'fag'."
"That reporter was an asshole, Kowalski," said Ray.
"He called him a fag, Vecchio," said Kowalski, getting up in Ray's face. "What kind of self-respecting faggot are you, anyway, standing with that scumbag?"
Ray leaned forward, too, until they were almost nose to nose. "What kind of self-respecting Polack meatpacker's kid are you, supporting the goddamn Cubs like a rich boy?"
"Fuck you," said Kowalski, glaring.
"You wish," said Ray, and something changed in Kowalski's face, aggression shifting to heat with the manic speed with which Kowalski's emotions always moved. Though Ray's face probably changed, too, as he thought of the sex they hadn't been having, staying up too late every night to watch the game before grabbing a precious few hours of sleep, resting up for another day of chasing mobsters and goat thieves. One way or another, the series would be over tonight, and things would go back to normal. Or what passed for normal with the two of them. "Finish your lunch, idiot. So we can arrest this guy and fight about the game at home."
Kowalski sat back and quirked his lips. He slurped the last of his Coke and pushed back his chair. "Come on," he said, switching to business-mode. "Let's go find our weirdo."
"I don't see why we're on this one," Ray complained when they were in the car, as they followed their burglar's trail from the ransacked goat pen behind the tiny Park Manor bungalow to the Yankee Candle store that had lost a single box of black licorice-scented pillar candles. "How is this Major Crimes?"
"When Alderman Lyle's pet goat gets stolen, I guess it's a major crime," said Kowalski. His phone rang, and he pulled it out of his pocket to look at the caller ID without slowing the car. "Yeah, Frannie, what?" he asked, flipping it open. He listened for a moment. "Okay, thanks," he said, and then turned to Ray, taking his eyes once again off the road. "We got a new one," he said. "Two buckets of Crayola sidewalk chalk stolen from a toy store a couple of blocks north. Witnesses say it was a guy in a purple dress with a goat." He shook his head, bemused. "Frannie says the goat ate an entire Playmobil pirate ship."
"For Christ's sake," said Ray as Kowalski turned the car toward their most recent crime scene, but really he was pleased. No murderers, no guns -- just an afternoon driving around Chicago with his partner. Not so bad, really. "You know," he said. "I'm not the only one responsible for Welsh giving us all the Fraser-style cases. You've done your share of arresting homicidal clowns and lute-playing terrorists yourself."
Kowalski shook his head, running a yellow light to pull up in front of their toy store. "Fuck, yeah," he said. "I don't know why the Basque separatists thought it was a good idea to travel around with the Renaissance Faire. Hell, I don't even know what a Basque separatist is."
Ray shuddered, remembering May Venzor, wearing plate mail and mounted on a galloping horse, aiming a lance at Kowalski. "Watching Stella make a case against that woman was terrifying," he said.
"It was a thing of beauty," agreed Kowalski. "I guess it still pisses her off when people besides her try to kill me."
"I don't know, she doesn't mind so much when I threaten to," drawled Ray.
Kowalski parked the car and turned to look at Ray, throwing his arm over the back of Ray's seat. "That's just because she wants to watch," he said, waggling his eyebrows. "I guess Venzor almost making me into shish-kebab wouldn't have been a turn on, except for Venzor." He smiled wryly. "At least she was the last one for a while," Kowalski continued. "Since then it's been all boring crap: murderers in furry suits, and that diamond thief with the snake fetish." He got out of the car and Ray followed.
"He dumped a sackful of snakes on you," he said. "That's hardly boring."
Kowalski laughed. "They were rubber, Vecchio."
"I didn't know that at the time," said Ray, and Kowalski touched his shoulder briefly as they walked into the toy store. Ray leaned imperceptibly into the warmth.
"Yeah, but they were. It was fine. I was fine."
After the toy store ("It's not the stolen chalk I mind, it's the damn goat. You know how much that pirate ship costs? And the smell!") it was the hippie food co-op a few blocks north, reporting stolen bags of ginger, ginseng, and asafetida.
"Who would've thought goats had a thing for gluten-free brownies?" asked Kowalski as he maneuvered the GTO around the drunken revelers parading with linked arms out of a sports bar. "Gah, fucking Sox fans."
Ray really didn't want to fight about baseball right now; time to distract. "You weren't complaining about the fucking Sox fans last night," he said, leering.
Kowalski's grin was sudden, and showed blindingly white teeth. "Sure I was. I was complaining that you weren't going deep or hard or fast. You know, like the White Sox lineup."
"Funny," said Ray, looking straight ahead and concentrating on not putting his hand on Kowalski's thigh, because damn it, they had a rule about groping on duty. "I remember that more as 'Oh, Ray! Oh, Ray! Faster, you well-hung Italian stallion!'"
Kowalski snorted. "See, like I told you," he said. "Complaining."
Ray would have tempted to break the goddamn no-groping rule just to show Kowalski the difference between complaining and whimpering, but then the call came in from Dispatch about the break-in at the knife store, and suddenly it looked like this crime spree might actually become a Major Crime, and he refocused. He exchanged looks with Kowalski when it looked like their burglar was headed to ground in Boystown -- the last thing they needed was another queer lunatic making headlines -- but in the end of the guy's trail continued north into Wrigleyville before disappearing into a sewer.
"Why is it always the sewers?" complained Ray, as he climbed gingerly down the slimy ladder.
"I never had to chase crooks into sewers until I was you," groused Kowalski, putting out one hand tentatively to maintain his balance on the curved floor of the tunnel.
"I never had to, either, until I met Benny," said Ray, and Kowalski laughed. It made his face beautiful even in the dim light of the bare bulbs on the tunnel walls.
"Figures," he said.
Ray stumbled and almost slipped into a puddle of he-didn't-want-to-know-what, but Kowalski reached out and grabbed his arm before he could fall. "Steady," said Kowalski, and left his hand there for another minute, even though the path was clear now.
After a few minutes, their tunnel opened up into a dry, candlelit cavern that smelled of licorice and burning chamomile. "What the --" Ray started as soon as he saw the light, but he cut himself off when he rounded the doorway and saw the whole room. The tableau would have been the most surreal thing Ray had ever encountered in police work, if it hadn't been for the years of Freak Patrol with Fraser and Kowalski. A bespectacled man in a Cubs hat and a fringed purple robe looked up, wide-eyed and frozen, poised with a frantically bleating goat in the middle of a circle of flickering black candles.
"Put down the knife, kid," said Ray, edging around to the right. He saw Kowalski slipping to the left in perfect synchronicity. The guy looked at both of them, darting his eyes back and forth, and Ray wondered if this was going to turn into a knife fight after all. I'm getting too old for this, he thought, and was just steeling himself to go for the weapon when the guy gave a dejected sigh and dropped the bejeweled decorative knife to the ground. The clatter was startling in the echoing cavern.
"Chicago PD. You're under arrest," said Kowalski, slipping up behind the guy and cuffing him. "You have the right to remain silent, although personally I would really like to hear what the fuck you are doing with an alderman's goat under Wrigley Field. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law, and both of us can personally assure you that the Assistant State's Attorney is an incredible hardass so I wouldn't give her any shit if I were you. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning, but you do not have the right to have a goat present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. An attorney, not a goat. Now who the fuck are you?"
The kid hung his head. "Steve Bartman," he said despairingly. Ray frowned, trying to remember why that name was familiar, but "shit!" exclaimed Kowalski, jerking involuntarily and pulling Bartman's arms back suddenly. "Ow," said Bartman, but he sounded oddly resigned.
"You're that guy!" said Kowalski.
"What guy?" asked Ray.
"Yeah," said the guy. "I am."
"What guy?" asked Ray again, trying for patience.
"This guy," said Kowalski, seemingly struggling with some emotion. "This guy, Vecchio, in 2003, at the Marlins game, this guy caught Alou's ball, and, and..." He trailed off, looking for words.
Light dawned on Ray. "You're the fan interference guy. You caught that ball and kept the Cubs from going to the World Series."
"That's me," said Bartman, and drew in on himself as if he were expecting a beating from Ray.
"Don't worry about him," said Kowalski to Bartman. "He's a Sox fan. He won't kick you in the head. He won't even let me kick you in the head."
Ray was looking back and forth from Bartman, to the goat, to the licorice-scented candles laid out on a carefully chalked pentagram, then back to Bartman. "So the goat," he said carefully.
Kowalski glanced up, realization sweeping over his face. "The goat," he repeated. "The goat and the incense and the knife, all under Wrigley Field."
Bartman shrugged. "I was trying to fix it," he said. "I figured if I sacrificed a goat I had a chance of breaking the curse. I need the Cubs to win the World Series. I need to fix Chicago. I need to fix my life." His face crumpled as if he were going to cry.
Kowalski tilted his head. "The goat," he said to Bartman. "Sacrificing a goat under Wrigley Field. You think it would work?"
Bartman twisted his head around to look at Kowalski. "You said he's a White Sox fan," he said, jerking his cuffed hands to point clumsily at Ray. "And a cop. He won't let us."
But Ray's attention was all on Kowalski. Kowalski, who had ceased glowering at Bartman, and now looked hopefully, almost hungrily, at the goat. Kowalski, who'd bullied his way into Ray's family, into his mother's good graces, into Frannie's confidence. Kowalski, who intruded on Ray's attention and concentration until he couldn't think about anything else. Kowalski, who was the real freak magnet in this partnership, no matter how much he insisted it was Ray.
"We have to return Flossie here to the alderman," Ray said slowly. He thought of eighty-eight barren years without a World Series win, about how good it had felt to break that dry spell three years before. He thought about with going to games with Pops and Maria and Frannie, on those rare occasions when the old man was sober.
"Kowalski, toss me your phone, would you?" Kowalski threw his phone to Ray without a moment's hesitation. Ray flipped it open and scanned through the frequently-dialed numbers until Doctor C's popped up on the screen. He looked up and met Kowalski's eyes, which were warm with love and trust. There he stood, a man who rooted for the fucking Cubs, who mocked the Sox mercilessly, who'd "unintentionally" spilled beer on Ray's White Sox World Champions 2005 t-shirt last week. Ray dialed.
"Hey," he said when Doctor C's picked up. "Vecchio, Chicago PD. Who do you call around here to buy a goat?"
The look on Kowalski's face was worth any number of World Series rings.
**
THIS POLL IS NOW CLOSED. ANY FURTHER VOTES WILL NOT BE COUNTED.
Poll Vote for this story