sky was a petrifying blue
now with pictures!
Catalyst
(one that precipitates a process or event, especially without being involved in or changed by the consequences)
You start out all right, because here in Phoenix you can wake up like nothing in your life was ever written down. You’re trailing your teammates from place to place, hands in your pockets and the streetlights pouring around you, or the sun if it’s more appropriate. It’s a fine day, a good time for the drive-thru liquor store and eating fast food in the car, Crosby throwing balled-up napkins and Zito bitching at him for making a mess.
Things are getting weird. You come across Crosby strewn in the upstairs hallway, his hands curled up like dry leaves, and you stop, studying him. The hallway lights are off, stair-railing shadows pressed up on the ceiling.
You nudge Crosby’s leg with your foot and he twitches, sneaking a look from under his eyelashes. He’s playing possum, holding his finger up to his lips. You roll your eyes and go back downstairs, where Haren grins at the sight of you and tries to make you take shots, and Zito is calling from the living room, “Rich, come fix this fucking machine.”
Ellis finds Crosby a little while later and comes down with a manic smile on his face, saying, “Bobby’s passed out, who’s got a Sharpie?”
You keep quiet as the others hoot and thud up the stairs, fiddling with the wires behind the television, your hands coated in slippery gray dust. It’s a practical joke, you’re pretty sure, but the punchline is hard to figure. You’re too drunk for this, anyway, and little electric shocks keep wrenching into your fingers.
There are bikes in the front hall, leaning against the white wall like skeletons. There are shoes in a pile and magazine pages scattered on the carpet. You know that you live here, in this boxy drafty house a little ways away from the university, but you think that if you left with the clothes on your back, there would be no evidence to prove it.
Crosby comes down laughing, careening into the living room. “Man, you shoulda seen their faces, dude.”
You leave the wires alone and slump back against the wall, trembling. “What was that about, anyway?”
Crosby shrugs, smears of black on his palms from when he battled the Sharpie away from the others. “It was funny. I’ve been doing stuff like that recently.”
His face is flushed, and he launches into a long story that you have trouble following. You’re tired almost all the time, trying to find your rhythm again. You can hear the other guys talking upstairs, and Crosby’s voice is hoarse and cracking. You want to curl up and not be alone when you do. You should call Street, who is only a few days removed and only a few strip malls away, but it’s very hard to get your body to do what you ask of it, and so you give in.
You sleep on the couch even though you’ve got a perfectly good bed upstairs. It just seems like too much effort. Zito has collapsed in the chair with his legs over the arm and his body slowly sliding towards the floor. You wake up to find him wrapped around the coffee table.
Haren is making Eggo waffles in the kitchen, leaning hard against the counter, his eyes flicking up past your wrinkled shirt to your matted hair. You exchange grunts in greeting and you drink your first Red Bull of the day, because you gave up coffee for Lent.
Feeling slightly better about existence in general, you take in the fact that Haren is wearing different clothes than last night, and you are confused.
“You don’t live here, Dan, do you?”
He gives you a look, hooking his waffles out of the toaster oven with a fork. “No.”
You rub your eyes. “Huh.”
Zito hollers from the living room for you to keep it the fuck down. Haren opens his mouth to holler something back, but you shake your head at him, it’s not worth it. He shrugs and eats his waffles dry, and you eat yours with maple syrup and fake butter. He weaves and checks you into the counter on his way to the sink, where he cups his hands and pours water over his hair, streaming around his ears and down his neck.
This is how it goes. You all leave the house together, and Crosby has to run back three times for things he forgot, because Crosby’s life happens in increments of spare change and his broken watch and the CDs he makes that nobody else wants to listen to.
It’s so bright outside, you can hear your pupils stretching, imagining telescopes and zoom lenses and stuff like that. Zito wanders across the street to take pictures of the palm trees. Haren is pacing a small circle around you, and you’re getting dizzy.
You tell him to knock it off and punch him on the shoulder. He pushes his damp hair back off his forehead and his eyes come out like even more sky.
“You’ve got syrup on your face,” Haren informs you mildly. You scrub your mouth with your hand, bending to look in the car’s side mirror, but there’s nothing there and Haren is fucking with you. You decide to ignore him.
Zito’s boring, though, talking about light and shutter speeds, saying, “See, it’s the contrast, with the lines of the house being all straight and the trees being all wild.”
You idly consider snatching his camera and end-zone spiking it on the sidewalk. That’s a little much for a practical joke, like poisonous snakes in a can of fake nuts. Crosby comes out of the house for the last time and swears he’s ready to go.
So you go.
You can’t get over the desert. You went to school down here and it got in you then like the dirt under your nails that never gets all the way cleaned out. The clouds are making incredible shapes, all laddered and ribbed, ragged at the edges and you can sympathize with that.
You and Crosby are in your car, and Zito’s tailgating just to be annoying. You can’t see Haren’s car; you think maybe he took the shortcut. You can find the ballpark by following the airplanes. It’s kinda fuzzy this morning, the gray roads as smooth as ribbons, the flicker of palm trees, and you’re glad Crosby is driving.
Spring training is like this sometimes, like the styrofoam feeling of your muscles and the ball taking control over its flight the instant it’s out of your hand. Spring training is spent learning how to talk to your friends again, and all these stunts you keep pulling on each other are just to make sure the team is the same as it was last year.
The team is remarkably similar to what it was last year. You’ve never come back so intact.
Street calls when you’re in the clubhouse, playing tabletop football with Haren. Street is in the same city, highway miles away. You can’t get used to seeing him on television in his soda-can-colored Team USA uniform, but that’s the least of your concerns.
“Hey, Richie, how’s it going?”
You wave Haren off, and he makes a face at you, goes over to bug Zito. “Pretty good.”
“You’re not pitching today, are you?”
“No. It’s gonna be Joe.”
“Oh. Cool.”
You stretch and pop your shoulders. “You gonna come hang out with us tonight? After my team, you know, obliterates your team?”
Street snorts. “As if, dude. But yeah. I’ll come.”
“Cool.”
You don’t think Canada is actually going to win the game, but you miss Street kind of a lot. You want to see him in the sunlight they’ve got down here, in real life not broken up by commercials. Everybody plays day games in the Cactus League, reverse vampires.
Street hasn’t changed, not even a little bit. You have this image of him five years from now, the exact same, and ten years, still with his alchemical smile and the weird step-back in his delivery, and then people would probably want to study him and put him in a room with white walls. Figure out how he stayed twenty-one years old for a decade.
Blanton pitches and Crosby hits a home run in the third and almost breaks your ribs coming in to the dugout. You get sunflower seeds stuck in your teeth and keep watch on the rusted stone mountain beyond the outfield wall. The lit part of your life can be organized into little boxes filled with obscure symbols, but not everything is that simple.
Towards the end of the game, Zito comes up from the clubhouse stumbling with laughter, telling you that Canada beat the U.S. and the whole team owes you twenty bucks.
It’s a good day. Danny stuffs his twenty down the front of your shirt and then puts you in a headlock, won’t let you go for about fifteen minutes. Your face presses against his ribs and you can hear his heartbeat. You don’t mind, feeling the money crinkle on your stomach, caught up against your belt, feeling Haren hot like the hood of a running car. You want to be drunk, and so drunk you shall be.
It’s still light outside when you get to the bar, and you worry about that for a minute, but you know in your heart that alcohol won’t be the thing that kills any of you. The wood of the booth’s table is shiny and scuffed and Haren wants to sit next to you and talk about the Oscars.
Ellis and Swisher bring beers and a deck of cards and then there’s falling aces, spiraling diamonds. You’re rich tonight and Canada is on top of the world. Haren’s arm is up along the back of the booth, soft when you lean back.
“I don’t think you understand how totally wrong it is to bluff with that hand,” Zito is saying to Crosby.
“You’re not even playing, so shut up.”
Zito coughs and raises his eyebrows. “It’s because I’m not playing that I can speak with such authority.”
“Great. Shut up.” Crosby pushes Zito off him, scowling and hiding his cards under his hand.
You smile. You like this, it’s all very familiar. Chavez is wandering around without purpose, a beer in his hand and a dumb look on his face. He’s the one who hisses as the door opens and light blasts in, and yells Street’s name.
You look up, your pulse kicking up for some reason, and Street is grinning hugely, patches of sunburn on his neck where he missed with the suntan lotion. You saw him just a couple of days ago, before he left camp, so there’s no reason to be looking for differences in him already.
“Hi, y’all,” Street says in his same old voice, same old eyes, same old teeth that make your head just fucking ache.
Everybody immediately starts ragging on him about the game, though Street cannot be blamed and they all know that. It’s just expected. Street shoulders it gamely and buys a round, at which point he is completely forgiven.
Haren is quiet at your side and you are watching Huston Street, who glances at you occasionally, sideways smiles and his thumb hooked in a belt loop. Street is still this impossible thing.
It’s an hour or maybe two before you get a chance to talk directly to him, when Haren goes to play darts and leaves a cold spot beside you. Street is not a perfect substitute; he’s much smaller than Haren, even smaller than you are, and you remember being so endeared to him for that simple reason, after years of being shorter than almost everyone and endlessly waiting to grow into your hands and feet. But he fits well, smells of cologne and beer and gasoline.
“Hey,” Street says. You echo it, nervously shifting your feet under the table. “How was your game?”
It’s unsettling to hear Street ask that question. Like Zito last year, talking to Hudson or Mulder and his expression twisting the first couple of times, because after five years, the only thing he had never talked to the two of them about was how the game had gone. You want to call Billy Beane and ensure that you and Street are still teammates.
“Good. You know. That kid up from Double-A is making a serious attempt at the outfield.”
“Oh yeah?” Street laughs. “That’s kind of a tough road.”
“We’re trying to keep that a secret. Let the kid think he’s got a shot.”
“Well, everyone’s got a shot. That’s the beauty of it.”
You don’t answer, because this is Street’s second year and he doesn’t know what you do. The non-roster invitees can run themselves into walls and skid for ten feet across the outfield grass and live for each day that they don’t get cut, but the infield is set and so is the rotation and of the three spots in the outfield, five are already taken.
But it’s spring in Phoenix and it makes you believe in stuff. Danny Haren is sneaking looks at you from the dart board, colored bottles catching red and blue across his face, and you cock your head to the side curiously, mouth, ‘what?’ at him. He clenches his jaw and turns back to the game.
You figure it doesn’t matter and nudge Street. “How’s life on the team-that-lost-to-Canada?”
Street tries to glare, and fails. “Listen, batters are behind pitchers as far as being ready, okay? And Willis, the way he throws, takes him like an extra week just to figure it out. Besides which, we got back into the game, just couldn’t finish it out. This kid Loewen, I don’t know, man, they say he’s in A-ball? Seems doubtful. I think he’s a ringer.”
You have to laugh. “How can he be a ringer?”
“Dunno. We’re looking into it.”
Street smiles and you know that he doesn’t care that his (other) team lost today, doesn’t particularly mind being smacked around by your countrymen, and you hum under your breath, we stand on guard for thee, and smile back at Street, glad to be here now.
The night goes quickly, full of pink light and college basketball drenching every television screen, and Street stays by your side. You stay by his. It’s regular, everyday, feels like New Year’s Eve, the way you are making promises and watching the clock with fierce concentration.
On the sidewalk, bits and pieces of your team drifting around you, you put your arm around Street’s shoulders and ask him if he wants to come back with you and you’re not wondering why Street didn’t want to live with you and the other guys this spring. You stopped wondering about that a couple of weeks ago.
But Street is turning you down very politely (you would have expected nothing less), saying, “I need to get some sleep, man, this schedule is killing me.”
You nod; day games are hard. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re aware that the U.S. doesn’t play tomorrow, and Street’s got nothing holding him back, but you don’t acknowledge that. Street must have a reason. He always does.
You clasp his hand and pull him into a hug, buzzed enough to think that it’s all right, and his arm is around your waist, his face scratching at your neck.
“I’ll see you later,” you say into his shoulder.
“Yep,” he says back, and you can feel his lips move and that’s not fair. He steps away and one more perfect grin, one more flash like static electricity in your bloodstream and then Street’s saying goodbye to the rest of the guys, dodging their hands and ducking his head. Haren comes to stand beside you and you barely notice him.
“Hey,” he says softly. You look over and he’s just like always, tall dense-shouldered heavy-featured and fuck those eyes of his, they don’t mean anything. “You ready to go?”
You narrow your eyes suspiciously, the night of drinking whirring in your veins and making it hard to organize your thoughts. Everybody has ulterior motives these days and after having your bed short-sheeted four times in a week, you trust no one.
But Haren is sharp as a safety pin and you don’t want to think about what’s going on with you, why watching Street leave makes your skin feel too tight. You let Haren drive you back to your house, and Crosby is somewhere behind you. Haren is whistling along with the radio. You’re mostly asleep.
“There’s no hope for that guy, you know,” Haren says, startling you. You blink at the wide street and the flurry of neon.
“Who?”
Haren gestures obliquely over his shoulder. “Huston.”
You tense, clutching your elbows like backpack straps. “What’re you talking about?”
Haren glances at you, and you watch his hands fist around the wheel, knuckles standing out straight and pale. He’s got some look on his face, something you can’t place. He clears his throat and shrugs.
“Never mind.”
You slump back and lean your head on the glass. You can feel the hangover already crawling in your synapses. “Whatever,” you mutter, thinking that Street is not on your team right now and you need to accept that.
Back at your house and if Haren was telling the truth when he said he didn’t live here, then what’s he doing here? Why’s he at your back like this, scuffing his shoes on the carpet and his throat clicking as he swallows?
You want to make coffee, but that’s a bad idea. You see Crosby’s headlights wash across the front of the house and you escape into the backyard, dying for air. Haren says your name, like, what are you doing, and you can’t spare the breath to tell him to stay away. You’re drunker than you remember getting.
It’s dark, colder than seems reasonable, and the underwater lights are on in the pool, whickering floats of white-blue, spooky as all hell. You lean on your shoulder against the side of the garage and Haren stands a few feet away in a T-shirt that used to belong to Barry Zito and jeans with one pocket turned out.
“What’s up with you tonight?” Haren asks, and you bare your teeth at him in response. He shifts from foot to foot. “You want me to go?”
You think about that for a while, vaguely aware that you’re sick of Haren coming around, and you don’t want him watching your back or anywhere else. You don’t want him at all. You cant your head so that your hair scrapes across the stucco.
“No, it’s okay. Just. Needed to get out for a second.” You think of this like another practical joke, some scam you’re pulling and nobody can tell.
“We were barely even in,” Haren points out, as if you didn’t know.
“So?” You close your eyes and you can feel a chafe like ropeburn on the undersides of your eyelids. Very tired, you could sleep here against the side of the garage.
“Danny?”
“What?”
You breathe, trick-flicker, highlight reel in your mind, black Irish hair and dutch blue eyes and you don’t know, honestly, you’re only trying to stay on your feet.
“Nothing,” you say with a sigh. There’s a pause, then a rasp of sneakers on cement, and then Haren is putting his hand on your side and you are freeze-framed. You are painfully conscious of the length of his fingers, the way your hip is notched into his palm and his fingertips are almost touching the run of your spine.
You’re really just worn down to the bone. You’re thinking of the stupid fucking pranks and the lights in the water, and Danny Haren is moving nearer to you in the busted-up pieces of moonlight and the weight of the air.
You wake up with a nauseous throb in your head and your throat aching thickly, staring at a pair of arms that you don’t recognize. You freak out almost immediately, two seconds to notice how skinny the arms look and how that can’t be right, and how the reflection of the white walls seems to gather in the elbow hollows, and then you are stricken. You roll away and curl into yourself. Your skin feels clammy and shrink-wrapped, your mind flying.
Trying to think back, way back and you overshoot it, you’re thinking of last year, Phoenix when the team was a pale imitation and Huston Street was the only thing that would come into focus. And you swore you could hear your ribcage creak open and your lungs draw clean and full for the first time.
You squeeze your eyes shut and reel. It’s Haren, in your bed, in your mouth and the back of your throat. Haren behind you and you don’t understand how that can be possible, his arms are too thin.
You slide back into yourself, skidding your palms on the asphalt. You know what this is. Swollen feeling of your mouth and your neck stiff, your hair finger-wrecked, whorled and jagged. Happy little buzz through your chest, you had sex last night, oh yes. And how could you be so stupid?
Stuff is coming back to you and also all the reasons why this is the worst thing you’ve ever done. Haren kissed your open mouth in the backyard, and Haren doesn’t have the attention span to watch television. You pushed him off because Crosby was somewhere inside, and you and Haren had spent last season sniping at each other and occasionally teaming up to fuck with Zito. Haren smiled wicked and wrenched a hand in your shirt, and you’d never really found him all that attractive. Haren led you upstairs, stumbling over your feet, Crosby singing off-key in the shower, and though you don’t really hate him, you at least have one good reason to, because you’d put your hand on Street’s bare back and you were about to do something, at long fucking last, Street turning to face you and his eyes lighting up, and then Haren had come into the locker room and you froze, broke, played it off like a joke, an awful downward feeling in your stomach that that had been your single best chance. Haren pulled your shirt off and you were near tears. Haren knelt, your hands finding his shoulders, and Haren had been turning up all over the place for the past year of your life. Your jeans opened so easy, you stared at the ceiling and listened to the snaps give, felt Haren’s hands jerk them off your hips and his forehead touched your stomach, and you had lent him forty-five dollars once to pay off a parking ticket and he never got you back for it. Haren licked the indented skin at your waist where the elastic of your shorts had dug in, and he used to make fun of the way you talked. Your hands were deep in his hair and there was a shard of heat and wet and crash behind your eyes, and Danny Haren took you down and down and down and it wasn’t that you didn’t like him, it was just you liked ten guys better than him, and you shouldn’t be doing this with someone who hadn’t even fucking placed.
Moving very carefully, you get out of bed, mortified to realize that you’re naked. Haren is in boxers and a T-shirt, and you wonder why he bothered to get dressed again, before remembering that you’d never actually gotten his shorts farther down than his knees, your hands pushing up under his shirt and the soft sticky fabric in your eyes.
You find your boxers flung onto the dresser, and oddly enough, it’s when you’re decent again that you start to shake hard, clinging to the little sculpted iron knobs of the drawers.
“Dude?”
Haren’s voice is rough like sand in your socks, and you go still, your back to him. There’s a mirror over the dresser, though, which you and Crosby carried up the stairs, arms dead from moving in and talking breathlessly about seven years’ bad luck. Your face is dim and shocked, unfamiliar in this light, your ears bright red. You can see Haren over your left shoulder, badly twisted in the sheets, one of his T-shirt sleeves rucked up and his upper arm showing a silhouette of teeth.
You swallow, feeling sick. “Look.”
Haren’s eyes meet yours in the mirror, wide and hopeful, and you can’t stand that, you look away. You stare at the chipped wooden frame and the Polaroid jammed like a baseball card, you and Huston Street grinning, arms over each other’s shoulders, blurry against the red-blue cop lights.
“All right,” Haren says after a long moment. “Fine.”
You hear him getting up and you glare fiercely at the Polaroid. Haren rustles into his jeans and snicks the zipper up hard enough for you to hear. He mumbles something about where are my fucking shoes, and then he’s a white smear in your peripheral vision and your bedroom door is slamming shut.
And you breathe out.
Calling Street seems to be simultaneously the best and worst idea that you’ve ever had. But you’re pretty sure your chest’s gonna cave in if you don’t see him soon, even scoured like this with a rash on your stomach that you don’t want to know is from Haren’s face. Even with the ragged sound of Haren’s voice rolling like marbles in your skull.
Street is just awoken, his mouth full of cotton, but when he hears it’s you, he perks up and says, “Hey, man, how was your night?”
You almost scream out loud, swallowing it back. You don’t answer and instead ask him if he wants to get breakfast, and he does, he even offers to drive.
You sit on the front porch and the only real reason to love Arizona is that the sky is enough to occupy your thoughts when you don’t want to think about anything else. It’s past dawn, but not by much. Your hands hang loose off your knees; Haren had licked your palm at one point, raked his teeth across the newly formed calluses. You shake your head harshly, gaze into the sun until it makes you sneeze.
Street takes you to the IHOP across the street from the campus, and you watch the college kids in backpacks and flip-flops, bleached hair and scraggly beards. Street is talking fast about something that’s hard to pay attention to. You see a kid outside who carries his shoulders the same way as Haren. You down cup after cup of coffee, breaking your vow because sometimes circumstances are beyond your control, enough cream to turn it the color of old paper, and you brushed your teeth four times before coming out here, you can’t still taste him, that’s just your fucking guilt complex.
“So what’d you guys end up doing after I left, anyways?” Street asks.
You stab at your pancakes, your face pulled into a rictus. “Not much. Just went home.”
Street nods. “Did Bobby let you play the new game?”
“Nah. He’s gotta get real good at first, you know. Win in a walk.”
“See, now, that’s what I’d call being overly competitive.”
Secretly, you’re worse than Crosby. You cannot stand losing, not at anything, it makes your stomach claw hotly, makes your skin itch. You cheat at solitaire. And that’s got to be why you’re taking this so hard, because Haren didn’t just suck you off and then hold your head in his hands as you struggled to regain control, he’d beaten you somehow, taken something you hadn’t intended to give.
You sneak glances at Street across the table, and you should not be allowed in the same zip code as a man like him. He looks younger than the kids pacing the sidewalk, clean as windex. After four weeks in the sun, there are flecked pieces of platinum in his hair. You believe wholeheartedly that your friendship with Street is the thing you will be most proud of when you are finally done with baseball.
“Hey?” Street says with his eyebrows up.
You move your shoulders uncomfortably. “Can I. Is there, like. A reason you got a place of your own down here?”
Street blinks and looks surprised. “Oh. Well. You know, I figured, with the Classic and everything, I wouldn’t be on the same schedule as y’all. And we’re going to Anaheim soon enough, so.”
“Pretty fucking sure of yourself for having lost to Canada,” you reply automatically, just to see Street smile.
“Anyway. It just seemed easier.”
“But that’s it, right?” you press, your fists digging into your knees under the table. “I mean, other than that, you woulda still wanted to live with us?”
Street licks sugar off his hand and says unconcernedly, “Of course, man. And we’ll do it in Oakland. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
You nod to yourself, staring down at the mess of demolished pancakes. “Okay. Thought maybe you were getting tired of us, but okay.”
Street rolls his eyes and kicks you under the table. “You’re my best friend. If I ever get tired of you, you better think of something to make me pay attention again.”
And you could just cry, because you’re his best friend and he’s yours and you can never ever tell him what you were doing last night, certain that it’s a betrayal but not at all clear on the specifics. Are you damned because it was Haren, or because it wasn’t Street? It’s possible that there’s no difference, but that doesn’t make you feel any better.
You cross your fingers, the blue and white of the restaurant making you seasick. “I’ll do what I can.”
Street is grinning again. You remember meeting him, almost exactly a year ago, and wanting him at once and with all that you had in you, like a punch to the stomach. Wanting him so bad it fucked up your eyes and you saw the world through cellophane, aware with stunning intensity that he would not do wrong by you, and you might be able to return the favor.
His phone goes off, tinny country-song ringtone, and he politely excuses himself to answer it. Idly, you unscrew the salt shaker and pour in a good half-inch of sugar. It’s just a reflex, at this point. You watch Street pacing a short path in front of the cash register. He has trouble staying still and that’s something you have in common. He hooks a hand on the back of his neck and you think of Danny Haren with his big hands on the back of your head. Your lip sneers.
Street comes back, saying, “So, man, let’s talk about it for a second. Bobby was saying Pleasanton, but I don’t really wanna be that far out.”
He rattles the sugar all over his hashbrowns. You hide a smile behind your hand. “It’s really quiet out there, though. We could do anything.”
Street is studying his hashbrowns with a confused look on his face, chewing slowly. “Yeah,” he says, distracted. “I think there’s something wrong with these.”
He tries to make you try some, and you start to laugh.
more visual evidence thisaway
Catalyst
(one that precipitates a process or event, especially without being involved in or changed by the consequences)
You start out all right, because here in Phoenix you can wake up like nothing in your life was ever written down. You’re trailing your teammates from place to place, hands in your pockets and the streetlights pouring around you, or the sun if it’s more appropriate. It’s a fine day, a good time for the drive-thru liquor store and eating fast food in the car, Crosby throwing balled-up napkins and Zito bitching at him for making a mess.
Things are getting weird. You come across Crosby strewn in the upstairs hallway, his hands curled up like dry leaves, and you stop, studying him. The hallway lights are off, stair-railing shadows pressed up on the ceiling.
You nudge Crosby’s leg with your foot and he twitches, sneaking a look from under his eyelashes. He’s playing possum, holding his finger up to his lips. You roll your eyes and go back downstairs, where Haren grins at the sight of you and tries to make you take shots, and Zito is calling from the living room, “Rich, come fix this fucking machine.”
Ellis finds Crosby a little while later and comes down with a manic smile on his face, saying, “Bobby’s passed out, who’s got a Sharpie?”
You keep quiet as the others hoot and thud up the stairs, fiddling with the wires behind the television, your hands coated in slippery gray dust. It’s a practical joke, you’re pretty sure, but the punchline is hard to figure. You’re too drunk for this, anyway, and little electric shocks keep wrenching into your fingers.
There are bikes in the front hall, leaning against the white wall like skeletons. There are shoes in a pile and magazine pages scattered on the carpet. You know that you live here, in this boxy drafty house a little ways away from the university, but you think that if you left with the clothes on your back, there would be no evidence to prove it.
Crosby comes down laughing, careening into the living room. “Man, you shoulda seen their faces, dude.”
You leave the wires alone and slump back against the wall, trembling. “What was that about, anyway?”
Crosby shrugs, smears of black on his palms from when he battled the Sharpie away from the others. “It was funny. I’ve been doing stuff like that recently.”
His face is flushed, and he launches into a long story that you have trouble following. You’re tired almost all the time, trying to find your rhythm again. You can hear the other guys talking upstairs, and Crosby’s voice is hoarse and cracking. You want to curl up and not be alone when you do. You should call Street, who is only a few days removed and only a few strip malls away, but it’s very hard to get your body to do what you ask of it, and so you give in.
You sleep on the couch even though you’ve got a perfectly good bed upstairs. It just seems like too much effort. Zito has collapsed in the chair with his legs over the arm and his body slowly sliding towards the floor. You wake up to find him wrapped around the coffee table.
Haren is making Eggo waffles in the kitchen, leaning hard against the counter, his eyes flicking up past your wrinkled shirt to your matted hair. You exchange grunts in greeting and you drink your first Red Bull of the day, because you gave up coffee for Lent.
Feeling slightly better about existence in general, you take in the fact that Haren is wearing different clothes than last night, and you are confused.
“You don’t live here, Dan, do you?”
He gives you a look, hooking his waffles out of the toaster oven with a fork. “No.”
You rub your eyes. “Huh.”
Zito hollers from the living room for you to keep it the fuck down. Haren opens his mouth to holler something back, but you shake your head at him, it’s not worth it. He shrugs and eats his waffles dry, and you eat yours with maple syrup and fake butter. He weaves and checks you into the counter on his way to the sink, where he cups his hands and pours water over his hair, streaming around his ears and down his neck.
This is how it goes. You all leave the house together, and Crosby has to run back three times for things he forgot, because Crosby’s life happens in increments of spare change and his broken watch and the CDs he makes that nobody else wants to listen to.
It’s so bright outside, you can hear your pupils stretching, imagining telescopes and zoom lenses and stuff like that. Zito wanders across the street to take pictures of the palm trees. Haren is pacing a small circle around you, and you’re getting dizzy.
You tell him to knock it off and punch him on the shoulder. He pushes his damp hair back off his forehead and his eyes come out like even more sky.
“You’ve got syrup on your face,” Haren informs you mildly. You scrub your mouth with your hand, bending to look in the car’s side mirror, but there’s nothing there and Haren is fucking with you. You decide to ignore him.
Zito’s boring, though, talking about light and shutter speeds, saying, “See, it’s the contrast, with the lines of the house being all straight and the trees being all wild.”
You idly consider snatching his camera and end-zone spiking it on the sidewalk. That’s a little much for a practical joke, like poisonous snakes in a can of fake nuts. Crosby comes out of the house for the last time and swears he’s ready to go.
So you go.
You can’t get over the desert. You went to school down here and it got in you then like the dirt under your nails that never gets all the way cleaned out. The clouds are making incredible shapes, all laddered and ribbed, ragged at the edges and you can sympathize with that.
You and Crosby are in your car, and Zito’s tailgating just to be annoying. You can’t see Haren’s car; you think maybe he took the shortcut. You can find the ballpark by following the airplanes. It’s kinda fuzzy this morning, the gray roads as smooth as ribbons, the flicker of palm trees, and you’re glad Crosby is driving.
Spring training is like this sometimes, like the styrofoam feeling of your muscles and the ball taking control over its flight the instant it’s out of your hand. Spring training is spent learning how to talk to your friends again, and all these stunts you keep pulling on each other are just to make sure the team is the same as it was last year.
The team is remarkably similar to what it was last year. You’ve never come back so intact.
Street calls when you’re in the clubhouse, playing tabletop football with Haren. Street is in the same city, highway miles away. You can’t get used to seeing him on television in his soda-can-colored Team USA uniform, but that’s the least of your concerns.
“Hey, Richie, how’s it going?”
You wave Haren off, and he makes a face at you, goes over to bug Zito. “Pretty good.”
“You’re not pitching today, are you?”
“No. It’s gonna be Joe.”
“Oh. Cool.”
You stretch and pop your shoulders. “You gonna come hang out with us tonight? After my team, you know, obliterates your team?”
Street snorts. “As if, dude. But yeah. I’ll come.”
“Cool.”
You don’t think Canada is actually going to win the game, but you miss Street kind of a lot. You want to see him in the sunlight they’ve got down here, in real life not broken up by commercials. Everybody plays day games in the Cactus League, reverse vampires.
Street hasn’t changed, not even a little bit. You have this image of him five years from now, the exact same, and ten years, still with his alchemical smile and the weird step-back in his delivery, and then people would probably want to study him and put him in a room with white walls. Figure out how he stayed twenty-one years old for a decade.
Blanton pitches and Crosby hits a home run in the third and almost breaks your ribs coming in to the dugout. You get sunflower seeds stuck in your teeth and keep watch on the rusted stone mountain beyond the outfield wall. The lit part of your life can be organized into little boxes filled with obscure symbols, but not everything is that simple.
Towards the end of the game, Zito comes up from the clubhouse stumbling with laughter, telling you that Canada beat the U.S. and the whole team owes you twenty bucks.
It’s a good day. Danny stuffs his twenty down the front of your shirt and then puts you in a headlock, won’t let you go for about fifteen minutes. Your face presses against his ribs and you can hear his heartbeat. You don’t mind, feeling the money crinkle on your stomach, caught up against your belt, feeling Haren hot like the hood of a running car. You want to be drunk, and so drunk you shall be.
It’s still light outside when you get to the bar, and you worry about that for a minute, but you know in your heart that alcohol won’t be the thing that kills any of you. The wood of the booth’s table is shiny and scuffed and Haren wants to sit next to you and talk about the Oscars.
Ellis and Swisher bring beers and a deck of cards and then there’s falling aces, spiraling diamonds. You’re rich tonight and Canada is on top of the world. Haren’s arm is up along the back of the booth, soft when you lean back.
“I don’t think you understand how totally wrong it is to bluff with that hand,” Zito is saying to Crosby.
“You’re not even playing, so shut up.”
Zito coughs and raises his eyebrows. “It’s because I’m not playing that I can speak with such authority.”
“Great. Shut up.” Crosby pushes Zito off him, scowling and hiding his cards under his hand.
You smile. You like this, it’s all very familiar. Chavez is wandering around without purpose, a beer in his hand and a dumb look on his face. He’s the one who hisses as the door opens and light blasts in, and yells Street’s name.
You look up, your pulse kicking up for some reason, and Street is grinning hugely, patches of sunburn on his neck where he missed with the suntan lotion. You saw him just a couple of days ago, before he left camp, so there’s no reason to be looking for differences in him already.
“Hi, y’all,” Street says in his same old voice, same old eyes, same old teeth that make your head just fucking ache.
Everybody immediately starts ragging on him about the game, though Street cannot be blamed and they all know that. It’s just expected. Street shoulders it gamely and buys a round, at which point he is completely forgiven.
Haren is quiet at your side and you are watching Huston Street, who glances at you occasionally, sideways smiles and his thumb hooked in a belt loop. Street is still this impossible thing.
It’s an hour or maybe two before you get a chance to talk directly to him, when Haren goes to play darts and leaves a cold spot beside you. Street is not a perfect substitute; he’s much smaller than Haren, even smaller than you are, and you remember being so endeared to him for that simple reason, after years of being shorter than almost everyone and endlessly waiting to grow into your hands and feet. But he fits well, smells of cologne and beer and gasoline.
“Hey,” Street says. You echo it, nervously shifting your feet under the table. “How was your game?”
It’s unsettling to hear Street ask that question. Like Zito last year, talking to Hudson or Mulder and his expression twisting the first couple of times, because after five years, the only thing he had never talked to the two of them about was how the game had gone. You want to call Billy Beane and ensure that you and Street are still teammates.
“Good. You know. That kid up from Double-A is making a serious attempt at the outfield.”
“Oh yeah?” Street laughs. “That’s kind of a tough road.”
“We’re trying to keep that a secret. Let the kid think he’s got a shot.”
“Well, everyone’s got a shot. That’s the beauty of it.”
You don’t answer, because this is Street’s second year and he doesn’t know what you do. The non-roster invitees can run themselves into walls and skid for ten feet across the outfield grass and live for each day that they don’t get cut, but the infield is set and so is the rotation and of the three spots in the outfield, five are already taken.
But it’s spring in Phoenix and it makes you believe in stuff. Danny Haren is sneaking looks at you from the dart board, colored bottles catching red and blue across his face, and you cock your head to the side curiously, mouth, ‘what?’ at him. He clenches his jaw and turns back to the game.
You figure it doesn’t matter and nudge Street. “How’s life on the team-that-lost-to-Canada?”
Street tries to glare, and fails. “Listen, batters are behind pitchers as far as being ready, okay? And Willis, the way he throws, takes him like an extra week just to figure it out. Besides which, we got back into the game, just couldn’t finish it out. This kid Loewen, I don’t know, man, they say he’s in A-ball? Seems doubtful. I think he’s a ringer.”
You have to laugh. “How can he be a ringer?”
“Dunno. We’re looking into it.”
Street smiles and you know that he doesn’t care that his (other) team lost today, doesn’t particularly mind being smacked around by your countrymen, and you hum under your breath, we stand on guard for thee, and smile back at Street, glad to be here now.
The night goes quickly, full of pink light and college basketball drenching every television screen, and Street stays by your side. You stay by his. It’s regular, everyday, feels like New Year’s Eve, the way you are making promises and watching the clock with fierce concentration.
On the sidewalk, bits and pieces of your team drifting around you, you put your arm around Street’s shoulders and ask him if he wants to come back with you and you’re not wondering why Street didn’t want to live with you and the other guys this spring. You stopped wondering about that a couple of weeks ago.
But Street is turning you down very politely (you would have expected nothing less), saying, “I need to get some sleep, man, this schedule is killing me.”
You nod; day games are hard. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re aware that the U.S. doesn’t play tomorrow, and Street’s got nothing holding him back, but you don’t acknowledge that. Street must have a reason. He always does.
You clasp his hand and pull him into a hug, buzzed enough to think that it’s all right, and his arm is around your waist, his face scratching at your neck.
“I’ll see you later,” you say into his shoulder.
“Yep,” he says back, and you can feel his lips move and that’s not fair. He steps away and one more perfect grin, one more flash like static electricity in your bloodstream and then Street’s saying goodbye to the rest of the guys, dodging their hands and ducking his head. Haren comes to stand beside you and you barely notice him.
“Hey,” he says softly. You look over and he’s just like always, tall dense-shouldered heavy-featured and fuck those eyes of his, they don’t mean anything. “You ready to go?”
You narrow your eyes suspiciously, the night of drinking whirring in your veins and making it hard to organize your thoughts. Everybody has ulterior motives these days and after having your bed short-sheeted four times in a week, you trust no one.
But Haren is sharp as a safety pin and you don’t want to think about what’s going on with you, why watching Street leave makes your skin feel too tight. You let Haren drive you back to your house, and Crosby is somewhere behind you. Haren is whistling along with the radio. You’re mostly asleep.
“There’s no hope for that guy, you know,” Haren says, startling you. You blink at the wide street and the flurry of neon.
“Who?”
Haren gestures obliquely over his shoulder. “Huston.”
You tense, clutching your elbows like backpack straps. “What’re you talking about?”
Haren glances at you, and you watch his hands fist around the wheel, knuckles standing out straight and pale. He’s got some look on his face, something you can’t place. He clears his throat and shrugs.
“Never mind.”
You slump back and lean your head on the glass. You can feel the hangover already crawling in your synapses. “Whatever,” you mutter, thinking that Street is not on your team right now and you need to accept that.
Back at your house and if Haren was telling the truth when he said he didn’t live here, then what’s he doing here? Why’s he at your back like this, scuffing his shoes on the carpet and his throat clicking as he swallows?
You want to make coffee, but that’s a bad idea. You see Crosby’s headlights wash across the front of the house and you escape into the backyard, dying for air. Haren says your name, like, what are you doing, and you can’t spare the breath to tell him to stay away. You’re drunker than you remember getting.
It’s dark, colder than seems reasonable, and the underwater lights are on in the pool, whickering floats of white-blue, spooky as all hell. You lean on your shoulder against the side of the garage and Haren stands a few feet away in a T-shirt that used to belong to Barry Zito and jeans with one pocket turned out.
“What’s up with you tonight?” Haren asks, and you bare your teeth at him in response. He shifts from foot to foot. “You want me to go?”
You think about that for a while, vaguely aware that you’re sick of Haren coming around, and you don’t want him watching your back or anywhere else. You don’t want him at all. You cant your head so that your hair scrapes across the stucco.
“No, it’s okay. Just. Needed to get out for a second.” You think of this like another practical joke, some scam you’re pulling and nobody can tell.
“We were barely even in,” Haren points out, as if you didn’t know.
“So?” You close your eyes and you can feel a chafe like ropeburn on the undersides of your eyelids. Very tired, you could sleep here against the side of the garage.
“Danny?”
“What?”
You breathe, trick-flicker, highlight reel in your mind, black Irish hair and dutch blue eyes and you don’t know, honestly, you’re only trying to stay on your feet.
“Nothing,” you say with a sigh. There’s a pause, then a rasp of sneakers on cement, and then Haren is putting his hand on your side and you are freeze-framed. You are painfully conscious of the length of his fingers, the way your hip is notched into his palm and his fingertips are almost touching the run of your spine.
You’re really just worn down to the bone. You’re thinking of the stupid fucking pranks and the lights in the water, and Danny Haren is moving nearer to you in the busted-up pieces of moonlight and the weight of the air.
You wake up with a nauseous throb in your head and your throat aching thickly, staring at a pair of arms that you don’t recognize. You freak out almost immediately, two seconds to notice how skinny the arms look and how that can’t be right, and how the reflection of the white walls seems to gather in the elbow hollows, and then you are stricken. You roll away and curl into yourself. Your skin feels clammy and shrink-wrapped, your mind flying.
Trying to think back, way back and you overshoot it, you’re thinking of last year, Phoenix when the team was a pale imitation and Huston Street was the only thing that would come into focus. And you swore you could hear your ribcage creak open and your lungs draw clean and full for the first time.
You squeeze your eyes shut and reel. It’s Haren, in your bed, in your mouth and the back of your throat. Haren behind you and you don’t understand how that can be possible, his arms are too thin.
You slide back into yourself, skidding your palms on the asphalt. You know what this is. Swollen feeling of your mouth and your neck stiff, your hair finger-wrecked, whorled and jagged. Happy little buzz through your chest, you had sex last night, oh yes. And how could you be so stupid?
Stuff is coming back to you and also all the reasons why this is the worst thing you’ve ever done. Haren kissed your open mouth in the backyard, and Haren doesn’t have the attention span to watch television. You pushed him off because Crosby was somewhere inside, and you and Haren had spent last season sniping at each other and occasionally teaming up to fuck with Zito. Haren smiled wicked and wrenched a hand in your shirt, and you’d never really found him all that attractive. Haren led you upstairs, stumbling over your feet, Crosby singing off-key in the shower, and though you don’t really hate him, you at least have one good reason to, because you’d put your hand on Street’s bare back and you were about to do something, at long fucking last, Street turning to face you and his eyes lighting up, and then Haren had come into the locker room and you froze, broke, played it off like a joke, an awful downward feeling in your stomach that that had been your single best chance. Haren pulled your shirt off and you were near tears. Haren knelt, your hands finding his shoulders, and Haren had been turning up all over the place for the past year of your life. Your jeans opened so easy, you stared at the ceiling and listened to the snaps give, felt Haren’s hands jerk them off your hips and his forehead touched your stomach, and you had lent him forty-five dollars once to pay off a parking ticket and he never got you back for it. Haren licked the indented skin at your waist where the elastic of your shorts had dug in, and he used to make fun of the way you talked. Your hands were deep in his hair and there was a shard of heat and wet and crash behind your eyes, and Danny Haren took you down and down and down and it wasn’t that you didn’t like him, it was just you liked ten guys better than him, and you shouldn’t be doing this with someone who hadn’t even fucking placed.
Moving very carefully, you get out of bed, mortified to realize that you’re naked. Haren is in boxers and a T-shirt, and you wonder why he bothered to get dressed again, before remembering that you’d never actually gotten his shorts farther down than his knees, your hands pushing up under his shirt and the soft sticky fabric in your eyes.
You find your boxers flung onto the dresser, and oddly enough, it’s when you’re decent again that you start to shake hard, clinging to the little sculpted iron knobs of the drawers.
“Dude?”
Haren’s voice is rough like sand in your socks, and you go still, your back to him. There’s a mirror over the dresser, though, which you and Crosby carried up the stairs, arms dead from moving in and talking breathlessly about seven years’ bad luck. Your face is dim and shocked, unfamiliar in this light, your ears bright red. You can see Haren over your left shoulder, badly twisted in the sheets, one of his T-shirt sleeves rucked up and his upper arm showing a silhouette of teeth.
You swallow, feeling sick. “Look.”
Haren’s eyes meet yours in the mirror, wide and hopeful, and you can’t stand that, you look away. You stare at the chipped wooden frame and the Polaroid jammed like a baseball card, you and Huston Street grinning, arms over each other’s shoulders, blurry against the red-blue cop lights.
“All right,” Haren says after a long moment. “Fine.”
You hear him getting up and you glare fiercely at the Polaroid. Haren rustles into his jeans and snicks the zipper up hard enough for you to hear. He mumbles something about where are my fucking shoes, and then he’s a white smear in your peripheral vision and your bedroom door is slamming shut.
And you breathe out.
Calling Street seems to be simultaneously the best and worst idea that you’ve ever had. But you’re pretty sure your chest’s gonna cave in if you don’t see him soon, even scoured like this with a rash on your stomach that you don’t want to know is from Haren’s face. Even with the ragged sound of Haren’s voice rolling like marbles in your skull.
Street is just awoken, his mouth full of cotton, but when he hears it’s you, he perks up and says, “Hey, man, how was your night?”
You almost scream out loud, swallowing it back. You don’t answer and instead ask him if he wants to get breakfast, and he does, he even offers to drive.
You sit on the front porch and the only real reason to love Arizona is that the sky is enough to occupy your thoughts when you don’t want to think about anything else. It’s past dawn, but not by much. Your hands hang loose off your knees; Haren had licked your palm at one point, raked his teeth across the newly formed calluses. You shake your head harshly, gaze into the sun until it makes you sneeze.
Street takes you to the IHOP across the street from the campus, and you watch the college kids in backpacks and flip-flops, bleached hair and scraggly beards. Street is talking fast about something that’s hard to pay attention to. You see a kid outside who carries his shoulders the same way as Haren. You down cup after cup of coffee, breaking your vow because sometimes circumstances are beyond your control, enough cream to turn it the color of old paper, and you brushed your teeth four times before coming out here, you can’t still taste him, that’s just your fucking guilt complex.
“So what’d you guys end up doing after I left, anyways?” Street asks.
You stab at your pancakes, your face pulled into a rictus. “Not much. Just went home.”
Street nods. “Did Bobby let you play the new game?”
“Nah. He’s gotta get real good at first, you know. Win in a walk.”
“See, now, that’s what I’d call being overly competitive.”
Secretly, you’re worse than Crosby. You cannot stand losing, not at anything, it makes your stomach claw hotly, makes your skin itch. You cheat at solitaire. And that’s got to be why you’re taking this so hard, because Haren didn’t just suck you off and then hold your head in his hands as you struggled to regain control, he’d beaten you somehow, taken something you hadn’t intended to give.
You sneak glances at Street across the table, and you should not be allowed in the same zip code as a man like him. He looks younger than the kids pacing the sidewalk, clean as windex. After four weeks in the sun, there are flecked pieces of platinum in his hair. You believe wholeheartedly that your friendship with Street is the thing you will be most proud of when you are finally done with baseball.
“Hey?” Street says with his eyebrows up.
You move your shoulders uncomfortably. “Can I. Is there, like. A reason you got a place of your own down here?”
Street blinks and looks surprised. “Oh. Well. You know, I figured, with the Classic and everything, I wouldn’t be on the same schedule as y’all. And we’re going to Anaheim soon enough, so.”
“Pretty fucking sure of yourself for having lost to Canada,” you reply automatically, just to see Street smile.
“Anyway. It just seemed easier.”
“But that’s it, right?” you press, your fists digging into your knees under the table. “I mean, other than that, you woulda still wanted to live with us?”
Street licks sugar off his hand and says unconcernedly, “Of course, man. And we’ll do it in Oakland. Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
You nod to yourself, staring down at the mess of demolished pancakes. “Okay. Thought maybe you were getting tired of us, but okay.”
Street rolls his eyes and kicks you under the table. “You’re my best friend. If I ever get tired of you, you better think of something to make me pay attention again.”
And you could just cry, because you’re his best friend and he’s yours and you can never ever tell him what you were doing last night, certain that it’s a betrayal but not at all clear on the specifics. Are you damned because it was Haren, or because it wasn’t Street? It’s possible that there’s no difference, but that doesn’t make you feel any better.
You cross your fingers, the blue and white of the restaurant making you seasick. “I’ll do what I can.”
Street is grinning again. You remember meeting him, almost exactly a year ago, and wanting him at once and with all that you had in you, like a punch to the stomach. Wanting him so bad it fucked up your eyes and you saw the world through cellophane, aware with stunning intensity that he would not do wrong by you, and you might be able to return the favor.
His phone goes off, tinny country-song ringtone, and he politely excuses himself to answer it. Idly, you unscrew the salt shaker and pour in a good half-inch of sugar. It’s just a reflex, at this point. You watch Street pacing a short path in front of the cash register. He has trouble staying still and that’s something you have in common. He hooks a hand on the back of his neck and you think of Danny Haren with his big hands on the back of your head. Your lip sneers.
Street comes back, saying, “So, man, let’s talk about it for a second. Bobby was saying Pleasanton, but I don’t really wanna be that far out.”
He rattles the sugar all over his hashbrowns. You hide a smile behind your hand. “It’s really quiet out there, though. We could do anything.”
Street is studying his hashbrowns with a confused look on his face, chewing slowly. “Yeah,” he says, distracted. “I think there’s something wrong with these.”
He tries to make you try some, and you start to laugh.
more visual evidence thisaway