Nothing comes, and I can't rise
Thin Stutter of Heat
2010 Mets: Niese, Pelfrey and Maine.
Notes: the way to get people to read your stories is to write gen about a team that no one likes because they suck. The game is this May 5th game, a 5-4 loss to the Reds. Title and so from J Michael Yates' "The Great Bear Lake Meditations." Edited by faded-lilac and much better for it.
Warnings: a narrative voice who has been drinking. This team.
So when he gets drunk and falls, Niese is rounding the corner, swinging his arms more than he needs, but it's late and he's happy. Not sloppily drunk, like he needs any help moving or something, but a couple drinks out with Davis and Pagan, it's sort of a thing they do. It keeps them together. It's been good. So they go out, have a little fun, drinking cold weak beers, switching over to warm whiskeys later. It comes to an end when when Pagan sees that it's eight-forty-five, and he needs to call up before his daughter goes to bed. Then Pagan's busy with his family, mi mujeres, smiling through the phone, and they're at the hotel before anyone knows it, walking fast in the Ohio heat.
After that, he'd been sprawled out on Davis' bed, drinking vodka and cranberry juice from a Big Gulp cup, looking up at the joint of the wall and the ceiling, the painted molding that was there. His mother notices that sort of detail, and he's thinking that she'd like this place, that kind of attention to detail; when she'd been driving him back from a Little League party once, she'd said that the Wilsons, or whoever, didn't have molding up in their house, and that was how to tell if people cared for things properly, put effort into them. He's not sure why he had been thinking this, but then Davis had started talking to his girlfriend, and yawned, looking to the door. He'd left the drink by the bed; Davis will probably put his foot in it.
His key is out, in his hand, and then he takes the corner and immediately thinks, fuck that is my knee which, at least he's not too buzzed to know that, and slips. Not like it hurts, it's not a big deal, he doesn't have pain or anything from it, just that the floor's maybe a better place to be right now. Not a problem. Or something, but there's an easy solution. So he sits, leaning back to the wall, while everything settles. And it's not like he would fall if he stood back up, if he could bother to try. The lights in the hall go in and out, coming closer when he blinks.
More vodka than cranberry, he thinks, and why did Davis even bother? Not hanging out; they're young guys, the young guys, and that's what they do. Davis sloshed his ice watered-down pop at the edge of the parking lot, getting it near Pagan's shoes, and that meant that Pagan had to put him in a headlock, and even though it was his start and he was supposed to be getting nervous, Niese had laughed with them, out in the lot, waiting for whatever it was they were avoiding in the clubhouse to blow over and finish up, and not bring stupid kinds of joy back in with them. Davis had sat back up, chewing on the straw, and sometime between then and now, had filled it with vodka. Davis does more or less collect trash, though. He's always got wrappers from gum, bits of paper, small knots of string, so it's nothing really that he's still got the cup from earlier. He's got everything from always. Niese had asked to borrow a pair of dress socks, on their first road trip, and David had pulled them unpaired from his bag, dotted with sticky tobacco and clear tape, even as he insisted that they were totally clean, promise it, man. The vodka probably came to him in much the same way, distilled in someone's basement, alcohol whistling through pipes secured with electrical tape and gauze, handed off, and of course they drank it. It was strong enough, yet it's still a weird thing to do now, and reminds Niese of high school, sneaking rum into two-liter bottles of pop for parties and afternoons in the winter. Before this, he had not drunk in the season.
It's cool to be like this. This year, he is not the youngest guy, and so nothing is really on him, he does not have to solve all the weightiest things for the team and be the one who gets picked on, in the anxiety over the fact that he can't fix it all, that he throws too many balls and not enough strikes - it's not him who's going to throw a no-hitter in his first few games up, and being relieved of that expectation is enough to make him curse it better. No one had said that, and he hadn't ever really, because last year was full of things that were not him, or any other rookie, and this year, Davis is good at both. Hands around the bat, or on his hips, fingers over the skinny black belt or the pink lace of that costume he'd had to wear, and he's a good guy. Adaptable, that's it, that's what Davis is, and even when they're doing lame stuff, he's ready for it. It's gotta be all kinds of weird, Niese thinks, to go from Arizona where the pictures are of sun and all too much, to this, where they've got to cut the night short and they're not supposed to have too much fun. They have a good time: it's baseball, every day and every tomorrow is a holiday.
He's drunk. Usually, he's just drinking, even after hours, but the start, and the empty day before it, and he's wrecked. That's what he knows, not drunk just drinking, which no one who's not drunk has ever said, but he means it. There has always been something bigger, more important than getting this way, slowed-down and clumsy, even if his dad couldn't tell what any of them had done before a practice, but Saturday morning was better than sneaking around. He likes drinking, but he likes pitching better. He does it, of course, because it's fun, but he mostly ends up listening to someone talk about something they like, and drinking the same thing for a couple hours. He has just never learned how to do this.
Someone, Niese distantly thinks, is going to find him here, and wonder why the starter's drunk before ten pm. This means that he should move at least, get some water, try to find his room. It's sort of tacky to be out here, and the lights have stopped moving, at least. Although, it might be because he's not moving at all; he breathes quickly against the back of his hand. So he's probably not dead, they won't find him in the morning, promising young player and the Mets would probably say something about how he hadn't died in a hotel hallway, but had bravely faced danger in a vague way. They're good at that, he figures, now, with everything else.
"Hey, shut up." Niese tries to not breathe very loud, quiet against the wall. "Pelf, come on." No one needs to find him here. He shouldn't be here at all. They're like kids, good little ballplayers are meant to be in bed by now, he thinks as his head knocks forward. Not that any of them pretend to follow rules like that, but the rule is still a good idea and second-year pitchers who break rules are not a thing, or not a thing for very long. He will just stay very still, and with the certainty of nothing very difficult, this seems like the very best approach. Laying in wait, like a lion, not that he wants to be on the same savannah as Pelfrey, which is where they would be in this whole thing. Pelfrey, with his sad fatherless confusion and knock-knock jokes would be a badass motherfucker of a lion.
Who would be a giraffe? He wishes Thole were up, not for the first time, but now: he would make an excellent wildebeest, all shoulders and bravery. Blanco and Barajas, too, but they're older, and it doesn't really make sense to put them on the savannah. The Mets savannah, the thought bubbles up within Niese, it's a pretty good joke. He wishes he could tell someone his new good joke. If Thole was up, he could, they'd find it funny together. Although maybe not exactly like this, because Thole's got sense, and wouldn't maybe spend so much time with Davis as Niese does. But again, if Thole was up, it wouldn't just be the three of them and maybe the room would get a little better. It's nice to imagine that it would.
Niese isn't sure what he would be, on the Mets savannah. A tiger would be sort of cool, striped and tough. And they're not just predators, but clever, too. Like in the grass, waiting. No one needs to find him here. He breathes, slow and deep, and leans out from the wall. Pelfrey has a hard look, the kind of certainty that comes with pitching every five games. This gives him a kind of invulnerability that no one else has, somewhere above Santana, even though the acknowledged order is that Santana is first, with his opening day starts and quick-twitch of a circle changeup.
"No," Pelfrey replies, "come on, you should tell me. Johnny, come on. It was acting up, wasn't it." It's work to run through the team, and figure out who Pelfrey might be talking to: 'John' is a common enough name, even a little bit like his own. But Pelfrey isn't talking to him, obviously, so it must be someone else. Probably Maine: not that the voice is easy to guess at, but he'd be the only one to use a nickname like that. That's because Maine's a friendly guy. Not to Niese specifically, though they get on okay, but he seems well-liked enough, and of course, Pelfrey would growl and probably threaten anyone who wasn't friendly back. Friendly goes both ways, Niese observes, friendly going out and friendly coming back.
"No, look, I'm fine."
Yeah, fine: Niese has seen Maine swallow two Vicodins with Gatorade before a start. He leans hard into the wall. Pain is not the worst of it. There're rules about it, how to keep it from getting so bad: but everyone plays through pain. It can get bad or stabilize to a heavily relativized okay, but it's not like the pain goes away or gets better. He's only not sore in the offseason, and he's never even had surgery or anything big like that. Nothing big, just small things, and if Maine's going to palm pills during innings, well. It's not like Niese can say anything to it.
Not like everyone is asking for him to do that, he is in hiding from other pitchers because he couldn't stand up quietly enough. He rubs at his leg; the repair went fine -- because it's a hamstring, who doesn't have a good hamstring, it has to have gone fine -- but he's on edge about potential pain. He doesn't have to hide it, but he's not supposed to drag anything out.
He can move in a second. It's more effort than he can now, after pitching, the ache from throwing heavy just above his elbow. It's a localized thing, not so bad. Not so good, even after putting some ice to it like he'd been told -- which he's been thinking, is just what the trainers have them all do so that it's clear whose body gives out. It is his arm, he lifts it and looks at it. It looks fine. It'd be clear though -- if it wasn't fine. Then it'd be clear that it's not theirs, it's not the team's, it'll just be them, the lone pitchers: suffering alone, off into the future. That's what the ice reminds him of, mostly. That nervous misery, and how cold his arm gets. The vent's on, that must be why he's cold, thinking about the ice cubes clinking against each other. Suggestible, that's what he is. He will have to be sure not to make any decisions tonight.
Any more decisions tonight. He did make the choice to drink; voluntary intoxication.
Maine says it again, "fine, okay?"
Pelfrey doesn't say anything. Except with his footsteps, and yeah, the time to get a move on would have been a while ago. "Niese. What're you doing here?"
Watched-over, he stands. He stands up just fine, and lets his head swing from Pelfrey to Maine. Eyes wide, head lifted, lips licked. "Hey guys." The floor seems awfully far away. It's farther away for them though: both Pelfrey and Maine are tall.
"Have you been drinking?" Pelfrey sniffs suspiciously at the air, like that would tell him something.
"Ike Davis gave me vodka."
"And you drank it." Pelfrey sounds like someone's dad, tired and slightly frustrated. But if someone has to sound like that, Niese thinks Pelfrey's the best for it. "Good job, come on up, get to bed."
"And we've let our starter get drunk in the hotel hallway." Maine scratches at the side of his nose.
"I'm not drunk. Anyway, I wasn't in the hallway at the time."
Maine mumbles "well, where else in Cincinnati would you?" Niese crinkles up his nose, trying to think about what that means: it's not a small city, not so small that Davis and Niese couldn't sit somewhere for drinks only that they were supposed to be back in the hotel so that was why. He tries to say this all to Maine, but it's hard since Pelfrey shepherds them all. Talking and walking is harder than thinking. Niese hopes he can get to his room first. He'd like to got to sleep, and try this all out tomorrow morning.
Pelfrey finishes it out; "knock it off, Johnny." They're not really all walking together: Niese is loping behind Pelfrey and Maine, and Pelfrey looks over his shoulder to make sure that Niese is coming along. He says this as he's turned, but he's talking to Maine.
Maine doesn't turn. "Whatever, I don't need to deal with this anymore," he says, and lopes off. They could catch up to him, Niese thinks, he's not going that fast. He thinks to mention this to Pelfrey, that they totally could. They aren't though, and there's gotta be a reason for that, other than how Niese hasn't yet suggested it. Pelfrey hasn't had any vodka today, probably, and he hasn't mentioned it. Not that Niese is dumb for drinking, but he's aware that relatively, Pelfrey will have a better understanding of things. Especially things as they relate to John Maine.
"Shit."
Niese nods.
"You can keep this stuff to yourself, alright yeah?"
Pelfrey sounds like he wants Niese to hold down this evening. Niese can't quite remember why: his mind feels very big, and thoughts slide out of it quickly. There's a moment where he can't even remember what they had talked about at all, what Pelfrey might be anxious about. Keeping secrets is enough. "I'm not a liar." He slides his keycard through the reader: the green light goes and Niese swings the door inwards a few inches. He leans on the handle, heavy. "What stuff?" He turns to look at Pelfrey.
Wide blue eyes blink back. Because, like, Niese would have said anything else? He knows what it is, and he's not going to be the one to ruin it. Pelfrey, nonetheless, is so evidently grateful that Niese somehow feels better for doing this. He waves. "Just sleep it off, alright?"
And where are they now? Niese was part of that June 1st-3rd 2012 sequence against the Cards: Santana no-hitter, Dickey shut-out, Niese 10 K's. Pelfrey had Tommy John surgery at the beginning of this season. Maine went out on May 20th 2010 and was called a "a habitual liar in a lot of ways as far as his own health" by the pitching coach; he later had shoulder surgery, played badly for the Rockies AAA affiliate, and somehow went to the Yankees.
2010 Mets: Niese, Pelfrey and Maine.
Notes: the way to get people to read your stories is to write gen about a team that no one likes because they suck. The game is this May 5th game, a 5-4 loss to the Reds. Title and so from J Michael Yates' "The Great Bear Lake Meditations." Edited by faded-lilac and much better for it.
Warnings: a narrative voice who has been drinking. This team.
So when he gets drunk and falls, Niese is rounding the corner, swinging his arms more than he needs, but it's late and he's happy. Not sloppily drunk, like he needs any help moving or something, but a couple drinks out with Davis and Pagan, it's sort of a thing they do. It keeps them together. It's been good. So they go out, have a little fun, drinking cold weak beers, switching over to warm whiskeys later. It comes to an end when when Pagan sees that it's eight-forty-five, and he needs to call up before his daughter goes to bed. Then Pagan's busy with his family, mi mujeres, smiling through the phone, and they're at the hotel before anyone knows it, walking fast in the Ohio heat.
After that, he'd been sprawled out on Davis' bed, drinking vodka and cranberry juice from a Big Gulp cup, looking up at the joint of the wall and the ceiling, the painted molding that was there. His mother notices that sort of detail, and he's thinking that she'd like this place, that kind of attention to detail; when she'd been driving him back from a Little League party once, she'd said that the Wilsons, or whoever, didn't have molding up in their house, and that was how to tell if people cared for things properly, put effort into them. He's not sure why he had been thinking this, but then Davis had started talking to his girlfriend, and yawned, looking to the door. He'd left the drink by the bed; Davis will probably put his foot in it.
His key is out, in his hand, and then he takes the corner and immediately thinks, fuck that is my knee which, at least he's not too buzzed to know that, and slips. Not like it hurts, it's not a big deal, he doesn't have pain or anything from it, just that the floor's maybe a better place to be right now. Not a problem. Or something, but there's an easy solution. So he sits, leaning back to the wall, while everything settles. And it's not like he would fall if he stood back up, if he could bother to try. The lights in the hall go in and out, coming closer when he blinks.
More vodka than cranberry, he thinks, and why did Davis even bother? Not hanging out; they're young guys, the young guys, and that's what they do. Davis sloshed his ice watered-down pop at the edge of the parking lot, getting it near Pagan's shoes, and that meant that Pagan had to put him in a headlock, and even though it was his start and he was supposed to be getting nervous, Niese had laughed with them, out in the lot, waiting for whatever it was they were avoiding in the clubhouse to blow over and finish up, and not bring stupid kinds of joy back in with them. Davis had sat back up, chewing on the straw, and sometime between then and now, had filled it with vodka. Davis does more or less collect trash, though. He's always got wrappers from gum, bits of paper, small knots of string, so it's nothing really that he's still got the cup from earlier. He's got everything from always. Niese had asked to borrow a pair of dress socks, on their first road trip, and David had pulled them unpaired from his bag, dotted with sticky tobacco and clear tape, even as he insisted that they were totally clean, promise it, man. The vodka probably came to him in much the same way, distilled in someone's basement, alcohol whistling through pipes secured with electrical tape and gauze, handed off, and of course they drank it. It was strong enough, yet it's still a weird thing to do now, and reminds Niese of high school, sneaking rum into two-liter bottles of pop for parties and afternoons in the winter. Before this, he had not drunk in the season.
It's cool to be like this. This year, he is not the youngest guy, and so nothing is really on him, he does not have to solve all the weightiest things for the team and be the one who gets picked on, in the anxiety over the fact that he can't fix it all, that he throws too many balls and not enough strikes - it's not him who's going to throw a no-hitter in his first few games up, and being relieved of that expectation is enough to make him curse it better. No one had said that, and he hadn't ever really, because last year was full of things that were not him, or any other rookie, and this year, Davis is good at both. Hands around the bat, or on his hips, fingers over the skinny black belt or the pink lace of that costume he'd had to wear, and he's a good guy. Adaptable, that's it, that's what Davis is, and even when they're doing lame stuff, he's ready for it. It's gotta be all kinds of weird, Niese thinks, to go from Arizona where the pictures are of sun and all too much, to this, where they've got to cut the night short and they're not supposed to have too much fun. They have a good time: it's baseball, every day and every tomorrow is a holiday.
He's drunk. Usually, he's just drinking, even after hours, but the start, and the empty day before it, and he's wrecked. That's what he knows, not drunk just drinking, which no one who's not drunk has ever said, but he means it. There has always been something bigger, more important than getting this way, slowed-down and clumsy, even if his dad couldn't tell what any of them had done before a practice, but Saturday morning was better than sneaking around. He likes drinking, but he likes pitching better. He does it, of course, because it's fun, but he mostly ends up listening to someone talk about something they like, and drinking the same thing for a couple hours. He has just never learned how to do this.
Someone, Niese distantly thinks, is going to find him here, and wonder why the starter's drunk before ten pm. This means that he should move at least, get some water, try to find his room. It's sort of tacky to be out here, and the lights have stopped moving, at least. Although, it might be because he's not moving at all; he breathes quickly against the back of his hand. So he's probably not dead, they won't find him in the morning, promising young player and the Mets would probably say something about how he hadn't died in a hotel hallway, but had bravely faced danger in a vague way. They're good at that, he figures, now, with everything else.
"Hey, shut up." Niese tries to not breathe very loud, quiet against the wall. "Pelf, come on." No one needs to find him here. He shouldn't be here at all. They're like kids, good little ballplayers are meant to be in bed by now, he thinks as his head knocks forward. Not that any of them pretend to follow rules like that, but the rule is still a good idea and second-year pitchers who break rules are not a thing, or not a thing for very long. He will just stay very still, and with the certainty of nothing very difficult, this seems like the very best approach. Laying in wait, like a lion, not that he wants to be on the same savannah as Pelfrey, which is where they would be in this whole thing. Pelfrey, with his sad fatherless confusion and knock-knock jokes would be a badass motherfucker of a lion.
Who would be a giraffe? He wishes Thole were up, not for the first time, but now: he would make an excellent wildebeest, all shoulders and bravery. Blanco and Barajas, too, but they're older, and it doesn't really make sense to put them on the savannah. The Mets savannah, the thought bubbles up within Niese, it's a pretty good joke. He wishes he could tell someone his new good joke. If Thole was up, he could, they'd find it funny together. Although maybe not exactly like this, because Thole's got sense, and wouldn't maybe spend so much time with Davis as Niese does. But again, if Thole was up, it wouldn't just be the three of them and maybe the room would get a little better. It's nice to imagine that it would.
Niese isn't sure what he would be, on the Mets savannah. A tiger would be sort of cool, striped and tough. And they're not just predators, but clever, too. Like in the grass, waiting. No one needs to find him here. He breathes, slow and deep, and leans out from the wall. Pelfrey has a hard look, the kind of certainty that comes with pitching every five games. This gives him a kind of invulnerability that no one else has, somewhere above Santana, even though the acknowledged order is that Santana is first, with his opening day starts and quick-twitch of a circle changeup.
"No," Pelfrey replies, "come on, you should tell me. Johnny, come on. It was acting up, wasn't it." It's work to run through the team, and figure out who Pelfrey might be talking to: 'John' is a common enough name, even a little bit like his own. But Pelfrey isn't talking to him, obviously, so it must be someone else. Probably Maine: not that the voice is easy to guess at, but he'd be the only one to use a nickname like that. That's because Maine's a friendly guy. Not to Niese specifically, though they get on okay, but he seems well-liked enough, and of course, Pelfrey would growl and probably threaten anyone who wasn't friendly back. Friendly goes both ways, Niese observes, friendly going out and friendly coming back.
"No, look, I'm fine."
Yeah, fine: Niese has seen Maine swallow two Vicodins with Gatorade before a start. He leans hard into the wall. Pain is not the worst of it. There're rules about it, how to keep it from getting so bad: but everyone plays through pain. It can get bad or stabilize to a heavily relativized okay, but it's not like the pain goes away or gets better. He's only not sore in the offseason, and he's never even had surgery or anything big like that. Nothing big, just small things, and if Maine's going to palm pills during innings, well. It's not like Niese can say anything to it.
Not like everyone is asking for him to do that, he is in hiding from other pitchers because he couldn't stand up quietly enough. He rubs at his leg; the repair went fine -- because it's a hamstring, who doesn't have a good hamstring, it has to have gone fine -- but he's on edge about potential pain. He doesn't have to hide it, but he's not supposed to drag anything out.
He can move in a second. It's more effort than he can now, after pitching, the ache from throwing heavy just above his elbow. It's a localized thing, not so bad. Not so good, even after putting some ice to it like he'd been told -- which he's been thinking, is just what the trainers have them all do so that it's clear whose body gives out. It is his arm, he lifts it and looks at it. It looks fine. It'd be clear though -- if it wasn't fine. Then it'd be clear that it's not theirs, it's not the team's, it'll just be them, the lone pitchers: suffering alone, off into the future. That's what the ice reminds him of, mostly. That nervous misery, and how cold his arm gets. The vent's on, that must be why he's cold, thinking about the ice cubes clinking against each other. Suggestible, that's what he is. He will have to be sure not to make any decisions tonight.
Any more decisions tonight. He did make the choice to drink; voluntary intoxication.
Maine says it again, "fine, okay?"
Pelfrey doesn't say anything. Except with his footsteps, and yeah, the time to get a move on would have been a while ago. "Niese. What're you doing here?"
Watched-over, he stands. He stands up just fine, and lets his head swing from Pelfrey to Maine. Eyes wide, head lifted, lips licked. "Hey guys." The floor seems awfully far away. It's farther away for them though: both Pelfrey and Maine are tall.
"Have you been drinking?" Pelfrey sniffs suspiciously at the air, like that would tell him something.
"Ike Davis gave me vodka."
"And you drank it." Pelfrey sounds like someone's dad, tired and slightly frustrated. But if someone has to sound like that, Niese thinks Pelfrey's the best for it. "Good job, come on up, get to bed."
"And we've let our starter get drunk in the hotel hallway." Maine scratches at the side of his nose.
"I'm not drunk. Anyway, I wasn't in the hallway at the time."
Maine mumbles "well, where else in Cincinnati would you?" Niese crinkles up his nose, trying to think about what that means: it's not a small city, not so small that Davis and Niese couldn't sit somewhere for drinks only that they were supposed to be back in the hotel so that was why. He tries to say this all to Maine, but it's hard since Pelfrey shepherds them all. Talking and walking is harder than thinking. Niese hopes he can get to his room first. He'd like to got to sleep, and try this all out tomorrow morning.
Pelfrey finishes it out; "knock it off, Johnny." They're not really all walking together: Niese is loping behind Pelfrey and Maine, and Pelfrey looks over his shoulder to make sure that Niese is coming along. He says this as he's turned, but he's talking to Maine.
Maine doesn't turn. "Whatever, I don't need to deal with this anymore," he says, and lopes off. They could catch up to him, Niese thinks, he's not going that fast. He thinks to mention this to Pelfrey, that they totally could. They aren't though, and there's gotta be a reason for that, other than how Niese hasn't yet suggested it. Pelfrey hasn't had any vodka today, probably, and he hasn't mentioned it. Not that Niese is dumb for drinking, but he's aware that relatively, Pelfrey will have a better understanding of things. Especially things as they relate to John Maine.
"Shit."
Niese nods.
"You can keep this stuff to yourself, alright yeah?"
Pelfrey sounds like he wants Niese to hold down this evening. Niese can't quite remember why: his mind feels very big, and thoughts slide out of it quickly. There's a moment where he can't even remember what they had talked about at all, what Pelfrey might be anxious about. Keeping secrets is enough. "I'm not a liar." He slides his keycard through the reader: the green light goes and Niese swings the door inwards a few inches. He leans on the handle, heavy. "What stuff?" He turns to look at Pelfrey.
Wide blue eyes blink back. Because, like, Niese would have said anything else? He knows what it is, and he's not going to be the one to ruin it. Pelfrey, nonetheless, is so evidently grateful that Niese somehow feels better for doing this. He waves. "Just sleep it off, alright?"
And where are they now? Niese was part of that June 1st-3rd 2012 sequence against the Cards: Santana no-hitter, Dickey shut-out, Niese 10 K's. Pelfrey had Tommy John surgery at the beginning of this season. Maine went out on May 20th 2010 and was called a "a habitual liar in a lot of ways as far as his own health" by the pitching coach; he later had shoulder surgery, played badly for the Rockies AAA affiliate, and somehow went to the Yankees.