“Right,” I said. I tried to sound upbeat and authoritative.
“So I’m not going to worry about it.”
“Exactly.”
“Worrying won’t do me any good.”
“Right.”
“Right.” She took a breath. “This morning I e-mailed some JPEGs of Marie Bastien’s work to the director of the Franz Koerner Gallery in New York.”
It took me a minute to remember who Marie Bastien was. “The quilts,” I said.
“The director’s a friend of Claudia’s.”
“Convenient.”
“Yeah, well, if you’ve got the connections, use them, I figure. I’m not going to say a word to Marie, of course. But if they’re interested, this could be just the breakthrough she needs. You look bored.”
“I’m not bored.”
“I didn’t ask you about your day. I’m sorry. How was your day?”
I told her that I’d just probably saved the division by winning the Atlanta airport contract, but I didn’t tell her how. She responded with a pretty convincing imitation of enthusiasm. Then she said, “The cable’s not working.”
“That’s a bummer. Did you call the cable company?”
“Obviously,” she said, peevishly. “They said we have a signal. Which is not true. They said if we want the box replaced, they can get someone out here in a couple of days. I really don’t want to wait. I’m under house arrest here.”
“Well, at least you’ve got the Internet.” We had high-speed DSL through the phone company.
“I know. But I want to watch TV. Is that so much to ask? Can you please take a look at the cable?”
“Kate, I have no idea how to fix a cable box.”
“It might just be the wiring.”
“I’m not a cable guy. It all looks like a bowl of spaghetti back there to me.” I paused a second and couldn’t resist adding, “Why don’t you call Kurt? He can fix anything.”
“Good idea,” she said, not getting my little dig. Or maybe she did and she didn’t want to “dignify it,” as she liked to say. Not that my digs ever needed dignifying. She turned back to her laptop. “You know that actress who was in the movie we saw last night?” She now had two accounts with an Internet movie-rental company so she could rent twelve DVDs at a time. She’d been renting a lot of indie films. I believe they all starred Parker Posey. “Did you know she was in Fast Times at Ridgemont High?”
“News to me.”
“And did you know the director grew up in Malden? He used to write for Major Dad.”
“I think maybe you’ve been spending too much time on the Internet,” I said. I noticed that her bookmark in The Brothers Karamazov was still only about a millimeter of the way into the book. “How’s the Brothers K? A real page-turner, I see. Can’t put it down if you don’t pick it up.”
“That’s the thing about bed rest,” she said. “You have all the time in the world, but you lose the ability to concentrate. So I just go on the Internet and look something up, and that leads to something else and something else, and I just click and click and click and pretty soon I’m lost in cyberspace. I thought you have a game tonight.”
“I do, but I’m staying here with you.”
“For what? Don’t be silly. If I need to reach you, I know how. Just keep your cell on this time.”
Kurt was really pitching lights-out that night, as the radio announcers say. But what was really amazing was how many long balls Trevor hit. He was good, and he usually hit a home run in each game. This evening, though, every time he stepped up to the plate, the balls just exploded off his bat, each flying easily three hundred feet. Trevor himself seemed amazed at how well he was playing. I figured his confidence was stoked by the possibility of bringing me down. He was playing better than Kurt.
The Metadyne guys weren’t great, weren’t terrible. This was a company that made testing equipment for semiconductor chips, which is as exciting as it sounds, so softball was the high point of their week, but they weren’t enjoying this game.
In the fourth inning, Trevor slugged another one, and his bat went flying out of his hands, slamming against the dirt with a loud metallic ping, and then something bizarre happened.
The end of his bat had popped off. The end cap had separated from the barrel and rolled a good distance away into the infield. A bunch of the players laughed, even Trevor. The ball was gone. One of the out-fielders gamely gave chase. Another one of the Metadyne players picked up the end cap as Trevor ran the bases.
He looked at it curiously, weighed it in his hand. “Man,” he said. “Heavy. Look at this!”
He took it over to another one of the Metadyne players, who I remembered was an electrical engineer. The engineer weighed it in his palm just like the other guy had done. “Oh, man, someone put, like, lead fishing weights and hot melt inside this cap. Unbelievable.” Then he walked over to the decapitated metal bat and picked it up. He looked inside, then waved some of his teammates over.
“Hey,” one of them shouted. “This bat is juiced!”
Trevor, running triumphantly home, nowhere near out of breath, looked to see what the commotion was.
“You doctored the bat,” another one of the Metadyne guys shouted.
“What?” Trevor said, loping over to where they were all inspecting his bat.
Our own team had left the benches to see what the fuss was about.
“The inside of this bat’s been machined, or lathed, or something,” the engineer was saying. “Like maybe with one of those Dremel tools. You can even see the shavings-graphite or resin, I think. And check out this lead tape inside the end of it.”
“Hey, I didn’t do that!” Trevor protested. “I wouldn’t even know how.”
“Nah,” said another Metadyne guy with an adenoidal, buzz-saw voice, “he sent it to one of those bat doctors.”
“No way!” Trevor shouted.
“It’s a forfeit,” the engineer said. “The game gets forfeited. That’s the rules.”
“No wonder these Entronics guys are suddenly on a winning streak,” said the buzz-saw-voiced guy. “They’re cheating.”
The Metadyne team insisted on doing a visual inspection of all the rest of our bats, and all they found were the usual scratches and dings. Only Trevor’s bat had been doctored. Apparently thinning the walls with a lathe to make it springier, and weighting the end, increased what the Metadyne engineer called the trampoline effect, making the bat really hot.
But Trevor was not going down without a fight. He stood there in his cargo shorts and his LIFE IS GOOD T-shirt and his pukka shells and his brand-new white Adidas and his backwards faded Red Sox cap, and he protested that he’d never in his life cheated at sports, that he’d never do such a thing, that he wouldn’t even know how to begin.
It was hard to tell how many of the guys believed him. I overheard Festino say to Letasky, “For a company softball game? Now that’s competitive.” Letasky, ever the diplomat, pretended he hadn’t heard. He was playing basketball with Trevor and Gleason on Thursday, he’d told me. He was being very careful not to take sides, as he’d put it.
“Either the thing came that way,” Trevor said, “or…”
He looked at Kurt. “This bastard did it.” His voice rose. “He set me up again.” Now he pointed to me, then to Kurt. “Both of these guys. It’s like a goddamned reign of terror around here, have you guys noticed?”
Kurt gave him a puzzled look, shrugged, then headed off toward the parking lot. I followed him.
“How come?” I said when we were out of earshot of our teammates.
“You don’t think I did that, do you?”
“Yes. I do.”
But Trevor had caught up with us, walking alongside us, speaking quickly, in clipped tones. “You’re an interesting guy,” he said, addressing Kurt. “A man of many secrets.”