“Just a tragic-”
“-tragic-”
“-situation. I don’t know what more we can say.”
“I think we’ve said what needs to be said.”
“Me too. And we’ve still got a few minutes to the top of the hour…”
“Think we should go to the phones?”
“Why not? Here’s Gil on the line right now. Gil?”
“Hi, guys.”
“Where you calling from, Gil? Sounds like Siberia or somewhere.”
“No place special.”
“What’s on your mind?”
“Lots of things.”
“It’s a lousy line, like I said, Gil. Make it quick.”
“This… thing.”
“You’re talking about the Primo tragedy?”
“I was wondering.”
“Wondering what?”
“If they’ll give Rayburn back his old number now.”
“Not sure I’m following you, Gil.”
“Onsay.”
“Excuse me?”
“Eleven. What he used to wear his whole career. Not that stupid forty-one.”
Pause.
“That’s kind of a strange question, Gil.”
Dead air.
Days later in an airport bar, Gil caught the highlights of the first post-Primo game on This Week in Baseball. When Rayburn knocked the first one out of the park, he pounded the table in triumph, as though he had done it himself. And, in a way, he had done it himself, hadn’t he? He was a player. A player in the game.
He pounded the table when Rayburn hit the second shot, but not as hard. He’d opened his wound the first time, felt blood seeping into the bandages he’d wrapped around himself. Gil didn’t mind the wound much: the wound was what made it self-defense. He hadn’t meant for things to play out the way they had, but, left with no choice, he’d taken care of business. That was what it meant to be a pro. Leaving his glass of Cuervo Gold untouched-he was losing his taste for it-Gil drained one last beer, and felt no pain.
No physical pain. Emotionaclass="underline" that was different. There the painful part was that although he was a player, no one knew. Perhaps pain was too strong a word. Confusion, that was more like it. He would have to sort things out. Looking up at a monitor, he saw the flight he was waiting for flashing on the arrivals list and went downstairs to the baggage carousels.
Standing outside the glass wall, a camera crew nearby, Gil watched the team coming down an escalator, watched closely. They looked tired and subdued; but not unhappy. He understood. On one hand was the Primo thing, on the other the fact that they’d closed out the west-coast swing by reeling off six straight, climbing out of the cellar.
And Bobby Rayburn was on fire. Sixteen for twenty-one in the last six games, with seven homers and fifteen RBIs. He’d had a good month last week, This Week in Baseball had just said, and Gil’s heart had leapt at the words. It leapt again as he spotted Rayburn walking toward the carousel, a bounce in his step.
“All right, Bobby Rayburn,” he said, under his breath. Had other fans been there to greet the team, he might have shouted it, but there were no other fans; the team had won six straight in July, not October. But they were on the way. Gil knew it. He was in a position to know.
Bobby came through the door, carrying his bags. Ordinary luggage, Gil noticed with disappointment: Bobby could have done better than that. A reporter asked him a question, stuck a microphone in his face. Gil heard Bobby say: “We’ll just have to go on, that’s all.”
The reporter said: “About your own play; you really seem to have turned things around.” And stuck the microphone in his face again.
Bobby said: “That’s the way the game is sometimes.” And pushed by.
He walked right past Gil, not two feet away. Gil felt a huge smile spreading across his face, but Bobby passed without looking at him. He left behind the scent of that coconut shampoo he used in the ads, and Gil made a note to get some.
Fishing pole in his hand, knapsack on his back, hair freshly washed and smelling of coconut, Gil walked along an endless beach that was sometimes sandy, sometimes shingle. The sea was glassy blue; a red sail cut across it toward the eastern horizon. On the other side of the beach rose big houses, separated from each other and the water by broad lawns, tall hedges, well-trimmed bushes. Gil stopped when he thought he’d come to the right one.
Unlike Bobby’s luggage, the house looked the part. Tall, sprawling, shining, it had chimneys, arches, balconies, decks, a terrace, and a pool, gleaming under the clear sky. Two lines of cedars marked the borders of the property from the house all the way down to the beach. Some dead branches needed clipping and the lawn needed mowing, but otherwise this was the model of life perfected. Still and peacefuclass="underline" Gil gazed and gazed, losing track of time.
Then a movement caught his eye. By the pool a leg-bare, a woman’s leg-straightened, stretching up into the air. Red-painted toenails sparkled in the sunshine; Gil could see the color all the way from the beach. He walked along the shore to the nearest line of cedars and ducked behind the first one.
From that angle, he could see her better. She lay on her back on a chaise, wearing a baseball cap, oversized sunglasses, and a skimpy bathing suit, or perhaps none at all; Gil couldn’t tell. He began making his way up toward the pool, moving from tree to tree, silent, like a woodsman back home. Once he disturbed a crow. It took off, and spiraled cawing into the blue. The woman turned her head to watch it. He recognized her from the shots they always took of players’ wives in the stands: Valerie Rayburn. He crept closer, close enough to see that she wore bikini bottoms but no top, and stopping only when his next step would have brought him into the open. He crouched behind a cedar branch, with nothing in mind.
Somewhere nearby a radio played, quiet but very clear. Gil couldn’t see the speakers, but he heard the sound:
“… just missing, inside. Boyle walks around the back of the mound. He wanted that call. Two and two. Infield still at double-play depth. Boyle steps on the rubber…”
Valerie Rayburn raised her other leg, stretched, sighed. A long, well-toned leg of the kind SI liked to feature in the swimsuit issue. And Val was that kind of woman. Gil couldn’t take his eyes off her, and not only for erotic reasons. This was no Lenore, or Boucicaut’s woman, he couldn’t remember her name. This woman was fine. He didn’t even get aroused, at first.
French doors swung open at the back of the house. A man in a suit came out, carrying an enormous inflated great white shark. Val saw him, made no attempt to cover up. The man crossed the terrace, walked onto the pool deck. Gil didn’t recognize him.
“Sean napping?” he said.
“She put him down ten minutes ago.”
“Where is she?”
“I gave her the afternoon off.”
The man smiled. He put the shark down, went to Val, and lightly brushed the underside of one of her breasts with the back of his hand.
“Mmm,” she said.
He knelt beside her.
“… down by three, Zamora’ll lead it off. The little guy’s oh for two this afternoon with a sac fly in the…”
Gil looked around again for the source of the sound, without success. Was he imagining it?
Soon Val and the man were naked, except for their sunglasses, squirming on a towel by the side of the pool, skins glistening. “Oh, Chaz,” Val said. Gil parted the branches for a better view.
Chaz was a balding man with a paunch and a cock that looked average size or smaller. Why would someone like her want to fuck someone like him, especially when she was married to Bobby Rayburn? Gil didn’t get it at all. But Val said, “Oh, Chaz,” again, and wrapped her elegant legs around his flabby back.
“… and the crowd comes to life as Rayburn steps up. Bases loaded, two out, Rayburn representing the winning run. He singled up the middle in the first, doubled into the gap in right center in the fourth, hit the solo round-tripper that brought them within three in the sixth. Normally a fast worker, Mardossian is taking a lot of time out there. Looks in for the sign and here’s the pitch. Strike one, over the inside corner. That’s the call Boyle hasn’t been getting all day. Hard to call ’em from up here, of course, but…”