I melted in among the others, worried and fascinated. I knew Jay was a big man, of course, but his body had always been cloaked by a suit or heavy winter coat; here, now, I plainly saw a man about six foot three, two hundred and forty pounds, powerful in the arms and chest and back, with a little extra in the gut, and, most notably, heavily muscled legs that swelled below the knee into enormous, veined calves, large as a comic book superhero's, three times normal size, and oddly, even disturbingly, compelling- beautiful fruits of muscle that splayed widely from the downward line of his legs- legs that Allison had presumably had between her own. Jay and I were not sexual rivals, but we weren't exactly not, either. I wondered if Allison measured our deep but solitary kiss in the Havana Room only a few hours earlier against the ongoing pleasures Jay had provided her. The question was silly but the answer was yes, of course, and seeing Jay's obvious vitality, I thought it was possible that Allison would shrug off our brief intimacy as silly or wrong.
"Fuckin' freak," sniggered one of the teenage boys hanging their fingers through the wire fencing. "Sucking on that thing, fucking cocaine gas or something."
"It's brain steroids, like makes your bat speed faster. Major leaguers use them secretly before they come out of the dugout."
"That's totally fucked, man."
"No it's not! Every major league dugout has like this little bathroom next to it. Guys go in there, toke on that stuff, and come out and hit. Why you think the home run records keep getting broken? It wasn't all the muscle stuff, it was the brain stuff."
"You have like no fucking idea what you're talking about."
"Look, he's hitting it, you pussy."
Indeed he was, and not just dinging them back or popping them up but swinging his bat parallel to the ground and driving the ball straight back against the mesh at the far end, one after another. Then he missed, and the ball rocketed against the screen in front of me. He let out a muffled roar of frustration, then gave himself two shots of the drug, seemingly swelling up with them before the next pitch came.
Which it did, and Jay got a piece of the ball, clanking it hard against the screen fifteen feet up. He roared again, and slammed the bat into the earth.
"See?" said the boy, stroking what he hoped was a mustache. "Freakman. Steroids in the brain, making him crazy."
Jay dug his cleats in and took a practice swing, then pulled the bat back to the loaded position, knees bent, head up, right elbow high and a little jumpy. The mechanical arm lifted and Jay rocked and cocked, as the coaches say, and when the ball came he was ready and drilled it into the nets.
"Haaa!" came his cry of satisfaction. The sound was sexual, murderous.
"See?" announced one of the boys. "See that?"
"I see your momma."
" Your momma fucked my baseball bat."
"Yeah, the one your sister gave her after she was done with it."
"You mean the one you licked for three hours."
"Shut up," said a third boy, "he's switch-hitting."
I watched Jay shift from rightie to leftie and swing at another forty pitches or so. Batting from the left, he wasn't nearly as effective, and missed every other pitch. But of course being able to switch-hit well is one of the rarest of skills in baseball, and I was intrigued that he was even trying it, especially with balls coming at major league speed. The back of his shirt grew dark between the shoulder blades, then a red light on the pitching machine popped on, signaling the end of the session.
"No good," Jay snarled to himself. He spat the inhaler out of his mouth, flipping it up in the air before him, and swung at it with the bat. It shattered and its metal canister flew in our direction, skittering over the dirt.
"He always does that, too," said one of the boys, "that's how come I know it's brain steroids."
Jay pushed up his helmet and started to pull off his batting gloves. I slipped back a step, thinking that it might not be right to confront him there, before so many people, while he held a baseball bat and was under the effects of whatever drug he'd been inhaling.
"Yo, mister," cried one of the boys. "What you got in that thing?"
"I'm finding out," said the other boy, and he scampered into the cage. Jay watched him with disinterest. The boy scooped up the canister from the dirt and ran back.
"What is it?"
The boys studied the fine print and I edged closer for my own look.
"Ad-ren-o-something."
"Let me see that, you fucking illiterate."
"Hey, yo mister," one of the boys hooted.
A heavyset man in his twenties in a Rangers jersey suddenly appeared, bent low to the boy, and spoke harshly to him, glancing up at Jay now and then.
"Okay, okay," the boy protested. Then he and the other boys ran off with their prize.
Adrenaline. In aerosol form. Did it really help one's bat speed? The idea made a kind of crazy sense. Jay opened the cage door and lurched forward through the crowd, his Yankees cap down low over his forehead, a coat and sweatpants slung over his shoulder, eyes on the ground, his face angry and determined and oblivious to all, including me. I made sure he couldn't see me, intimidated by his staggering, violent strength, no doubt enhanced by the stuff he'd pumped into his system. He also appeared deeply alone, threatening in his bulk. My planned declarations seemed puny and even imbecile, but I decided to press forward, and followed him from thirty feet back as he disappeared into the front room, saying goodbye to no one, though it had seemed from the boy's comments that Jay was well known there. I fought through a sudden influx of eight-year-old boys, any of whom could have been Timothy a couple of years earlier, and watched Jay plunge out the front door into the cold. When I reached the door he had already crossed the three southbound lanes of Third Avenue and disappeared under the deep shadowed roar of the expressway. Across the street a neon sign promised XXX VIDEOS amp; BUDDY BOOTHS. I'd missed him again, or rather had found him and then let him go. Impossible, impossibly stupid. Or was I just scared of him? Was letting him go smarter?
"Jay!" I called, trying to lift my voice over the river of heavy traffic before me. I stepped into the street, waiting for an opening.
"Yo, man," called a hoarse voice next to me. "Don't mess with that dude."
A face emerged from the doorway behind me, a man a few years younger, his hair brilloed around his head. He might have been white, dressed Latino, talking black. It gets harder and harder to tell these days. I turned back toward Jay, then checked the light.
"Why?" I answered, still watching. "Why shouldn't I mess with him?"
Through the traffic I could see Jay getting into his truck.
"That guy? Lemme tell you about that guy, okay? He's no good. I mean it."
"Come on."
The cab darkened, the headlights went on.
"Jay!" I called again, stepping forward.
"Do I look like I'm messing with you?" the man said.
I watched the traffic slow. "Jay! Jay!"
His truck bumped its way onto the other side of the avenue, heading north, toward Manhattan.
"I'm telling you, don't fuck with him!" He jerked his thumb toward the batting cages. "Fucking gorilla, they ought to throw him out of there. Sucking on drugs, scaring those kids. Shit fucks you up, makes you crazy. The polices, they don't do shit, neither."
"What, what?"
"That guy, he's done some stuff, okay? Let's just leave it at that. You ain't from around here, okay? I would of seen you before." The man bobbed his head assertively, as if I had argued the point. "One time some guy got into a argument with him, and it wasn't pretty. You know what I'm saying?" He stepped forward, grabbed my coat, yanked. Instinctively I stepped backward but it was too late. His face was close to mine, breath warmly foul. "Just like that, huh? Like pulling down the fucking zipper on your coat, ha!"