Page 11 of Heavy Hitter

ALONE IN HIS KING-SIZE BED AT THE WESTIN IN MINNEAPOLIS, Jimmy stares at his phone for a long, silent moment. Then he swears under his breath and tosses the thing onto the sheets.

He’s not going to reply, obviously. What would even be the point of replying? What exactly does he think he’s trying to accomplish here? She’s a little bit nuts, or that’s what people say about her. She’s the benevolent dictator of a densely populated nation comprised entirely of screaming girls. Jimmy’s been with famous women before, has gamely held their purses while they walked red carpets and struggled to keep his composure while cameras strobed six inches from his eyeballs. He promised himself a long time ago he was never getting anywhere near any of that Hollywood bullshit ever again.

Also, not for nothing, he stood alone in that bathroom for four full minutes waiting for his fucking erection to go down.

He picks his phone up off the mattress. The time stamp on her message is 7:52 p.m., a little over two and a half hours ago. She must have sent it before she went onstage, assuming she had a concert tonight. Did she have a concert tonight? Jimmy’s not about to fucking check. He makes himself do a hundred push-ups instead of considering the possibilities. Then he makes himself do seventy-five more.

Finally he gets up off the carpet and reads her note one more time, rubbing a contemplative hand over his beard. He thinks of the pleased, slightly mischievous way she looked at him as the elevator whooshed down to the parking garage at the hotel last night, like the two of them were in cahoots about something. He thinks of the sounds she made as she came.

Oh yeah? he types—and already, already he knows he’s going to live to regret this. What happened, you get some good coverage in CosmoGirl?

Jimmy puts his phone down, for real this time. Then he grabs it again, locks it in the hotel safe, and marches himself down to the bar to get a beer.

A couple of the guys are already down there, Ray and a few of the other call-ups slouched with their skinny legs spread on the red leather armchairs in the lounge. They spent the entire afternoon in the dugout giving Jimmy shit about last night, about where he might or might not have gone after the rest of them left the club. “Back to my hotel room to jerk off,” he told them truthfully, yanking his ballcap down over his forehead and shoving his sunglasses onto his face. “Just like the rest of you fucking clowns.” He thinks he may have hit the homer mostly just to shut them up.

Still: “Yo,” Tuck said quietly, sliding into the seat beside him on the bus to the airport after the game. “Between you and me. Did you really not—?”

“I really did not,” Jimmy said firmly. “Nice girl, though.”

“Yeah,” Tuck agreed, glancing over at him for what may or may not have been an extra, bullshit-smelling second. “Nice girl.”

In any event, Jimmy’s not about to surrender himself for further questioning, so he flips the rest of them a friendly bird and takes his beer back upstairs to his room, where he drinks it, plus another one from the minibar, while staring out the plate glass window and thinking, resolutely, about nothing at all. He takes a shower, soaping himself up with hotel-issue body wash that purports to smell like green tea and bergamot. He watches half an hour of SportsCenter. He ices his swollen knees.

Just after midnight, he takes the phone out of the safe.

Sure as shit: two new messages from Instagram user laceylogan, 254M followers. The little green circle, the one that means the person has the app open at this very moment, glows like a beacon right next to her name.

First of all, she’s written, that’s a sexist comment.

Second of all, no. I was talking about you. Nice game today.

Jimmy sits down on the edge of the mattress. She said she was going to Canada, which means the local news wouldn’t have carried Yankees/Orioles baseball, which means she actively sought that information through alternate channels. He concentrates for a moment on not feeling any particular kind of way about that, and mostly fails.

Thanks, he types, then: Sorry. For being sexist.

Joke’s on you, she fires back, so quickly it startles him a little. CosmoGirl folded like twenty years ago.

Jimmy gets another beer from the minibar, though that’s three, which is more than he tries to have the night before a game now, the way hangovers hit quicker and harder on this side of thirty-five. It’s a bold move, adding an elective headache to his long list of bodily grievances. Explains why my subscription hasn’t been arriving, I guess.

The little red heart appears, the one that means she liked it. I’m sorry too, she writes. It’s weird how fast she’s replying, though Jimmy supposes one doesn’t have to worry about looking thirsty in one’s direct messages if one is Lacey Logan, Queen of the Glitter Universe. For running out like that. And, you know. For slut-shaming you, I guess.

For slut-shaming—oh, for fuck’s sake. Jimmy types and discards three different responses, all boasting slightly different ratios of humorous to douchey, before finally settling on: No big deal. I get it.

The typing bubble appears, then disappears and stays gone for so long Jimmy wonders if maybe that’s the end of the conversation. That could have been all she wanted to say, he guesses. Closure, or whatever. He could leave it like that—should leave it like that, probably, should file this strange interlude away with the end of his marriage and the weekend he spent in Ibiza drinking mezcal flights with John Mayer under Experiences It’s Probably Best Not to Dwell On and move the hell on with his life.

So, he types instead, how’s the Great White North?

Pretty good so far, Lacey reports immediately. They made me the mayor for a couple of days.

Oh yeah? Jimmy flops back onto the pillows. What are your duties?

I have no idea, she confesses. I should probably ask for a briefing.

Couldn’t hurt.

They riff back and forth on executive orders for a while, then on Canada in general, then on celebrities who seem Canadian but aren’t, then on Michael Bublé. When Jimmy finally glances at the clock on the nightstand he realizes they’ve been at this for almost an hour, like how he used to talk to girls on Instant Messenger back in middle school. His arm is a little bit numb from holding the phone.

Fuck it, he decides suddenly. After all: she messaged him first. Hey, he types, hitting send before he can talk himself out of it, what’s your number?

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