Page 3 of Heavy Hitter

“You get him,” Jimmy counters stubbornly. He didn’t want to come out tonight in the first place, and this is why. Well, not this, specifically, he didn’t portend this exact clusterfuck, but he’s over the late nights and the paparazzi, the whole who’s-fucking-who scene of it. He’s too old.

“They’re going to send him to Rikers Island, Jimmy. You ever read about Rikers Island?”

“They’re not gonna—” he starts, but Tuck just keeps on looking at him, and finally Jimmy rolls his eyes and gets up off the couch, his knees cracking loudly in protest. He jams his hands into his pockets and ambles over to the curtain, where by some miracle Ray has not yet been forcibly removed by a bouncer twice his size and tossed out the window onto a passing trash barge. “Ray, buddy,” he says, swinging an arm around the kid’s skinny shoulders, “your team needs you. For, uh. Top secret sports stuff.” He nods at the women on the sofa, holding up one conciliatory hand. “Ladies.”

The blonde nods back, but the brunette—and the brunette, make no mistake, is Lacey Logan—narrows her eyes in his direction, pointing with one short vermilion fingernail. “Jimmy Hodges, right?”

“Uh.” That startles him. “Yeah.”

She nods, unfolding herself from the sofa and offering a hand. “Lacey Logan.”

Jimmy clears his throat. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too.” She’s got a firm handshake, businesslike. She’s taller than he would have thought she was—not as tall as him, but close to it—and slightly gawky-looking, like a very lovely ostrich. Her hair is twisted into a long, complicated-looking ponytail over one shoulder. “This is my friend Matilda.”

Jimmy nods, patting the kid on the back. “This is Ray.”

“Oh, now,” Matilda says Britishly, sounding like Dame Maggie Smith in that show about the rich people in the castle. It occurs to Jimmy to wonder if her accent is even real. “Ray, we have met.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy says, feeling bad for the kid, a little defensive on his behalf. He only got called up from the minors last week. “Well. We were just—”

“You guys got killed tonight, huh?” Lacey says.

That surprises him, both the fact that she’s got that knowledge as well as what a less confident guy might call the rudeness of her deploying it quite so baldly. “You could say that,” he admits, rubbing a hand over his beard. She’s wearing a fringy dress and a pair of red platform stilettos. Her legs are, like, ten miles long. “You watch a lot of baseball?”

“No,” she says with a smile. “But I like to put the local news on in my hotel room.”

Jimmy nods. “I usually watch the Food Network, myself.”

“Also pleasantly numbing,” she agrees. “You cook?”

“Quesadillas, mostly,” he confesses. “The odd bag of frozen vegetables. I can grill a steak.”

“Yeah, that tracks.”

“That’s the vibe I give off, huh?” Jimmy asks wryly. “Red meat and freezer-burned green beans?”

“All-American,” she says. “Like a Kraft Single.”

Jimmy lets out a low whistle. “Like a Kraft Single,” he repeats slowly. “I gotta tell you, pal, that’s gonna fester. That one smarts.”

Lacey’s red mouth drops open. “It’s a compliment!”

“Is it?” Jimmy is very dubious.

“It is!” she insists seriously. “Kraft Singles are the superior melting cheese.”

“Uh-huh.” He shakes his head. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Neither one of them says anything for a second too long, both of them still looking at each other. It’s only when Matilda abruptly announces her intention to use the loo that Jimmy realizes Ray has also drifted mournfully off, so it’s just the two of them now, him and Lacey Logan, and he means to say his goodbyes but instead he just keeps standing there, waiting for her to send him on his way. “You’re on tour right now, yeah?” he asks, shaking out his aching hands for a second before tucking them back into his pockets. “Where you headed after New York?”

“Canada tomorrow,” she reports. “This was the end of the US leg. And Europe after that, but not ’til after the holidays.” She nods back in the direction of the team, none of whom are even pretending not to be watching. “What about you guys?”

Jimmy thinks for a minute, trying to imagine the calendar in his mind. “Minneapolis,” he tells her. “So, like, basically the same.”

Lacey laughs at that—a real laugh, loud and open-mouthed. Jimmy grins at her; he can’t help it. If he didn’t know better—and he does know better, obviously, he’s a thirty-seven-year-old has-been catcher with knees like hamburger and twenty extra pounds in the gut—he would almost think she was—

What he means to say is—

---