Page 17 of Every Sweet Thing Is Bitter

“You’ll be swept up into a tornado like Dorothy if you stay in the portable.” The reference is lost on Karishma, who cocksher head and squints at me like I’m speaking Latin. I don’t bother to elaborate. “Hey, before you go—do you see Harmony much?”

She scoffs. “Sometimes, when she’s not off in the mental hospital.”

“The what now?”

“You were in jail,” she says. “Same difference.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Grace doesn’t like to talk about it much, okay? Harmony is … well, I think the exact phrase Grace once used wascuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”

“Is—?”

Karishma is midway to the other portable, shrugging with her gloved hands. A gust of wind scatters her bangs and exposes two swollen pimples on her forehead, staring at me like a second pair of eyes. “She’s a nutcase. You’re probably better off leaving her alone.”

I thank her for the heads-up, but I don’t mean it and the wind drowns me out anyway. Karishma thinks I’m a nutcase too. Harmony and I can bond over that, share a few sisterly drinks at the pool hall and wax poetic about how the ghosts of our youth still haunt us all these years later, how we have become defined by the very epithets our father once hurled at us.

Somehow, I doubt it.

I decide to ride out the storm at the Tyre pool hall. The patrons inside are enraptured by a nail-biter Rockies game, unaware of Mother Nature’s approaching apoplexy. Billiard balls, abandoned midgame, are rainbowed across the green felt tables. The men at the tables swap baseball observations over beers in cans, beers in bottles, beers in glasses. I slink to the furthest corner of the bar and take the barstool beside the brick wall decoratedwith the tires of Tyre. Anyone who gets a flat tire in Tillman County is expected to donate the casualty to the pool hall. Your generosity is rewarded with a beer and a game of pool on the house.

I watch the game despite myself. Baseball makes me think of my father. I tagged along on a double date to a Royals game once, and the whole time I heard his voice in my head like gunfire, rebuking the commissioner who bastardized his favorite sport with the universal designated hitter.Pussies.

The bartender scarcely looks old enough to be serving me the stout in his hand. He can’t keep himself from peeking at my chest. “From the gentleman down there,” he says, pointing his thumb toward the only other person seated at the bar.

“Coach Romanoff? Are you—?” I stop myself from berating the bartender, instead dismissing him with a pinched smile. I refuse to look at Coach Romanoff again. Another look will be construed as an invitation. “Tell him I said thanks and I said piss off, in those exact words.”

“I don’t—”

“My old softball coach shouldn’t be buying me drinks.”

“No, I mean he—”

“I think Chuck and Jimmy could use another beer, kid.” Coach Romanoff claims the peeling vinyl stool beside me and shoos the bartender with a flick of his hand. “Miss Byrd, you looked a little lonely sitting here by yourself.”

The boys always got the first name treatment from Coach Romanoff. The girls were addressed by last name only, a habit he defended as chivalry, but I saw only as an affirmation that I belonged to my father. I wasn’t allowed to be Providence; I was only allowed to be Tom Byrd’s daughter. “I like being alone,” I say.

“That’s not how I remember it. You were always a social butterfly when you were on my team.” He drains the last sip from his beer and licks the foam along his upper lip. “You were afirecracker too. No one got thrown out of more games than you, least not until Harmony came along.”

“You coached her? Did you sit next to her in the dugout too?” I scoop a handful of almonds from a bowl on the counter and pop them into my mouth one at a time like Tic Tacs.

The bar erupts with cheers as the Rockies batter slices the ball under the first baseman’s glove. Bottom of the ninth, Rockies down two, one out, runners on the corners. “I put her at shortstop, just like you, but—well, but not as good, frankly. She didn’t move like you. If I had a quarter for every time she bobbled a routine grounder, I’d be on the Forbes List. And that swing? She reminded me of my four-year-old playing tee-ball.”

His knee brushes against mine, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I am sixteen again, alone with Coach Romanoff in his office, pretending not to notice he’s sitting a little too close to me. “Who do I remind you of?”

“Oh, you’re one of a kind, Miss Byrd.”

When his knee grazes mine again, this time longer and with intention, a bilious lump forms in my throat. “If you want to fuck me, you can say it. I’m sure you’ve been jacking off to the thought of me since I tried out for you in those tight softball pants.”

“Hey now, I—” He sputters.

“Or am I too old for you now? I am thirty, after all. I’m technically past my prime.”

He fails to disarm me with a blush and a smile. “I think we’ve misunderstood each other.”

“No, I don’t think we have.”

“I’m going to step outside for a moment to make a call,” he says, “and when I come back, maybe we can try this conversation again, hmm?”

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