Page 17 of Unwritten Rules
Eugenio says something too low for Zach to hear, and then continues venting whatever frustrations he’s carrying on to their dinner.
“That can go in the fridge for a while,” Eugenio says, a few minutes later. Zach’s kitchen smells like whatever seasonings he brought, like garlic and oregano, maybe, and Zach comments on it.
“Good nose,” Eugenio says, like that’s some kind of compliment.
The pool at Zach’s rental property is indoors, a little blue oasis in the middle of the desert lensed by a glass skylight. It’s dark out, the major sign that, even in the heat, it’s still technically winter. Zach went swimming one night, expecting to see stars through the skylight, and was disappointed when he could only see the glaring lights from the surrounding rental complex.
Eugenio chucks his shirt at one of the chaise lounges. He has on the kind of narrow clinging swim trunks Zach associates with competitive swimming. They outline his thighs. In the pool, he does laps with neat economical motions, arms churning through the water like he’s mad at it.
Zach lies on his back, not bothering to do anything more than float. They have a game tomorrow, Zach slated to catch Montelbaum’s pitch arsenal. He came into the league hurling fire, routinely touching triple digits, only to be felled by the two words that pitchers most dread:elbow discomfort.Surgery, a yearlong recovery. Along with it, a slow fastball that Zach has to finesse into strikes.
Near him, Eugenio hauls himself up onto the side of the pool, propping his elbows on the concrete deck, a tattoo tracing up his back that’s half-distorted by the water.
And Zach doesn’t let himself look, not in the clubhouse, where bodies are as common as furniture, where everything smells like feet and ballplayer funk, where most guys pad around buck-ass naked. He doesn’t let himself look, that part of him carefully folded and tucked away, like the things he put in storage at his offseason apartment, neatly vacuum-packed and stuffed under his bed until winter.
He doesn’t let himself look. But he does now, at the water tracing lines down Eugenio’s back, the breadth and weight of him, the darkened ends of his hair, the gradual fade of his tan up his arms. Doesn’t let himself look, except in the safety of the pool, Eugenio probably thinking about dinner or their game tomorrow or whatever straight guys think about, their minds not occluded by what they shouldn’t be thinking.
Eugenio turns back toward him, saying something that Zach can’t make out, not with his hearing aid sitting in its case on the bathroom counter back at his rental.
Zach swims over to the side of the pool, pulling himself up. “What’d you just say?”
“I wanted to know if you’re hungry.” There’s water beading off Eugenio’s hair and eyebrows, and he’s got that thick coating of offseason muscle they all have, a catcher’s body under it.
“Yeah, I mean, I’m a ballplayer. I’m always hungry.”
And Eugenio’s laugh echoes off the water.
Back at Zach’s apartment, they shower, Eugenio first so he can get the grill started, then Zach, who lets his hair air dry but bangs the water from his ears before putting his hearing aid back in.
When he gets outside, Eugenio pronounces the grill suitably hot. Zach expects it to summon other players from their rentals, the promise of free dinner a beacon in the darkness. But when he checks his phone, he missed a bunch of texts about everyone going to some restaurant nearby.
“Looks like it’ll just be us,” Zach says, unnecessarily, since Eugenio only brought food for the two of them and not whatever alley cat of a relief pitcher might come begging.
Eugenio’s got a stack of cheese, one of ham, one of sliced dill pickles. He’s layering them together and inserting them into the pork chops, folding them over like books and setting them on the grill.
Zach’s eaten enough Cuban sandwiches to recognize the combination, though usually not stuffed into a pork chop. “What are you making?”
“It’s a Bobby Flay recipe.” Eugenio is concentrating on watching the pork; he vaguely motions that Zach should slice up some bread from a loaf he brought. “Put a little of the oil on it.” And Zach does.
“Do you always eat like this?” Zach asks, when they’re sitting at a picnic table on the patio, beers next to each of them, grilled pork chops and bread and Brussels sprouts that Eugenio stabbed onto skewers and grilled.
“No. I mean, in the offseason, sometimes. My parents worked all the time when I was growing up, and my chore was to make dinner. Turns out I liked it, so I got good at it.” He turns his pork chop, slicing into it at an angle. “I guess it was the same way with baseball. They didn’t want me to play at first, but I kept insisting.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t really an option for me. My mom would never have forgiven me if I didn’t play. She used to throw batting practice for me in the backyard.”
Zach’s earliest memory—standing in their backyard on hot Baltimore evenings, a plastic bat too big for his childish grip, grass wet from the afternoon rain, fireflies blinking their approval. His mother tossing a ball to him, yelling “good eye, good eye,” if he hit it or if he didn’t. Something that feels too intimate to mention, even sitting in the fading daylight, the normal tumult of the complex for once quiet. Even if Eugenio probably wouldn’t give him a hard time about it.
“What do your parents do?” Zach asks instead, and it’s kind of a date question, though Eugenio doesn’t seem to notice.
“They’re religious studies professors. At a small Christian college in Indiana.”
“Oh, huh.” Because Eugenio hasn’t mentioned praying or going to church. None of his tattoos are religious either, and Zach has definitely spent enough time not looking at them to confirm that.
“Yeah.” And he sounds like he expected Zach’s surprise. “How about yours?”
“My dad runs an upholstery company. In Baltimore. You know like, fabrics, re-covering couches, that kind of thing. My mom does the books for it.” He slices his already sliced pork chop into slightly smaller pieces. “They wanted me to go to college. Both of ’em went to like junior college or whatever, and they wanted me to get my degree.”
“Mine too. I mean, they have PhDs. It was sort of expected. Professors don’t get paid anything, but they kind of think of baseball as being more tenuous.”
