Page 77 of Unwritten Rules
Zach breathes, the kind of controlled breathing that fills his chest and torso. He closes his eyes, noticing the rocks slippery under his feet, the wind off the surf, thetu-tu-tucall of the water birds. Listens to the ocean shaping the shore, carving out living spaces in the once-solid coastline. Listens and feels his breath, and when he opens his eyes, Eugenio is looking at him.
“I love you too,” Zach says. “I was trying to make sure I remember how I feel just now.”
Eugenio holds up his phone, pressing against Zach, arm around Zach’s shoulders, face against his neck. They’re unmistakable in the pictures, who they are and who they are to each other, Eugenio kissing his cheek, then the side of his nose, then his mouth, a series of images preserved on his camera.
They walk back to the beach house, Eugenio’s arm brushing against his, a kind of silence like the world is contained in a soap bubble, one that could be burst by talking about baseball or dinner or their plans for the next day. They determine, by mutual agreement, to bypass the living room, the kitchen, to make their way to the broad bed they’ve been sharing, to lie there with one another, curtains open to the fading late-afternoon light.
Chapter Twenty-Two
July, Present Day
The first game back after the All-Star break has the feeling of coming back to school after winter vacation: everyone’s a little heavier and forgets what exactly it is they’re doing there.
After playing in Cincinnati, Swordfish Park seems particularly enormous, a huge cavern of a place with a staring concrete roof and a handful of fans. Their reactions, which are mostly collective groans, echo off it. They held a concert there over break; the already-patchy outfield still bears scars of where the stage was set up.
It’s mid-game, and Womack is on the mound. He’s one of their more experienced pitchers, if having three years of big-league service time makes anybody experienced. But by the fourth inning, his sinking fastball isn’t fooling the Arches’ lineup. They’ve loaded the bases with three blooper singles, each spinning past the Swordfish second baseman into the wide plains of Miami’s infinite outfield.
Zach calls time, tipping up his mask and jogging out to the mound.
“Save it,” Womack says, when he gets there. “I do not need Zach Glasser therapy right now.”
Womack’s a few inches taller than Zach is, Black, skinny enough to be swallowed by the bright teal of their home jerseys. He has a complex windup that reminds Zach a little of a pinwheel but when he’s locked in, he’s locked in. Right now he mostly looks sweaty and pissed off. He moves the glove from his mouth so Zach can see him talk, revealing a scowl. They’re facing one another, Zach’s mitt up shielding them on one side, and Womack’s glove on the other, a concession to the runners occupying the bases, who are also apt to steal signs and relay them to their team’s batter.
“No therapy, I swear,” Zach lies. “I was gonna say we should maybe go heavier on the sliders.”
Womack gives him a look like he doesn’t believe Zach either. “Sliders. Sure, Glasser, let’s throw some sliders.”
Zach doesn’t leave right away, instead waiting for the umpires to start inching closer like they’re gonna come to break up their confab.
“You gonna get the hell off my mound?” Womack says finally.
And Zach conceals his grin behind his mask, jogging back behind home plate, and throwing the set of signs to indicate a slider.
They end up losing the game, one where Zach strikes out, lines out, flies out, and pops out, four frustratingly quick at-bats that seem over before they’ve begun. He has to answer for the team’s anemic showing when the beat reporter for theHeraldsticks his phone in Zach’s face and asks about it. “Sometimes stuff goes your way,” Zach says, “and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s baseball.”
“Thanks,” Womack says, after the reporters have dispersed.
“You mean for not selling you out to the press?”
“My sinker wasn’t working.”
“Shit happens.” Zach’s legs hurt, the roof not fully insulating them from the heat. His knees have started making noises when he first gets up in the morning. He mostly just wants to dunk himself in the hot tub and go home. “It’s probably just rust from the break. I should get going.”
“Nah, I threw almost every day over break. Ball just felt weird coming out of my hand.”
“What’d Pinelli say?” Zach says. Though Womack spent most of the game at the other end of the dugout from their pitching coach, talking over pitch selection with Zach.
“Said it was probably rust from the break. But I mean—” Womack glances around at their teammates, most of whom are already changed and heading out “—it’d be cool if you could do some work with me during my next throwing session.”
“Maybe you should ask Pinelli.” Because it would mean additional work on top of trying to coax three good pitches out of pitchers who can only really throw two.
“You know when you’re in school and the teacher figures out early on you don’t need as much help as the rest of the knuckleheads in your class. And so she leaves you alone, even when you need something?”
“I was one of the knuckleheads, but I’ll take your word for it.” Zach suppresses a sigh. “All right. Let me know when.”
Zach goes home, marking the day off on his printed-out calendar, a slash line through it. He watches a TV show that he doesn’t really pay attention to before flipping to a cooking show that he also mostly ignores. He hurts, his body registering all its small indignities as he settles into bed, aches that no longer respond to heat or ice or their massage therapist. He looks for his Tiger Balm, but remembers he finished his last tin before the break and hasn’t gotten around to getting more. He digs an ancient tub of Vicks out of his medicine cabinet and spends a few minutes rubbing some on the meat of his hip where a knot has coalesced and won’t release.
When he first moved to Miami, he spent most of his time getting to know the new team. They’re rebuilding and are made of the kinds of players common on rebuilding teams: a parade of rookies promoted too young from the minors, most of whom were quickly demoted once it became clear they couldn’t cut it against big-league pitching. And players like him, ones aging out of the game or still clinging to its fringes. He got to know the city some, even going to synagogue a few times, mostly to appease his parents’ insistence that he couldn’t meet someone “nice” sitting around his apartment. Made a list of restaurants and went to them, sometimes with teammates, sometimes with their coaching staff or trainers, the kind of meals where he just ordered the first thing on the menu, absent the rituals of Eugenio’s explanations.
