Page 93 of Unwritten Rules
“It’s sort of complicated. I just found out I’m moving to New York for, um, work. And I was wondering if video appointments are a possibility since I’m on the road a lot.”
Over video, Henry looks different from his pictures online—he has a lip piercing, the edge of a tattoo showing at his collar. When he goes to adjust the camera, Zach can see he’s wearing a rainbow bracelet, a set of rings. He asks for Zach’s availability for the next week.
“I was sort of hoping to talk later today? It’s kind of a specific situation. And I’m on a company flight right now.”
“If it’s an emergency, a hotline might be a better fit.”
“It’s urgent but not an emergency. And I’ll pay cash. Or bank transfer. Whatever. Just send me the rates.”
Henry looks at him, and Zach waits for a, “Hey, aren’t you that guy who—” before Henry asks if that night works and says he’ll send instructions for how to log in to a video conference app for their appointment.
When he hangs up, there’s a text from Eugenio waiting, another in an increasing thread of them.Out west on a road trip. Be back in a few days.
And Zach considers what he would have written years ago, something cryptic enough to be “just buddies” in case someone got ahold of one of their phones or their texts got leaked. Something bland, passive. Uncaring.
Can’t wait to see you,Zach says.
Union Stadium, better known as the Bronx Battleground, sits with its back to the Harlem River, an open horseshoe challenging the city. It’s not the original ballpark, the one built in the ’20s, but a replica, plunked down adjacent to the former one, which was demolished into a set of youth fields surrounding the stadium. A hitters’ park, though spacious enough at its centerfield lines to not give anything away cheaply. A roofless megachurch where the baseball faithful come daily to pray.
And Zach stands in it, looking up the way that tourists do at Manhattan skyscrapers.
“Nice, huh?” The Union sent a handler, Maritza, to meet him at the airport and help him negotiate his belongings into a town car. She’s standing next to him out on the field, Union Stadium’s infamous wind blowing her hair, which is as curly as Aviva’s and secured back in a ponytail. A few defiant strands of it come loose, and she peels them from her lipstick.
She spent their ride in from the airport reading him his schedule. Today it’s a set of meetings with Union management, with the coaching staff, with the trainers and catching coordinator, and when he expressed surprise at the number of meetings and their efficiency in arranging them, she just said, “Oh, right, you played for Miami.”
She shows him a picture of the hotel room they booked him as if he’ll find fault with it. It’s lavish by any standard, but probably palatial by New York ones, all navy upholstery and complicated floor tile in the bathroom; she assures him his aloe plant is already there.
It’s an off-day, and there are a few players around, the team’s starting catcher not among them or their backup catcher, who they put on waivers to make roster space for Zach. A couple members of their starting rotation are out in the bullpen, getting work in. And Zach spent enough of the flight thinking about what his life would be like in New York compared with Miami that it almost escaped him that he’ll be calling games for the Union down the stretch and through September. October, if he’s lucky. November, if he’s really lucky.
Maritza delivers him to his stall, a set of jerseys hanging in it with his number. “We assumed you’d want to keep it.”
“Thanks.” Even though he picked it at more or less random when the Swordfish asked him during his long drive east. “For the tour and stuff.”
“No problem. Welcome to the Big Show.” She walks away while he’s still laughing.
From there, it’s another few meetings and a meandering tour of the training facilities. The ones in Miami were nice, but he thinks about the ones in Oakland, which had water damage over the ceiling tiles, a dark brown stain that started in one corner. By the end of the season, players were taking bets on how far it would spread. The ones where he worked out next to Eugenio, going back and forth on how to approach teams’ opposing hitters, Eugenio’s big laugh filling the space between them.
When he looks up, the ceiling is as clean as good teeth, and the room is quiet save whatever’s playing on the stereo.
The hotel they have him in is as lush as it looked in the pictures. The bed is large and just the right springiness. He tries to sleep in the afternoon light, seconds ticking down to getting on a call with Henry, then one with Stephanie right after. Henry sent paperwork and rates. Zach reads through them, even the fine print, lingering on the termconfidentiality.
He looks up the Gothams’ schedule. Eugenio will be back in three days, an eternity and not enough time for Zach to figure out what to say. That they’re in the same city. That Zach came to New York with one bag and a plant and no expectations.
He wonders what it’ll be like—if Eugenio will feel the same kind of pull toward him that Zach feels now, like magnets held apart by the thinnest of barriers, or if he’ll tell Zach he needs space, time. If anything will be different save the uniform Zach pulls on each day and the stadium he plays in.
He contemplates it as he orders room service, as he stands under the precipitation of the waterfall shower long enough that he’s almost late to calling Henry.
“Hi,” he says, when Henry logs on, “sorry for all the subterfuge earlier. It’s a complicated situation. Thank you for agreeing to this at the last minute.”
“Usually with clients, I get to know them in order to establish trust. It sounds like your circumstances are more exigent.”
“You could say that. I need to tell the New York Union baseball team that I’m gay. Tomorrow.”
Henry blinks, an extended blink.
“To be clear, I play for the New York Union. As a catcher. It’s not, like, something in the abstract.”
“Why tomorrow?”
