Page 46 of Diamond Ring
“Alex and I’ll deal with it.”Alex.Like they’re still friends. Like Alex isn’t standing there, stone-faced, forcing Jake to handle this.
“You got a wife, Fischer?” Courtland asks.
“No.” Jake swallows around the burning in the back of his throat he gets whenever someone asks.
“Managing a team is like managing a thousand different marriages. It’s hard to keep track of all of it. You know what the best kind of clubhouse relationships are?”
Jake shakes his head.
“The ones I never have to hear about.” Courtland motions to Alex and Jake like he’s pushing them together, which he more or less is. “You two go work your shit out.”
“C’mon,” Todd says, cheerfully. He leads them to an office that looks like it belongs to a high school guidance counselor: a long couch, an armchair, a desk with various fidget objects arranged haphazardly.
“Sit wherever you like,” Todd says.
Jake claims the couch, Alex the chair, and Todd pulls out his desk chair so they’re sitting in a triangle from one another, each waiting for the other to say something.
Todd starts. “Let me tell you a bit about myself and my role on the team.” He explains he’s an athlete too, a triathlete from the various pictures in his office. That his degree is in psychology. That he’s a guyjust like them.
Jake tries to be easygoing in the clubhouse, Alex notwithstanding. But Todd makes him want to roll his eyes or at least tune him out, which he does, marginally, instead focusing on the tchotchkes lined up—or misaligned—on his desk. Jake’s hands itch to rearrange them.If I don’t...A familiar, unwanted refrain. Instead, he grips his pendant through his shirt, a movement that draws a glance from Alex.Can you believe this guy?Jake thinks loudly.
Apparently loudly enough to make Alex...not smile but frown marginally less.
“Before we delve into whatever friction you all are having”—Todd saysfrictionlike he meansfighting—“I’d like to get to know you.” With that, instructions to each brainstorm three things to share with him about themselves, while he gets himself water from the clubhouse kitchen. He leaves them with half sheets of paper “in case you want to brainstorm,” then props the door open as he goes.
“Think he’s testing to see if we’ll kill each other?” Jake says.
Alex raises an eyebrow. “Probably.”
“Are you gonna?”
“You worried I’ll mess up your hair, Jake?” Said mockingly. At least Alex’s anger is familiar. The sun comes up in the east, Jake throws baseballs for a living, and Alex Angelides hates him to his very bones.
Maybe Jake should write that down. Instead his paper stares at him like an unfinished assignment. “What’re you going to say?”
“I don’t know yet. I assume yours are gonna be, ‘Jake Fischer, pitcher, all-around pain in the ass.’”
Jake tries not to laugh. “I assume yours are gonna be, ‘Alex Angelides, catcher, great game-calling skills, great anger management issues.’”
“At least I’m great at stuff.”
“Yeah.” Jake taps his pen against the paper. “I was just going to list the last three teams I was on. That’s probably not what he meant.”
“Where were you?” Like Alex didn’t care enough to look it up.
“You know, here and there. I was in the Rivers minor league system, then got flipped over to the Pacifics double-A team, which was great but they released me a few weeks later. I swung down to the Mexican league for winter ball. Gordon called me about a week before the season and asked how I felt about the Elephants.”
Alex’s face doesn’t give much away, but he gets a flicker that Jake refuses to classify as pity. “Oh,” Alex says, belatedly.
Jake shrugs. “We’ll see how things work out this year. What about you?”
“I was with Seattle the past few years,” Alex says. “San Diego and Toronto before that.”
“I meant, what are you gonna write?”
Alex looks down at his paper. “If you were me, what would you write?”
A question. A big question. Todd’s been gone a while. It’s possible this really is a test. That his office has hidden cameras or, more likely, Todd eavesdropping slightly beyond the door.
