Page 48 of Breakout Year
17
Eitan
@queens_king: [eyes emoji] that rainbow pin on the volunteer next to Rivkin
@da_stars_baby: he’s an ally!!!
@queens_king: yeah, nothing says ‘ally’ like tongue-kissing your boyfriend all over the city
@da_stars_baby: he’s a *dedicated* ally!
* * *
“Smile!” Isabel said for approximately the twentieth time that afternoon while she aimed a camera at him. Eitan didn’t really need the reminder—he’d been smiling since he’d walked in the door to the community center, its front lobby painted with murals done by childish hands. The place smelled like juice and maroon rubber balls like the kind he’d used in PE growing up.
They were in the multipurpose room, most of which was dedicated to a small basketball set-up. Bleachers rose on either side, grading up to windows letting in warm afternoon light.
Nearby, players engaged in various game stations. One of their starting pitchers attended a makeshift soccer goal, guiding kids through taking penalty kicks. Botts took a more direct route and just let the smaller kids test out their footwork by kicking him in the shins. He was laughing in between theatrical ouches. Williams had been manning the station along with Botts, but now he was talking to one of the parents, a mom who was either single or about to be from the look she was giving him.
Vientos and Bishop were talking in Spanish to the kids, comparing differences in their accents—Vientos was Panamanian and Bishop was Puerto Rican on his mother’s side—and laughing uproariously. Eitan had contributed for a while: his Spanish was clubhouse Spanish, which was to say bad and slightly obscene. When he attempted a few of the cleaner idioms he knew, the kids had pityingly assured him that, if he stayed in New York, his Spanish had nowhere to go but up.
“Anyone here speak Russian?” Eitan asked at the end of the conversation. The closest any of them came was a kid named Lenin who was all of about five, far too young for Eitan to mention that the White and Red Armies both had done their share of pogrom-ing in between clashes with one another.
So he’d challenged Lenin to a foot race across the floor—or Lenin raced on his feet and Eitan on his knees—and Eitan had collapsed, laughing, when he’d come in second and received Lenin’s conciliatory pat on the shoulder.
After that, he’d spent some of the afternoon drifting around, talking with volunteers, joking with kids. Do you have what you need? A question he’d been trying to slip into each conversation. He’d done that in Cleveland: each season, he’d cycle through visits to community centers and youth practice fields to see the joy on kids’ faces as they broke in a new mitt or repumped a deflated basketball or pinged a ball off the soccer goal crossbar.
Eitan never told them he’d bought those things: didn’t want a congratulatory plaque out front. Now he wanted one if only so his name wouldn’t completely evaporate from New York when he left.
A pang went through him, the particular feeling of being in a place knowing you were likely to leave it. Maybe he could come back to New York in the offseason. Teach the kids how to scoop up a grounder or tap a plastic ball off a tee with a plastic bat. He sent a voice note to Gabe about a visit. Maybe Akiva would want to come.
But no, they wouldn’t be dating in the offseason. They weren’t even dating now, no matter how many times they’d kissed. No matter what look Akiva gave him after they did: something hot and inviting. But that invitation never came, and it wasn’t Eitan’s place to ask for more.
He was broken from his contemplation by a kid coming up to him, a girl in neat braids with plastic beads dangling on the ends. Unlike the previous kids, who’d eagerly seized the opportunity to kick a ball or throw one or ask him the blunt New York question of if he was gonna win the World Series, she could barely look at him. Instead, she buried her face in the collar of her shirt. She was also clutching a book. Its pages flopped in her small grip like it’d been read over and over.
He ducked down to her eye level and waved.
She raised a skeptical eye above her shirt collar.
He pointed to the book. “Is this your favorite?”
More shirt collar.
“Do you like to read?”
She shook her head, but it was less of a no and more like she didn’t want to talk with him.
“Do you want to kick the ball?” He mimed tapping the ball gently with his foot.
Another head shake, this one more definite.
“Do you want to read over in the bleachers?” Eitan pointed to the stands where a few parents were idling. He didn’t think it’d be a problem to have a kid not play, but he looked around for Clarence, the center worker who’d been running the events that afternoon, just to make sure. “Is it okay if she sits over there?” Eitan asked.
Clarence—a college student on his summer break who was studying early childhood education—squatted next to Eitan. Unlike Eitan, Clarence was a big guy with a jovial face and a belly that made him look like the world’s youngest Santa. The kind of size that must put kids at ease because the girl immediately abandoned her book in favor of climbing into his arms and demanding to be picked up.
Clarence laughed as he hefted her up, making sure that his rainbow All Are Welcome pin didn’t catch on her clothes. “Why’re you being shy around Mister Eitan?”
“That’s okay,” Eitan said. “I wasn’t sure what to make of people in this city when I first got here either.”
