Page 16 of Breakout Year
He found Eitan’s number buried in his phone contacts. A text thread that had somehow survived the single upgrade Akiva could afford over that time.
Eitan: You’re not coming to spring training?
Eitan: ?????????????????????
Eitan: For real?????
With it, a link to a transaction page: Akiva Goldfarb announces his voluntary retirement—the baseball way of saying that he’d quit. Then, nothing. Mostly because Akiva had spent the first few weeks of what would have been spring training at his parents’ house lying in his childhood bed, while his parents had cycled between asking if he was sure about not going back and talking to his agent about what this all meant. Too much to put in a text, certainly, and accompanied by a burn of embarrassment that flared anytime Akiva thought about those weeks.
So he typed, I signed. What happens now?
Eitan: I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me. Like on a date.
Despite himself, Akiva almost smiled, then he typed a single word into their text thread. Yes.
6
Akiva
The next day, Akiva woke up to the early morning sun slatting through the partially bent blinds of his bedroom window—and to a text from Sue saying she was going to skip her physical therapy that day.
No you’re not, he wrote back, then emailed his landlord about the blinds. Get better curtains came the almost immediate response, but hey, at least it was a response.
Still, it was morning, it was summer, the day not yet hot. Akiva checked the level of coffee grounds in the canister—low—then checked his bank balance—also low. So he brewed a single cup of coffee and sat on the tiny patio that constituted the backyard of his house: a two-bedroom on paper that was actually a one-bedroom with an ambitious closet, surrounded by a little yard that was more concrete than grass and not a lot of either of those. Mist rose from the lawns around him. Light gleamed off the low chain-link fence that demarcated the border between his house and its neighbors.
His house, his own little patch of the universe, or at least Newark, for as long as he paid rent.
He allowed himself exactly an hour of this—he’d woken up early to have exactly an hour of this—but by eight a.m., he couldn’t put things off much longer.
So he ran through the morning air that was already heavy with humidity, rinsed off that humidity under his stuttering shower. Checked his email, checked Sue’s email, checked the clock. He had a little more time, and even if he didn’t, he’d find the time. His tefillin sat in his top dresser drawer, along with his spare kippahs and clips, his prayerbook, and a single baseball card. He pulled each tefillin from its protective plastic cover, whispered the blessing over them. One tefillin went at his biceps, a black leather box containing a scroll, fastened by a trailing leather strap that extended down his arm. He looped the strap: three times on his upper arm, seven on his forearm, a few times around his palm. The other box he situated above his eyebrows, secured around his head by a single loop. Finally, he finished the binding on his hand: three circuits around his middle finger. He tucked the excess strap into the leather around his palm.
Once complete, he felt a highway of something, an emotion he couldn’t quite name: hand to heart, heart to mind. He closed his eyes. Breathed. Thought of everything, and nothing, like he was standing at the edge of something impossibly larger than himself. Stood that way and prayed, not thinking of the pace of the clock until its tick became unignorable.
He had to go: Email wouldn’t answer itself. Sue’s voice notes wouldn’t transcribe themselves. His phone chimed.
He unwound his tefillin, returned them to their cases. The strap had left slight red indentations on his arm. He studied them for a minute before he concealed them under a long-sleeved T-shirt, then texted Sue that he was on his way.
“Sue, I know you can see me.” Akiva knocked, knocked again, then knocked a third time.
Finally, she opened the door, not bothering to beckon him inside. At least she was dressed for PT: in athleisure wear and a pair of pristine white running shoes, both of which probably cost more than what Akiva’s car was worth. Though it wasn’t like a fifteen-year-old Prius was worth that much.
“Morning, Spencer.” Not his real name, which Sue knew full well. She was holding a coffee cup with both hands—and not her purse. So, it was going to be one of those mornings.
“Hi, Sue.” Which wasn’t her real name, either—a long-running joke between them. “How’re the hands?”
She tsked. “You worry too much.”
“We gotta go. They’ll charge you if you no-show again.”
“I already have a kid”—which she did, a son in his late thirties who Akiva had never met—“I don’t need another.” But she set her coffee cup down carefully on the table by the door.
“Where’s your purse?” he asked.
“Quit treating me like I’m infirm.” Her hands shook—tremors that had been getting worse in the five years he’d known her. She made a soft, pinched noise of frustration, then glared at him as if he was going to mention it.
He waited. Didn’t ask where her brace was or if she’d been typing when she shouldn’t.
“All right,” she said, finally. She picked up her mug, huffed down the hallway, lingered wherever she was long enough that Akiva wondered if he’d have to go after her, then finally returned, hands cased in the weighted gloves that were supposed to help her tremor and only sort of did. Her purse rested under her arm. “We’re taking my car and not your deathtrap.”
