Be My Baby Tonight (2 page)

“It’s like a superstition, ain’t it? Like
wearin’ the same socks, like you do when we’re winnin’? You got
yourself one big superstition.”

Tim shrugged. “I guess. Something like that.
We’ve all got superstitions; it’s part of the game. But this is
worse. This is like I’ve got this sword hanging over me, and the
thread holding it is getting thinner and thinner, and there’s
nothing I can do to stop it...”

“I still don’t get it, you know. So what if
your brother got himself injured and outta the game? Got himself a
baby, a wife. You’re not him, right?”

“I’m his twin, Dusty,” Tim explained as he
had several times before, reaching for the deck of cards he always
kept on the table beside any bed he slept in, ever. “We’ve always
done whatever the other one’s done.”

“Like playin’ baseball, right?”

“Right,” Tim said, dealing out the cards for
solitaire. “Like breaking the same bones, like coming home with the
same grades, like getting crushes on the same girl, like smashing
up cars the same week. Jack’s older—seven minutes—and he does stuff
first, and I always follow.”

He looked at the cards, saw he was already
out of moves, and gathered them up in one hand. “Almost every damn
time, I end up doing something the same as Jack has already done.
Call it superstition, but I’ve been looking over my shoulder ever
since Jack retired from the game.”

“That long? Your brother had to quit baseball
after that rotator cuff thing, right? That was over a year ago.
You’re still here, right?”

“Right. Except I missed the last month of the
season last year after that finger surgery.”

“Yeah. What was that, anyway? The guys were
laughin’ about it one time.”

Tim dealt out the cards again, put a red
queen on a black king. “I tore a tendon in the middle finger of my
throwing hand.”

“Wow, how’ya do that? In a game? I don’t
think you ever said.”

Red ten on the black Jack. “After the game,”
he said, not looking at his roommate. “In the club house, taking
off my sock. I—I stuck my finger down into the sock, tried to pull
it off my foot, and the damn tendon snapped.”

“Naw. Get out,” Dusty said. “Takin’ off your
sock? Man, that’s somethin’.”

“Sports writers seemed to think so. The
jokes? Damn. But then they started making noises about the Trehan
curse.”

“Wow, a curse. Superstition’s bad enough, but
a curse? You mean, because your brother ripped his rotator cuff
takin’ off a sock?”

Tim laughed. Okay, so maybe rooming with a
rookie wasn’t so bad. The kid had made him laugh. “No, Dusty,
because the writers had noticed, long ago, that almost everything
Jack did, I did. We were signed the same month, him with the Yanks,
me with the Phillies. We moved to Triple-A within weeks of each
other, came up to the majors exactly two months apart. Jack first,
me second. Always. If Jack does something, I do it. Not all the
time, granted. It’s not always follow the leader, you know. But at
least two out of every five. I don’t like the odds.”

Dusty nodded. “So, okay, so Jack gets hurt,
and everybody thinks you’re next? Am I gettin’ this?”

“Yeah, you’re getting this. And I was, too,
after never missing a game since I got beaned my senior year in
high school.” He lost another game of solitaire, picked up the
cards, replaced them on the nightstand. “I got away with it last
year, with the tendon thing, but the clock’s ticking. Any day now,
Dusty, it could all be over.”

Dusty was silent for some moments, then
grinned. “But you said only two out of five, right? From what
you’re tellin’ me about these dreams, you’ve got three this time.
Would that make it one out of three, do ya think? Do one, and the
other two go away.”

Tim shrugged. “I don’t know. Yeah, okay. One
out of three. Big damn deal. Out of the game? A baby left on my
doorstep, like Jack?
Married?
Cripes, Dusty, it’s not like
there’s anything real good in those choices.”

“There’s nothin’ too good about wakin’ up
almost every night, screamin’ because you’re havin’ that dream
again. You struck out three times today, Tim. Not that it’s my
place to be sayin’ nothin’, you understand. You’re still the
best.”

Pressing finger and thumb against the bridge
of his nose, Tim let Dusty’s words echo inside his head.
O-for-three today. One-for-five yesterday. And that passed ball.
Damn, that one hurt. Should have been ruled a wild pitch, not a
passed ball. Still, he was off his game, and he knew it.

“So,” Dusty said, slipping his skinny, hairy
legs under the covers once more, “which of the three is the worst?
Leavin’ the game, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?”

Tim nodded. Leaving the game would be the
worst. The very worst. He wasn’t yet thirty, had plenty of good
years ahead of him, even if Sam had started making noises about
moving him to first base when Romero retired next year, to save his
knees. As long as he could swing the bat, he had a home in Philly,
and he knew it.

Dusty kicked off the covers, stood up. “Gotta
go brush my teeth,” he said, heading for the bathroom. “My ma’d
skin me if she knew I didn’t brush after that grape juice.”

Tim absently waved the kid into the bathroom,
thinking about what Dusty had said. Yes, definitely. Leaving the
game, being forced out of the game, was the worst of the three.

Sticking his head, and his foaming mouth
sporting the handle end of a toothbrush, out of the bathroom, Dusty
said, “No babies around, right? Rich said you’re gettin’ a new
nickname—Tim ‘the Monk’ Trehan.”

“Remind me to shoot some shaving cream into
Rich’s cleats,” Tim said, pushing the pillows lower as he lay down,
trying to believe he’d actually be able to fall back to sleep: They
had one more game in Pittsburgh tonight, before having a day off
and starting another home stand.

“Yeah, sure,” Dusty said, smelling like mint
as he crawled back into bed, then reaching toward the toggle on the
bedside lamp. “Hey, I got it. One out of three, right?”

“I don’t know. I never had the dream with all
three in it before. Probably. But they’re all lousy.”

“One out of three, two out of five. That’s
what you said. So get married. Can’t be worse than the other two,
right? At least then if it’s two out of three and the baby comes
along, you’ll have somebody to raise it, right?”

Dusty turned off the light, leaving the room
dark and silent. Tim stared up toward the ceiling, Dusty’s last
words going round and round inside his head.

Married? Get married? Sure, that would work.
He could do that. Right after he jumped off a bridge....

* * *

Suzanna Trent stood outside the new
Pittsburgh Pirates’ stadium, not ten feet from the players’
entrance, wondering when it was she’d lost her mind.

It was bad enough that she’d bought tickets
to the entire weekend series, then sat in right field, her
binoculars trained on Tim Trehan as he squatted behind home plate,
and each time he came up to bat.

But this was worse, much worse. What in hell
had possessed her to bribe the guard with a twenty so that she
could get inside the gate, be there when the team members headed
for the bus that had to be taking them to the airport and the trip
back to Philadelphia?

She didn’t even have a pennant for him to
sign, or an autograph book.

Not that she’d ask him for his autograph. Why
should she do that? She still had every note he’d ever passed to
her in Mrs. Butterworth’s world history class:

“
Suze—you coming to practice? Bring my
cleats, okay? They’re in
my
locker.”

“
Suze—think fast, when was the war of
1812? Hahaha!”

“
Suze—you think Mindy Frett will go to the
dance with me Friday night? Ask her, Suze, okay?”

Oh, yeah. She still had every note. Had cried
over most of them. She didn’t need no
steenking
autograph.
So why was she here?

Hey, she was in town, that was why. She was
on a job, straightening out the Harrison Manufacturing Company’s
screwed up computer system, a job she’d just wrapped up Friday
morning.

It was Sunday. So why hadn’t she gone home to
Allentown? Why had she stayed, gone to all three weekend games?

“Because you’re certifiable, that’s why,”
Suzanna grumbled to herself, hitching her large bag back up on her
shoulder, preparing to leave before Tim came out, saw her, and
walked right past her without recognizing his old classmate, pal,
and general gofer.

Yes, that was it. She wanted to see if he
recognized her. Why not? She looked good. She looked damn good.

Then again, anything would be an improvement
over frizzy, carrot-orange hair, the teeth braces that had nearly
become a permanent part of her, and the baby fat she’d carried all
the way into her early twenties.

God, the crush she’d had on the man. Ever
since kindergarten, and straight through their senior year.

From the beginning, they had been together,
thrown in close proximity through simple alphabetics. Every
classroom, every year, it was Trehan, Trehan, Trent. Jack, then
Tim, then Suzanna. Every blessed year.

Jack, Tim, and “good old Suze.”

That was what Tim called her: good old
Suze.

She didn’t call herself that. Inside her
notebooks, where nobody could see, she’d scribbled, year after
year: Mrs. Timothy Trehan.

Not that he’d ever had a clue. She’d have
died if he’d known. If he’d laughed, told his brother, told his
friends. She would have just
died.

But, damn him, he should have known.

After all, it had been Suzanna who could
always tell the twins apart, when no one else could. It was Suzanna
who had done Tim’s homework for him when he’d forgotten, Suzanna
who had always made sure she had bubble gum for him because he
swore he couldn’t play ball for spit without it.

It was Suzanna who had volunteered to be
statistician for every team Tim had ever played on, just so she
could be near him. It was Suzanna who Tim had thought of as his
great pal, his buddy, his friend, his “good old Suze.”

The jerk.

Thank God she’d wised up and not followed
Jack and Tim to college. Instead, she’d deliberately headed to
UCLA, as far away from Tim as she could get without leaving the
continental United States.

She’d graduated near the top of her class,
built herself a career, a damn good career, acting as a
troubleshooter for a major software firm headquartered back in
Allentown. She traveled the country now, remained heart-free, and
believed she had a pretty good head on her shoulders.

A head with short, tamed, now carefully
colored dark mahogany hair with touches of soft blond highlights,
atop slim shoulders that belonged to a size-eight body.

Oh, yes. She wasn’t good old Suze anymore.
She was woman, watch her soar.

So what in
hell
was she doing
here?

“Nothing good,” she told herself, hitching up
her purse once more as she stepped away from the shadows, intent on
getting herself out of here and back to sanity. She should have
left long ago, when the game had gone into extra innings, instead
of sticking around until the bitter end.

Thing was, the door had just opened, and
Suzanna found herself trying to fight the tide of yelling autograph
seekers, from six-year-old boys to seventy-year-old grandfathers,
that converged on the area as if they had been tossed there by a
tidal wave.

Fighting that wave was hopeless, so Suzanna
turned around, allowed herself to go with the flow.

What the hell. She was here. Why not at least
look?

“Dusty! Dusty! Over here, over here! Sign my
book, sign my book!”

Suzanna looked down to see a young boy
standing in front of her, a pair of crutches propped under his arms
and a cast to his midthigh. Poor kid, he’d never make it through
the crowd. She looked around, hoping to see a parent, but the kid
seemed to be alone.

“Here, let me help you,” Suzanna said,
proving yet again that, yup, here she was, good old Suze.

Good old Suze used polite “pardon me’s” and a
couple of well–placed elbows as she helped the boy to the front of
the crowd just as Dusty Johnson—his shock of bright red hair easily
recognizable—headed out of the door and toward the bus.

“Yo, Dusty,” Suzanna called out, waving her
hand high in the air. “Over here. There’s a kid wants your
autograph.”

The rookie shortstop smiled, nodded, and
headed for the crowd. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, then bent down, lifted
the boy’s Phillies cap, and ruffled his hair. He ignored the other
books and programs and hats being aimed at him and instead took the
autograph book from the boy as he knelt down in front of him,
getting on eye level with the kid. That was nice.

“See that triple I hit tonight, son? Did that
just for you. Bet you didn’t know that.”

“Ah, man,” the boy said, shifting on his
crutches. “You’re so cool. Sign it to Joe, okay? Not Joey.
Joe.”

“Got ya,” Dusty said, scribbling on an empty
page. Then he stood up, looked back at the door and the few
stragglers still heading for the bus. “Hey, Tim. Hey, roomie.
C’mere. Sign this kid’s book why don’t ya.”

“Sure,” Tim Trehan said, tossing a light
Jacket over his shoulder as he headed their way.

Time stopped. Reversed. Older yes, but he was
still Tim. Her Tim. Long, lean, a ballplayer to his toes. Thick,
unruly dark blond hair, with that lighter streak on the left, just
above his temple. That same wide smile, those same
whiter-than-white teeth against his constant tan. Those same bright
colbalt blue eyes. That same lazy walk that some might call a
swagger.

She’d know him in the dark, on the moon...
and in her dreams. Always in her dreams.

Suzanna could have done a quick melt into the
crowd, except that it wouldn’t be easy. Especially since she didn’t
want to move.