Slaves of New York (14 page)

The captain of my team comes over to me. "I'm changing the order," he says. "You're up next."

"I thought maybe I could wait for a while," I say.

"Are you playing, or what?" the captain says. "Everyone's waiting, go ahead. Just take Paul's turn, he went to buy more beer."

I step up to the plate. Stash, the catcher for his team, stands behind me. He puts down his glove and comes over to me. While the rest of the players wait, he grabs me in a stranglehold and kisses me passionately. I disengage. "I have to bat now," I say.

"Take your time," Stash says. "That's my advice to you."

Before the pitcher has a chance to throw the ball, Mickey rushes out from the sidelines. "Wait," he says. "Use my bat! It's good for a girl!"

"That's okay, Mickey," I say. "I like the bat I have, because I practiced with it."

Stash winks at me. I let a ball go by, and then, on the next

pitch, I hit one. For several seconds I stand still. I have forgotten what to do next. When I watch the ball game with Stash on TV, things seem to move much more slowly. The time from when the ball is thrown to me and when I hit it seems nonexistent. "Drop the bat," the voice of Mrs. Rourke shouts in my ear. She's more bossy than I could ever hope to be. I drop the bat on my feet and trip over it. Then I start to run. I'm out at first. That's the third out.

"Nice play!" Mickey shouts.

Stash comes over to me. "You hit the ball," he says. "Darling, I'm so proud of you." Once again he locks me in an animalistic embrace. One of his greatest fears—he's often told me—is that he will hug me so hard he'll break my ribs. Once he read something like this in the papers, how a man met his girlfriend at the airport and was so glad to see her he killed her. I don't know what my greatest fear is; maybe just that I'll be caught and discovered, accused of being a child in an adult's body.

Between innings, the little kid comes over to me. "I could be a pitcher, if anyone wanted me to," he says, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. "I could be the catcher if you get tired. Why don't you let me be the catcher, then you can rest."

"Maybe later on," I say. I stand up to take my place as catcher. I don't have a mitt, I'll have to catch bare-handed.

"You mean the next inning I can be catcher instead of you?"

"Maybe," I say. "Maybe later on in the game."

"We'll split innings, that's fair," Mickey says.

"Maybe," I say.

"I'm a great catcher," Mickey says. He squints. "I'm just going to tell my dad that you don't want to be the catcher anymore." He runs off, shouting, "Dad, Dad! She wants me to be the catcher instead of her!"

"Wait a minute," I say. "You said that, I didn't." He doesn't even turn around. "Mickey!" I say. But he is running up and down the bleachers.

All through the inning I get madder and madder. I really want to be the catcher. It's fun, even though I hurt my finger

on the ball when it comes at me too fast, bending my finger backward. It takes all my strength to throw the ball back to the pitcher. Most of the time it lands short, and the pitcher has to run forward to pick it up off the ground. I stagger about, trying to avoid being hit when the pitcher throws at the batter. Our team might have gotten a player out at home, but I forget to run to the base when they throw the ball to me. Still, no one yells at me—I'm glad of that. I think to myself: I like being the catcher, now this little kid is trying to take my position from me.

Stash comes up to bat. "You okay?" he says.

"Come on, Frankie baby," someone shouts to Stash from the sidelines. It's Eddie, Mickey's father.

"He always calls me Frankie baby," Stash says. Stash hits the ball and disappears down the field. A cloud of brown dust marks where he ran. I think I'll tell Mickey he can't have my turn as catcher. That's all I need to do, stand up for my rights. I don't want to wait on the sidelines while Mickey catches. Anyway, I know I'm not capable of playing left field. My arms are too weak, and in the glare of the arc lamps I'd have a hard time seeing the ball if it came at me.

After the inning Mickey comes back over to me. He hikes up his pants and rubs his stomach. I wonder what he'll look like when he gets older. His thin lips are cracked, his nose is pug. He resembles a child actor of the 1930s—Jackie Coogan, or Spanky from
Our Gang.
I remember how much I looked forward to being a grown-up: no school, no one telling you what to do. It didn't turn out to be so much fun; I find it traumatic even to make a decision on what to order from a restaurant menu.

"I'm going to ask my father again," Mickey says. "He was too busy before." I guess Mickey seems like a regular kid, it hasn't seemed to affect him that his father lives with a man and his mother with some woman. He runs back out onto the field. Eddie looks embarrassed when his son joins him, he keeps walking.

"Anybody got a joint?" he says.

"She doesn't want to be the catcher, Dad," Mickey says. "She wants me to take over for her."

I run to Stash. "Stash, Stash," I say. "That kid is trying to take my position away from me."

"Well, tell him he can't," Stash says.

"You tell him for me," I say. But Stash pays no attention, he goes to get a can of chocolate soda.

"Hey, Mickey," the captain of my team calls, "are you keeping score? Why don't you be the official scorekeeper?"

"I can't," Mickey says. "I'm going to be the catcher."

"No, you're not," I mumble.

Mickey races over to me, holding a ball in his hands. "My father says it's okay," he shouts from two feet away. He throws the ball into the air, but as he tries to catch it, it slips out of his hands and rolls behind the backstop. "Go get it," he tells me.

"Wait a minute," I say. "You go get it, you go get it. I don't have to put up with this. If you want to be a catcher, you go get the ball. You dropped it."

"Ah, relax," Mickey says, waving his hands broadly. His little face is white and pinched, it must be way past his bedtime. "Don't worry about it," he says. Dirt is smeared in a streak under one eye, I'm ready to send him to Boys' Town. "Where are you from?" he asks.

I don't answer him. All the men seem to take this game very seriously. The women are having a good time, but the men get very angry when they strike out. One guy hits the ball so hard it goes up 150 feet and crashes into the underside of the bridge. The guy looks humbly at the ground, the other team members applaud.

"Foul ball!" Mickey shouts. "Strike one!"

There are murmured complaints from the batter.

"In this game, a foul counts as a strike," Mickey says. "My father says."

The English boy sits down beside me. "What a terrific kid," he says.

"He sure has a loud voice," I say.

"Let me ask you something," the English boy says. "Is getting two strikes the worst thing you could possibly do?"

"No," I say. "I don't think it's the worst thing you could do."

"That's good," he says.

Mame is up next. She hits a ball and runs to first base. Then she collapses.

"It's her legs," someone says. Both her legs have apparently given out from under her. She is carried back to the bleachers, moaning quietly. Then she lies flat on her back on the dusty cement steps. Her eyes are shut. The game stops.

I look up at the bridge. It's like a whole residence up there, mysterious nooks for a human fly. If there was a way of getting a rope ladder up there, a person could arrange a spot to live. This setting is unearthly. It might be two in the morning, it might be the day after the bomb is dropped. After a few minutes a boy drives onto the field on his motorcycle. Mame climbs on behind him, and they race off. "What happened?" I say.

"She pulled some muscles," the English boy says. "It looks bad. Leonard is going to take her to hospital."

I walk over to Stash. "Do you think she's okay?" I say. "She told me she's pregnant."

Stash shakes his head. "That's just the kind of stunt Candy used to pull," he says. "Every time she got pregnant she'd go berserk and do something crazy, then run off and have an abortion."

It bothers me that Stash still talks about his ex-wife. Even though she might have been a little crazy, she sounds to me like she was a very glamorous person; life with her must have been exciting. "Were you trying to have a baby?" I say.

"No," Stash says. "It just happened."

"Did you want to have kids?"

"No," Stash says.

I'm tempted to ask him whether he thinks we'll always go out together. It's a surprise to me, to be twenty-seven with my life still unsettled. I reach out to give Stash a hug, but he's

already walking out to the field. I look behind me. Mickey is squatting on the bleachers, shouting, "Strike two! Strike two!" He's jumping up and down, rubbing his crotch. When he catches my glance, a look of shame crosses his face, the same look I've seen on Stash's Dalmatian, Andrew, when he knows Stash is laughing at him for something he's done.

Mickey comes over and points to a can of Diet Coke. "Is this your soda?" he says. "I'm thirsty."

"No," I say. "I don't know who it belongs to." Mickey stands looking at me. "Well, go ahead," I tell him. "I'm sure they won't mind if you have some."

Mickey glances up. "You're safe, Dad!" he screams. I clutch my hand to my ear. The kid is deafening. But Mickey's ecstatic. He leaps up and down on the cement steps, his thin arms waving. "Safe, safe, safe!" He grabs the soda from the steps and drinks eagerly, gurgling sensuously. "Ah," he says. He puts down the can and looks at me. "You sure you don't want to share your batting with me?"

"No," I say. "You can share my catching, but I want my batting."

He shrugs. "Top of the sixth, eight to five," he yells. He turns to me. "I'd make a good umpire, huh?"

Jane, a blond sculptor wearing a black leather miniskirt, her hair tied with ribbons and tiny shoelaces, hits the ball and runs to first base. She's tagged as she gets there. "Safe!" Mickey bawls.

"She's out," the first baseman says.

"Don't argue with the umpire," Mickey says. "She's safe. She had one foot on the base before the ball hit her."

It's Mickey's turn as catcher. Maritsa, a fashion model, is up at bat. The last time I saw her was in a Japanese magazine, wearing something soigné while Godzilla loomed in the background. Mickey races over to her and tries to retrieve the ball, which has rolled between her legs after he threw it in the air. Maritsa nearly brains him with the bat during her practice swing. "Ooops," she says. "Sorry about that."

"That's one way to do it," Stash says from the bleachers.

He gives me a look, grins. Stash is a team player—he shouts to the pitcher, joking around, that Marley (he's out in left field, staggering around in circles) has had one beer too many. The pitcher kids Stash about his baseball cap. I think everyone loves Stash; when we're in public he's really an extrovert, the kind of person everyone comes over to talk to.

Mickey is undaunted by his near bash on the head. He runs around in a circle, carrying the bat and ball, before he goes back to the catcher's position. "Daddy!" he says. "Daddy, it's your turn at bat!" His father jumps up, handing his joint to someone else, and runs over to the plate.

The team captain comes over. "It's my turn," he says.

Eddie turns to Mickey. "It's not my turn," he says slowly. "You said it was my turn, Mickey." I wonder what's going to happen; he seems ready to give Mickey a punch.

But Mickey's like a mouse in the elephant's cage. "You're up next then, Daddy," he says.

By now I'm actually glad that Mickey has finagled my catching position, though I'd never admit it. I'm bushed. This pearl-escent, gritty heat, and the smell of the East River—garbagy, exotic—is overwhelming. The game has gone on for hours, it must be getting close to midnight. I wonder if the "Jerry Lewis Telethon" has finally ended. It seems as if everyone is a mile apart from each other. Plus, I have to go to the bathroom.

Stash suggests I go off behind the far bleachers where Max went earlier. Men have an easier time of things. "I can't do that," I tell Stash. "There're probably a half-dozen rapists lurking out there. And probably that little kid would follow me. I can't believe that kid. He has the loudest voice, Stash!"

"Doesn't he?" Stash says.

"I can't believe I let him push me around," I say. "Why doesn't someone discipline him? Why doesn't he take over his father's turn at bat? He stole my position as catcher and now he wants to take over half my batting!"

"But he loves you," Stash says. "That little kid loves you. I can see that."

"Yeah, because he knows I'm a pushover," I say.

The sides change position. Stash gets up to play catcher. Mickey comes back to me. "You know what?" he says. "Last week I was catcher for eleven innings. Eleven innings! There was a girl here who asked me to be catcher for her. She couldn't play at all. Not like you. You're a good player." He scratches fiercely at his thin arms. "Bottom of the fifth!" he shrieks. "Ten to seven, our favor!"

"Yeah?" I say. "You think I'm a good player, Mickey?"

The pitcher stops. "What inning is this?" he says.