The Legend of Mickey Tussler (24 page)

“It's sure starting to feel that way,” she answered playfully.

The two of them walked for a while alongside the tracks, watching the horizon slowly swallow the big orange ball. She told him all about herself, how she lived alone, and that her mother had died years ago.

“Tuberculosis,” she said. “She was sick a long time.”

“What about your father?”

She answered in a low, even voice, without emotion or tears. “Haven't seen him in years.”

“That's rough. I know a little bit about being on your own. Baseball can be a pretty lonely life.”

Her feet threw up dirt and loose gravel. She looked down at the roadside, and at the stones lying in desultory patterns against the metal rail, as if the scene were some sort of portrait of her life.

“Oh, you're a ballplayer?” she said eagerly. “Who for?”

“Brewers. Today's actually my first day with the club.”

“I love baseball. The players are pretty okay too.”

They talked some more, then sat down on a redwood bench beneath a Victorian gaslamp and watched the trains pass by.

“What's your name?” he asked.

“Laney. Laney Juris.”

“Laney. That's mighty pretty.”

“Thank you. Do you have one? A name?”

“George Rogers. Nothing too pretty about that, although I do have a nickname.”

She wrinkled her nose, pretending to be formulating a guess. “Are you gonna tell me, or do I have to figure it out by myself?”

“Lefty. Guys on the team call me Lefty, on account of me being a southpaw and all.”

“Well, that's not very original.” She laughed.

“Maybe so, but it works for me.”

Then he put that arm around her, placed his other palm gently on her cheek, and kissed her. A deep passion flooded her.

“You know,” he told her, “some people say that life's a casting off—that we have to find happiness whenever we can. You ever hear that?”

She nodded and placed her hand on his knee. He leaned forward, took the hand in his, and kissed each finger, one at a time. She saw him, muscular and firm, as if he had emerged, godlike, from the setting sun.

“You ever make it with a ballplayer, Laney?”

The crudeness of the question startled her. Her eyes blinked twice, as if she had come suddenly from a dark room into the bright sunshine. For a moment, all her feelings were conflicted. She was intrigued, and wonderfully excited, yet suddenly on guard. She had been here before. The memory halted her passion, but then yielded to a more recent recollection, the one of a lonely girl in a single room eating tuna by candlelight.

“No,” she said, the faint cloud around her eyes lifting. “But if someone were to ask me tomorrow, I may have a different answer.”

They went back to Lefty's place and tore at each other like animals. There was something primal and reckless about their intercourse. His caress was hot and feverish, like warm ocean waves washing over her body. His hands explored the contours of her voluptuous form, beginning with her shoulders and breasts and then slowly, methodically, across her hips and between her legs. His lips brushed her neck, then nibbled their way to her ear, whispering a few salacious things to her before finding their way to hers.

He could feel her body awakening, rising as his tongue danced across the outline of her lips and the weight of his rigid body pressed down against hers. She struggled a little, in playful protest, but he overpowered her, pinning her wrists to the bed while continuing to devour her shuddering form with passionate strokes from his lips and tongue. His hands roamed all over her body.

“You're so wet,” he said, sliding a finger inside her.

She moaned quietly. “Is that okay?” she asked breathlessly. “Am I okay?”

“Don't talk.” He placed his hand across her mouth. He was heavy. She submitted, locking her thighs around him and kissing him hard, surrendering herself to this man whom she scarcely knew at all.

When it was over, she lay on top of him, heavy and fulfilled. It was good. So were the days that followed. But Lefty was a ballplayer. And many girls like Laney were out there, which reduced her over time to just an occasional diversion whenever the churlish pitcher was bored or horny. This left poor Laney feeling cheap, and vulnerable. She existed in silent, unfulfilled yearning, bitterness, fettered to this man's capricious interest in her. Each time they were together, she promised herself it would be the last. She knew, somewhere in her fractured soul, that she deserved better. But the loneliness was brutal, enveloped her until she could scarcely breathe. He was all she had. So when Lefty came calling, as he did a few times each month, every fiber in her body wanted to say no, screamed to her to just get up and walk away. She heard the call, but could not bring herself to do it; she stayed and made the promise again.

Now, many months later, she was embroiled even further. Lefty had made a promise to her, too. He had never done that before. She believed him. Trusted him. She had expunged all of the heartache and disappointment, all of the regret and bitterness, all in exchange for a vision of something real and lasting. Now she wanted what was hers.

“I will not leave, George,” she insisted, demanding his attention. She grabbed his arm and began tugging at him. “I helped you. You promised me things would be different if I helped.”

He looked at her and started to say something and then stopped, anger raging beneath his skin. She appeared to him to be this alien presence, secreted suddenly from months of silent brooding. He wanted to hit her, to take his hand and strike her hard, right in the mouth. But the girls were around. So he filled his lungs, unclenched his fists, and then, through tight teeth, finally whispered, “What did you really do, Laney? Huh? Talk to some cowpunching retard? Drink some free liquor? Please. You gotta be kidding me now.”

“Don't you say that to me, you bastard! The plan would not have worked without
me
! Remember, George? That boy is out of your way for a while because of
me
! And now the sheriff is talking to me. Okay? So, what about us? Huh? What about that promise you made? I've been waiting, George.”

Lefty sighed with vexing exasperation. “Meet me outside, in back. And leave after me, so nobody sees.”

The moon, through thick clouds, was vague and ominous. The air was cool and bothered the sweat on her forehead. She found him out back, leaning against a trash receptacle.

“Look, George, I know you told me never to come here again, but you don't return my calls and I have been—”

“Shut up!” he screamed. “Just shut your mouth, you little tramp. I don't owe you nothing. Nothing, you hear? That promise don't mean a hill of shit. Seems to me I already paid for that, long time ago. I kept you around longer than I should have. There's nothing happening here. Got it? I have a lot of people to see. I don't have no time for some alley cat. It's over. That's it. Now get your shit together and don't ever show your face again.”

She felt dizzy and her helplessness raged anew. “What are you saying?” she screamed. “Why, George? Tell me why.”

He had no answer for her.

She cried. She cried a lot. She just stood there before him, and cried. And then it happened. Laney saw deep into him, as if his eyes had somehow become portholes to his blackened soul. She shuddered and gasped, and in that one instant, her loneliness and misguided affection for the man turned to loathing.

“You asshole!” she screamed. “You fucking asshole! I am not some worthless piece of shit. Do you hear me? Don't you walk away from me! Do you hear me? You will respect me! You will respect me!”

The words fell softly on Lefty's back.

Quinton Harrington and Chip McNally sat in the dim light of Quinton's office and toasted their recent good fortune. A lamp resting precariously on a teetering pile of binders threw a flat, yellow beam across the room, forming a circle that expanded to include Quinton's tight jaw, his manicured fingers wrapped carefully around a clear, beveled glass containing a brown liquid, and some stray papers placed errantly in front of him.

“Here's to sweet victory,” he announced, lifting his glass in the direction of the ceiling. “And to a well-executed plan.”

McNally also raised his glass and smiled. Then he pulled out the sports section of the morning paper. “And to a two-game lead in the standings,” he added, “with just fifteen to go.”

It made them both smile. The Rangers had made up an incomprehensible amount of ground in such a short time and were on the brink of eliminating the Brewers and clinching a postseason appearance.

As time went on, the yellow beam seemed to expand, extending farther to reveal the dark circles under McNally's eyes. He had spent all night working on his lineup, aware that the next game, a pivotal matchup against the Brewers, could prove to be the final nail in their coffin. What little sleep he managed to get was punctuated by broken dreams, a peculiar patchwork of episodic exchanges between Murph and him. In the most haunting of the series, he is young again, the fleet-footed number nine, dashing through the outfield in pursuit of a fly ball. His eyes are focused on the ball; his mind wedded to that vision of a game-saving catch. He is there, just about to snare the ball in his glove, when he is run down by another outfielder—Arthur Murphy. So there's no catch. No glory. Nobody screams his name, ever again. It's all gone, in one, fleeting moment. Gone. All that's left is a busted knee and broken dreams that spill out all over that outfield.

In the confines of the dusky office, with the smell of leather and new carpet perfuming the air, the residue of that dream lingered. He could still hear the sound of the collision; his knee still throbbed. They were both painful reminders. But alcohol was good—it dulled the senses. Helped him forget. As for so many others, the bottle was McNally's good friend—the great equalizer, the momentary panacea for many a shattered baseball career.

The two men continued to drink their whiskey and light cigars, then resumed their discussion.

“I think tomorrow should be the knockout blow,” McNally said cheerfully. “Murphy is reeling over there—poor bastard. They're really down. One more loss, they'll fold their tents.”

Quinton stood there, pouring whiskey down his throat, his mind clicking fitfully like some tired contraption. “I'd like to believe that's the case. It sure would be nice. I know Mickey's still on the shelf. But are you sure that Rogers is not available? I don't need any flies in the ointment.”

McNally jiggled the ice cubes in his glass and smiled. “I am positive.” He held up two fingers on each hand and clicked down as if to type quotation marks on the stale air. “Sore arm.”

Across town, a different kind of meeting was taking place, one laced with anger and vitriolic exchanges.

“Mr. Murphy, have you seen the morning paper?” Dennison asked bitterly.

The question sort of floated, lingered for a while like a dandelion seed caught on a spring breeze. Both men sat quietly in the veiled light of Dennison's lair, staring at each other. The reproachful silence angered Murph. His spirit writhed with exposure and shame, not because of Dennison's remark, but because of his own inability to ameliorate the disaster left in the wake of Mickey's injury.

“Yes, Warren, I have seen it.”

“Two games Arthur—two. With only fifteen left on the goddamned schedule. Do you understand what that means? My God, how could you blow such a big fucking lead?” Dennison struggled with the brutal misfortune that had befallen them. “Look, I am the first one to admit that I was not in favor of this kid joining our team. I was wrong. He's the best thing that ever happened to us. I get that losing him was quite a blow. But, Arthur, for Christ sake, that was a month and a half ago. When are you going to get your shit together? What is it that you are doing about this?”

Dennison's condemnation was a logical consequence of the team's subpar performance; but the bilious owner's incessant attempts to belittle him, to impugn his character as a baseball man and manager, irritated him, scraped against his grain to the point of complete exasperation.

“You know something, Warren? I'm dealing with a mountain of shit here. Are you aware of that? I lost my best pitcher, whom I still feel personally responsible for. My other stud is a fucking head case, who the rest of the team wants to string up by his balls. And now this whole investigation that Rosco wants to conduct has everyone feeling sick and out of sorts. So you know what? I don't need your bullshit also. All things considered, I think I've done a pretty damn good job holding this thing together.”

Dennison sat back in his chair, rolled his shoulders as if to shake off the ill effects of a blindside, and glanced out the window. The sun was going down with a riotous swirl of brilliant color, varying shades of pink, orange, and sea-foam green. He looked on, with vague interest, then shook his head. He had always had a vision of Murph as someone who would, someday, take the disappointment of unfulfilled promise and convert its turbulent energy into sweet, vindicating success. It's the reason why he'd given Murph the job.

“I believe you're hungry,” he told him that very first day. “Hunger is good. It's the key.”

But some years later, Dennison had yet to see that hunger yield anything more than mediocrity, which led him to believe that what he had perceived as hunger really was, at best, a whimpering vacuity.

“Let's go about this thing a little differently, shall we, Arthur?” Dennison said in forced conciliatory tones. “Because I'm at the end of my rope here. Maybe I have not expressed myself clearly enough.” He wrinkled his nose. For a moment, it was all too much for him. He tossed around a cluster of ideas that resonated in his head like a roomful of people all chattering at once. Some were soft, and understated, while others possessed an earsplitting energy that threatened to suffocate those less inclined to promote themselves vaingloriously. He entertained all of them for a while, then just let them go and went with his gut instead.