The New York (8 page)

I guess I'm saying it was like old times with Charlene, and that's better than sunshine. But it wasn't, too. There was still that darned secret agreement with George that stuck in my throat everytime I thought to tell her. I didn't want her to get involved in this, but it was there, between us, and I think Charlene knew it, too.

It wasn't until the end of November that I told Charlene. It was just after Thanksgiving. She went to her mama's for Thanksgiving and didn't ask me to come along. Charlene is cautious some about men because she's had a few bad ones. When she got that phony letter from Miss Roxanne Devon of Brunswick, New Jersey, she just figured I was another one, so I suppose there was a certain amount of suspicion in her about me all that winter. I understood it, but it didn't make it any easier.

I spent Thanksgiving Day in Ernie's Cafe eating sliced turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and string beans. And a salad, which shows I was thinking about Charlene.

She came back on Friday because she had been thinking about me. We were lovers again, and it was so wonderful, it hurt. It's the style now to talk about all those intimate things, but I don't do that, never have. The only thing that's fair game is what any fool on the street can plainly see. Not a man in East Texas wouldn't give up his comfort for a night with Charlene, and that's so evidently the fact that it's hardly worth repeating.

I don't know what it was, the making love or just the warm and runny of being with Charlene, but I told her about Cuba around midnight or one in the morning when we were lounging around in various states of undress. I recall I was wearing her pink bathrobe with the frills on it and not feeling the least bit foolish, and she was wearing my polo shirt and nothing else. We were drinking the last of a fine bottle of Merlot, sitting at her kitchen table.

“You look cute in that robe,” Charlene said.

“Hell, I'll go out and buy a dozen of them in different colors,” I said.

“No. Pink is your color, definitely.”

It was that kind of goofy, giggly talk that led up to it. I was getting in deep with Charlene, I thought brieiy, the way you think it might be better to turn back instead of trying to swim all the way across the lake. Then you swim on If we didn't have this instinct to risk our hides, we'd never get anywhere. And besides, I'd been buttoned up too long.

I told her all about the George plan, the thing with the Cubans. Of course, at this time I didn't know about Raul and Castro or any ofthat, be-cause that came later.

When I was finished, Charlene just sat there the longest time. Just sat with her fingers on the stem of her wine glass, kind of twirling the wine glass around.

Then she laughed.

Damn. I was expecting anything except that.

Maybe it was because I was wearing her pink fluffy robe, but I could see the humor in it while she kept laughing and tears started in her gray eyes.

I cracked a smile and then let out a couple of chuckles and then it was all I could do not to laugh too, so I did.

When we finished our giggles, we looked at each other and she grabbed my hand.

“Poor old Ryan Patrick Shawn. Now you're swimming with the sharks,” she said.

“Well, I been working for old George a while, I think I can handle myself.”

“George Bremenhaven is in deep trouble,” she said.

“Well, more power to him. I hope the ship goes down. All I know is, I got a contract.”

“That's why you got a contract, then,” she said, talking to herself. “He gives away his best players and the other owners scarf them up at a discount and that's why they give the go-ahead for George to follow through on his crazy scheme. It makes sense. They benefit and they figure George ends up holding the bag for them.”

“I don't get that at all,” I said, resenting not getting what she was saying.

“He undermines the salary structure, league arbitration, everything. He tilts the game by freeing up his old cast of characters, ‘cept for you of course.”

“Well, it's a secret.”

“And you weren't supposed to tell me what you told me.”

“Well, I trust you. I waited this long ‘cause I didn't want any trouble for you.”

“And this fellow, Deke Williams in Chicago?”

“Deke ain't gonna say nothin' to no one. He taught me all I know.”

“He taught you about that? The thing in the bedroom?”

“No, I learned that on my own.”

“Your mouth is so sweet. I think you get turned on wearing my bathrobe.”

“I do when you're wearing my shirt.”

She stared at me, sort of smiling but not smiling at the same time.

“You don't suppose there's something wrong with us?”

“There's always something wrong with everyone, that's normal. What ain't normal are the people pointing out there's something wrong with you.”

We were quiet then for a while, pondering old Ryan's philosophical point. I often think I should have been a philosopher, if you could find anyone who would pay me for it. Took a course or two in philosophy at Arizona State. I liked the existentialists best, because they had the best scam: None of it means nothing except that it just is, so what's the next question?

“George used you as a goat twice,” Charlene said, shaking her head, suddenly turned serious.

“I don't understand that anymore than I understood George when he asked me the first time if I spoke Spanish.”

“First, you're the Judas goat, leading all those little lambs from Cuba into his slaughterhouse. Then, if anything goes wrong, you're the scapegoat. He'll figure out a way to get everyone's hatred directed at you.”

“Why would anyone hate me?”

“Teacher's pet.”

“Ah, I can handle that. I been called worse things in my life.”

“Traitor. To your fellow ball players.”

“I have been thinking on that. But a relief pitcher ain't got a lot of friends to start with, so I can handle it as long as they keep putting TV sets in the hotel rooms on road trips.”

“And the Cubans? They aren't going to trust you, Ryan.”

“I wouldn't, either. But I'm not going to betray them to George, you know. Besides, what are they gonna do? Invade New York? March on the Pentagon? Smuggle in cigars? Canadians do that already.”

“I wonder,” Charlene said. “I've wondered a lot since I got that letter from Miss Roxanne Devon.”

“That was a phony letter, we proved it with the phone company.”

“I know it's a phony now. From what you just told me. You see? This was all George Bremenhaven, sending me that letter. He doesn't want to see you get attached to anyone or anything to queer his deal. And you're attached to me.”

That's when I thought of Jack Wade and the IRS man. So I told Charlene and she just shook her head.

“Poor old Ryan. You're already in the slops up to your knees and you're just beginning to realize it.”

“I realize a lot of things,” I said. That was pure defense and we both knew it. Charlene said nothing, waiting for me to collect myself. Realize a lot of things? I didn't. Not a damned thing until thee. “I got a mind to fly to New York and bust George in the face.”

She stared at me. The eyes were cool, the way they'd look at someone ordering a Big Mac,

“Do it, then,” she said quietly.

“I just might.”

“You won't.”

“Why won't I? I just might”

“Ryan. You're gonna do what George wants you to do.”

It was hopelessly true and Charlene was too smart not to see it.

“Charlene. He owns the team. They're all that way, the owners. And we're the same way. This ain't sandlot, we're playing for big bucks. We all talk about respect, but what we're talking when we say it is about getting a sweeter contract than some other mope on the team. We got a union, but it basically is every man for himself. The best thing the union ever had going for it was the collective dumbness of the owners, Take arbitration, that's a hoot in itself. Owners fucked themselves up good on that one. So George is dumb and selñsh. For $625,000, I'll be dumb and selflsh one more year.”

“Then what? You'll never get a job in baseball again.”

I hadn't thought ofthat at all. It showed I was right about the dumb part. But Charlene was dead on — if things turned out sour, I'd be the goat and I couldn't get a job scouting class A ball.

Well, who said I would have anyway?

That question comes from the Resentful Ryan when he gets up against it. It's a cousin to Self-Pitying Ryan. What did I need baseball for?

Which got back to why I signed for another year under George's terms. I could say it was the money, and it was, but it was something else. I can't explain the Bigs from the inside out because it is a parade like no other parade you ever seen, and you're in the center of it. You go into Yankee Stadium and, man oh man, there are 60,000 people who actually paid to come out and see you, who sit there eating hot dogs to watch you scratch your nuts or spit or warm up in the bull pen. Not that I think I'm the center of attention; I'm just part of the center of the parade. Sometimes, after a game, you can't get down at all. You drink beer and just sit there in your sweaty old suit and just think about it, about winning or losing, about the high of it or the low of it, depending. It is an addiction that you know is going to be cured when you're too old to play, and then you hope to carry it on by doing something else in the game. That's why you see those old farts coming around the clubhouse before a game with their golf shirts on and their Florida tans and gray hair and crinkled eyes; they just want to be part of it again for a moment, like smoking a joint again when you used to smoke one every day.

“Shit, I wasn't coaching material anyway. I'll go out like Catfish, open me a restaurant, learn the trade.”

“Catfish?”

“Deke Williams,” I explained. Then I explained Catfish to her and that made her smile a little, even though her eyes were sad.

“I bet he doesn't serve healthy food,” she said.

“Not a lick of it, except for greens. Although I thought catfish was supposed to be good for you.”

“Not fried catfish.”

“Hmmph,” I said.

“Not ribs.”

“Well, it tastes good. I ate a salad at Ernie's Cafe yesterday with the traditional Thanksgiving dinner of sliced turkey in gravy with mashed potatoes and string beans.”

“Poor baby. I should have brought you home to Mama, but I wasn't sure about you, even yesterday. I was just missing you so much that I said, ‘Chariene, go ahead, make a fool of yourself for this man.'“

“Because you still believed that phony letter.”

“And because you were acting goofy. I mean, you didn't want to talk about Jack Wade and not taking the job selling cars and, I don't know, you were just moping like a milk cow after milking's done.”

“Charlene, I was the way you say I was back then because I didn't want to get you involved in the mess I been making for myself.”

“I believe you.”

It was like she had said she loved me. Exactly like that. Later, when we were finally getting to sleep after another round in bed, I thought that I had got that part of it right anyway.

You can imagine how discombobulated Raul was that winter, playing ball and thinking of going to New York City. He got an old guide-book to New York in the central library in Havana and he went over it with a fine-tooth comb. The book was about thirty-five years out of date and didn't bear a lot of resemblance to New York as she is now — I mean, there was something about the “wonderful, safe, efficient” subway system, which was a hoot by itself — and about the Empire State being the tallest building in the world and about the football Giants playing in the Polo Grounds. Man.

But it was all that Raul had to go on. You see, he hadn't ever set foot off Cuba except for those inter-American games in Costa Rica, and he was homesick for it without even leaving it.

One of the things that was impressed upon him by old Fidel was he could say nothing — nothing —- to anyone about this before it happened and was announced by the Supreme Leader.

So he couldn't tell Maria.

Maria Elena Velasquez was a daughter of the middle class in Cuba, which is supposed to be about having no classes in their society. She had a good education and, despite everything, she had fallen in love with a ball player like Raul. Her father was a doctor and her mother was a university teacher, and though her father liked baseball, he didn't like it that much.

Raul, I have to explain, is a sweet and shy boy who is very polite. He's light in the body and his skin is sort of translucent brown, if you can follow that. He has stunning olive-drab eyes and a power swing that is surprising coming out ofthat light body. He put on a few pounds in New York eating unhealthy food, but he was never going to be a Babe Ruth or Frank Thomas in bulk.

The polite part of him got him inside the Velasquez household, finally. He was deferential to both the Señor and the Señora, and they could not deny his charm. Or his obvious love for Maria. They just wanted to make sure that the love was held this side of respect until something legal came along. I don't blame them. I'd feel the same way if I had a daughter. I know it's a double standard in light of my relationship with Charlene — what would her mama say? — but that's the way the world works, on double standards. It's the only thing we can rely on.

The secret Raul carried around with him that winter affected his play, and he was only hitting .387 by the end of the season. Everyone noticed it, including El Supremo, but he let it pass because the big announcement was due any day now. The winter meetings of the major leagues were being held in Los Angeles and it was there that George Bremenhaven sort of stunned the sporting world. But more about this part later.