“Upstate New York. You were drafted out of high school but made a deal so you could play minor league ball when school wasn’t in session, and you played for Cornell the rest of the year.”
“All they wanted was for me to stay sharp until they could call me up. My parents didn’t think I was really going to play major league ball, so I went to school to make them happy. None of this is relevant.”
“Really?”
What was relevant to him? I had the feeling it wasn’t numbers or stats. Maybe it was the way he caught a ball off-balance and spun on his left toe while he threw to second behind his back, cutting three milliseconds off his time, to make the out? Or the way he wore down a pitcher with foul balls, risking the at bat in favor of a longer ball later?
“Why don’t you give TV interviews?” I asked.
From his expression, my question was relevant but not what he’d expected. “It’s a distraction. Anything I have to say, I say on the field.”
A closed-door answer. Dad the lawyer had named all of my teen argument techniques, and this was a non-sequitur meant to cut off further discussion on the topic.
“My turn.” He leaned on the wall. “Where does a librarian get a dress like that?”
“That’s a long story.”
He shrugged. “I don’t need to be anywhere. Do you want to sit?”
“Yeah, actually.”
He pulled a chair out for me, and he sat on the opposite side of the round cocktail table, elbows on the marble, waiting for me.
“It’s my mother’s dress. She was a very glamorous woman.”
“Was?”
“She was hit by a drunk driver on Wilshire and Rodeo. I was eight. My stepdad raised me. He kept her house, her clothes, all the things she loved.”
“Her daughter too.”
I pulled the lapels of his jacket close around me. It smelled like him even in the cold outdoor air. Dusty and masculine. Grass and sky and everything in between.
“The glove,” he said, picking at the leaves that had dropped off the centerpiece and gathering them into a neat little pile. “I know it’s trouble to find it, so I want to explain. It’s not the glove. I can buy another glove. I even have time to wear it in. I have ten spares. But I had a sister. Her name was Daria, and she died, God, seven years ago now.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. It was undiagnosed leukemia. Which is crazy. But there it is. That’s not even the point. The point is when I went to college, we traded pins. The kind with the snap in the back. I gave her one of my Eagle Scout fleur-de-lis. To annoy me, because she thought I should have just skipped college and gotten drafted, she gave me a princess pin she got at Disney. I wore it inside my glove.”
“It was inside the glove that was taken?”
“Yes.”
The missing glove had gone from inconvenience to serious business. Just about every step of the way, I’d failed. I’d been unable to prevent the theft and assumed the worst of the victim when it came to light. I was guilty on both counts.
“I feel terrible,” I said. Three words to describe a much more complex web of self-reproach.
“I wasn’t trying to ruin your evening. But not telling you why I wanted it back didn’t seem right either.”
“I want to run back to work and start making phone calls.”
He took my hand again, and again, I was swathed in shock.
“Thank you for taking it seriously,” he said.
“I’m all about serious. I’m wearing my dead mother’s shoes.”
“The shoes too?”
“I have enough to get me through middle age as long as I don’t gain a hundred pounds.”
He laughed. He was going to say something. It was going to be terribly witty, then I was going to stutter nervously and his seduction would be complete. He would win in thirty minutes or less.
But he never said anything because a man in an Armani suit approached with a boob job on his arm. I shot up, nearly toppling the chair.
“Vivian?” Carl said. “Hi! Wow! I can’t believe it. You look va-va-voom!”
He reached for me with his hands splayed and his arms bent, the Angeleno sign for “I’m hugging you now,” except low, as if he was going to grab my tits.
Dashiell Wallace of the lightning reflexes and recently discovered jealous streak stood, grabbed Carl’s shoulder, and yanked him back, sending my ex-boyfriend off-balance and forcing Boobjob’s mouth into a lipstick-and-collagen grimace.
“It’s okay!” I said. “He’s a friend.”
Dash was being an ape, but he wasn’t a stupid ape. He let Carl go with a push, letting me know with the tilt of his head that he felt justified.
Carl straightened himself. “Sorry.” He glanced at me then Dash.
“You caught me by surprise,” Dash said, slapping him hard on the back with a big smile.
“Cool, cool, it’s cool. Hey, yeah, Viv and I know each other from a long time ago.” He turned to me. “This is Cherry.” He indicated his date.
“Nice to meet you. Dash, this is Carl. Old friend.”