“I hope so, peanut. You didn’t sleep in your own bed for weeks.”
“Yeah.” My tone was rueful. I couldn’t help myself. All the hours I’d spent wrapped in his sheets, laughing and crying his name, flashed in my mind like a high-speed slideshow. “Anyway. I have today to wallow in grief, then I have to get back to work. Should I make the jambalaya?”
“If you cut the carrots.”
“Deal. What do you want for your birthday dinner?”
“It’s six weeks away.”
“It’s something to look forward to.”
Francine and I were going out later to get his decorations and order his cake. Though Dash had licked envelopes on invitations, my time with him had kept me from doing anything else to get ready for the most epic surprise party in generations.
“Can you get the potato pancakes from Merv’s?” Dad asked.
“What’s wrong with the ones I make from scratch?”
“Eh, they’re a pain in the ass. Just get from Merv’s, and then you get the sour cream right there. It’s easy. And the soup. You can get the soup. You’re done.”
It was clear he really wanted the matzo soup, which I’d never gotten right. The balls always fell into a goopy paste. Well, he was going to have it. After the party store, Francine and I stopped on Fairfax Ave and ordered the full-on Jewish deli New York spread.
Maybe I couldn’t make Dash happy, but I sure as hell could make my dad happy.
thirty-two
Dash
Hey, bat boy
Janice texted a few hours after I got in. I was barely at the hotel when she tapped me. She understood me. She followed all the rules. She knew what happened when the rules were broken.
But the next line. The one I had to text…
Hello, ball girl
And that was it. There would be no more communication until the next day. First day of spring training. I went to the practice field with Youder and a couple of the guys. It was a full-size field with bleachers and dugouts that hadn’t been dug. The locker room smelled of feet and asshole, and we snapped towels and joked around.
I didn’t think about Vivian.
There’s only one ball girl.
Not once.
That was over.
Vivian. She was the ball girl. A real one.
I was back to normal. So there was no reason to think of her or regret my decision.
At all.
This is going to be weird.
Right?
Day one was the usual clown show. Pitchers and catchers had been there a week and were a little better organized, but the rest of us were just a bunch of fat assholes who had forgotten how to think. We played like Little League for the morning, and in the afternoon, we signed balls for fans at the bottom of the bleachers. A few dozen diehards and locals, and at the end of the line, a pretty woman with dark hair and brown eyes.
I took her ball. “Hi, ball girl.”
Yeah. That’s not going to work anymore.
What was I supposed to replace it with? And could I replace it?
“Hey, number nineteen. I got us at the Westin.”
I signed the ball. It was the right hotel. Was the hotel or the girl the thing that kept me out of the slumps? Maybe. I hoped so. “Our room?”
She winked. “Yep.”
I handed her the ball, signed. She beamed every time. I liked that.
“See you at seven. Be ready.”
Her eyes twinkled. Ready meant one thing. Naked. One time she’d been clothed, and that had been my worst opening. It had taken a month to fix it. Not until I fucked Rose in New York did I start playing like I should have.
“You coming to dinner tonight, Wallace?” asked Randy. He was already after-shaved and clean-pressed.
I was still in a towel. I felt slow. “Nah, got someplace to be.”
“That girl?” He raised an eyebrow. “The one you brought to Westlake’s place?”
The locker room was loud and boisterous. I barely heard him.
“Nope,” I said.
“She was fuckhot.”
“Shut up, Randy.”
“She going to be your Los Angeles fuck or what?”
“Stop talking.”
“Because if not, I love to tap fans. They’re—”
I wasn’t as slow as I’d thought. Not with my hand completely bypassing my brain and grabbing his throat or my arm getting in on the action and slamming him against the lockers.
“Fuck—?” he choked out. He grabbed my arm, clutching, fingernails digging.
I didn’t even feel it. “I said to stop talking.”
A little gack escaped him, and he swung at me. The upbeat noise of the locker room was shut off as if it had a switch. I wanted to choke the fucking life out of him, and I squeezed.
I didn’t squeeze. My hand had a life of its own. Dashiell Wallace didn’t choke people.
I’d warned him.
Little fuck.
“Dash!”
A voice behind me. An older, wiser voice. Youder.
“Let go before I clock you.”
I glanced at him. He had a bat over his shoulder. The entire team stood behind him.
What the hell was I doing?
I let the little fuck drop. He pushed me. Ran at me. Forty guys rushed in to keep us apart.