playing catch with that stone wall
begins over in this direction
The season was almost over. A lousy team was going to win the National League West but it wasn't going to be the Giants. The Angels were just a few of their wins or Oakland's losses away from clinching that side of the slate, and Lowry figured he probably hadn't factored in Zito's state of mind after six straight seasons in contention, six straight seasons going home early. The A's weren't out of it just yet, but Zito'd already spent most of his baseball miracles. He was getting cagier as his pitching skills deteriorated, and he must have seen it coming, grabbing hold of Noah like the last rung on a broken ladder.
It didn't really matter why, Lowry decided as the plane landed at Reagan International, the Mall white-lit and the Capitol Dome glowing in the distance. Zito had a bunch of mental problems and one of them was evidently falling in love with the least suitable person he could find, with which Lowry could kinda sympathize, but it wasn't important, the important thing was that they hardly ever saw each other and the off-season was no kind of promise. The cracks in Zito were starting to show. Lowry didn't even want to think about his own self, the blown windows other people must have seen when they looked at him.
They got to the hotel and all the guys were pretty ramped up because none of them had ever come to this city to play baseball before, everything seeming shiny and new. Lowry wasn't in the mood, it was just another stupid hotel, another stupid East Coast city with awful soup-like weather even after the sun went down. Half the team headed out to the bars seeking cures for jetlag, but Lowry stayed behind, preferring the quiet.
He got room service and watched part of an Adam Sandler movie on cable, but sitting around didn't take, his knee jogging spastically under his hand. He went wandering, took his phone and iPod with him, and found a back stairwell to climb without clear purpose, a roof door with a busted lock for him to shoulder open, gravel to crunch under his sneakers. The thick air stuck in his chest, smothered him for a second before he remembered how to breathe it.
It was nice out, clear-skied and a few scattered lit windows in the office buildings, street traffic shushing below. There were no skyscrapers, no buildings taller than about ten stories, and Lowry puzzled over that for awhile.
It was eight o'clock in California and the A's had already lost their game, so Noah called Danny. It rang almost through to voicemail and then he picked up, half-shouting "Noah!" like he always did when Lowry called him. Lowry hid his grin behind his phone.
"Hey man, I'm in D.C. Do you know why the buildings are so short here?"
Haren made a faint humming sound. "We were there in June, but that was my first time. I didn't even notice, just seemed to fit."
"Not so helpful, then."
"You check out the stadium yet?"
"It's a forty-year-old multipurpose, seen one you seen 'em all."
"Hey," Haren said with a joking edge of sharpness. "I play in one of those, watch your mouth."
"You only like it for the foul ground."
"'s true."
They were quiet for a second, and Lowry picked up bits of gravel to chuck into the alley. He could hear the television going behind Haren's voice, wondered if he was at his place or one of his teammates'.
"So how's it going?" Lowry asked, odd tugging feeling in his stomach because he felt like he shouldn't have to ask Haren that.
"Oh, you know." Haren exhaled against the receiver. "Arm's about to fall off. Gonna take some kinda divine intervention for us to pull it out and then what's the reward, get to pitch for another month. It might kill me, honestly."
But he sounded vaguely joyful, and Lowry knew not to take his words at face value. If the A's made the playoffs, Danny Haren would want the ball every single game.
"Whiner," Lowry said off-hand. He had his head tipped back, eyes on the stars. "How're the boys?"
"Fine, fine. All these fucking bush leaguers around now. There's never anywhere to sit in the dugout."
"Yeah, things are tough all over." Lowry wasn't really fully engaged, and Haren could probably tell, his voice drawing shrewd.
"You call for any special reason?"
"Oh. Just checking in." Lowry kicked the low wall running along the edge of the roof, feeling lame and stunted. "And. Wanted to run something by you, I guess."
"'kay. That's usually a bad sign, but okay."
Lowry smiled, braced in anticipation of the wave of frustrated longing that Danny's tiredly affectionate tone always inspired, but then it didn't happen. He just felt very fond of Danny, and it didn't hurt at all.
He swallowed, shook his head. He couldn't be getting distracted now.
"I, well, here's a hypothetical situation. Say there's a guy on one team who maybe likes a guy on another team. I mean, likes, you know. Um. These people aren't you and me, by the way."
Haren snorted softly. "You and me is half-right, though, isn't it."
Best to ignore that. "And say the guy being liked is not entirely opposed to being liked, okay. But he's concerned because, you know, baseball. They're always hundreds of miles apart. And, oh, the first guy, he's maybe sort of crazy and co-dependent. But he makes it kinda cute."
Lowry bit his tongue, cutting himself off. He'd let that go on a little long. He listened to Haren breathing, processing, and stared at the ivory shard of the Washington Monument spiking between the buildings.
"Well," Haren said after a moment. "Is the crazy guy's team going to the playoffs?"
Lowry shut his eyes, said truthfully, "No."
"So then you got the winter, starting ten days from now. You can try it out for real, see if it sticks. I mean, hypothetically you, of course."
"Hypothetically, I've thought of that. It wouldn't solve anything, because either it does stick and then he's even worse come next season, or it doesn't stick and. That would suck too."
There was something in Lowry's throat that he couldn't quite swallow past, his eyes kinda fuzzy and hot. He thought for a second that after a whole winter with Zito, neither of them would be in any shape to face the summer alone.
Haren was quiet for a second, then said with a weird unplaceable note in his voice, "You don't have a crush on me anymore, do you."
"It wasn't a crush," Lowry said too fast, catching his mistake as soon as Danny did.
"Wasn't," Haren echoed.
Lowry's mouth opened and closed a couple times, but what was he supposed to say? He examined the tight feeling in his heart, searching for that old well-loved gash and finding something pale and smooth like scar tissue instead. The world jolted under his feet, the stars jerking hard to the side, and Lowry had the most disorienting sensation careening through his mind, as if he'd woken up able to remember everything but his own name.
"You should be happy," he said, lower and rougher than he intended. Haren made a scoffing sound.
"I never minded, Noah."
Hand on his face, Lowry dug his fingers into his eye, having trouble keeping up with all the stuff between the stuff they were saying out loud.
"Could you just tell me what to do, please."
"I already did, you shot me down. You want a list of stupid shit you could try?"
"Hey-"
"Who is it, man?"
Lowry pulled up short. "I, what? I'm not gonna tell you. I don't know who he wants told."
"Fuck that, you know I'm not gonna say anything to anybody. Best friend privilege, goddamn it." Haren paused. "Except that you really like him. And you'd feel bad about it because you're a girl. Jesus Christ."
"Okay, you know what, thanks for your help," Lowry said, wanting out of this conversation. "Think I got it from here."
"Wait, come on."
Lowry almost, almost hung up on him, but it was Danny and it was like he was physically incapable. "What."
Haren sighed. "You give the game eight months out of every year. It's what you signed on for, you both knew going in. You deal with the schedule or you wait until retirement for the other part of your life to begin. Or you just sleep around a lot, but I wouldn't recommend that. Now you, you're a romantic. You'll do whatever it takes, and when that doesn't work, you'll wait. Crazy boy, all we know about him is that he's crazy. Which means he probably can't do either."
An air-filled laugh caught up in Lowry's throat. "You get less helpful the more you talk."
"Little out of my element here, I can admit it. I don't know what the fuck you want me to say."
Eyes shut, Lowry half-smiled. "It's okay, Danny. I wasn't really expecting any kind of easy answer."
Haren made a chuffing noise, exasperated. "You didn't really want one."
"No," Lowry agreed. "But thanks for trying, anyway."
Danny mumbled something that Noah didn't make out, and he could hear him taking a drink of something. He closed his eyes, felt a muted painless pull that threw him off for a second before he defined it, just wishing Danny were here in a normal best-friend kinda way.
He went back downstairs after saying goodnight to Haren, and paced the long hallways for awhile debating whether or not he should call Zito too. It felt like he'd arrived at some kind of conclusion but he knew that wasn't true. Zito wouldn't be able to help in any way, he only ever confused things.
The Giants played out the string, losing five in a row before winning the last of the year on a Brett Tomko complete game that came out of absolutely nowhere, making everyone feel cheated in a vague way. They packed up their lockers and said their goodbyes and J.T. Snow was trying to pretend he wasn't crying, nine long years in San Francisco and not coming back. Lowry was depressed and there wasn't enough room in his bag for all the crap in his locker. His bobbleheads clinked together and he knew they'd shatter without insulation but he couldn't summon up the energy to care.
He got in his car in the underground parking garage, and just sat there for a minute, listening to the muffled sounds of his teammates calling to each other, waving out their SUV windows. Lowry rubbed his forehead, feeling kinda sick. He wasn't sure what to do with himself now, where he was supposed to go.
As it so often did these days, his unguided mind strayed back to Zito, wondering if the A's were still tied up in Seattle like they'd been on the out-of-town scoreboard. He pulled out of the parking garage so he could turn on the radio, just in time to hear Oakland wrap up a five-run rally in the eighth inning, and Lowry was smiling even though it kinda hurt, and he didn't want to think about why.
His apartment was dark and musty; three days home from the road and he still hadn't managed to open the curtains. It had matched his mood, obscure and stifling as he tried to figure out this thing with Zito, but now Lowry was itchy, his throat nervously tight. He tried to watch TV, tried screwing around on his computer, but nothing eased him, so he climbed out onto the fire escape, sunlight and wind pounding into him. He gasped, sucked in a deep breath, unused to the force. He squinted around, tears drawn to his eyes, checked to make sure no one was looking before he hiked himself up onto Danny's fire escape and jimmied the window open with his keys.
Lowry got a beer out of Haren's refrigerator, studying the junk magneted to the front. He wasn't sure why he'd broken in, pinned it on being sick of his own apartment and appreciating the Bizarro World nature of Haren's place, exact same layout but nothing was where it was supposed to be.
There was a messy pile of mail and other detritus on the kitchen table, Lowry's eyes catching the distinctive red-yellow of a photo pack from Walgreens. He glanced at the top sheet briefly to make sure they weren't naked photos of Danny's girlfriend or anything of the sort, and then dug in, guilt-free because if you couldn't invade your best friend's privacy, whose could you?
They were just a bunch of regular photos, anyway, nothing that Haren would care about Lowry seeing. Mugging with his cousins, rolling around in the grass with a pair of dogs Lowry didn't recognize, shots from the stands at a football game, a run of touristy pictures from New York City. Lowry settled in, smiling slightly, this new infection of nerves calmed out of him for a moment.
Just a moment, though, because the universe couldn't let things stay easy for longer than that, and Lowry flipped to a batch that was all Danny's teammates.
He flinched, open-faced lockers and guys half-dressed in their uniforms slouching around the clubhouse, Lowry stung suddenly with the tangible awareness that right now, two hours after the end of his last game of the season, this was as far away as he ever got from baseball. Four and a half months from Valentine's Day, half a year from throwing the next pitch that would actually matter, and he missed it so much that he thought he'd die, but then the urgency of the feeling ebbed and it became close to tolerable again.
Lowry leaned hard on his elbow on the table, hand jammed into his hair. Here was a picture of Eric Chavez and Mark Ellis building playing card pyramids on the floor, here was an action shot of Nick Swisher jumping on Joe Blanton's back, neon blue Gatorade exploding out of the bottle in Blanton's hand. Here was the Oakland bullpen engaged in some kind of intricate cup-stacking game, and then the aftermath when it came tumbling down, blown away in the wind.
Then there was a picture taken from a skewed side angle, no one in particular the focus, a candid shot of the A's after a game, hanging in small exhausted groups around the couches and chairs with little white plates from the spread in their hands. Lowry's eyes caught on Zito immediately, though he was way over at the edge of the shot and kinda blurry, the only one without anybody around him. Zito was hunched over his cell phone and Lowry knew the look on his face, that dreamily pained look that Zito wore around him so often, and he figured Zito was probably sending him his forty-seventh text message of the day. Zito wasn't smiling at all, his shoulders in a broken slump.
Noah set the photos down. He covered up that last one but it was too late, he was haunted by it already. He drank his beer dry, steady and slow, trying not to think about anything but that didn't really work either.
Zito wasn't okay. Lowry wondered if he'd ever been, thinking of how Zito's career had started, all meteoric and legendary, ludicrously good with nothing rational behind it, just faith and deception and a swan-diving curveball, and then he'd won the Cy Young and it had all started to fall apart. Lowry couldn't figure out if it was because Zito was fucked up that he'd lost his touch, or if he'd lost his touch and then became fucked up. The chronology wasn't important; either way, Zito had been like this for years.
So Zito wasn't okay and his thing for Noah was just more evidence of self-destructive tendencies, and Noah knew that, he could see it clear as the photograph. Fell in love with a National Leaguer, might as well be gone on a ghost.
Lowry's head spun, the beer hitting him, and he crumpled, resting his forehead on the table, cool slick wood and pain beating in his temples. Hollow feeling in his chest, this bizarre certainty that he was going to cry without even knowing why.
After awhile he picked himself up, put his empty bottle in the recycling bin under the sink and went back down the fire escape, shirt blown tight and thin as tissue paper against his body. Lowry ran on autopilot, getting his coat and keys and wallet, pulling a non-affiliated cap down low over his eyes. He went down and got in his car, found a radio station playing AC/DC and turned it up so loud his windows rattled. He drove over to Zito's apartment building wholly by muscle memory, having no memory of doing it once he'd arrived.
The sun was just beginning its nightly fall into the ocean. Lowry sat on the curb, rolling a baseball between his hands and watching the gold light sink down the sides of the buildings. He computed how long it'd take the A's to get out of Safeco, the commute to the airport and the length of the flight, numbers crowding into his mind and Lowry welcomed it, appreciating the immutability.
Zito showed up a couple hours later. Lowry had crossed to the bodega to get an apple and he was mostly done with it, gnawing at shreds, when a cab pulled up and Zito unfolded himself from within. Lowry's eyes went big and he was glad they were hidden by his cap brim. Zito looked like he hadn't slept in a week, hair messily unwashed and dull purplish bags under his eyes, his left arm held at an awkward dislocated angle.
Zito dropped his duffel and stood over him, took the apple core out of Noah's hand and winged it directly into the sewer across the street, and Noah was amazed and kinda heartbroken at the same time; when it didn't count Zito could still be exceptional.
He followed Zito upstairs without speaking. He kept staring at Zito, trying to find a way to say it that Zito would accept without a fight. Lowry really didn't think he was up for a fight.
Zito was listing, almost knocking into things and not realizing it, so Lowry put an arm around his shoulders and led him, stripped Zito's shirt off him once they were upstairs, sliding his hands up and across his ribs. Everything was tidied up, and Zito's bed was made because he had a cleaning lady come in when he was out of town, and Noah laid him down carefully on the smooth bedcover, struggling against a terrible sense of foreboding.
"I don't think this is doing either of us any good," he told Zito, and Zito nodded but that was because he didn't think Lowry was serious, and Lowry brushed the hair out of his eyes, wondered if he could smile and he pretty much could, just shaping his mouth.
"I was in love with Danny for a very long time," Noah continued, rough. "And I'm not anymore, and that's okay, but it's not really reason enough to keep barely seeing you."
It was nothing about Zito, he wanted to make that clear, but Zito broke in before he could, saying haltingly, "But the off-season," and then stopping dead.
Lowry smiled at him a little bit more for real this time, pushed his fingers over Zito's collarbones and up his neck, into his hair. Zito thought he'd be traded; everyone thought Zito would be traded. It seemed unthinkable that after everyone Billy Beane had dealt away, he would let Barry Zito stay all the way through to free agency.
He shook his head, got up to get undressed, eyes on Zito the whole time, wishing he were just a little bit less screwed up, wishing he could explain it right. They would have been good for each other. He would never in his life regret it. There were whole great swaths of Lowry that were crazy in love with Zito, and it was the nature of their business to starve that kind of halfway thing, wither it away to less than nothing. There had to be some way to get that across, but Lowry had never really been all that good with words.
"It's no one's fault," he said in a low tone that sounded wrecked to his own ears, and laid himself down on top of Zito's body, catching his mouth so he wouldn't have to hear his answer. It would only hurt them both, Lowry knew. He had to do this.
Zito groaned into the kiss, one arm around Lowry's neck, and his eyes were squeezed shut so tight it looked painful. Lowry kissed him again and again, hardly pausing for breath. He wanted to say that he was sorry but he couldn't, he'd fucking break down or something.
So he slept with Zito for the last time and wondered in some bleak part of his mind how many more people he was gonna fall for in his life, and would he ever be allowed to keep any of them?
It was really good sex, that time. Lowry wasn't sure why he'd been expecting different, maybe just that it was odd for his physical state to run so counter to his mental and emotional ones. But it felt like one of them was going off to war or something, some world-rending twist of fate that couldn't be helped. They clung to each other, rolled across the bed knotted together. Lowry said his name so many times his mouth went numb.
Afterwards, Zito's eyes were closed and his breath whistled between his teeth, his chest moving in hitches. Lowry sprawled along his side, chin on Zito's shoulder. He looked at him in the murky streetlight bleeding through the window, thinking that he wanted to remember him just exactly like this.
"Hey," Lowry said, and Zito's eyelids twitched, didn't open. Lowry smoothed his palm over Zito's hip. "I'm going to leave while you're still asleep."
Zito was still for a moment and then he gave the smallest nod, his lips pressing thin. Lowry petted his hip a few more times, liking the slope of it, the solid line of muscle.
"If I stay the night I don't think I'd leave in the morning," Lowry admitted. "And. It's not that I don't want to, Barry. You got that, right?"
A shrug to match the tiny nod that preceded it, Zito's shoulders flinching up. He didn't believe Lowry and Lowry could hardly blame him; he'd spent their relationship avoiding Zito's direct questions and playing at mysterious just for the hell of it.
Lowry pushed his face into Zito's throat, letting his eyes shut and breathing him in. "It's killing you, dude. I can't."
And Zito's chest jumped under Lowry's arm, a wretched moan mostly cut-off and then Zito saying with his voice like broken ice, "Lemme sleep, Noah, please."
They didn't see each other for a long time after that.
Lowry went home to Ventura trailed by a nagging throb in his forearm and a bad attitude that only festered in the endless sunlight, the nothingness of winter in Southern California. He had cause to drive into L.A. twice a week, the signs for Van Nuys arrayed over the highways as cruel taunts.
He didn't sleep much. He lay in bed with his eyes closed half the night, dazedly replaying scenes from his own life, unable to stop even though he was so tired, his bones feeling whittled and something stinging bright red in the forefront of his mind.
Four months ago he and Zito had traced a crooked corkscrew through the Mission District, the sunlight coated yolk-yellow and the sidewalks packed with people and fruit stands and ice cream carts. The long Saturday before the All-Star Game all soaked with heat and everybody speaking in Spanish and carrying their kids on their shoulders, the drug deals going down with cheerful efficiency, big grins and slick hand-to-hand transfers. Lowry and Zito had just kept walking for hours and hours, five blocks one way and two blocks up and then doubling back, staying on the sunny side of the street, ducking into taquerias for aguas frescas and bakeries for conchas, hot and soft out of the oven with the pink sugar crumbling on their hands. Talking about nothing that Lowry would ever be able to remember, flicking a baseball back and forth idly, laughing so hard he had to hold on to Zito to keep from falling down.
Lowry went around and around in his mind, wishing there had been wet cement for them to press their hands into, something he could visit like a grave.
He kept up with trade rumors as obsessively as if he were the one on the block. Zito was mentioned every other day, tantalizing bits of backroom gossip that had Lowry praying for the National League West; he saw those guys all the time and they were all close enough for day trips. Then he caught himself, clicked fast out of the browser like he could chase all that false hope away. He couldn't be thinking like that; it wasn't an actual solution.
The Giants were never mentioned in the Zito trade talks. This was because all Billy Beane wanted in return was good young pitching and Brian Sabean, though not very smart, was certainly not brain damaged enough to offer up his team's future, having learned his lesson with Joe Nathan and Francisco Liriano. Lowry was mostly relieved; he didn't think he'd be able to handle it if those infuriatingly nebulous rumors had revolved around his ideal scenario.
But he was trying to get his head back together and get over this whole mess, which involved a fair amount of fucking around and the kind of drinking Lowry had never really had time to get to in college. There were a lot of different kinds of Scotch in the world, and a lot of tall guys with soft brown hair too, and Lowry already had extensive experience in the mechanics of substitution.
Zito still hadn't been traded when the Giants signed Lowry to a four-year deal worth better than nine million dollars, which kinda took the wind out of his sails and left him limp with a mild case of shock. All his friends started handling him with awkward care, but he didn't think too much of it because he knew he was acting out of character right now, bruised and defensive, surprised to find himself alone at the beach just in time for sunset.
A couple days before they were due in Phoenix, Lowry and Haren got into the worst fight they'd ever had.
It was unexpected; they'd been less involved in each other's lives since Danny and Jessica had gotten engaged and Lowry had started wanting to beat up every happy couple he saw. Lowry went out to West Covina on Haren's promise of dollar shots and no fiancées, still kinda hungover when he started drinking again. Things were going well, history and chemistry crackling between them and reminding Lowry that there was still good on the earth.
But then late that night they went to a diner to get some food and coffee and sober up enough to drive home, and Haren asked:
"You gonna tell me who that guy was now?"
Lowry recoiled, his reaction overdone because of the drunk, knocking a fork onto the floor. He blinked at Danny a few times, stricken and feeling pale. Danny just nodded, pointed at him with his eyes all gauzy and half-focused.
"See, 'cause obviously it's over, right? So no point keepin' secrets anymore. Not that you ever had a point, not from me." Haren grinned encouragingly. "So who was he?"
Lowry felt his face heat, his hands close into fists under the table. He wasn't going to tell Danny. He didn't want to tell Danny, and it wasn't only because Zito might not appreciate it. This heartbreak was his, belonged to him as sure as the heart itself.
He refused, tight-lipped and flushing, and Haren pestered for a few minutes before getting annoyed and giving up momentarily, glaring balefully at Lowry as they finished their food in a less-than-companionable silence.
Haren brought it up again walking back to the bar where Lowry's car was parked. He played the best friend card and Lowry wished he would stop doing that.
He said, "Drop it, Danny, fucking drop it," over and over with his voice climbing, but Haren had his hooks in it now and he wasn't letting up, demanding, "What's so bad that I can't know it, why the fuck don't you trust me," and Lowry, still drunk despite the flapjacks, shoved Haren so hard he tripped over the curb and fell.
Lowry watched Haren's elbow crack into the pavement in slow-motion horror, saw Haren's mouth warp in sudden pain. Grotesque images of shattered bones piercing skin filled his mind, and there would be surgeries and months of rehab and then Haren would still not be able to pitch and it would all be Lowry's fault. He saw it all in about a second and a half, a ghastly plausible version of the future.
Haren curled up around his arm and snarled when Lowry came to him stumbling and apologetic, "Get the fuck away," and Lowry jerked backwards, almost falling himself.
He watched helpless as Haren screwed his eyes shut and fought back the most immediate agony. He probably wasn't permanently disabled, but it did sound like he was starting to hate Noah, which might have been fair.
"You shoulda just told me, you didn't have to-" and Haren bit his teeth together, wrenched his head. There were lines of pain sketched all over his face. "I got a right to know, 'cause it means something, you, you do. You always have and you never see it."
Lowry shook his head, no idea what the fuck Haren was talking about and nausea crawling in his stomach, the sidewalk slewing under his feet. He never should have come out here tonight.
"I can't, Danny, you gotta let it go," Lowry begged. "It was like being fuckin' ripped open, and I, I just can't."
Haren clambered to his feet, clutching his arm to his chest and sneering at Lowry, not caring what it did to him. "I know what he's done to you, Noah, do you think I'm fucking blind? That's why I want to know his motherfucking name."
Lowry shook his head again, kept jerking it side to side and backing up unsure and staggering. His hands were held up, beseeching.
"Can't, I'm sorry," he barely managed, and then he turned away, half-sprinted back to the bar and his car and tried not to feel like the worst person in the world as he ditched Danny, just ran the fuck away.
Getting back to baseball was a cold relief. Somewhere to go every day, and if he ran the track long enough, if he took cuts in the cage until his sides ached and his arms were three times heavier than normal, if he pitched and pitched and pitched, he'd be worn out enough to sleep the night through, and if that didn't work, he only had to ask the team doctor for sleeping pills. Lowry liked the deadened Halcion sleep, visionless and thick. He was sick of the vibrant colors of July following him into February dreams.
Lowry didn't call Haren and Haren didn't call him. Sometimes he got empty voicemails from blocked numbers, and he suspected Zito, a certain tautness in his chest giving it away. Lowry didn't even erase them, sliding closer to pathetic with every passing day.
Spring training ended and they went back to San Francisco. Lowry started the home opener, third game of the year, and he got two outs in the second before feeling something tear viciously in his side, muscle rent from bone. He cried out, sent a pitch sailing into the net.
He couldn't even stand up straight when the trainers came out, hunched over sideways, mouth pulled in a grimace. He knew before they took him to the medical center that he would hit the DL for the first time in his career, just five outs into the season. It seemed only natural; everything else was falling apart too.
But then six hours after the news of Lowry's injury broke online, Haren showed up at his door with two sixers and a guardedly regretful mien.
Lowry stood in the doorway blinking dumbly for a long moment, until Haren rolled his eyes and shoved past him. Lowry followed him into the kitchen where Haren was unloading the beers into the refrigerator and casing Noah's food. He glanced back at Lowry, hesitated for a second.
"Sorry about that shit earlier. Beer?" Haren offered one at the end of his arm, dim cautious look on his face. Lowry took it, baffled.
"Um. Aren't you supposed to be in Seattle?"
Haren shook his head, leaned back against the counter. "Not pitching till Minnesota, so they said I could take a couple days, go visit my sick uncle."
Lowry blinked dumbly some more, eyebrows climbing high. Haren smirked at him.
"So how ya feelin', unc?"
"Fine," Lowry answered on autopilot, never mind that he couldn't bend or stretch or reach or generally move without pain. He drank some of his beer, trying to adjust himself to Danny's sudden reoccurrence, thinking that he must be missing something. "What shit were you apologizing for?"
Haren shrugged, eyebrows lowered. "Shouldn't've pushed you about that guy. You shouldn't've pushed me, either, in a much more literal way, but yeah. Your business is your business."
Lowry nodded, but he felt slow and scared, curling his hands around the beer. He couldn't meet Haren's eyes and he fumed at himself, cowardly little bitch.
"Thanks, I, uh. Thanks," Lowry said. "And, you know, I'm sorry too."
Nodding like all was right with the world again, Haren took a long drink from his beer, and then launched into a monologue about the goddamn New York Yankees and their goddamn pinstripes. Lowry moved gingerly to sit at the table, nodding along and pitching in hmms and oh yeahs when it seemed appropriate. He experienced an almost overwhelming urge to blurt out, Zito, it's Zito, but biting the inside of his lip bloody mostly cured him of that.
They retired to the living room, drank a few beers each. Danny didn't ask him about his injury and for that Noah was deeply thankful. They weren't wholly comfortable with each other again, but they were getting there, and Lowry was confused--everything was supposed to be falling apart.
Then Danny was saying goodnight and stumbling to the door, flapping his hand behind him and showing Noah a series of disjointed grins. Lowry trailed behind, righting Haren when he canted too much one direction or the other.
"Hoo, so I'll see you tomorrow, yeah? Madden, yeah?" Haren asked, and Lowry nodded along. Haren patted the side of Lowry's head, smiled at him foggy and honest. "Gonna be great, you'll see. Gotta buck up. Get over your crazy boy and then you won't look so sad anymore, an' it'll be so great, Noah, fuckin' swear it will."
Noah was shocked silent, and he barely summoned up a bent little smile, got Haren out of his place and threw all three locks, slumping against the door with both hands over his face. Lowry breathed out hot and rushed against the heels of his hands, fingers set against his eyes. He thought he'd been passing, at the very least. He hadn't thought people could see it.
But Danny wasn't people. Lowry needed a better game face, or possibly some different friends. He shook his head hard, dug into his eye sockets until he wanted to scream. He needed to get over his crazy boy, that was all.
Lowry's time on the disabled list passed like a prison stay, deadly bored every day and locked into rigid routines. He gave himself little tasks to do, made his bed each morning and reorganized his DVD collection once a week, walked down to the waterline after day games to watch the sunset bleed fire through the Golden Gate Bridge. When the team was out of town, he only spoke to cashiers and the rare fan who stopped him on the street. After a couple of weeks of this, Lowry worried that he was becoming a sociopath, and rented Brian's Song and Field of Dreams to make sure he could still cry (double check).
He wasn't traveling with the team, seven- and ten-day stretches spent mostly alone and trying to ignore the awareness of the Oakland Athletics at home across the bay, the ring of white stadium lights visible from the bridge and the tops of San Francisco's highest hills, if the night was clear and you knew where to look. The A's game flipped past when Lowry was channel-surfing and he jerked like he'd been burned, every single time.
By the time they started letting him throw again, Lowry had learned how to pitch through all kinds of pain.
The season passed, a distinct feeling of mediocrity in every aspect of it. The Giants hovered within a game or two of .500 for most of the season, dipping below and rising above in steady shallow waves, and then everyone ran out of gas in the dog days of late summer, faltering and wilting in the heat. Lowry's mechanics were all fucked up from being hurt and favoring his bad side unconsciously, and in September his elbow gave out, a gory snapping sound that Lowry could hear, putting him back on the shelf for the rest of the season. He spent the better part of six weeks whacked out on painkillers, resurfaced just in time to see the Oakland Athletics get swept for the pennant.
Lowry hadn't seen much of Danny that year, just an ever-more-infrequent exchange of emails and text messages. He read Haren's blog, and Zito's too, because he was some kind of ridiculous masochist and he hadn't had enough yet. Zito's in particular was almost painstakingly cleaned up for public consumption, but Noah could see the gaps in his stories, the strange unexplained contexts of so many of his interactions. Zito wrote a lot about how he was feeling good on the mound, feeling like he'd really started to sort things out, and Lowry could tell that was a bald-faced lie.
But here the A's were playing in the championship series, and they were showing clips of Zito out-dueling Johan Santana in the first round, and Lowry was star-struck, drunk and dazzled on too much sleep, that cleanly determined look on Zito's pretty face.
That game in Minnesota was maybe Zito's last best moment. The Tigers kicked the shit out of them for the pennant, and now Zito didn't play for Oakland anymore. He'd made it through to free agency against all odds, and so the bidding began.
Lowry couldn't believe the estimates being thrown around for the contract that Zito would sign. Noah was more than a little bit in love with the guy and even he didn't really think Zito was worth a hundred million dollars, or at least, not as a pitcher.
Five times a day, something happened or some thought occurred to Lowry and he'd wish he could tell Zito about it. He wished he could hear from Zito how the negotiations were going, the directions in which he was leaning. Everyone kept talking about the Mets, and that was probably for the best, get him as far away as physically possible and maybe Lowry would be able to recover then.
And then, two days before New Year's, the San Francisco Giants signed Zito for $126 million.
Lowry was sure he was dreaming. The news broke bright-red on the ticker scrolling along at the bottom of ESPN, and Lowry thought he must have seen it wrong. He got his laptop and checked the websites and it wasn't possible, it must have been a dream. It was the biggest contract signed by any pitcher in history. It was the answer to a prayer that Lowry had never even had enough faith to send. It didn't make any sense.
He slapped himself hard across the face. He went and looked in the bathroom mirror at the handprint blooming on his cheek, and something about the soft flush on his face, the hectic gleam in his own eyes, convinced him that it was true.
Lowry scrambled for his phone, muting the television where Zito threw curve after perfect curve. He called Danny Haren, his heart jittering and climbing into his throat.
"Noah!"
"Danny, where are you?" Lowry said fast. "Can you talk?"
Haren's voice dropped and became abruptly serious. "Yeah man, I'm just coming home from the store. Are you okay?"
"No. Or, maybe. I dunno." Lowry scrubbed a hand across his face, took a ragged breath. "It was Zito."
"What?"
"My. The guy. The crazy one. I couldn't tell you because it was Zito."
Haren inhaled sharply. "Barry Zito?" Lowry rolled his eyes, but that was only reflex, and then Haren was saying too loud, "You're the one who fucked him up! Oh my god, I totally should have figured this out."
He was taking it altogether better than Lowry had hoped. It didn't help the wild jumping feeling in his chest, this free-fall.
"I had to, I didn't want to," Lowry tried to explain, the whole argument seeming weak suddenly. "He, it meant too much to him, he was drowning."
"How long has this shit being going on?"
"Um, since June last year. And then I ended it in October but it was too late, he was already too far gone."
"I knew it, I knew something happened over the off-season. He came back so screwed up, never told me anything. I figured it was some guy, never guessed it was some ballplayer."
Lowry winced, not liking how Haren spat it like a curse. "I had to," he repeated feebly.
"Oh yeah?" Haren asked, weird tone in his voice as if his loyalties had suddenly become strained and uncertain. "'cause it sounds like you're still screwed up over him, too, or else why did you call?"
"Danny, Jesus, you haven't heard?" Lowry shut his eyes, still badly thrown. "He just signed with the Giants. Seven years, 126 mil."
Haren choked. "What?"
"Forget the numbers, he signed with my team," Lowry said, franticness fraying the edge of the words. "What the hell am I supposed to do now?"
"Are you joking?" Haren asked, still rife with disbelief.
"No," Lowry responded urgently, needing Haren to understand. This development had completely upended the world. "I'm gonna see him every day."
"Isn't that a good thing? Thought being on different teams was the whole problem."
"I," and Lowry stopped, crashed headlong into a brick wall and bounced back reeling, delirious. A rush of images flooded through him, having breakfast in hotel restaurants with Zito still in his pajamas, dogpiling after a walk-off win with Zito on his back, sleeping slumped against each other in the back row of the team plane, every day, every single day.
He was terrified. Look how much damage they'd done to each other after only four months. They were both crazy now.
"Noah?" Danny said when he'd been quiet too long, and Noah made some tiny huff of acknowledgement. Danny took a moment just breathing, then said, "You gonna go see him?"
Lowry shook his head immediately, biting his lip. "He's gonna have so much going on-"
"He's not gonna care, why the fuck do you think he did it?"
Lowry's heart thudded unevenly, jarred right out of place. "No, it was the money, that, that's fuck-you money for three generations-"
"No, man."
It was very strange; Danny sounded almost sad.
"It was you, Noah. The money, the money's going to destroy him and he knows that. He was so fucking scared all year, none of us knew what to do. No part of him wants this except the part that feels like he's supposed to."
"That doesn't mean it was 'cause of me."
"Kinda does. You should go see him."
"Danny-"
"No, fuck it," Haren said, voice cracking and hoarse but so sure for all of that, plain as the sky. "No more excuses outta you. Hang up the phone and go get your boy."
Lowry closed his eyes. He pressed the phone hard against his face, concentrating on the feel of it, pressure against his cheekbone, denting into his temple. It wasn't reasonable for his luck to turn this quickly, it wasn't like momentum shifting dugouts on a single pitch, and Lowry didn't want to trust the loosening feeling in his chest, the awed hush in his mind.
"Yeah," he said in a whisper, and then again, "Yeah," a louder echo.
He was at least going to try.
It took him the better part of two days to screw his courage to the sticking point and get himself out to the Hollywood address Danny had given him. He couldn't call Zito first, it wasn't the type of thing he could say over the phone, and so he loitered around for most of an afternoon, pacing the sidewalks and leaning on his shoulder on a lamppost. It felt like he'd spent his whole life watching and waiting, bearing witness to the sun setting over the ocean like it meant something, his instincts cued to the future, the moment when Zito would finally appear, and Lowry thought again and again, every day.
It was New Year's Eve and firecrackers rattled and rang from other streets, the dim sound of backyard-barbecue laughter rising over the houses. Lowry remembered when he was a kid and he'd loved New Year's as much as Christmas, the idea that the world was new at midnight and so were you.
Zito came home slump-shouldered, dragging. He looked beaten around the eyes and wary, moving slowly towards Lowry, as if he were maybe an apparition of some kind. Lowry studied him, his throat closing up and something dissolving in his chest. He wasn't just halfway in love with Zito. He wasn't just a bystander to this catastrophe.
"So," Lowry said, and pulled off his cap, showing Zito his face and smiling at him. "You gonna invite me in?"
Zito took the cap out of Noah's hand and smashed it against his hip. He had a hunted look on his face, his throat ducking fast, eyes darting. There was a line pressed into his forehead that Lowry wanted to feel under his fingers. Zito looked miserable, and Lowry was taken aback, a shiver of doubt running through him. He'd gotten it all wrong, him and Danny both; Zito didn't want him here.
But Zito only snapped the cap brim and dropped it on the sidewalk, twisted his key in the lock and held the door open for Lowry. Lowry brushed close by him, felt Zito suck in a fast breath.
They went upstairs without speaking, and Lowry followed Zito into the kitchen, took a seat at the table watching the other man pull down a pair of glasses and a bottle of Scotch. Lowry figured that was probably about right, and accepted the drink Zito made even though it was strong enough to strip paint off the walls. Zito took the seat across from him, gazing down at the glass cradled in his hands. There was a discomfited stain of red on his face, something like shame but that couldn't be right, what did Zito have to be ashamed about?
No good toasts occurred to Lowry, so he sipped his drink unchristened, flicking glances at Zito and giving him a chance to talk first but Zito declined.
"Danny thinks you signed with the Giants 'cause of me," Lowry offered, and then sat back, mildly appalled at himself. He hadn't intended to just say it out of the blue like that.
Zito twitched backwards, his eyes getting big. "Danny knows?"
"Since two days ago." Lowry scratched at the back of his neck. "Um, sorry about that. I don't know if you wanted-"
"Whatever." Zito scowled down at his drink, his lip curling up. "Is that what you think too?"
"I don't know, man. I haven't talked to you in a really long time."
"Whose fault was that?"
"Hey, come on." Lowry kicked Zito's feet under the table, trying to get him to look at him, but Zito refused, gaze trained stubbornly away. Crossing his fingers against his leg, Lowry said haltingly, "If. If that was the reason you signed. I might be kinda interested to hear that."
There was a frozen span of time, brief and epic at once, and then Zito lifted his head slowly, his eyes cracking into Lowry's. Zito looked scared out of his mind, shaking, and he scanned Lowry's face feverishly. The inside of Lowry's cheek tasted of copper, shivering from the effort of meeting Zito's gaze.
"Why?" Zito asked softly. Lowry shook his head, swallowing hard.
"Because I'd do the same. Wherever you were, that's where I'd go."
Zito didn't react right away, and the moment stretched, spun out around them like rings dilating in water. Lowry held perfectly still, a litany of ill-formed prayers running in his mind, two pairs of fingers crossed on each hand. He watched, breath netted in his lungs, as the dismal shadow cleared glacially off Zito's face.
Zito flashed a hesitant fraction of a smile, shielded and defensive, and asked, "Really?"
There was a weak thread of hope woven through his voice, light coming up in his eyes, and Lowry knocked over his chair getting to his feet, clumsy and dumbstruck and not caring because Zito was starting to laugh in incredulous astonishment, tipping his face up. Lowry fisted his hands in Zito's shirt and hauled him up, shoving him against the wall and kissing the stupid grin off his face. Zito took Lowry's head in his hands, kissed him right back.
It wasn't sweet yet, something feral in the way Zito held on to him, panic still driving through his eyes, but that was only the history. Zito didn't really trust Lowry and Lowry couldn't blame him, but he thought if he could just keep showing his face every single day, turning up like a bad penny on Zito's doorstep, following him around wherever he went--it'd get through to him eventually.
And it would be okay, Noah caught himself thinking as they stumbled to the bedroom, tied up in each other and tripping over nothing. It might take months to convince Zito, maybe even years, but they had time now, so much it made Lowry's head spin. Calendar pages snowed down in his mind, burying the two of them like an avalanche, and somewhere in there was the day that Zito would believe him, and they'd be all right then.
Lowry pictured that perfect day, all crowded with wind and color and joyful noise, Mexican sunlight as thick as oil. He closed his eyes as Zito touched his mouth to the birthmark on his face, and he could see it all.
THE END
Endnotes: You're experiencing a strong sense of déjà vu because it is a not-so-sneaky remix. And the weirdest part is that Noah Lowry got a start-to-finish story (well, start-to-becomes-injury-prone-and-largely-useless) before Rich Harden did. But! I managed to keep it to a semi-reasonable length, which will surely not be the case when/if I ever attempt to do the Canadian justice.
Danny and Noah are deplorably uninformed about their nation's capital, but originally the rule was no buildings could be taller than the Capitol Dome, later amended to no buildings more than twenty feet taller than their adjacent street (e.g., a street eighty feet wide sports no buildings more than one hundred feet tall). Lovely wide continental-style avenues and a constant view of the sky, coming at the price of horrendous suburban sprawl. So was it worth it?
Extraneous rambling! I feel like the characterization of Lowry in this doesn't wholly match up to that in the original story, but have decided to blame that on Zito being a ridiculously unreliable narrator. And Noah Lowry secretly being a ninja.
And for the record, I never ever intend to write a story this long without section breaks. Anytime I start out without section breaks, it is supposed to stay short, but this, like Outside In, just got right the hell away from me.
Finally, I was like 15,000 words into it before I realized it was gonna end happily. Absolutely floored me, particularly considering the original. And I just, it was such a wonderful surprise.
Also, people, people please. Takin' requests for remixes, any A's story you think might be seen well from the other guy's perspective (any of the other guys, actually, if you feel like there's some particularly fucked-up version of Mulder/Zito who can only be properly be understood from Huddy's point of view or whatever). Can't for the life of me come up with any intriguing new plots but I can write remixes like standalones, just give me a direction.