rather remarkable, actually
For the Yankee fans who are in horrible pain.
For the Red Sox fans who can't see straight 'cause they're too happy.
I wrote this last summer. In one night. I wasn't happy with it right after I finished it, but I like it better now. It's weird and unexpected. Anyway.
El Rey
By Candle Beck
part one
Zito gets to El Rey four days after the All-Star break.
El Rey is small and scrapping, stashed in the hard mountains of Chiapas, southern Mexico near the Guatemalan border. The heat is ungodly, warping metal and splintering wood. Even past midnight, the air is tense and demanding, slicing down the hood of Zito’s car, tumbling thickly on the asphalt.
The town’s only claim to fame is the baseball team, but that’s not saying much. There’s not enough talent in this part of the country-maybe every five years or so a seventeen year old will stumble out of the jungle speaking no language except the Spanish words for ‘run’ and ‘I got it’ and ‘slide’ and ‘go two, go two.’ Teenagers with crow-black eyes that can track sliders like radar, full extension of their arms to reach the outside pitch and slap it to the opposite field, and they’ll blister through El Rey raw and unfinished. They never stay much longer than a month because it’s clear that they’re better than this place, and after a few weeks they’ll be on their way to the real teams in Oaxaca and Mexico D.F.
El Rey and the league in which its team plays aren’t on the scouting schedule of any major league ballclub. The vast majority of organized baseball isn’t even aware of its existence.
Zito rolls his car into the dirt parking lot of the single lit building on the dragged-out main road, a cantina with a blinking green neon sign. It’s shadowed and quiet inside, no music on the dented speakers, and Zito doesn’t have to say much more than “baseball” and “American,” doesn’t even have to say the name.
They point him down the road, rattling off some saint’s name affixed to a motel. San Carlos, Santa Clara, same as the Bay Area cities that Zito spent the crucial years of his life wandering through.
Zito walks down to the motel, because he’s not really looking forward to this. His knee hurts. His knee has hurt every single day since a line-drive comebacker shattered his kneecap his eleventh season. He lets himself limp, something he would never normally do, because there’s no one here to see it.
It’s not hard finding the right room. The huge car with Arizona plates, once-shiny and now with dust clouding the panels above the wheels, waits in the heat. The back window on the shotgun side has been smashed in, probably ‘cause this car is the one thing within a hundred miles worth robbing, and carelessly repaired with a ripped fragment of cardboard stuck down with peeling duct tape. It’s not hard at all, because once upon a time this car was stupidly expensive, and there’s only one man in town with the money to afford it.
Zito tugs at the hem of his shirt, runs his hands through his hair. The specks of white started appearing at the ends of his hair during his last season in the bigs, scattered like grains of salt, creeping through, but it’s still nothing more than subtle.
He doesn’t look as old as he is.
There’s sweat on the back of his neck and the undersides of his wrists. Zito walks slowly to the motel room’s door and stands there for a long time before knocking twice.
He waits for better than a minute, but there’s no response, so he knocks again. And this time he hears that best-known voice calling hoarsely, “Go the fuck away! Fucking salga!”
Zito smiles.
He touches the doorknob with his fingertips and it turns easily, the metal hot under his palm. The lock is busted and hanging off its hinge, which doesn’t surprise him much. He steps in and it’s no cooler in here, just darker. Pitch fucking black.
Zito shuts the door behind him and leans back. The long shape sprawled on the bed, head under a pillow and legs hanging off the end, growls, “Who the fuck . . . vaya, pendejo.”
Zito tips his head back against the wall. “Hello, Cy Young,” he says quietly.
The figure on the bed tenses, and then slowly, slowly, the man pushes the pillow away and raises his head.
For everything that’ll never be the same again, Mark Mulder’s still got those goddamn blue eyes.
They just look at each other for a long time, for days maybe, weeks. It’s dead silent in the room and dead silent outside and Zito can hear Mulder pull in each breath.
Finally Mulder says without inflection, “Hello, Cy Young.”
Mulder drops his head back and gazes at the ceiling, then levers up, straightening with a drawn-out groan, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
“How’s the knee?” he asks, not looking up. It’s been years since they’ve seen each other, and nobody’s supposed to know Mulder’s down here, but Zito wouldn’t have expected Mulder’s first question to be anything else.
Zito shrugs, swiping an arm across his forehead. It’s so fucking hot in here. A drop of sweat leaps off a strand of Zito’s hair, dots his nose, and another one steals into the corner of his eye, making him squint and wipe his face off on the hem of his shirt, the feverish stifled air on his momentarily bare stomach making it impossible to tell where the atmosphere ends and he begins.
Mexico in July and it makes a perfect kind of sense that Mark Mulder, maybe one of the best left-handers ever, would end up playing for a team too dirt-poor to provide him with an air-conditioned room.
Zito wishes for an ice cube, a handful of ice cubes, deliciously melting to water on his skin, popping one in his mouth and sucking hard till his head is chilled and aching. He’s fucking exhausted, in addition to everything else, because it was three solid days of driving and if he slept, he doesn’t remember it.
And anyway, he just two months ago got closer to fifty than he is to forty, and he can’t burn through the night so easy anymore. Twenty-three, twenty-four, he could watch sunrise the morning after a night game, mainline some coffee and aspirin and be fit for a noon start, he remembers, he remembers perfectly.
Mulder’s got a three-quarters full bottle of whiskey glinting on the dresser, a water-spotted tumbler tucked up against it. The room is filthy, cinder-gray sheets and broken plaster walls. The phone’s in three pieces on the floor, probably from the last time Mulder got beat by the malnourished teenagers of the lowest Mexican league there is.
“Hurts. How’s the elbow?” At least Zito’s knee was a freak accident. Mulder’s elbow started to go when they were both still in Oakland.
Mulder cradles his left elbow, rubbing it with his palm. “Killing me.” He pauses. His head is bent down and the moonlight through the window is beginning to take effect as Zito’s eyes adjust. There’s silver collecting at Mulder’s temples, deep lines near his eyes. “What are you doing here, man?”
Zito thumbs open the first two buttons of his shirt, his fingers slicking across the hollows of his throat. Mulder’s still not looking at him. “I was in the neighborhood.”
Mulder snorts, darts an impatient look over at the other man. “You came all the way down here to make fucking jokes?”
Zito shakes his head. “No.” He looks down, calls himself a coward, pulls his eyes back up. “I came to take you home.”
Mulder stands abruptly, his movements jerky. He stalks across the room and pours himself a tall shot. His back is tight, his shoulders high, and he braces his hands on the edge of the dresser, says shortly, “Fuck off, Zito. Thanks for making the drive and all, but seriously, go to hell. If I go home, I’m certainly not going with you.” Mulder scowls down at the glass, muttering, “Not like I got anything to go back for, anyway.”
His expression blanking in surprise, a shabby little bolt of self-righteousness down the heart of him, Zito hikes his eyebrows and asks, “How’s your son, Mulder?” his voice pegging harsh on the word ‘son.’
Mulder winces, suddenly looking very old, and Zito runs on recklessly, brutal with false curiosity, “What is he, about thirteen, fourteen now? Little Matty’s growing up. Hey, has he got his growth spurt yet, you still think he’ll end up taller than you?”
Mulder answers, hard and low and full of warning, “Don’t talk about my family.”
Zito doesn’t even fucking care, at this point. Two thousand miles of highway and twenty-five years behind him and Mulder’s trying to kill himself in a town named for some king, so to hell with it.
“Remind me, man, I always get them mixed up, did you have Matty by your second wife or your third? Or have you forgotten too? Well, you could always call and ask him who his mom is. That is, if you even know the phone number.”
Mulder snaps, snatching handfuls of Zito’s shirt and throwing him so hard into the wall the whole place shakes. Mulder wraps a hand around Zito’s throat and squeezes just tight enough as he says, a terrible scraped tone, “I told you, don’t talk about my family.”
Zito can only breathe a little bit, but it’s enough to push out the words, moving up under Mulder’s hand and gasping from Zito’s lips, “What fucking family?”
Yeah, Mulder’s lip curled up and his hand strangling, hey, that didn’t take too long, and Zito braces, waiting for the punch, waiting for Mulder’s hands to fall on him again, and he’s pretty sure he deserves this.
*
It’s been a long time since they got into a fistfight (not counting Atlanta, which Zito rarely counts for anything). Maybe eighteen years ago, in the clubhouse of the American League All-Star team, that single game the last time they would ever be teammates, and Mulder had been laughing at him, because Zito’s old A’s cap had tumbled out of his bag and into the open, so that all of them could see how pathetic Zito was, still dreaming of California.
And Mulder was laughing at him, scooping up the cap and playing keep-away, taunting Zito, didja forget who you played for, can I keep this, at least it’s my right team, and calling out to everybody that it’s a crying fucking shame Zito misses Oakland as bad as he does, because Oakland doesn’t miss him much at all.
So Zito hit him. Mulder hit him back and they did that for awhile until strong arms were looped around their chests and they were hauled off each other. Zito spit blood on the clubhouse floor and couldn’t quite believe that he was on the edge of tears, and he wondered if these rising bruises would be the last marks Mulder ever left on him.
*
In Mexico, Zito holds his breath and doesn’t press his cheek against the wall with his eyes screwed shut like he wants to do. He swallows, feeling his Adam’s apple push against Mulder’s palm, and they’re too old for this shit, they really are.
Mulder drops his hand from Zito’s throat to the doorknob, shoving it open and shoving the other man out in one smooth motion, slamming the door shut as Zito stumbles over his feet.
Zito stands out there for a long silent stretch, his hands jammed in his pockets, trying to pick out the differences in constellations between here and L.A., the choke of the equatorial heat.
That could have gone better. Bad fucking start. Why’d he have to bring up Matty? Such a fucking asshole. What the hell did he think Mulder would do?
He sits down at the foot of the room door, leaning his head back, brushing splinters out of his hair. No ambient light and the moon like a dinner plate, pale and enormous. Strange noises trawling out of the scrub brush and Zito wonders what animals live wild out here.
Zito listens to Mulder moving around through the wall, and he thinks, for only a moment or two, about the night he got traded for the first time, the night they sent him away from Oakland.
*
It’s stark, incomplete as he cripples his mind from following that train of thought. He sees his hands moving, numbly cleaning out his locker, and he was thinking inchoately and stunned, ‘Baltimore? Baltimore?’ over and over again, trying to get it to make sense.
Then suddenly someone else’s hand was around his wrist. Zito blinked and looked up and there was fury in Mulder’s face, no good reason for it, and Mulder saying into his ear, “Why’d you have to become so fucking expendable.”
And Zito tried to push him away, moving slow like being underwater, which explained his dissolving vision, and he wouldn’t have thought that he’d take it this hard, he really wouldn’t have.
There are parts missing from the middle, all at once the two of them were back at Zito’s house and Zito almost broke down two feet into the front hallway, unable to believe that he really had to leave. Mulder didn’t say a word as Zito staggered against him, didn’t even blink, just let Zito breathe carefully with his arms around Mulder’s waist.
How could they just get rid of him like that? What was he going to do?
Zito was just about okay again, presentable, when Mulder backed him up into the corner and whispered, “you know that thing that happens sometimes that we never talk about?”
Zito froze. The first time had been after the third game of the ALDS in 2001, when Zito pitched eight innings of two-hit ball at Yankee Stadium, allowing only one run and still taking the loss. Of all the things that happened that night, giving Mulder a blowjob in the hotel bathroom actually ended up being the least strange, and he mainly remembered his hand on Mulder’s shoulder, holding him down after the other man’s knees had given out.
The second time was in the backyard of the Lafayette house five minutes after the Diamondbacks won the World Series, Mulder flattening him against the side of the house and whispering, “little fucking cocksucker, is this what you been waiting for,” while jerking him off with rough strokes, and the entire team was just inside.
The third time was Mulder showing up drunk at Zito’s place in Hollywood over the off-season, Zito so fucking angry and bending Mulder over the back of the couch, his hand pushed up under Mulder’s shirt, fingers spread wide between Mulder’s shoulder blades.
Every couple of weeks, every month or so. During the streak in 2002, every single night for all twenty games, given a perfect excuse, because they were protecting the luck. Eventually Zito lost track.
They never talked about it. It was always as near to silent as they could manage, save curses and groans, and never once had Zito said Mulder’s name when Mulder was sucking his cock or biting his shoulder or any of the other stuff they did and forgot about the next day. Never fucking once.
And then Zito got traded and in the hallway of his apartment, Mulder smiled faintly at him, his fingers in Zito’s shirt pocket, tugging down. Mulder said, the words coming jaggedly, “probably you should know that it didn’t mean anything, ‘cause it couldn’t mean anything, but now you’re leaving, so listen, it meant a lot, okay, sometimes it meant everything.”
And Mulder kissed him and took him down, last-time fierce and desperate, carpet burns on Mulder’s elbows and Zito’s face, bruises scattered like clues all over their bodies, and Mulder’s forehead on the nape of his neck as they both pretended to sleep, and Mulder’s lips moving on the highest knob of Zito’s backbone, saying almost too low to hear, “I didn’t think it’d happen this soon.”
Zito swallowed, nodded, buried his face in the pillow and held Mulder’s hand pressed to his hip, until he finally fell into a stunning dreamless sleep and Mulder was able to slip away.
*
Zito gets bored plaiting together the new stars, El Rey so deeply asleep around him, he can almost feel the burring rapid eye movements under the dirt roads. He stands, remembering that the lock on the door’s busted, and though there’s not much chance Mulder will let him stay for longer than an eloquent “fuck right off,” Zito drove to goddamn Mexico, practically drove to Guatemala, and fuck if he’s gonna give up now.
Twisting the doorknob and nudging it warily open, Zito sticks his head in.
Mulder’s lying on his back on the bed again, staring up at the ceiling. The bottle of whiskey is at his right hand and has lost considerable volume since Zito last saw it. Mulder must know he’s come back in; he couldn’t have gotten that drunk that fast.
Just to be sure, Zito clears his throat, feeling stupid. Mulder doesn’t acknowledge him, and Zito sighs, sitting backwards in the room’s single chair, flat wood planks and a ninety-degree seatback that Zito folds his arms on top of, resting his chin and relearning Mulder as he lies there without moving, his eyes open.
Mulder’s still tall, even lying down, still strong. He’s gotten skinnier, spare with his slatted stomach, his collarbones stabbing out, like how he was when they were first called up. Mulder never really had any extra weight to lose, it’s the muscle that has shrunk back, his wiry arms and the shadows of his ribcage barely hinted at beneath his T-shirt.
Zito hasn’t seen him in five years, and three years ago Mulder self-destructed in his last chance to pitch for a contender, a staggering 9.45 ERA by the break, and when he got sent down to the minors for the first time since a rehab assignment fourteen years early, he somehow got worse, lit up like a pinball machine by fucking bush leaguers. Mulder got released before the trade deadline, wasn’t picked up by anyone, and by the next spring he’d absconded across the border, looking for some team, any team.
In the dark like this, it’s easy to see Mulder twenty-two years old again, grinning and laughing and soon enough the best pitcher of his generation.
That was more than twenty years ago, that doesn’t matter, not anymore.
*
Mulder’s got three ex-wives (he started the trend of getting married, divorcing, and remarrying swiftly a year before he finally left the A’s. Combined between the three women, Mulder had been a husband for about five years, steadfastly refusing to learn from his mistakes) and a son he never sees, and when he went to Mexico, the only person he told was Eric Chavez, who’d never had to play for any other team.
Chavez hmm’ed his vague approval into the phone, then asked hesitantly, “Mark, aren’t you . . . aren’t you pretty tired?”
Mulder called him a dirty name and swore him to secrecy, but then six months later, Zito came to visit after Eric’s fourth daughter was born, and in between trading memories back and forth and recapping the whereabouts of their former teammates, Chavez killed about three too many beers and ended up slinging an arm around Zito’s neck, pressing his face to Zito’s shoulder and mumbling, “I don’t care, man, you know I don’t care. But I guess you probably miss him, huh?”
Grinning, shrugging, Zito asked for clarification and Chavez said, “Mark. Mark. Mulder. I mean, ‘cause, like, I’m thinking that the only time Mulder was ever really, like, at peace or whatever, was when you and him were having your thing. And I figure, it goes both ways, so you probably miss him now that he’s disa-fucking-ppeared.”
And Zito should have outright denied it, but, well, he was a couple past his limit, too, and just rolled Chavez off his shoulder, dimly picking Chavez’s eyes out and asking, “You knew?”
Chavez nodded, grinning goofily. “Very smart, me. Very aware of all that goes on. Also I saw you guys making out in the backyard at the Lafayette house one time.”
Rolling his eyes, smirking, Zito took a pull of his beer. They were on the front porch, two middle-aged guys drinking and talking about the past. Two retired-before-age-forty, set-for-life, will-be-remembered former ballplayers who both still got recognized in the East Bay, though neither of them lived there anymore. Zito had never really decided what he would do after he stopped playing, so for the past seven years he’d just been doing nothing.
Life after baseball.
Zito shuddered quickly, a cold flash, and he rubbed his arms through his coat, nodding and keeping his attention on the street as he said, “Yeah, okay, smart guy, I miss him. I haven’t heard from him in months, and nobody seems to know where he’s gotten to.”
Chavez was blowing air over the mouth of his beer bottle, producing an echoing hoot, a high clear note-‘c flat,’ Zito thought-distracted as he answered, “Well, somebody knows,” bending a grin.
Zito took Chavez’s bottle away from him and held him still, his gaze solid and beyond challenge. “Ricky,” he said. “Spill.”
Chavvy blinked at him owlishly, his face creased with entrenched laugh lines at his mouth and eyes, his hair well on its way to being pure gray. “Nobody’s called me Ricky in at least fifteen years,” he replied wonderingly, ticking his fingers out like he was calculating the passage of time.
His brow scrunched up, Chavez said with drunken sincerity, “If I tell you, you gotta go and bring him back. You gotta fix him, Barry, okay?”
Zito almost had to bite back a laugh at that one, as if fixing Mulder was as easy as getting in his car and topping a hundred on the highway through the desert. But he just nodded solemnly, and Chavez sighed, stammering a bit, “He’s in Mexico. El Rey. Which is south. I think. He’s playing ball down there.”
Zito dropped his beer, exploding it on the cement patio. He stared dumbly at the shards for a minute, then shot his eyes back up to Chavez’s. “He’s pitching? How?”
Chavvy shrugged, slouching down in his chair, sleepy and wanting to go look at his new baby girl again. “Like always, I guess. Except, you know, not very . . . good. This team in El Rey isn’t affiler-affil-affilia-fucking connected to the majors . . . MLB doesn’t even really know they’re playing down there, as far as scouting goes. It’s the middle of fucking nowhere, basically.”
Zito bent down to pick up a broken piece of glass, turning it in his hand, watching the porch light beam off the bottlegreen. He took his time, getting things straight. “So what’s he doing? If he’s got no shot to make it back?”
Chavez rattled his fingers on the wooden arm of the chair, snuck a quick look over his shoulder at his shuttered house. He was . . .yeah, pretty fucking drunk.
Eric shook his head, suddenly and purposelessly overwhelmed with melancholy, thinking of Mulder down there, chasing something all the rest of them had let get away, thinking of Mulder at twenty-four years old, dunking him in the pool, and thinking of Zito, alone even with all his friends and family, Zito who’d been traded way too soon from their brilliant young-millennium team, and didn’t even have a chance to really say goodbye.
Zito’s stricken eyes and the inexorable tear-down of his talent once he was wearing a different uniform and calling a new city home. And Mulder, who couldn’t escape the game, though maybe he wanted to, at last, maybe he wanted to just be still, be easy and clean.
Mostly trying not to think about those few blinding, overjoyed years when they were all Oakland Athletics, mostly trying not to think that that was as good a span of time as could be, that was the best they’d ever do and the best they’d ever be and that was twenty years behind them now.
Chavez scowled, not liking the path of his thoughts, shutting that out, and told Zito, “He’s playing ball ‘cause if he stops, I think he thinks he’ll die or something. But, it’s, uh, really not . . . healthy. At all. He’s been down there for six months and he can’t even win against that pitiful league and I think it’s probably a good bet that he’s going crazy.”
Zito stood, patting his pockets for his keys, and was halfway down the porch steps when he turned, all gaslight eyes and determination set into his jaw and mouth, asked to make sure, “El Rey?”
Chavez nodded, cracking open a new beer and toasting the pitcher with it. “The once and future king. Good luck.”
Zito looked at him, then all of a sudden grinned and looked like a rookie again, looked invincible the way he’d been when he was young, and Zito said, “Your little girl is beautiful, Eric. Your whole family is awesome.”
And then Zito was gone, hopping down to the walk and jogging to his car. Chavez watched until the hanging red brake lights melted into the black, then went inside and figured he was probably pretty lucky, all things considered.
*
Zito is surprised to find himself speaking into the hollow room, his head cradled on his arms on the seatback, folded uncomfortably in the stiff chair, yawning and abruptly breaking the silence by saying, “I’m sorry I said that stuff about Matty.”
Mulder twitches, his hand scratching on the covers of the bed, dully shined from overuse. Zito sighs, rubs his nose on his arm. “You just . . . you fucking vanished, man. Nobody knew where you went or if something happened or anything. I was pretty pissed off at you, I guess. For running away or whatever.”
Zito gnaws on his shirtsleeve, just for something to do, and studies the carpet, counting discolorations until he loses his place. His lower back is starting to hurt like a motherfucker. Zito thinks that it’s probably the onset of arthritis, and he fucking hates the way his body is falling apart in a million tiny ways.
“I didn’t run away.”
Zito snaps his head up. Mulder’s still staring at the ceiling; it doesn’t look like he’s moved an inch. Barring auditory hallucinations, though, Zito knows what he heard. He cocks an eyebrow. “What would you call it?”
Mulder shrugs, the movement pulling up his T-shirt a bit. Zito can see Mulder’s stomach, ghosted with an air-thin layer of sweat, making him gleam. Zito’s about to suggest they say fuck modesty in favor of comfort and lose their shirts altogether, but then Mulder answers:
“I wanted to keep playing ball, and this was the only place that would let me.”
Zito wonders if he’s allowed to sit on the bed yet. He stays in the chair and asks, “Well, why didn’t you tell anybody except Eric what was going on? ‘Cause, you know, woulda liked to know or whatever.”
Mulder braces himself on his elbows, pulling his legs up to sit Indian-style, his head rising out of the moon-paned light stretching across the bed, into the shadows, his eyes sunk back far enough to be invisible. “I . . . it was hard. I didn’t want everybody to know about this team or this town.” He fists a hand on his knee, presses down hard. “’Cause . . . it’s like Steve Carlton. Or Rickey.”
Zito holds up a hand to ask, “Which Rickey?”
Mulder gives him a look, pay-attention-little-punk, and Mulder at forty-six maybe isn’t that much different than Mulder at twenty-six. “Henderson. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”
Mark pushes a hand through his hair, picks at a loose thread on the bedspread. “How, by the end of it, Carlton was begging for a tryout in Japan, down on his fucking knees for every team in the game. And Rickey, crashing our FanFest that year trying to make a comeback.”
Zito yawns into the crook of his elbow. “Rickey did make a comeback, though. A couple of ‘em.”
“’s not the point,” Mulder tells him. “It just, it like, killed those guys for me, you know? As good as they were, and they lower themselves to that . . . begging for a fucking shot. I never wanted to be like that.”
Mulder’s winding the thread around his fingertip, tightening and dark blood gathering. Zito thinks that he needs to be careful here. “But how they went out doesn’t change what they did. Carlton won better than 300. Rickey’s lousy with records. People don’t forget that.”
Mulder chafes a humorless laugh. “Well, my stats aren’t quite that memorable, I don’t think.”
Widening his eyes, Zito looks for signs of joking and seeing none, immediately rushes to defend Mulder from . . . Mulder. “What the fuck are you talking about? You’ve got great stats. You’ve done as good as anybody, you fucking idiot. You got a ring, you got more Cy Youngs than me, your career ERA is just fucking unfair, you won 284 games-”
Mulder cuts him off, saying sharply with a trace of a smile, “Hey, hey. 288. Is how many games I won. Get it straight.”
Zito decides they’re probably cool for now, goes over to sit cross-legged on the bed next to Mulder, who shifts slightly away. Zito finds a thread of his own to pull at, wonders, “Is this about getting 300? You want to get back to the Show so you can get twelve more wins?”
Mulder blows out a breath. “The way I’m pitching, it would take me about four seasons to get twelve wins.”
Zito smiles. “You remember ’04? Twelve by the break, you had.”
His mouth crooking, Mulder nods. “Topped your win streak, too.”
He reaches behind him to snag the bottle of whiskey and the glass. He hands both to Zito, and leans off the bed, ducking his head under and scrounging, emerging with a plastic bottle of water. Constructing his drink, Mulder continues, “It’s not about getting 300, though. That’s just a number, so whatever. I pitched for twenty-two seasons, so those twelve wins I don’t have, that’s only about one more win every other year. Not that big a deal.”
“If you’d had one more in ’01, you probably would have gotten the Cy,” Zito points out, watching Mulder’s big hands flicker through the motions of mixing a drink, wondering how all the grace in a person’s body can be solely restricted to their hands.
“I got enough Cys,” Mulder replies, leaning back against the headboard and stretching his legs out. He cradles the glass between his palms, the amber shine of the whiskey winking expectantly, curveball grip over the chipped glass.
Zito waits, but Mulder doesn’t add anything, so Zito props his elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand, hunched over, and there’s really only one reason he came down here. Well. Maybe two. But only one that really counts.
“If it’s not to get back to the Show,” Zito begins slowly. “Why are you out here?”
Mulder looks away, blinking a few times very quickly, deep contusions under his eyes from five years of not getting enough sleep, now carved in permanently. .
Zito’s been trying to chisel his way back into Mark Mulder’s life for more than fifteen years now, and there are no earthly means to measure the number of times Zito has wished that he had never been fucking traded in the first place.
*
Zito called Mulder pretty constantly for about two months after he joined the Orioles. It was a lot of things, it was checking up, getting the new gossip, maybe how are you pitching this guy, do you think I should pitch him like this, griping about having to find a new place to live and the weather in Baltimore and how far away he was from everything now.
Eventually, of course, Mulder stopped picking up when the Caller ID showed Zito’s name, never responded to any of Zito’s messages, and though it took him a good three weeks, Zito finally caught on and didn’t call Mulder again.
Hard to explain, because Zito didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. Maybe talked too much . . . but he’d always talked too much. Mulder in his head, telling him, ‘sometimes it’s meant everything,’ and something like that doesn’t just go away, does it?
Anyway, Zito stopped calling Mulder, thinking maybe Mulder had a rule about being friends with players from opposing teams, but that was bullshit, because Mulder had a ton of friends who played on opposing teams. So did Zito, so did all of them.
So maybe Mulder just had a rule about being friends with Zito.
As each new season pushed him further and further away from those five and a half years in Oakland, Zito lost touch with some of his old teammates, the ones who retired, kept tabs on all those still active, always trying to organize some kind of hanging out when they visited each other’s cities, and stayed telecommunications-close to a few others.
It was Scott Hatteberg who told him Mulder had gotten married, early in 2007. Zito didn’t ask who was at the wedding, ‘cause what if it turned out to be everyone except him?
And when the marriage fell apart a few months later, it was Scotty who said casually to Zito, the first baseman in Anaheim and Zito in Baltimore, “You should call him. Just to say hi, you don’t have to talk about the divorce or nothing. It’s been awhile for you guys, yeah?”
Zito swallowed past something thick and sharp in his throat. “Guess so. He . . . didn’t seem very interested in me, after I left the team.”
“Fuck, that wasn’t your fault,” Hatteberg answered, sounding indignant.
Zito half-smiled. “I know.”
“Well, to hell with him. He wants to punk out on his friends, he can see what happens when he needs his friends. Like now.”
Zito still wanted to call Mulder. Not to say sorry, not to tell him to hang in there, not to tell him it’s darkest before the dawn, nothing so clichéd. Zito wanted to hear Mulder’s voice and wanted to ask him, “sometimes we mean everything to each other, and could this please be one of those times?”
But Mulder, he was the perfect ballplayer, he was clean for it, brilliantly designed. He could shut off his mind in a way Zito never could. He could forget the bad parts, see nothing but the future. Yeah, he was blessed, and Zito was three thousand miles away and that meant he didn’t exist anymore, as far as Mark Mulder was concerned.
Mulder got remarried and had a son and left Oakland himself, in one of the biggest trades of the season, went on to be all that he was promised to be, and wear pinstripes, and win a World Series.
And one September, six years removed from California, in the depth of the pennant race (Mulder would be going to the playoffs; Zito wouldn’t get within shouting distance of the playoffs), Zito took the hardest hit line-drive he’d ever seen square on the kneecap.
He quite literally felt it shatter.
He went down like he’d been shot, petrified on his back on the mound, his every last shred of power focused on not moving, because the pain was astonishing, breathtaking, cathartic, and the slightest tremor sent agony ricocheting through him.
He was, obviously, out for the season, the few weeks that remained, and the team’s lack of a postseason chance actually worked in his favor, thinking that he had it better than Mulder in ’03, Mulder’s broken hip and the jigsawed October rotation Macha and Billy Beane (God rest) had built around his absence.
But then he reminded himself that he wasn’t thinking about Mulder anymore.
He crutched home on the subway after a week in the hospital, turning down rides from his friends and teammates, wanting to prove himself a functional cripple, at the very least.
And found Mulder sitting on the front steps of his apartment building.
Zito double-took in surprise and shuffled, considered ducking into the alley to hide, before irritably calling himself a fool and a fucking coward, and hobbled a bit slower on the sidewalk, closing the space between them.
Mulder stood as Zito approached, and without hesitation reached out to take Zito’s bag off his shoulder and sling it over his own. Zito blushed and ground the rubber end of his crutch into the concrete, his eyes down.
He could see Mulder’s shoes, and he knew Mulder wasn’t pitching until the weekend. Zito snuck a glance at the other man, got incredibly nervous upon looking at Mulder again, and jerked his chin towards the lobby door.
They rode the elevator up to Zito’s place in total silence like strangers, and Mulder prowled around for a bit investigating the apartment, squinting at the snapshots on the bulletin board in the kitchen, pecking out about five notes of ‘Heart and Soul’ on the piano before he hit the wrong key and promptly gave up, peering into the refrigerator and climbing out onto the fire escape to check out the view.
Zito got himself all set up on the couch so that there would be a minimum of movement required from him for the rest of the day, the coffee table crowded with remote controls and sodas and food and a stack of books two feet high.
As slowly as he had to move, it all took a good bit of time, but Mulder still hadn’t come in off the fire escape when Zito finally sank down into the couch and resolved not to get up for at least a week.
Zito flipped through the TV channels, already bored and pain-meds-disconnected and unable to concentrate on anything for longer than about ten seconds.
They still hadn’t said a word to each other.
Zito heard the window bang shut and muted the television. When Mulder walked in a moment later, Zito got his first decent look at the other man, that break-your-heart-and-fucking-laugh face of his, the pale gold highlights catching on the ends of his hair, the broad straight bridge of his shoulders and the lazy hang of his five-foot-reach arms, the taper of his chest to his waist, the easy strut of his long long legs.
Zito faked a cough, scrubbing a hand across his eyes. Mulder was just standing there looking down at him, his thumbs hooked in his pockets and his mouth thin.
Zito sighed, couldn’t avoid it. “All right, what. What are you doing here? ‘Cause, you know, I kinda got some other stuff to deal with right now.” He flapped his hand at his propped leg, the heavy bandages and plastic brace, the spiraling trend of the pain, or the pain meds, he wasn’t sure.
Mulder met Zito’s gaze, held it for an awfully long time. Mulder’s short hair had been tousled as much as possible by the wind outside, a cornered ruff poking down on the side of his forehead. There were flakes of orange rust on the palms of Mulder’s hands, and a leaf knotted in one of Mulder’s buttonholes.
Mulder said, carefully, like the explanation was cast in crystal, “I . . . I saw you . . . on TV. They . . . keep showing it. SportsCenter. Fox Sports. Everybody. I, um . . .” Mulder dragged a hand wickedly through his hair, tried to keep his eyes on Zito. He continued in a near-inaudible whisper, “I got on a plane. I . . . I told the club it was family illness and I’d be back for my start, and then I . . . got on a plane. I’m not . . . sure why.”
Zito’s eyes kept getting bigger, but he remained still. Mulder paced back and forth, once, twice, his hands cutting through the air. “I’ve seen that goddamn ball hit you probably a hundred times now. Seen you lying there like you were dead. Seen them carry you off. I saw . . . your face. When it hit you. When you fell down. Maybe, I mean, probably I’ve never seen anybody in pain like that. And it was . . . well, it was you.”
Mulder stopped, turned to face Zito. Zito had his arms wrapped around a couch cushion, hugging it to his chest. He felt about six years old, waiting to hear the end of the story.
Mulder studied him for a long moment and then blew out an irritated breath, his body tight with energy. Mulder started feinting and shadowboxing, digging uppercuts into the air, slashing hooks, broken-nose jabs. He spoke without looking at Zito, “I basically needed to see you. Like, in real life. Make sure you’re okay. Or whatever. ‘Cause right after it happened they said that maybe you wouldn’t be able to walk again, and, and . . .”
Mulder trailed off, pulling in a deep breath and steadying himself. His nerves weren’t entirely gone, evidenced by his hand scratching at his chest and anxiously counting his shirt buttons.
Right about then was when Zito saw Mulder’s wedding ring for the first time.
Zito snatched his eyes away, pushing the cushion away and crossing his arms over his chest, staring out the window and instinctively wishing he had a view of the Bay Bridge before he remembered that that wasn’t an option anymore and tore it out of his mind.
“I’m fine,” he said dully. “I might eventually have to have another operation on it, but it should heal perfect. I’ll be able to walk and pitch and everything.”
He wasn’t looking, so Mulder was able to sneak up, kneel in front of the couch and touch his fingers to Zito’s shoulder before curving his whole hand around, sliding up to the back of Zito’s neck, weaving through Zito’s hair.
Zito yanked backwards in shock, cracking his head on the wall behind him, spitting out a hoarse obscenity as Mulder sat back on his heels, his face unreadable.
“The fuck are you doing?” Zito snapped. Mulder shrugged, keeping his eyes half-lidded. Mulder’s arm was resting on Zito’s good leg, his hand dangling, crawling upwards to palm Zito’s non-broken kneecap.
Zito was gonna shove him off, but Mulder’s hand was . . . okay. Warm. Strong. Badly missed. Warm some more.
Zito watched the other man’s hand with scientific detachment, finger-walking up his thigh and past his belt to ease across Zito’s stomach, mold Zito’s chest under his hands.
Zito closed his eyes and sighed, dropped his head back. Mulder was nudging his legs apart, terribly cautious of Zito’s busted knee, maneuvering between and tugging Zito’s body down farther on the couch, his one good leg lolling out like a drunk. Mulder pulled him to sit all the way up for a moment to get rid of his shirt, then pressed him back down, his tongue marking down the center of Zito’s chest.
Zito curled his hand in Mulder’s hair, thought that there was something he was forgetting, something pretty important, and then something hard and smooth and fucking freezing cold brushed across his nipple, and Zito gasped, jerked away.
Mulder slid his hands down from Zito’s chest and held his hips instead, angling a questioning look up at the other man, blue-eyed and handsome and not that nice and oh, yes, fucking married.
Zito tried to push him off, but his angle was all wrong ‘cause of his leg, so he just grabbed Mulder’s hand and said, “Knock it off, right fucking now, and maybe I won’t tell your wife about it.”
Mulder’s face wreaked through a million things in the space of a moment, mostly guilt and anger and desire, all three huge and screaming out of his eyes. He took a long time composing himself, one hand still on Zito’s side, still kneeling in between Zito’s legs.
Mulder tested the give of Zito’s stomach muscles under his hand, letting anger win out. “You’re the one who fucking left,” he snarled.
Zito sat up too fast, jostling his leg and crushing him with pain. He fell back with a moan and when Mulder’s hands started fluttering across his chest again, when Mulder’s mouth attached itself to his throat, Zito groaned and dragged his hands up Mulder’s back before sweeping over his shoulders and planting them hard on Mulder’s chest, shoving him off.
Zito glared at him, folding his arms over his bare chest to feel less exposed, to hide the way his hands were shaking. “You blame me for getting traded?” he asked incredulously.
Sitting back with his arms braced behind him, Mulder’s mouth warped, became ugly and cruel. “If you hadn’t pitched like shit for as long as you did, no way Billy would have gotten rid of you.”
Zito couldn’t believe it and as he looked down, shaking his head, he noticed for the first time that his belt and jeans fly were both gaping open. “The fuck?” he muttered, shooting a sick violent look at the other man. Mulder just grinned meanly, ran his hand up the inside of Zito’s leg until Zito slapped him away.
“Told you to knock it the fuck off,” he said. “And as far as me getting traded, you and me still woulda been fine if you hadn’t decided to start ignoring me completely, not to mention the fact that you managed to get married twice and have a fucking kid, but couldn’t find the time to call me or see me until I get hurt and your fucking protective instinct kicks in.”
Mulder sneered, but Zito cut him off before he could say anything back. “You still want to fuck around with me, tough. I got traded, you got married, and I think that’s more than enough reason for me to tell you to get the fuck out of my house.”
Mulder’s expression tightened, and Zito kept his eyes level, refusing to allow himself to look away or blink really fast or lick his lips or take Mulder’s hand and slide it under the waistband of his boxers, or any of the other stuff he wanted to do that definitely wouldn’t go towards emphasizing his point.
His hands at either side of Zito’s body, dented in the couch cushions, Mulder lifted his eyes and something was happening behind the contrite expression on his face. “All right,” he said, lowering his eyelashes like a girl or something. “I’ll go.”
And then suddenly Mulder had one of Zito’s wrists gripped tightly his hand, then Zito’s other hand and other wrist and Zito making a noise of protest as Mulder pressed Zito’s arms together and chained one of his big hands around both of Zito’s wrists. With his free hand he reached up and stroked his palm across Zito’s cheek, Zito furious and wrenching his hands in Mulder’s grip, until his struggling jarred his shattered kneecap and Zito immediately went limp, his eyes closed against it.
Mulder, not above using Zito’s pain to his advantage, leaned forward and covered Zito’s mouth with his own, Zito resisting at first and trying to rip his head away, but Mulder had a hand around the back of Zito’s neck and held him motionless, taking his time ‘cause probably this was the last time (for real the last time), and yeah, Mulder’s got respect for that sort of thing.
By the time Mulder was licking the inside of Zito’s mouth and sucking on his tongue, he didn’t need to restrain the other man anymore, and Mulder released Zito’s wrists, Zito’s hands skidding up to his shoulders and through his hair. Mulder kissed him as long as he could, until his thoughts began to fracture and white spots burst on the backs of his eyelids.
He pulled away, Zito looking dazed, and when Mulder’s hands went back to Zito’s fly, Zito didn’t do anything, not even a token protest, just mumbled nonsense words and petted the back of Mulder’s head.
Mulder, aware at that moment that he could do pretty much anything to the other man, made a cold smile and swiftly fastened Zito’s jeans, buckling his belt and Zito blinking down at him in utter confusion. Mulder found Zito’s T-shirt under the couch and draped it over his head, saying, “There you go, right back to fucking normal.”
Zito snatched the T-shirt off his head, his outrage and ferocity returning full-force, but before he could say anything, Mulder kissed him again, hard.
Then Zito couldn’t quite get his vocal chords to work and Mulder smirked, tossed over his shoulder in farewell, “That knee is God’s punishment for you being a fucking cocktease, in case you were wondering.”
Mulder barely got the door shut behind him before he heard the hurled book slam against it. Mulder laughed to himself, in the elevator and in the cab and in the airport, and then he was standing before a huge window watching the planes take off, when out of nowhere his legs gave out and he fell to the ground, his mouth tasting like Zito and his eyes hot and dry, his hands shaking so bad that he balled them up into fists and pressed them against his face and Mulder ordered himself to quit it, just fucking quit it, he’s not worth it, nothing is worth this.
*
Zito waits, then he waits some more, and when still no dice, he touches Mulder’s knee, saying his name softly, only to have Mulder spook and shift even farther away. Zito sighs.
“Tell me, will you?” he implores. “You know you wanna. It’ll be, like, easier. To have told someone else. I swear, dude.”
Mulder cuts him a glance from out the corner of his eye. “I think you’re too old to still be talking like that. Dude.”
Zito smiles, but won’t back down. “How come you came down here? Not running away, not trying to get back to the Show, so . . . what?”
Mulder falls back on the bed, rubbing his hand across his forehead. “You ever think all this evasion of mine is a way of telling you I don’t want to talk about it?”
“Crossed my mind,” Zito shrugs. “But you should tell me anyway. I drove two thousand miles to Bumblefuck . . . excuse me, El Bumblefuck . . . and you’re not even keeping up your end of the conversation.”
Mulder rolls over, off the bed and to his feet. He starts to pace, and Zito realizes that the sun is beginning to come up. Mulder’s got blue light on one side of his face, cottony violet shadows inching into the holes of his shirt. “If you’ll remember, nobody fucking invited you down here,” he says, arrowing a finger at Zito’s forehead.
Zito hikes an eyebrow. “Nobody invited you to come see me after I hurt my knee, either.”
Mulder narrows his eyes at the memory, willfully pushing it aside. Zito is cross-legged on the bed, following him as he strides back and forth like watching tennis. Mulder stops, looks at the other man. “You got some white hair, you know that?”
Zito nods, stifling a yawn. “And you’ve got gray. More gray than I got white, as a matter of fact.”
Mulder tufted a hand across his hair, scowling. “You know, it’s not like we’re that old. It’s not like we’re fucking decrepit, staggering around with a cane or whatever. Forty-six . . . I still got half my life ahead of me.”
Scooting to sit back against the headboard, punching a pillow into service as lower back support, Zito settles in, about to fall asleep sitting up and trying to keep focused on Mulder.
Zito nods. “Yeah. Very young. In every line of work other than professional sports.”
Registering and discarding that in the same quick slash of his hand, Mulder paces up and back, hypnotically, Zito’s eyelids heavy, Mulder muttering to himself. He stops at the dresser, leaning towards the mirror above it, but the dust that sheets everything in this town has actually colonized the mirror above the dresser, and Mulder exhales in annoyance, strips off his T-shirt to wipe down the glass.
Zito’s eyes come open.
He watches Mulder cleaning the mirror, the muscles twisting and flowing in his back. Mulder’s skin is darker than Zito remembers it, and his jeans are slung low enough that Mulder’s hipbones stick out like open car doors. There’s an unfamiliar scar on Mulder’s left shoulder, a road-rash abrasion on his right elbow, and a long skinny scratch that looks pretty deep, cutting just under his heart and curving around his side.
Mulder studies himself in the mirror for awhile, tilting his head to see the gray hair, poking at his ribs discontentedly, inspecting one hand and then the other, holding them up and turning his wrists, glaring hatefully at his hands, as if this is all their fault.
Zito doesn’t miss a moment of it, wide-eyed on the bed, and when Mulder turns to face him, Zito tries to look cool, unperturbed, but isn’t too successful.
Mulder, his shoulders thrown back and his spine straight, says, “I’m in okay shape, I think.”
Zito swallows. “Sure.”
Mulder stretches out his arms, crucified with his wingspan like an imagined hero, his ribs and hipbones jutting out even more, his head held at a distinctly regal angle, and Zito wonders for a brief panicked second if Mulder’s gone completely ‘round the bend, but then the other man just pulls the tension out of his arms and his back, and crosses his arms over his chest, leaning back against the dresser.
His eyes are hard and Mulder, still with that imperial tilt to his chin, says, “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to keep pitching for at least a couple more years. No physical reason.” He shrugs. “I mean, maybe I’m not as strong now as I was when I was twenty, but that’s no big deal because I was stronger at twenty than basically everyone else, so it’s not, like, a standard I need to reach.” Mulder looks down, aiming a death-gaze at his chest. “Been having trouble putting on muscle, recently. All bony and stuff. But I’m not too worried about it.”
“Me either,” Zito replies without thinking, but Mulder’s not listening.
“If I can still play the game, then I should be allowed to still play the game, right?” Mulder asks, coming to kneel on the bed, sit back on his heels so that his chest is pulled taut, and Zito’s mouth is utterly dry.
Zito forces his eyes to Mulder’s face, figures the time’s come for the truth. He shakes his head, masking his face in apology.
“Man, that’s the thing. You can’t play the game. I mean, you can go out there and you can pitch and you can field and you can maybe even hit a little-do they still have the DH in this league or did they get rid of it when everybody else did? Never mind, it doesn’t matter-you can physically do all the things that make up baseball, but you’ve lost your touch.”
Mulder’s halfway between beating the shit out of Zito and believing every word that comes out of his mouth. One hand in a fist, wrenched into the mattress, and the other flat, working out the wrinkles in the sheets. Mulder eyes Zito suspiciously, but listens to it all.
Dawn is in true form, right about now. It’s powder blue in this part of Mexico, it’s lavender and pale cotton-candy pink, it’s pastels and the sun itself is such a rich yellow it almost makes up for the heat it brings with it. People are beginning to stir in El Rey, hauling out tractors and plows and tramping into the wilderness with machetes sheathed in leather slings over their shoulders, and with the new light the mountains are snatching looks over the horizon like kids cheating on a test. The jungle is breathing, its limbs curled up and waiting for the signal to attack.
Zito thinks, quite unexpectedly, that dawn in this place is as beautiful as anything he has ever seen in California.
Mulder’s waiting for him, so he hurries ahead, pushing at his damp hair with the back of his hand. “I mean, we could see that your last couple of seasons in the majors. I think . . .” he hesitates, he’s crossing a line, surely, but Mulder’s shirtless and watching him intently, so fuck it, “I think your elbow hurts more than you let on. You never got it operated on because you didn’t want to admit it was that big of a problem, and now you’re forty-six and you shouldn’t be starting games anyway, much less with a bum arm. I’m actually pretty surprised you lasted this long.”
There’s no response on Mulder’s face, nothing to interpret. He’s just a blank, except for his eyes, his clever eyes scanning through this.
Zito sighs. “Mulder, you’re in excellent shape, okay, fine. But you’re forty-six years old and all this is, coming right down to it, is that you’re just getting old. Which, you know, happens. It’s happening to me, to Chavvy, to, like, the whole world. You can’t just run away to Mexico because you can pretend to be twenty-four years old again down here.”
Mulder gets up, and Zito has to fight down a swift sense of loss. ‘Fucker,’ he thinks, ‘stupid motherfucker, how many times do you have to get burned by the same guy before you pick up on it?’
He’s got his head on straight. Maybe it took him half a lifetime and his whole major league career to finally get that way, but Zito knows himself pretty well, at this point, at last. And Mulder’s not his only weakness, but he is the one that Zito can’t seem to shake. At least Zito knows that now.
Mulder, he’s just a blindspot, he’s the hole in Zito’s heart.
*
part two to follow shortly.
For the Red Sox fans who can't see straight 'cause they're too happy.
I wrote this last summer. In one night. I wasn't happy with it right after I finished it, but I like it better now. It's weird and unexpected. Anyway.
El Rey
By Candle Beck
part one
Zito gets to El Rey four days after the All-Star break.
El Rey is small and scrapping, stashed in the hard mountains of Chiapas, southern Mexico near the Guatemalan border. The heat is ungodly, warping metal and splintering wood. Even past midnight, the air is tense and demanding, slicing down the hood of Zito’s car, tumbling thickly on the asphalt.
The town’s only claim to fame is the baseball team, but that’s not saying much. There’s not enough talent in this part of the country-maybe every five years or so a seventeen year old will stumble out of the jungle speaking no language except the Spanish words for ‘run’ and ‘I got it’ and ‘slide’ and ‘go two, go two.’ Teenagers with crow-black eyes that can track sliders like radar, full extension of their arms to reach the outside pitch and slap it to the opposite field, and they’ll blister through El Rey raw and unfinished. They never stay much longer than a month because it’s clear that they’re better than this place, and after a few weeks they’ll be on their way to the real teams in Oaxaca and Mexico D.F.
El Rey and the league in which its team plays aren’t on the scouting schedule of any major league ballclub. The vast majority of organized baseball isn’t even aware of its existence.
Zito rolls his car into the dirt parking lot of the single lit building on the dragged-out main road, a cantina with a blinking green neon sign. It’s shadowed and quiet inside, no music on the dented speakers, and Zito doesn’t have to say much more than “baseball” and “American,” doesn’t even have to say the name.
They point him down the road, rattling off some saint’s name affixed to a motel. San Carlos, Santa Clara, same as the Bay Area cities that Zito spent the crucial years of his life wandering through.
Zito walks down to the motel, because he’s not really looking forward to this. His knee hurts. His knee has hurt every single day since a line-drive comebacker shattered his kneecap his eleventh season. He lets himself limp, something he would never normally do, because there’s no one here to see it.
It’s not hard finding the right room. The huge car with Arizona plates, once-shiny and now with dust clouding the panels above the wheels, waits in the heat. The back window on the shotgun side has been smashed in, probably ‘cause this car is the one thing within a hundred miles worth robbing, and carelessly repaired with a ripped fragment of cardboard stuck down with peeling duct tape. It’s not hard at all, because once upon a time this car was stupidly expensive, and there’s only one man in town with the money to afford it.
Zito tugs at the hem of his shirt, runs his hands through his hair. The specks of white started appearing at the ends of his hair during his last season in the bigs, scattered like grains of salt, creeping through, but it’s still nothing more than subtle.
He doesn’t look as old as he is.
There’s sweat on the back of his neck and the undersides of his wrists. Zito walks slowly to the motel room’s door and stands there for a long time before knocking twice.
He waits for better than a minute, but there’s no response, so he knocks again. And this time he hears that best-known voice calling hoarsely, “Go the fuck away! Fucking salga!”
Zito smiles.
He touches the doorknob with his fingertips and it turns easily, the metal hot under his palm. The lock is busted and hanging off its hinge, which doesn’t surprise him much. He steps in and it’s no cooler in here, just darker. Pitch fucking black.
Zito shuts the door behind him and leans back. The long shape sprawled on the bed, head under a pillow and legs hanging off the end, growls, “Who the fuck . . . vaya, pendejo.”
Zito tips his head back against the wall. “Hello, Cy Young,” he says quietly.
The figure on the bed tenses, and then slowly, slowly, the man pushes the pillow away and raises his head.
For everything that’ll never be the same again, Mark Mulder’s still got those goddamn blue eyes.
They just look at each other for a long time, for days maybe, weeks. It’s dead silent in the room and dead silent outside and Zito can hear Mulder pull in each breath.
Finally Mulder says without inflection, “Hello, Cy Young.”
Mulder drops his head back and gazes at the ceiling, then levers up, straightening with a drawn-out groan, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
“How’s the knee?” he asks, not looking up. It’s been years since they’ve seen each other, and nobody’s supposed to know Mulder’s down here, but Zito wouldn’t have expected Mulder’s first question to be anything else.
Zito shrugs, swiping an arm across his forehead. It’s so fucking hot in here. A drop of sweat leaps off a strand of Zito’s hair, dots his nose, and another one steals into the corner of his eye, making him squint and wipe his face off on the hem of his shirt, the feverish stifled air on his momentarily bare stomach making it impossible to tell where the atmosphere ends and he begins.
Mexico in July and it makes a perfect kind of sense that Mark Mulder, maybe one of the best left-handers ever, would end up playing for a team too dirt-poor to provide him with an air-conditioned room.
Zito wishes for an ice cube, a handful of ice cubes, deliciously melting to water on his skin, popping one in his mouth and sucking hard till his head is chilled and aching. He’s fucking exhausted, in addition to everything else, because it was three solid days of driving and if he slept, he doesn’t remember it.
And anyway, he just two months ago got closer to fifty than he is to forty, and he can’t burn through the night so easy anymore. Twenty-three, twenty-four, he could watch sunrise the morning after a night game, mainline some coffee and aspirin and be fit for a noon start, he remembers, he remembers perfectly.
Mulder’s got a three-quarters full bottle of whiskey glinting on the dresser, a water-spotted tumbler tucked up against it. The room is filthy, cinder-gray sheets and broken plaster walls. The phone’s in three pieces on the floor, probably from the last time Mulder got beat by the malnourished teenagers of the lowest Mexican league there is.
“Hurts. How’s the elbow?” At least Zito’s knee was a freak accident. Mulder’s elbow started to go when they were both still in Oakland.
Mulder cradles his left elbow, rubbing it with his palm. “Killing me.” He pauses. His head is bent down and the moonlight through the window is beginning to take effect as Zito’s eyes adjust. There’s silver collecting at Mulder’s temples, deep lines near his eyes. “What are you doing here, man?”
Zito thumbs open the first two buttons of his shirt, his fingers slicking across the hollows of his throat. Mulder’s still not looking at him. “I was in the neighborhood.”
Mulder snorts, darts an impatient look over at the other man. “You came all the way down here to make fucking jokes?”
Zito shakes his head. “No.” He looks down, calls himself a coward, pulls his eyes back up. “I came to take you home.”
Mulder stands abruptly, his movements jerky. He stalks across the room and pours himself a tall shot. His back is tight, his shoulders high, and he braces his hands on the edge of the dresser, says shortly, “Fuck off, Zito. Thanks for making the drive and all, but seriously, go to hell. If I go home, I’m certainly not going with you.” Mulder scowls down at the glass, muttering, “Not like I got anything to go back for, anyway.”
His expression blanking in surprise, a shabby little bolt of self-righteousness down the heart of him, Zito hikes his eyebrows and asks, “How’s your son, Mulder?” his voice pegging harsh on the word ‘son.’
Mulder winces, suddenly looking very old, and Zito runs on recklessly, brutal with false curiosity, “What is he, about thirteen, fourteen now? Little Matty’s growing up. Hey, has he got his growth spurt yet, you still think he’ll end up taller than you?”
Mulder answers, hard and low and full of warning, “Don’t talk about my family.”
Zito doesn’t even fucking care, at this point. Two thousand miles of highway and twenty-five years behind him and Mulder’s trying to kill himself in a town named for some king, so to hell with it.
“Remind me, man, I always get them mixed up, did you have Matty by your second wife or your third? Or have you forgotten too? Well, you could always call and ask him who his mom is. That is, if you even know the phone number.”
Mulder snaps, snatching handfuls of Zito’s shirt and throwing him so hard into the wall the whole place shakes. Mulder wraps a hand around Zito’s throat and squeezes just tight enough as he says, a terrible scraped tone, “I told you, don’t talk about my family.”
Zito can only breathe a little bit, but it’s enough to push out the words, moving up under Mulder’s hand and gasping from Zito’s lips, “What fucking family?”
Yeah, Mulder’s lip curled up and his hand strangling, hey, that didn’t take too long, and Zito braces, waiting for the punch, waiting for Mulder’s hands to fall on him again, and he’s pretty sure he deserves this.
*
It’s been a long time since they got into a fistfight (not counting Atlanta, which Zito rarely counts for anything). Maybe eighteen years ago, in the clubhouse of the American League All-Star team, that single game the last time they would ever be teammates, and Mulder had been laughing at him, because Zito’s old A’s cap had tumbled out of his bag and into the open, so that all of them could see how pathetic Zito was, still dreaming of California.
And Mulder was laughing at him, scooping up the cap and playing keep-away, taunting Zito, didja forget who you played for, can I keep this, at least it’s my right team, and calling out to everybody that it’s a crying fucking shame Zito misses Oakland as bad as he does, because Oakland doesn’t miss him much at all.
So Zito hit him. Mulder hit him back and they did that for awhile until strong arms were looped around their chests and they were hauled off each other. Zito spit blood on the clubhouse floor and couldn’t quite believe that he was on the edge of tears, and he wondered if these rising bruises would be the last marks Mulder ever left on him.
*
In Mexico, Zito holds his breath and doesn’t press his cheek against the wall with his eyes screwed shut like he wants to do. He swallows, feeling his Adam’s apple push against Mulder’s palm, and they’re too old for this shit, they really are.
Mulder drops his hand from Zito’s throat to the doorknob, shoving it open and shoving the other man out in one smooth motion, slamming the door shut as Zito stumbles over his feet.
Zito stands out there for a long silent stretch, his hands jammed in his pockets, trying to pick out the differences in constellations between here and L.A., the choke of the equatorial heat.
That could have gone better. Bad fucking start. Why’d he have to bring up Matty? Such a fucking asshole. What the hell did he think Mulder would do?
He sits down at the foot of the room door, leaning his head back, brushing splinters out of his hair. No ambient light and the moon like a dinner plate, pale and enormous. Strange noises trawling out of the scrub brush and Zito wonders what animals live wild out here.
Zito listens to Mulder moving around through the wall, and he thinks, for only a moment or two, about the night he got traded for the first time, the night they sent him away from Oakland.
*
It’s stark, incomplete as he cripples his mind from following that train of thought. He sees his hands moving, numbly cleaning out his locker, and he was thinking inchoately and stunned, ‘Baltimore? Baltimore?’ over and over again, trying to get it to make sense.
Then suddenly someone else’s hand was around his wrist. Zito blinked and looked up and there was fury in Mulder’s face, no good reason for it, and Mulder saying into his ear, “Why’d you have to become so fucking expendable.”
And Zito tried to push him away, moving slow like being underwater, which explained his dissolving vision, and he wouldn’t have thought that he’d take it this hard, he really wouldn’t have.
There are parts missing from the middle, all at once the two of them were back at Zito’s house and Zito almost broke down two feet into the front hallway, unable to believe that he really had to leave. Mulder didn’t say a word as Zito staggered against him, didn’t even blink, just let Zito breathe carefully with his arms around Mulder’s waist.
How could they just get rid of him like that? What was he going to do?
Zito was just about okay again, presentable, when Mulder backed him up into the corner and whispered, “you know that thing that happens sometimes that we never talk about?”
Zito froze. The first time had been after the third game of the ALDS in 2001, when Zito pitched eight innings of two-hit ball at Yankee Stadium, allowing only one run and still taking the loss. Of all the things that happened that night, giving Mulder a blowjob in the hotel bathroom actually ended up being the least strange, and he mainly remembered his hand on Mulder’s shoulder, holding him down after the other man’s knees had given out.
The second time was in the backyard of the Lafayette house five minutes after the Diamondbacks won the World Series, Mulder flattening him against the side of the house and whispering, “little fucking cocksucker, is this what you been waiting for,” while jerking him off with rough strokes, and the entire team was just inside.
The third time was Mulder showing up drunk at Zito’s place in Hollywood over the off-season, Zito so fucking angry and bending Mulder over the back of the couch, his hand pushed up under Mulder’s shirt, fingers spread wide between Mulder’s shoulder blades.
Every couple of weeks, every month or so. During the streak in 2002, every single night for all twenty games, given a perfect excuse, because they were protecting the luck. Eventually Zito lost track.
They never talked about it. It was always as near to silent as they could manage, save curses and groans, and never once had Zito said Mulder’s name when Mulder was sucking his cock or biting his shoulder or any of the other stuff they did and forgot about the next day. Never fucking once.
And then Zito got traded and in the hallway of his apartment, Mulder smiled faintly at him, his fingers in Zito’s shirt pocket, tugging down. Mulder said, the words coming jaggedly, “probably you should know that it didn’t mean anything, ‘cause it couldn’t mean anything, but now you’re leaving, so listen, it meant a lot, okay, sometimes it meant everything.”
And Mulder kissed him and took him down, last-time fierce and desperate, carpet burns on Mulder’s elbows and Zito’s face, bruises scattered like clues all over their bodies, and Mulder’s forehead on the nape of his neck as they both pretended to sleep, and Mulder’s lips moving on the highest knob of Zito’s backbone, saying almost too low to hear, “I didn’t think it’d happen this soon.”
Zito swallowed, nodded, buried his face in the pillow and held Mulder’s hand pressed to his hip, until he finally fell into a stunning dreamless sleep and Mulder was able to slip away.
*
Zito gets bored plaiting together the new stars, El Rey so deeply asleep around him, he can almost feel the burring rapid eye movements under the dirt roads. He stands, remembering that the lock on the door’s busted, and though there’s not much chance Mulder will let him stay for longer than an eloquent “fuck right off,” Zito drove to goddamn Mexico, practically drove to Guatemala, and fuck if he’s gonna give up now.
Twisting the doorknob and nudging it warily open, Zito sticks his head in.
Mulder’s lying on his back on the bed again, staring up at the ceiling. The bottle of whiskey is at his right hand and has lost considerable volume since Zito last saw it. Mulder must know he’s come back in; he couldn’t have gotten that drunk that fast.
Just to be sure, Zito clears his throat, feeling stupid. Mulder doesn’t acknowledge him, and Zito sighs, sitting backwards in the room’s single chair, flat wood planks and a ninety-degree seatback that Zito folds his arms on top of, resting his chin and relearning Mulder as he lies there without moving, his eyes open.
Mulder’s still tall, even lying down, still strong. He’s gotten skinnier, spare with his slatted stomach, his collarbones stabbing out, like how he was when they were first called up. Mulder never really had any extra weight to lose, it’s the muscle that has shrunk back, his wiry arms and the shadows of his ribcage barely hinted at beneath his T-shirt.
Zito hasn’t seen him in five years, and three years ago Mulder self-destructed in his last chance to pitch for a contender, a staggering 9.45 ERA by the break, and when he got sent down to the minors for the first time since a rehab assignment fourteen years early, he somehow got worse, lit up like a pinball machine by fucking bush leaguers. Mulder got released before the trade deadline, wasn’t picked up by anyone, and by the next spring he’d absconded across the border, looking for some team, any team.
In the dark like this, it’s easy to see Mulder twenty-two years old again, grinning and laughing and soon enough the best pitcher of his generation.
That was more than twenty years ago, that doesn’t matter, not anymore.
*
Mulder’s got three ex-wives (he started the trend of getting married, divorcing, and remarrying swiftly a year before he finally left the A’s. Combined between the three women, Mulder had been a husband for about five years, steadfastly refusing to learn from his mistakes) and a son he never sees, and when he went to Mexico, the only person he told was Eric Chavez, who’d never had to play for any other team.
Chavez hmm’ed his vague approval into the phone, then asked hesitantly, “Mark, aren’t you . . . aren’t you pretty tired?”
Mulder called him a dirty name and swore him to secrecy, but then six months later, Zito came to visit after Eric’s fourth daughter was born, and in between trading memories back and forth and recapping the whereabouts of their former teammates, Chavez killed about three too many beers and ended up slinging an arm around Zito’s neck, pressing his face to Zito’s shoulder and mumbling, “I don’t care, man, you know I don’t care. But I guess you probably miss him, huh?”
Grinning, shrugging, Zito asked for clarification and Chavez said, “Mark. Mark. Mulder. I mean, ‘cause, like, I’m thinking that the only time Mulder was ever really, like, at peace or whatever, was when you and him were having your thing. And I figure, it goes both ways, so you probably miss him now that he’s disa-fucking-ppeared.”
And Zito should have outright denied it, but, well, he was a couple past his limit, too, and just rolled Chavez off his shoulder, dimly picking Chavez’s eyes out and asking, “You knew?”
Chavez nodded, grinning goofily. “Very smart, me. Very aware of all that goes on. Also I saw you guys making out in the backyard at the Lafayette house one time.”
Rolling his eyes, smirking, Zito took a pull of his beer. They were on the front porch, two middle-aged guys drinking and talking about the past. Two retired-before-age-forty, set-for-life, will-be-remembered former ballplayers who both still got recognized in the East Bay, though neither of them lived there anymore. Zito had never really decided what he would do after he stopped playing, so for the past seven years he’d just been doing nothing.
Life after baseball.
Zito shuddered quickly, a cold flash, and he rubbed his arms through his coat, nodding and keeping his attention on the street as he said, “Yeah, okay, smart guy, I miss him. I haven’t heard from him in months, and nobody seems to know where he’s gotten to.”
Chavez was blowing air over the mouth of his beer bottle, producing an echoing hoot, a high clear note-‘c flat,’ Zito thought-distracted as he answered, “Well, somebody knows,” bending a grin.
Zito took Chavez’s bottle away from him and held him still, his gaze solid and beyond challenge. “Ricky,” he said. “Spill.”
Chavvy blinked at him owlishly, his face creased with entrenched laugh lines at his mouth and eyes, his hair well on its way to being pure gray. “Nobody’s called me Ricky in at least fifteen years,” he replied wonderingly, ticking his fingers out like he was calculating the passage of time.
His brow scrunched up, Chavez said with drunken sincerity, “If I tell you, you gotta go and bring him back. You gotta fix him, Barry, okay?”
Zito almost had to bite back a laugh at that one, as if fixing Mulder was as easy as getting in his car and topping a hundred on the highway through the desert. But he just nodded solemnly, and Chavez sighed, stammering a bit, “He’s in Mexico. El Rey. Which is south. I think. He’s playing ball down there.”
Zito dropped his beer, exploding it on the cement patio. He stared dumbly at the shards for a minute, then shot his eyes back up to Chavez’s. “He’s pitching? How?”
Chavvy shrugged, slouching down in his chair, sleepy and wanting to go look at his new baby girl again. “Like always, I guess. Except, you know, not very . . . good. This team in El Rey isn’t affiler-affil-affilia-fucking connected to the majors . . . MLB doesn’t even really know they’re playing down there, as far as scouting goes. It’s the middle of fucking nowhere, basically.”
Zito bent down to pick up a broken piece of glass, turning it in his hand, watching the porch light beam off the bottlegreen. He took his time, getting things straight. “So what’s he doing? If he’s got no shot to make it back?”
Chavez rattled his fingers on the wooden arm of the chair, snuck a quick look over his shoulder at his shuttered house. He was . . .yeah, pretty fucking drunk.
Eric shook his head, suddenly and purposelessly overwhelmed with melancholy, thinking of Mulder down there, chasing something all the rest of them had let get away, thinking of Mulder at twenty-four years old, dunking him in the pool, and thinking of Zito, alone even with all his friends and family, Zito who’d been traded way too soon from their brilliant young-millennium team, and didn’t even have a chance to really say goodbye.
Zito’s stricken eyes and the inexorable tear-down of his talent once he was wearing a different uniform and calling a new city home. And Mulder, who couldn’t escape the game, though maybe he wanted to, at last, maybe he wanted to just be still, be easy and clean.
Mostly trying not to think about those few blinding, overjoyed years when they were all Oakland Athletics, mostly trying not to think that that was as good a span of time as could be, that was the best they’d ever do and the best they’d ever be and that was twenty years behind them now.
Chavez scowled, not liking the path of his thoughts, shutting that out, and told Zito, “He’s playing ball ‘cause if he stops, I think he thinks he’ll die or something. But, it’s, uh, really not . . . healthy. At all. He’s been down there for six months and he can’t even win against that pitiful league and I think it’s probably a good bet that he’s going crazy.”
Zito stood, patting his pockets for his keys, and was halfway down the porch steps when he turned, all gaslight eyes and determination set into his jaw and mouth, asked to make sure, “El Rey?”
Chavez nodded, cracking open a new beer and toasting the pitcher with it. “The once and future king. Good luck.”
Zito looked at him, then all of a sudden grinned and looked like a rookie again, looked invincible the way he’d been when he was young, and Zito said, “Your little girl is beautiful, Eric. Your whole family is awesome.”
And then Zito was gone, hopping down to the walk and jogging to his car. Chavez watched until the hanging red brake lights melted into the black, then went inside and figured he was probably pretty lucky, all things considered.
*
Zito is surprised to find himself speaking into the hollow room, his head cradled on his arms on the seatback, folded uncomfortably in the stiff chair, yawning and abruptly breaking the silence by saying, “I’m sorry I said that stuff about Matty.”
Mulder twitches, his hand scratching on the covers of the bed, dully shined from overuse. Zito sighs, rubs his nose on his arm. “You just . . . you fucking vanished, man. Nobody knew where you went or if something happened or anything. I was pretty pissed off at you, I guess. For running away or whatever.”
Zito gnaws on his shirtsleeve, just for something to do, and studies the carpet, counting discolorations until he loses his place. His lower back is starting to hurt like a motherfucker. Zito thinks that it’s probably the onset of arthritis, and he fucking hates the way his body is falling apart in a million tiny ways.
“I didn’t run away.”
Zito snaps his head up. Mulder’s still staring at the ceiling; it doesn’t look like he’s moved an inch. Barring auditory hallucinations, though, Zito knows what he heard. He cocks an eyebrow. “What would you call it?”
Mulder shrugs, the movement pulling up his T-shirt a bit. Zito can see Mulder’s stomach, ghosted with an air-thin layer of sweat, making him gleam. Zito’s about to suggest they say fuck modesty in favor of comfort and lose their shirts altogether, but then Mulder answers:
“I wanted to keep playing ball, and this was the only place that would let me.”
Zito wonders if he’s allowed to sit on the bed yet. He stays in the chair and asks, “Well, why didn’t you tell anybody except Eric what was going on? ‘Cause, you know, woulda liked to know or whatever.”
Mulder braces himself on his elbows, pulling his legs up to sit Indian-style, his head rising out of the moon-paned light stretching across the bed, into the shadows, his eyes sunk back far enough to be invisible. “I . . . it was hard. I didn’t want everybody to know about this team or this town.” He fists a hand on his knee, presses down hard. “’Cause . . . it’s like Steve Carlton. Or Rickey.”
Zito holds up a hand to ask, “Which Rickey?”
Mulder gives him a look, pay-attention-little-punk, and Mulder at forty-six maybe isn’t that much different than Mulder at twenty-six. “Henderson. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”
Mark pushes a hand through his hair, picks at a loose thread on the bedspread. “How, by the end of it, Carlton was begging for a tryout in Japan, down on his fucking knees for every team in the game. And Rickey, crashing our FanFest that year trying to make a comeback.”
Zito yawns into the crook of his elbow. “Rickey did make a comeback, though. A couple of ‘em.”
“’s not the point,” Mulder tells him. “It just, it like, killed those guys for me, you know? As good as they were, and they lower themselves to that . . . begging for a fucking shot. I never wanted to be like that.”
Mulder’s winding the thread around his fingertip, tightening and dark blood gathering. Zito thinks that he needs to be careful here. “But how they went out doesn’t change what they did. Carlton won better than 300. Rickey’s lousy with records. People don’t forget that.”
Mulder chafes a humorless laugh. “Well, my stats aren’t quite that memorable, I don’t think.”
Widening his eyes, Zito looks for signs of joking and seeing none, immediately rushes to defend Mulder from . . . Mulder. “What the fuck are you talking about? You’ve got great stats. You’ve done as good as anybody, you fucking idiot. You got a ring, you got more Cy Youngs than me, your career ERA is just fucking unfair, you won 284 games-”
Mulder cuts him off, saying sharply with a trace of a smile, “Hey, hey. 288. Is how many games I won. Get it straight.”
Zito decides they’re probably cool for now, goes over to sit cross-legged on the bed next to Mulder, who shifts slightly away. Zito finds a thread of his own to pull at, wonders, “Is this about getting 300? You want to get back to the Show so you can get twelve more wins?”
Mulder blows out a breath. “The way I’m pitching, it would take me about four seasons to get twelve wins.”
Zito smiles. “You remember ’04? Twelve by the break, you had.”
His mouth crooking, Mulder nods. “Topped your win streak, too.”
He reaches behind him to snag the bottle of whiskey and the glass. He hands both to Zito, and leans off the bed, ducking his head under and scrounging, emerging with a plastic bottle of water. Constructing his drink, Mulder continues, “It’s not about getting 300, though. That’s just a number, so whatever. I pitched for twenty-two seasons, so those twelve wins I don’t have, that’s only about one more win every other year. Not that big a deal.”
“If you’d had one more in ’01, you probably would have gotten the Cy,” Zito points out, watching Mulder’s big hands flicker through the motions of mixing a drink, wondering how all the grace in a person’s body can be solely restricted to their hands.
“I got enough Cys,” Mulder replies, leaning back against the headboard and stretching his legs out. He cradles the glass between his palms, the amber shine of the whiskey winking expectantly, curveball grip over the chipped glass.
Zito waits, but Mulder doesn’t add anything, so Zito props his elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand, hunched over, and there’s really only one reason he came down here. Well. Maybe two. But only one that really counts.
“If it’s not to get back to the Show,” Zito begins slowly. “Why are you out here?”
Mulder looks away, blinking a few times very quickly, deep contusions under his eyes from five years of not getting enough sleep, now carved in permanently. .
Zito’s been trying to chisel his way back into Mark Mulder’s life for more than fifteen years now, and there are no earthly means to measure the number of times Zito has wished that he had never been fucking traded in the first place.
*
Zito called Mulder pretty constantly for about two months after he joined the Orioles. It was a lot of things, it was checking up, getting the new gossip, maybe how are you pitching this guy, do you think I should pitch him like this, griping about having to find a new place to live and the weather in Baltimore and how far away he was from everything now.
Eventually, of course, Mulder stopped picking up when the Caller ID showed Zito’s name, never responded to any of Zito’s messages, and though it took him a good three weeks, Zito finally caught on and didn’t call Mulder again.
Hard to explain, because Zito didn’t think he’d done anything wrong. Maybe talked too much . . . but he’d always talked too much. Mulder in his head, telling him, ‘sometimes it’s meant everything,’ and something like that doesn’t just go away, does it?
Anyway, Zito stopped calling Mulder, thinking maybe Mulder had a rule about being friends with players from opposing teams, but that was bullshit, because Mulder had a ton of friends who played on opposing teams. So did Zito, so did all of them.
So maybe Mulder just had a rule about being friends with Zito.
As each new season pushed him further and further away from those five and a half years in Oakland, Zito lost touch with some of his old teammates, the ones who retired, kept tabs on all those still active, always trying to organize some kind of hanging out when they visited each other’s cities, and stayed telecommunications-close to a few others.
It was Scott Hatteberg who told him Mulder had gotten married, early in 2007. Zito didn’t ask who was at the wedding, ‘cause what if it turned out to be everyone except him?
And when the marriage fell apart a few months later, it was Scotty who said casually to Zito, the first baseman in Anaheim and Zito in Baltimore, “You should call him. Just to say hi, you don’t have to talk about the divorce or nothing. It’s been awhile for you guys, yeah?”
Zito swallowed past something thick and sharp in his throat. “Guess so. He . . . didn’t seem very interested in me, after I left the team.”
“Fuck, that wasn’t your fault,” Hatteberg answered, sounding indignant.
Zito half-smiled. “I know.”
“Well, to hell with him. He wants to punk out on his friends, he can see what happens when he needs his friends. Like now.”
Zito still wanted to call Mulder. Not to say sorry, not to tell him to hang in there, not to tell him it’s darkest before the dawn, nothing so clichéd. Zito wanted to hear Mulder’s voice and wanted to ask him, “sometimes we mean everything to each other, and could this please be one of those times?”
But Mulder, he was the perfect ballplayer, he was clean for it, brilliantly designed. He could shut off his mind in a way Zito never could. He could forget the bad parts, see nothing but the future. Yeah, he was blessed, and Zito was three thousand miles away and that meant he didn’t exist anymore, as far as Mark Mulder was concerned.
Mulder got remarried and had a son and left Oakland himself, in one of the biggest trades of the season, went on to be all that he was promised to be, and wear pinstripes, and win a World Series.
And one September, six years removed from California, in the depth of the pennant race (Mulder would be going to the playoffs; Zito wouldn’t get within shouting distance of the playoffs), Zito took the hardest hit line-drive he’d ever seen square on the kneecap.
He quite literally felt it shatter.
He went down like he’d been shot, petrified on his back on the mound, his every last shred of power focused on not moving, because the pain was astonishing, breathtaking, cathartic, and the slightest tremor sent agony ricocheting through him.
He was, obviously, out for the season, the few weeks that remained, and the team’s lack of a postseason chance actually worked in his favor, thinking that he had it better than Mulder in ’03, Mulder’s broken hip and the jigsawed October rotation Macha and Billy Beane (God rest) had built around his absence.
But then he reminded himself that he wasn’t thinking about Mulder anymore.
He crutched home on the subway after a week in the hospital, turning down rides from his friends and teammates, wanting to prove himself a functional cripple, at the very least.
And found Mulder sitting on the front steps of his apartment building.
Zito double-took in surprise and shuffled, considered ducking into the alley to hide, before irritably calling himself a fool and a fucking coward, and hobbled a bit slower on the sidewalk, closing the space between them.
Mulder stood as Zito approached, and without hesitation reached out to take Zito’s bag off his shoulder and sling it over his own. Zito blushed and ground the rubber end of his crutch into the concrete, his eyes down.
He could see Mulder’s shoes, and he knew Mulder wasn’t pitching until the weekend. Zito snuck a glance at the other man, got incredibly nervous upon looking at Mulder again, and jerked his chin towards the lobby door.
They rode the elevator up to Zito’s place in total silence like strangers, and Mulder prowled around for a bit investigating the apartment, squinting at the snapshots on the bulletin board in the kitchen, pecking out about five notes of ‘Heart and Soul’ on the piano before he hit the wrong key and promptly gave up, peering into the refrigerator and climbing out onto the fire escape to check out the view.
Zito got himself all set up on the couch so that there would be a minimum of movement required from him for the rest of the day, the coffee table crowded with remote controls and sodas and food and a stack of books two feet high.
As slowly as he had to move, it all took a good bit of time, but Mulder still hadn’t come in off the fire escape when Zito finally sank down into the couch and resolved not to get up for at least a week.
Zito flipped through the TV channels, already bored and pain-meds-disconnected and unable to concentrate on anything for longer than about ten seconds.
They still hadn’t said a word to each other.
Zito heard the window bang shut and muted the television. When Mulder walked in a moment later, Zito got his first decent look at the other man, that break-your-heart-and-fucking-laugh face of his, the pale gold highlights catching on the ends of his hair, the broad straight bridge of his shoulders and the lazy hang of his five-foot-reach arms, the taper of his chest to his waist, the easy strut of his long long legs.
Zito faked a cough, scrubbing a hand across his eyes. Mulder was just standing there looking down at him, his thumbs hooked in his pockets and his mouth thin.
Zito sighed, couldn’t avoid it. “All right, what. What are you doing here? ‘Cause, you know, I kinda got some other stuff to deal with right now.” He flapped his hand at his propped leg, the heavy bandages and plastic brace, the spiraling trend of the pain, or the pain meds, he wasn’t sure.
Mulder met Zito’s gaze, held it for an awfully long time. Mulder’s short hair had been tousled as much as possible by the wind outside, a cornered ruff poking down on the side of his forehead. There were flakes of orange rust on the palms of Mulder’s hands, and a leaf knotted in one of Mulder’s buttonholes.
Mulder said, carefully, like the explanation was cast in crystal, “I . . . I saw you . . . on TV. They . . . keep showing it. SportsCenter. Fox Sports. Everybody. I, um . . .” Mulder dragged a hand wickedly through his hair, tried to keep his eyes on Zito. He continued in a near-inaudible whisper, “I got on a plane. I . . . I told the club it was family illness and I’d be back for my start, and then I . . . got on a plane. I’m not . . . sure why.”
Zito’s eyes kept getting bigger, but he remained still. Mulder paced back and forth, once, twice, his hands cutting through the air. “I’ve seen that goddamn ball hit you probably a hundred times now. Seen you lying there like you were dead. Seen them carry you off. I saw . . . your face. When it hit you. When you fell down. Maybe, I mean, probably I’ve never seen anybody in pain like that. And it was . . . well, it was you.”
Mulder stopped, turned to face Zito. Zito had his arms wrapped around a couch cushion, hugging it to his chest. He felt about six years old, waiting to hear the end of the story.
Mulder studied him for a long moment and then blew out an irritated breath, his body tight with energy. Mulder started feinting and shadowboxing, digging uppercuts into the air, slashing hooks, broken-nose jabs. He spoke without looking at Zito, “I basically needed to see you. Like, in real life. Make sure you’re okay. Or whatever. ‘Cause right after it happened they said that maybe you wouldn’t be able to walk again, and, and . . .”
Mulder trailed off, pulling in a deep breath and steadying himself. His nerves weren’t entirely gone, evidenced by his hand scratching at his chest and anxiously counting his shirt buttons.
Right about then was when Zito saw Mulder’s wedding ring for the first time.
Zito snatched his eyes away, pushing the cushion away and crossing his arms over his chest, staring out the window and instinctively wishing he had a view of the Bay Bridge before he remembered that that wasn’t an option anymore and tore it out of his mind.
“I’m fine,” he said dully. “I might eventually have to have another operation on it, but it should heal perfect. I’ll be able to walk and pitch and everything.”
He wasn’t looking, so Mulder was able to sneak up, kneel in front of the couch and touch his fingers to Zito’s shoulder before curving his whole hand around, sliding up to the back of Zito’s neck, weaving through Zito’s hair.
Zito yanked backwards in shock, cracking his head on the wall behind him, spitting out a hoarse obscenity as Mulder sat back on his heels, his face unreadable.
“The fuck are you doing?” Zito snapped. Mulder shrugged, keeping his eyes half-lidded. Mulder’s arm was resting on Zito’s good leg, his hand dangling, crawling upwards to palm Zito’s non-broken kneecap.
Zito was gonna shove him off, but Mulder’s hand was . . . okay. Warm. Strong. Badly missed. Warm some more.
Zito watched the other man’s hand with scientific detachment, finger-walking up his thigh and past his belt to ease across Zito’s stomach, mold Zito’s chest under his hands.
Zito closed his eyes and sighed, dropped his head back. Mulder was nudging his legs apart, terribly cautious of Zito’s busted knee, maneuvering between and tugging Zito’s body down farther on the couch, his one good leg lolling out like a drunk. Mulder pulled him to sit all the way up for a moment to get rid of his shirt, then pressed him back down, his tongue marking down the center of Zito’s chest.
Zito curled his hand in Mulder’s hair, thought that there was something he was forgetting, something pretty important, and then something hard and smooth and fucking freezing cold brushed across his nipple, and Zito gasped, jerked away.
Mulder slid his hands down from Zito’s chest and held his hips instead, angling a questioning look up at the other man, blue-eyed and handsome and not that nice and oh, yes, fucking married.
Zito tried to push him off, but his angle was all wrong ‘cause of his leg, so he just grabbed Mulder’s hand and said, “Knock it off, right fucking now, and maybe I won’t tell your wife about it.”
Mulder’s face wreaked through a million things in the space of a moment, mostly guilt and anger and desire, all three huge and screaming out of his eyes. He took a long time composing himself, one hand still on Zito’s side, still kneeling in between Zito’s legs.
Mulder tested the give of Zito’s stomach muscles under his hand, letting anger win out. “You’re the one who fucking left,” he snarled.
Zito sat up too fast, jostling his leg and crushing him with pain. He fell back with a moan and when Mulder’s hands started fluttering across his chest again, when Mulder’s mouth attached itself to his throat, Zito groaned and dragged his hands up Mulder’s back before sweeping over his shoulders and planting them hard on Mulder’s chest, shoving him off.
Zito glared at him, folding his arms over his bare chest to feel less exposed, to hide the way his hands were shaking. “You blame me for getting traded?” he asked incredulously.
Sitting back with his arms braced behind him, Mulder’s mouth warped, became ugly and cruel. “If you hadn’t pitched like shit for as long as you did, no way Billy would have gotten rid of you.”
Zito couldn’t believe it and as he looked down, shaking his head, he noticed for the first time that his belt and jeans fly were both gaping open. “The fuck?” he muttered, shooting a sick violent look at the other man. Mulder just grinned meanly, ran his hand up the inside of Zito’s leg until Zito slapped him away.
“Told you to knock it the fuck off,” he said. “And as far as me getting traded, you and me still woulda been fine if you hadn’t decided to start ignoring me completely, not to mention the fact that you managed to get married twice and have a fucking kid, but couldn’t find the time to call me or see me until I get hurt and your fucking protective instinct kicks in.”
Mulder sneered, but Zito cut him off before he could say anything back. “You still want to fuck around with me, tough. I got traded, you got married, and I think that’s more than enough reason for me to tell you to get the fuck out of my house.”
Mulder’s expression tightened, and Zito kept his eyes level, refusing to allow himself to look away or blink really fast or lick his lips or take Mulder’s hand and slide it under the waistband of his boxers, or any of the other stuff he wanted to do that definitely wouldn’t go towards emphasizing his point.
His hands at either side of Zito’s body, dented in the couch cushions, Mulder lifted his eyes and something was happening behind the contrite expression on his face. “All right,” he said, lowering his eyelashes like a girl or something. “I’ll go.”
And then suddenly Mulder had one of Zito’s wrists gripped tightly his hand, then Zito’s other hand and other wrist and Zito making a noise of protest as Mulder pressed Zito’s arms together and chained one of his big hands around both of Zito’s wrists. With his free hand he reached up and stroked his palm across Zito’s cheek, Zito furious and wrenching his hands in Mulder’s grip, until his struggling jarred his shattered kneecap and Zito immediately went limp, his eyes closed against it.
Mulder, not above using Zito’s pain to his advantage, leaned forward and covered Zito’s mouth with his own, Zito resisting at first and trying to rip his head away, but Mulder had a hand around the back of Zito’s neck and held him motionless, taking his time ‘cause probably this was the last time (for real the last time), and yeah, Mulder’s got respect for that sort of thing.
By the time Mulder was licking the inside of Zito’s mouth and sucking on his tongue, he didn’t need to restrain the other man anymore, and Mulder released Zito’s wrists, Zito’s hands skidding up to his shoulders and through his hair. Mulder kissed him as long as he could, until his thoughts began to fracture and white spots burst on the backs of his eyelids.
He pulled away, Zito looking dazed, and when Mulder’s hands went back to Zito’s fly, Zito didn’t do anything, not even a token protest, just mumbled nonsense words and petted the back of Mulder’s head.
Mulder, aware at that moment that he could do pretty much anything to the other man, made a cold smile and swiftly fastened Zito’s jeans, buckling his belt and Zito blinking down at him in utter confusion. Mulder found Zito’s T-shirt under the couch and draped it over his head, saying, “There you go, right back to fucking normal.”
Zito snatched the T-shirt off his head, his outrage and ferocity returning full-force, but before he could say anything, Mulder kissed him again, hard.
Then Zito couldn’t quite get his vocal chords to work and Mulder smirked, tossed over his shoulder in farewell, “That knee is God’s punishment for you being a fucking cocktease, in case you were wondering.”
Mulder barely got the door shut behind him before he heard the hurled book slam against it. Mulder laughed to himself, in the elevator and in the cab and in the airport, and then he was standing before a huge window watching the planes take off, when out of nowhere his legs gave out and he fell to the ground, his mouth tasting like Zito and his eyes hot and dry, his hands shaking so bad that he balled them up into fists and pressed them against his face and Mulder ordered himself to quit it, just fucking quit it, he’s not worth it, nothing is worth this.
*
Zito waits, then he waits some more, and when still no dice, he touches Mulder’s knee, saying his name softly, only to have Mulder spook and shift even farther away. Zito sighs.
“Tell me, will you?” he implores. “You know you wanna. It’ll be, like, easier. To have told someone else. I swear, dude.”
Mulder cuts him a glance from out the corner of his eye. “I think you’re too old to still be talking like that. Dude.”
Zito smiles, but won’t back down. “How come you came down here? Not running away, not trying to get back to the Show, so . . . what?”
Mulder falls back on the bed, rubbing his hand across his forehead. “You ever think all this evasion of mine is a way of telling you I don’t want to talk about it?”
“Crossed my mind,” Zito shrugs. “But you should tell me anyway. I drove two thousand miles to Bumblefuck . . . excuse me, El Bumblefuck . . . and you’re not even keeping up your end of the conversation.”
Mulder rolls over, off the bed and to his feet. He starts to pace, and Zito realizes that the sun is beginning to come up. Mulder’s got blue light on one side of his face, cottony violet shadows inching into the holes of his shirt. “If you’ll remember, nobody fucking invited you down here,” he says, arrowing a finger at Zito’s forehead.
Zito hikes an eyebrow. “Nobody invited you to come see me after I hurt my knee, either.”
Mulder narrows his eyes at the memory, willfully pushing it aside. Zito is cross-legged on the bed, following him as he strides back and forth like watching tennis. Mulder stops, looks at the other man. “You got some white hair, you know that?”
Zito nods, stifling a yawn. “And you’ve got gray. More gray than I got white, as a matter of fact.”
Mulder tufted a hand across his hair, scowling. “You know, it’s not like we’re that old. It’s not like we’re fucking decrepit, staggering around with a cane or whatever. Forty-six . . . I still got half my life ahead of me.”
Scooting to sit back against the headboard, punching a pillow into service as lower back support, Zito settles in, about to fall asleep sitting up and trying to keep focused on Mulder.
Zito nods. “Yeah. Very young. In every line of work other than professional sports.”
Registering and discarding that in the same quick slash of his hand, Mulder paces up and back, hypnotically, Zito’s eyelids heavy, Mulder muttering to himself. He stops at the dresser, leaning towards the mirror above it, but the dust that sheets everything in this town has actually colonized the mirror above the dresser, and Mulder exhales in annoyance, strips off his T-shirt to wipe down the glass.
Zito’s eyes come open.
He watches Mulder cleaning the mirror, the muscles twisting and flowing in his back. Mulder’s skin is darker than Zito remembers it, and his jeans are slung low enough that Mulder’s hipbones stick out like open car doors. There’s an unfamiliar scar on Mulder’s left shoulder, a road-rash abrasion on his right elbow, and a long skinny scratch that looks pretty deep, cutting just under his heart and curving around his side.
Mulder studies himself in the mirror for awhile, tilting his head to see the gray hair, poking at his ribs discontentedly, inspecting one hand and then the other, holding them up and turning his wrists, glaring hatefully at his hands, as if this is all their fault.
Zito doesn’t miss a moment of it, wide-eyed on the bed, and when Mulder turns to face him, Zito tries to look cool, unperturbed, but isn’t too successful.
Mulder, his shoulders thrown back and his spine straight, says, “I’m in okay shape, I think.”
Zito swallows. “Sure.”
Mulder stretches out his arms, crucified with his wingspan like an imagined hero, his ribs and hipbones jutting out even more, his head held at a distinctly regal angle, and Zito wonders for a brief panicked second if Mulder’s gone completely ‘round the bend, but then the other man just pulls the tension out of his arms and his back, and crosses his arms over his chest, leaning back against the dresser.
His eyes are hard and Mulder, still with that imperial tilt to his chin, says, “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to keep pitching for at least a couple more years. No physical reason.” He shrugs. “I mean, maybe I’m not as strong now as I was when I was twenty, but that’s no big deal because I was stronger at twenty than basically everyone else, so it’s not, like, a standard I need to reach.” Mulder looks down, aiming a death-gaze at his chest. “Been having trouble putting on muscle, recently. All bony and stuff. But I’m not too worried about it.”
“Me either,” Zito replies without thinking, but Mulder’s not listening.
“If I can still play the game, then I should be allowed to still play the game, right?” Mulder asks, coming to kneel on the bed, sit back on his heels so that his chest is pulled taut, and Zito’s mouth is utterly dry.
Zito forces his eyes to Mulder’s face, figures the time’s come for the truth. He shakes his head, masking his face in apology.
“Man, that’s the thing. You can’t play the game. I mean, you can go out there and you can pitch and you can field and you can maybe even hit a little-do they still have the DH in this league or did they get rid of it when everybody else did? Never mind, it doesn’t matter-you can physically do all the things that make up baseball, but you’ve lost your touch.”
Mulder’s halfway between beating the shit out of Zito and believing every word that comes out of his mouth. One hand in a fist, wrenched into the mattress, and the other flat, working out the wrinkles in the sheets. Mulder eyes Zito suspiciously, but listens to it all.
Dawn is in true form, right about now. It’s powder blue in this part of Mexico, it’s lavender and pale cotton-candy pink, it’s pastels and the sun itself is such a rich yellow it almost makes up for the heat it brings with it. People are beginning to stir in El Rey, hauling out tractors and plows and tramping into the wilderness with machetes sheathed in leather slings over their shoulders, and with the new light the mountains are snatching looks over the horizon like kids cheating on a test. The jungle is breathing, its limbs curled up and waiting for the signal to attack.
Zito thinks, quite unexpectedly, that dawn in this place is as beautiful as anything he has ever seen in California.
Mulder’s waiting for him, so he hurries ahead, pushing at his damp hair with the back of his hand. “I mean, we could see that your last couple of seasons in the majors. I think . . .” he hesitates, he’s crossing a line, surely, but Mulder’s shirtless and watching him intently, so fuck it, “I think your elbow hurts more than you let on. You never got it operated on because you didn’t want to admit it was that big of a problem, and now you’re forty-six and you shouldn’t be starting games anyway, much less with a bum arm. I’m actually pretty surprised you lasted this long.”
There’s no response on Mulder’s face, nothing to interpret. He’s just a blank, except for his eyes, his clever eyes scanning through this.
Zito sighs. “Mulder, you’re in excellent shape, okay, fine. But you’re forty-six years old and all this is, coming right down to it, is that you’re just getting old. Which, you know, happens. It’s happening to me, to Chavvy, to, like, the whole world. You can’t just run away to Mexico because you can pretend to be twenty-four years old again down here.”
Mulder gets up, and Zito has to fight down a swift sense of loss. ‘Fucker,’ he thinks, ‘stupid motherfucker, how many times do you have to get burned by the same guy before you pick up on it?’
He’s got his head on straight. Maybe it took him half a lifetime and his whole major league career to finally get that way, but Zito knows himself pretty well, at this point, at last. And Mulder’s not his only weakness, but he is the one that Zito can’t seem to shake. At least Zito knows that now.
Mulder, he’s just a blindspot, he’s the hole in Zito’s heart.
*
part two to follow shortly.