the feeling of being in motion again, it's the most extraordinary thing in the world
Okay, so, back me up, astronaut ice cream, that's a good Christmas present, right? As is a little alligator keychain where you pull on this thing and the alligator's mouth opens and a red light of awesomeness shines out? And a Curious George calendar? A pair of Oakland A's wristbands that are so hot and so 80s I could almost cry? A stuffed Tyrannosaurus with big orange eyes and tiny tiny arms who will, necessarily, be named Erubiel? Beggar gloves with the fingers cut off? A wristwatch that has a bright blue band and 'The fuck are you looking at?' on the face? A wind-up monkey with cymbals? Y'all would be down, I know.
One of my friends was taking a look at what I'd so far gathered for the rampant gift-giving and was all, it's just a bunch of toys and crap. And I was all WHAT. ARE YOU BLIND SIR. Mainly because it will pain me to give some of this stuff up, it's, like, a trove of ultimate coolness.
I mean, last year, just from my brothers, I got a bunch of plastic cowboys and Indians (horses and covered wagons included!), a racecar track set with the cars that you wind up by revving them backwards (it's got loop-the-loops), the Back to the Future Trilogy DVD box and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, O Brother Where Art Thou and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a bag of Beggin Strips (yeah, I know it's dog food. it's an inside joke), a Ouija board, and a talking Stitch doll that tells you that you're smelly. I mean, I totally scored. But my skeptical buddy from above, he would probably turn up his nose and call it junk and dumb comedies. Hello! Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure! It is an. American. Classic.
Anyway, I've decided not to listen to him.
Continuing in the theme of Mark Mulder being a slut. Man. How come none of the boy-sluts I know look like that? It’s enough to make a kid forgive the clap.
English as a Second Language, or The Story Where Everybody is in Denial
By Candle Beck
The balcony of the house in the Hollywood Hills faces east. It overlooks a long green-brown sprawl of brush with peaked roofs sticking out like playing cards, and runs into the highway. The highway’s good, he can watch it for an hour or two and get so tired he’ll barely be able to make it to his bedroom.
Zito’s out there drinking coffee some morning in November of 2002, and his cell phone starts buzzing in his pocket.
The area code is 858, which is San Diego. But he doesn’t know the number.
“Hello?”
“Zito. Zeeeee-to.”
Zito smiles. “Well, motherfucker.” He sits down in one of the plastic chairs they’ve got out there, props his feet up on the balcony rail. He’s not wearing shoes, because he rarely does in the off-season, and pretty soon the metal of the rail will dig hard enough into his ankles that he’ll have to take them down, but that’s in the future.
“How’s it going, Chavvy?”
Chavez sighs hard into the receiver, but says, “Pretty good, you know, really very good.”
Zito rests the coffee mug on his stomach, drumming his fingers. The wind comes off the ocean and hits the other side of the house, so he’s protected. The mug makes a perfect warm circle through his T-shirt.
“You’re home, huh?”
“Pretty much. Oh. Say hi to your sister for me, okay?”
Zito turns his head, yells through the open sliding door, “Sal! Eric Chavez says hi!”
Sally’s voice comes back muffled over the Matt Nathanson CD she’s got playing, “Tell him he still owes me thirty dollars!”
Zito smirks. “She wants her money, dude,” he says into the phone.
Chavez makes an indistinct sound, and Zito can pick up something that sounds like drumbeats in the background, rattling away. “What, or she’s gonna break my legs? Think I can take her.”
“You’re not taking my sister anywhere, man, let’s be clear on that.” Chavez mumbles something in reply. He’s never been very good on the phone. “So what’s up?”
“I. Am bored. And I wanna go to Mexico. Yes. Tijuana, man, what do you say?”
The rail’s started to hurt. Zito takes his feet down and he can see a red line on his Achilles’ tendon, perpendicular and making a cross. “Are you serious?”
The drumbeats disappear suddenly, and Chavez’s voice sounds too loud in the silence. “Totally serious. It will be, like. I promise you tequila. And, possibly, a lapdance.”
“You’re gonna give me a lapdance?”
“Ack. Ew. No. Are you gonna come, or am I gonna have to say dirty things about your sister?”
“Jesus Christ, Eric, you’ve got a sister too,” Zito says, rolling his eyes, thinking that this is a pretty fucked up conversation they’re having. Thinking about how he’s got a full tank of gas and a bunch of new mix CDs. And he’s got to go to San Diego anyways, drop off the Cy Young at his parents’ house.
“You say one word about my sister and I’ll fuckin’ kill you.” Chavez sounds way too serious, and like maybe his throat is sore.
Zito’s got nothing in particular to do today. Or, really, any day until he leaves for Europe. Sally said he couldn’t play with her band anymore until he learned how to properly slide-change off the break, because, like, every single song they play has a slide-change off the break. He’s already pretty tired of Hollywood.
“You’re at your parents’ place?”
Chavez’s voice brightens, sensing that he’s almost won. “Yep.”
“’Kay. I’ll be down by dinnertime. You gonna feed me?”
“Yep yep yep.” Chavez in the off-season is kind of a weird guy.
“’Kay.”
Zito hangs up, and finishes his coffee, the sun in his eyes.
*
Chavez’s idea of having a guest over for dinner is apparently to throw another couple of Hot Pockets in the microwave, but they stop and get some In ‘N Out, so it works out okay.
Chavez comes with him to his folks’ house, and manages to keep the vulgarity to a minimum. Zito’s mom gives them cookies and Kool-Aid, and Chavez says please and thank you, ma’am and sir, though Zito’s dad keeps telling him to knock it off. Chavez is way too good with parents. Everybody always wants to take him home and put him in the top bunk, make sure he eats enough green stuff and puts Band-Aids on his scrapes. It’s kind of sickening.
Zito helps his dad nail the Cy Young plaque up over the mantle, and manages to hammer his thumb almost flat, at which point his dad tells him to just stay back and supervise. Zito sucks on his thumb and watches his father’s hands straightening the plaque, brushing his fingers over his son’s name. Zito makes a note to remember this, later.
Chavez comes up from behind and throws an arm around Zito’s shoulders. He’s got to reach up to do it, and Zito bends his knees a little to take the pressure off. Chavez is grinning as Zito’s dad puts the hammer down on the mantle, a scatter of short nails and one of them rolling off the side, bouncing with a click on the fireplace bricks.
“I’ll be damned,” Chavez says, and Zito’s dad turns, a giant smile on his face, looking at Chavez. “Pretty proud of your boy, Joe?”
Zito pushes Chavez off him, blushing. “Shut up, dude.”
Zito’s dad just keeps beaming, clapping Zito on the arm and then pulling him fast into a tight hug. Zito’s arms are pinned at his sides because he wasn’t expecting it, and he coughs out a breath, choked by Aqua Velva and the brass smell of the plaque that are clinging to his father.
“My boy,” Joe says, close to his ear. “My boy.” Over his dad’s shoulder, half hidden by a blur of silver hair, Zito can see Chavez grinning like he’s responsible for all of this.
*
They get on the road after night has fallen. They don’t talk for awhile.
Zito’s going too fast to count the highway lights, so he rattles his fingers on the wheel in tune with the music. Chavez keeps making disgruntled noises and hitting the song forward button, muttering about ball-less emo crap, until Zito raps him across the knuckles with the CD case and says shortly, “Excuse me, are you driving? Fuckin’ leave it alone.”
Chavez puts his knuckles up to his mouth and glares murderously at Zito, but it’s dark and Zito’s keeping his eyes on the road.
From around his hand, Chavez says, “I think you should know that I’m not having fun yet.”
Zito passes a long silver-blue Cadillac that looks cooler than just about everything Zito owns. “Yeah, I’m real broken up about that.”
“Zeee-to.”
“Quit saying it like that.”
They pull up into traffic a few miles shy of the border. Zito leans his elbow on the edge of the window and pushes his hand through his hair a couple of times.
“Hey, look, see.”
Chavez is tugging on his sleeve, and Zito looks over. Chavez is pointing at a highway sign, regular yellow diamond-shape. There are the black silhouette shapes of a man, holding the hand of a woman, holding the hand of child. The edges of the people are frayed, clearly meant to indicate ragged clothes, unkempt hair, general slovenliness, something to be shunned. The text under reads in bold capital letters: ‘WATCH FOR ALIENS.’
“Aliens?” Zito asks, raising his eyebrows.
Chavez is scowling at the sign. “Man, if I see a family like that on the side of the road, I’m offering them a fucking ride.”
“Yeah?”
He nods, his hand curled around the grip on the side of the door. “Goddamn right.”
Zito rubs his face, yawning into his palm. He’s not actually tired, but driving on the highway always makes him want to yawn. “But, like, that’s not how your. Um. Well.” He stops talking, biting his tongue.
Chavez narrows his eyes. “Yeah, Zito, my dad hid in the back of a truck hauling chickens and got himself smuggled across the border. Don’t fucking tell anybody, all right?”
Zito looks at him in shock. “For real?”
Chavez socks him on the arm. “Of course not! Jesus.”
Zito rubs his arm, feeling like a dumb white boy. “Just wondering, god.”
“Have you heard from Mulder?”
Zito blinks, and double-takes, his hands tightening on the wheel. “Um. What?”
He glances over and Chavez is looking out the window with an expression of intent concentration on his face, though they’re not moving. The border crossing is coming up, cars funneling through into the little stations, all of it flooded with white light.
“Mark Mulder. Tall guy. Good slider.”
“Thanks,” Zito sneers, but it’s pretty much just a show. He’s thinking quickly, flicking past different responses.
Zito got a postcard last week with a picture of the Sears Tower, and nothing written on the back.
He shrugs. “Nah.” It might be true. Anybody in Chicago could have sent that postcard. He swallows. “You?”
“Nope.” Zito looks over again but he can only see Chavez’s ear, a partway curve of his cheekbone, the dark rough on his jaw. Can’t see his face or tell if he’s lying.
Zito hmms, and notices that Chavez’s hand is picking at his jeans compulsively. “Guess he’s probably doing all right. Guess we’d, um. Know. If something had happened.”
“How exactly would we know?” Chavez asks with a strange bitter tone to it.
Zito clears his throat. “Well. His mom and my mom. They. Talk to each other. They’re, like, friends. It’s really weird.”
That gets Chavez to turn, his face thinned like he’s pulling his cheeks in. “You’re kidding.”
Zito shakes his head. “I know. Freaks me the fuck out.”
“Huh.”
Zito waits, but Chavez doesn’t say anything else. Zito sighs, and puts his window down for the customs guy.
*
Tijuana’s just like it always is, dirty and bright and loud, a teenaged version of heaven. There are rainbow-colored carnival lights strung up in long arcs across alleys and storefronts, and neon signs hooked up to blown fuses, and people on the sidewalks laughing half-bent over, hanging onto each other. There are many more Americans than there are Mexicans, and all of them seem to have a bottle in hand, flushed and wild-eyed and kicking through the loose paper and broken glass in the gutters.
Zito parks a few blocks back from the main drag, and Chavez says something about how it’s a good thing Zito’s car is such a piece of shit, they won’t have to worry about it getting broken into. Zito answers that Chavez, being such a fucking comedian, gets to buy the first round.
“Thought you were the best pitcher in the league, motherfucker. Fuckin’ cheapskate punk.”
Zito shoulders him into a wall. There’s the plaque over his parents’ mantle, and then there’s the $295,000 dollars he made this season. But what can you do? How can he complain about something like that, he’s only twenty-four years old.
They go into the first bar they see, ratty little place carved out of brown wood and bleeding liquor from the walls, and the bartender asks Chavez, “¿Qué usted desean, mi amigo?”
Chavez looks at him blankly, and hooks a hand around Zito’s elbow, pulling him close and whispering urgently into his ear, “Dude, would you please. Ah. He thinks I’m a native.” Chavez makes a nervous smile at the bartender, continuing to Zito, “But he’s okay. Think he called me friend. That’s good, right?”
“Jesus, Eric.” Zito pushes him away, moves up to the bar, his foot looking for a low brass rail that isn’t there. “Dos tequilas, por favor.” He smiles reassuringly, but the bartender’s face falls into hard lines, turning his back on them to fix the drinks.
Chavez is looking around at everything, red light on his face from the buzzing Dos Equis sign over the bar. He grins at a girl down the bar with black hair and dark eyes, who looks like a native too, but Zito knows better than to make that assumption, considering who he’s traveling with. The girl smiles back, showing clean white teeth.
Zito elbows Chavez, hands him one of the shots. “Mexico,” he says as a toast.
Chavez nods, clinking their glasses soberly. “Mexico,” he agrees.
There’s a quick burn and Zito’s eyes water, and when the room comes back into focus, Chavez has slid down the bar away from him, closer to the girl. She keeps looking over at him and flicking her hair. Zito asks the bartender for two more, and watches with his mouth curled up halfway between a smirk and a grimace as Chavez and the girl draw nearer to each other.
Zito hears Chavez say, “hi,” just as the bartender tocks the shots down in front of him, and hears the girl, low-voiced and surprised, answer, “¿Eres americano?”
Chavez nods kind of helplessly. “American? Yeah. Yeah. But, um. Hi. Eric.” He points at himself, and Zito mutters, “Christ,” and takes their tequilas, bumping into Chavez’s back and pushing the shot at him.
Chavez looks over his shoulder, his face stricken. “Zito, she speaks Spanish.”
“Would you drink your fucking shot and take a look around, please.” Zito smiles at the girl over Chavez’s head. “¿Como estás?” She looks relieved, and bends a quiet smile his way. Chavez scowls.
“You better be fuckin’ talking me up, dude, because I definitely saw her first.” He throws back his shot with a vengeance.
Zito rolls his eyes, fingering the shot glass and watching the tequila roll back and forth. “Yeah, yeah.”
Chavez leans towards him. “Tell her my name.”
Zito takes his shot, and slides in between Chavez and the girl, who is looking at them both with growing suspicion. “Me llamo Barry.” He claps Chavez’s shoulder. “Y él. Um. Su nombre es Eric.” Chavez grins happily, and Zito sighs. Three shots of tequila from now and he’s not going to know any more of the language than Chavez.
The girl licks her lips, sips the skinny straw of her drink. She looks at them out of the corner of her eye, sizing them up. She says to Zito, “Él no habla Español.” while studying Chavez from under her eyelashes.
He shakes his head. “No.”
Chavez presses against him urgently. “What’d she say? Did she say she likes me? Dude!”
Zito pulls his arm away, glaring at Chavez. “You wanna calm the fuck down? And buy a fucking phrase book or something? God. All the fucking Speedy Gonzalez you watch, you think you would have picked up something.”
“Speedy Gonzalez doesn’t speak real Spanish,” Chavez answers with his forehead lined seriously. Zito looks at him in disbelief for a moment, and then turns back to the girl.
“Uh, no, no se preocupe. Sobre él. Él tiene gusto de. De los muchachos.” He’s not sure if he got it right, drawing way back to eleventh grade, but then the girl’s eyebrows crawl up and her shiny red mouth opens and he knows she understood.
“¿Es verdad?” she asks in a near-whisper, keeping it a secret. He nods solemnly. She gives Chavez a look that’s half-disgusted and half-disappointed, and turns away. Chavez punches Zito’s shoulder blade.
“What the fuck! What’d you say to her?”
Zito hits him back, knuckling Chavez’s chest. “She’s got a boyfriend, for Christ’s sake. See if I do any more fucking favors for you.”
“Oh. Well.” Chavez shrugs, his mouth pulled into a bow. “Whatever. Get some more drinks, willya.”
They stay in the bar until the Dos Equis sign above the bar flickers and gutters and goes out. As they’re leaving, Zito’s hand on Chavez’s back to keep his balance, he can hear the girl say conspiratorially to the bartender, “Esos americanos son homosexuales,” and Zito ends up laughing so hard he almost passes out.
*
They go to a few more bars, and they argue over who knows the town better. Chavez talks about high school, spring break with his folks away in Los Angeles and a free weekend, going missing and coming home unconscious in the backseat of his friend’s car. Zito tops him with his buddy who can start a true story by saying, “So I wake up, and I’m in this Tijuana prison cell.”
It’s weird, because sometimes it’s like they’ve lived the same life, the two of them. They grew up on different sides of San Diego, but they both know about the big community pool in Palmedge, with the Olympic diving towers and the kids who would dare cannonballs from thirty feet up. They both know about Alta Vista, the ghetto high school where you’d go after getting kicked out of everywhere else, and also the freeway underpass where if you bought the homeless guys a pack of cigarettes, they’d let you sleep there and make sure no one fucked with you. They both know about Charlie Eddie down by the ballpark who could tell you who would win the game and sell you tickets for five bucks over cover.
It’s really just a small town disguised as a big city, and Chavez is always finishing his stories for him, saying, “oh yeah, I know how this one ends,” when he’s never heard it before.
They get pretty drunk. Zito teaches Chavez how to order beers, and how to politely say, I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish, and Chavez gets confused, needling him, if I say that, I’ll be speaking Spanish. Chavez can be kind of annoying, especially seven hours in.
Zito doesn’t really know all that much Spanish, but Chavez is under the impression that he’s fluent, pulling on Zito’s shirt and saying, “Tell her about how I used to come here when I was seventeen and there was this guy named Ramon with crazy red hair, ask her if he still comes around, go’head, man, ask her.” Zito wants to put him in a taxicab and send him back to America.
But they end up at a motel instead. Two in the morning and Chavez is fading, his eyes getting heavy and swollen, his head rolling on his neck. Zito finds enough cash in Chavez’s wallet to cover the room, and signs them in under fake names, just because it seems like the thing to do. Chavez has got his arms folded on the high counter and his head snugged down, and the guy working the check-in desk is talking too swiftly for Zito’s tired mind to pick up any of it, gesturing impatiently at Chavez and sounding angry.
Zito pulls him up, the room key in his teeth, and drags him down the hall. The room’s appropriately seedy, water spots and strange orange-brown discolorations on the ceiling, long fly-paper strips hanging from the corners with the things at the end, the film canister things, slowly turning back and forth. Chavez falls back onto one of the beds and Zito’s head flips, spins, dives, and he falls down next to him, keeps his eyes focused on the light fixture until things get clear again.
“Tijuana. Teeee-wanna,” Chavez says, like the way he’s been saying Zito’s name all fucking day.
“How’s it. How’s it possible that you know no Spanish?” Zito asks, feeling Chavez’s arm up against his own. Chavez shrugs, then makes a little moan, his hand on his stomach.
“I know some. Mi amigo. Dos cervezas, por favor. Beisbol. Uh. Los Angeles.”
Zito smirks, and rests his forearm over his eyes for a minute. “I never got my lapdance, either.”
“Well, man, I’d help you out, but I might vomit.”
“Okay, definitely, don’t fucking move.”
They’re quiet for a while, and Zito thinks that he should probably haul himself up and get in the other bed. His T-shirt’s started to itch, all along his shoulders and the middle of his back. He wonders if the shower is something that can be trusted.
“You told her I was gay, didn’t you?”
Zito’s eyes flick open. Chavez sounds pretty normal. Zito doesn’t look over at him. “What. When? Who?”
Chavez’s hand comes up in his peripheral vision, cutting around drunkenly. “The girl. In the first bar. I heard her say something when we were leaving.”
Zito swallows, licks his lips. His eyes hurt, gritty and old. “I didn’t. I mean. She thought we both were.”
Chavez laughs through his nose. “Smart girl.”
Zito feels a flush crawling up his neck, and he can explain this, sure. “Chavez-”
“Did Mulder say I was? Is that how you. He told you.”
Zito rolls his head, ignoring the twist in his stomach. Chavez is just staring up at the ceiling like he’s never seen anything so fascinating. Zito’s suddenly very aware of how close they are, the shiny worn-thin sheets and the splinters in the headboard.
“No, man, he didn’t. I, um. Saw you.”
Now Chavez turns, his hair rasping on the bed, and their faces are maybe five inches apart. Zito shifts backwards. Chavez has an unreadable expression on his face, foggy eyes and the corner of his lower lip is pretty badly chewed.
“What do you mean, you saw me?”
Zito looks back up at the ceiling. His throat is very dry. “Ah. Last year. The night he won his twentieth. That, that alley?”
Chavez hisses out a breath between his teeth. Zito remembers it all very clearly. It was somewhere in Alameda, and he’d stepped out of the bar, looking for them. Something about a darts tournament. Something. They were all so happy, because they were heading for their first hundred-win season, though they would finish in second place and have to settle for the wild card. But they’d beat the Mariners that night, the Mariners who were breaking a record a day, and Mulder was their first twenty-game winner, twenty-four years old and a Cy Young favorite, though he wouldn’t end up getting it.
Anyway, Zito had stepped out of the bar and heard some weird noise in the alley, and when he went exploring, happy and drunk, he saw them. Saw it in bits and pieces, really, and he remembers being aware at the time how utterly fucking cliché it was, but he also remembers that really, really not mattering.
Chavez was on his knees and Mulder’s head was tipped all the way back against the concrete wall, his eyes closed and his mouth open. His left hand was on the back of Chavez’s head, woven through the strips of black hair so that it looked like pieces of his fingers were missing. Mulder’s shirt was rucked up and Chavez had a hand pressed flat against Mulder’s bare hip and the other vanished in Mulder’s open jeans. His cheeks were hollowed, eyebrows pulled down, and it didn’t look like the first time.
Zito thinks maybe there was a moment when Chavez’s forehead was resting on Mulder’s stomach and his throat was working, but it’s entirely possible he imagined that, because he spent basically the entire off-season imagining it, recreating it. It stayed with him until the spring training day when he pushed Mulder up against a wall and Mulder looked down at him all surprised with his eyes light-colored. Stayed with him until he decided, I can do better than that, and set about proving it. Stayed with him anyway, forever, okay, tell the truth.
Mainly, he remembers the show of Mulder’s hip and side, under Chavez’s hand and then Chavez’s hand had moved to tug Mulder’s jeans down a little farther, and Zito could see a triangle of Mulder’s skin, caught out yellow in the streetlight that came in shards. It was strange, because Zito had seen Mulder shower-naked a hundred times, but just that clean triangle of skin nearly buckled his knees.
Zito left before either of them noticed, and begged some painkillers off Giambi, went home and jerked off for about an hour. The most unreal part about it, he remembers thinking, was that he and Mulder were both rookies. Not really, because they’d both come up mid-summer the year before, so they’d already been around, but it was their first full year and they were in a weird halfway rookie place where they usually went ahead and fetched Gatorades when asked, but just said “ah fuck off,” to the bigger stuff like hauling suitcases.
Mulder was a rookie. He was the one who should have been on his knees. Then Zito came so hard he almost went blind.
“You saw that,” Chavez says, his voice flat and hard.
“I. I didn’t mean to.”
“You never said anything.”
Zito scoffs, rubbing a hand across his mouth. “What the fuck was I supposed to say? Hey, dude, thanks for sucking off our ace, I’m sure he appreciated it. C’mon.”
“You’re really one to fucking talk, Zito.”
Zito’s not sure how Chavez knows about him and Mulder. He guesses maybe they weren’t so subtle. Guesses maybe Chavez had something invested in keeping an eye on Mulder, and they lived in the same house, after all. He only hopes that Chavez doesn’t have a memory of him on his knees. Or worse. God.
“Look, I’m sorry, all right?” Zito attempts, pushing his tongue against the back of his teeth. The ceiling’s pretty fucking boring, all things considered.
Chavez sighs. “Whatever.” He scratches his stomach, and the bristly sound of it is much louder than it should be. “I’m not gay, is the fucking point. I don’t like guys.” There’s a low click as he swallows. “I just. I like Mulder.”
Zito exhales, heat prickling away behind his eyelids. “Yeah, me too,” he says, feeling unaccountably sad.
Chavez pushes up on an elbow, the bed shifting. He looks down at Zito, his teeth bit into his lip, worrying it. “What happened between you guys, anyway?”
Zito makes a rough laughing sound. He’s still pretty drunk, and figures the whole confession thing is working out pretty well right now, why not keep it going.
“I went to bed with him a couple of weeks ago and woke up with a fucking note. It was all very Crash Davis, but I haven’t heard from him since.”
One of Chavez’s eyebrows hikes up like it’s on a string. “A note?”
Zito sighs, and levers up to pull his wallet out of his back pocket. He digs the folded square of paper out, wondering for probably the seven hundredth time since that morning why he doesn’t get rid of the fucking thing already. He hands it to Chavez, and Chavez’s brow furrows as he struggles to get it unfolded, falling back on his back.
Chavez’s lips move slightly as he reads it, which usually Zito would make fun of, but he’s pretty tired.
The note says, in Mark Mulder’s autograph handwriting, ‘You won the Cy.’
Chavez looks at the back, his mouth drawn taut. “That’s it? That’s all he said?” Zito nods. “What the fuck, man? And that’s how you found out about the award?”
Zito shrugs. “Well, I kinda knew it was coming, you know? But, yeah. Right after I saw that, I got the phone call. Whatever.”
Chavez gives him the note back. Zito folds it carefully and tucks it back into his wallet, then chucks the whole thing on the floor.
“You think he’s mad because you won it this year and he didn’t win it last year?”
“Trust me, man, I do my very best not to think about what’s going on in his head.”
Chavez walks his fingers slowly across his own stomach, tapping his thumb speculatively. “He’s kind of an asshole.”
“There’s no kinda about it, dude.”
The edge of Chavez’s mouth crooks. They’re close again, arms together. “I guess probably we should stop fucking him, then.”
Zito closes his eyes. “Guess so.”
“I mean, not that I am. Anymore. But, well. I’ma be living with him again next year, you know?”
The room goes crazy and hook-slides inside Zito’s head, and he wrenches his eyes open again, focusing tightly on the light fixture and clenching his teeth, counting backwards from twenty-three. Twenty-three is his new lucky number. “I know,” he answers.
Chavez nods, the back of his hair getting all pushed out of shape so that Zito knows it’ll poke up when he’s not lying down anymore. “Pretty much, yeah. Not gonna sleep with him, though. No matter what he does. Even if he begs.”
Zito rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“I swear, man,” Chavez insists, his voice going sleepy. Zito looks over to see that his eyes are shut. “I’ll even pinky-swear if you want.” He holds up his fisted hand, pinky sticking out. That’s another thing they both know. The proper way to pinky-swear, kissing your thumb to seal it for good. All these things they have in common. They’re basically the same person.
Zito folds his hand around Chavez’s, the line of Chavez’s knuckles pressed into his palm. He half-sits up, and lets their hands drop onto Chavez’s stomach, which is warm and hard through his shirt. Zito fans out his fingers, pattering them on Chavez’s stomach. He slides Chavez’s shirt up and gets a nice expanse of skin, a place for his hand to go riding along and Chavez’s breath hitching, Chavez’s eyes opening all dark and confused.
“Dude,” Chavez says, but Zito shakes his head, and leans down to flatten his tongue on Chavez’s stomach. His hand goes to work on Chavez’s jeans. Chavez tastes sharp like salt and metal, and the thin hair on his stomach is coarser than Mulder’s. Zito bites him, lightly just to the side of his belly button, and Chavez’s hips twitch once as he breathes in hard through his nose.
“Dude, I. Jesus. Not fucking gay, Zito, would you. Um. Oh. Fuckin’ quit it, man.” But Chavez’s hand is finding the back of his head, combing through Zito’s hair and his palm curving around Zito’s skull.
Mulder always presses down harder with his pinky and ring finger when his hand is on Zito, and probably it’s, like, a technique. Zito presses those two down and strokes his hand down Chavez’s chest, drawing the side of his thumb across Chavez’s nipple the way Mulder does. He closes his teeth on the elastic of Chavez’s boxers and pulls it up just to snap back again and hear Chavez gasp, shifting from side to side and rolling his shoulders.
Chavez whispers again, touching Zito’s ears, petting his hair, “Not fucking gay.”
“I know,” Zito mumbles into Chavez’s stomach. “Neither am I. So it’s okay. Because we’re not. It’s just him, he’s the only one.”
Chavez makes a choked sound from way back in his throat, and fists his hand in Zito’s hair, pushing him closer and his back arching. There’s technique, and things specific to left-handed pitchers and people with broken hearts. Zito thinks that if he can make Chavez say Mulder’s name when he comes, he’ll consider this trip a success.
THE END
Endnotes: Zito’s Cy Young is definitely hanging over his parents’ mantle. Which is just adorable. I do, in fact, have a friend who can start a true story with “So I wake up, and I’m in this Tijuana prison cell.” Charlie Eddie is not from San Diego, he kicks it on the BART overpass at the Oakland Coliseum. He is awesome. The highway sign down by the border is ever-so-real.
And this one time, back when I used to hitchhike home from work because we got done after the buses stopped running, and because I was fifteen and fuckin’ stupid, I got picked up by this couple who told me about how they came over on the run and only stayed out of the INS detention center and deportation because they got picked up by a guy in a beat blue van who took them all the way to Fresno, and twenty-five years later, their son is at UC Berkeley working on his physics degree, and it basically reaffirmed my faith in humanity. That’s a true story, too.
More epic for y'alls tomorr, if they don't kick me off campus for being such an utter slacker.
One of my friends was taking a look at what I'd so far gathered for the rampant gift-giving and was all, it's just a bunch of toys and crap. And I was all WHAT. ARE YOU BLIND SIR. Mainly because it will pain me to give some of this stuff up, it's, like, a trove of ultimate coolness.
I mean, last year, just from my brothers, I got a bunch of plastic cowboys and Indians (horses and covered wagons included!), a racecar track set with the cars that you wind up by revving them backwards (it's got loop-the-loops), the Back to the Future Trilogy DVD box and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, O Brother Where Art Thou and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a bag of Beggin Strips (yeah, I know it's dog food. it's an inside joke), a Ouija board, and a talking Stitch doll that tells you that you're smelly. I mean, I totally scored. But my skeptical buddy from above, he would probably turn up his nose and call it junk and dumb comedies. Hello! Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure! It is an. American. Classic.
Anyway, I've decided not to listen to him.
Continuing in the theme of Mark Mulder being a slut. Man. How come none of the boy-sluts I know look like that? It’s enough to make a kid forgive the clap.
English as a Second Language, or The Story Where Everybody is in Denial
By Candle Beck
The balcony of the house in the Hollywood Hills faces east. It overlooks a long green-brown sprawl of brush with peaked roofs sticking out like playing cards, and runs into the highway. The highway’s good, he can watch it for an hour or two and get so tired he’ll barely be able to make it to his bedroom.
Zito’s out there drinking coffee some morning in November of 2002, and his cell phone starts buzzing in his pocket.
The area code is 858, which is San Diego. But he doesn’t know the number.
“Hello?”
“Zito. Zeeeee-to.”
Zito smiles. “Well, motherfucker.” He sits down in one of the plastic chairs they’ve got out there, props his feet up on the balcony rail. He’s not wearing shoes, because he rarely does in the off-season, and pretty soon the metal of the rail will dig hard enough into his ankles that he’ll have to take them down, but that’s in the future.
“How’s it going, Chavvy?”
Chavez sighs hard into the receiver, but says, “Pretty good, you know, really very good.”
Zito rests the coffee mug on his stomach, drumming his fingers. The wind comes off the ocean and hits the other side of the house, so he’s protected. The mug makes a perfect warm circle through his T-shirt.
“You’re home, huh?”
“Pretty much. Oh. Say hi to your sister for me, okay?”
Zito turns his head, yells through the open sliding door, “Sal! Eric Chavez says hi!”
Sally’s voice comes back muffled over the Matt Nathanson CD she’s got playing, “Tell him he still owes me thirty dollars!”
Zito smirks. “She wants her money, dude,” he says into the phone.
Chavez makes an indistinct sound, and Zito can pick up something that sounds like drumbeats in the background, rattling away. “What, or she’s gonna break my legs? Think I can take her.”
“You’re not taking my sister anywhere, man, let’s be clear on that.” Chavez mumbles something in reply. He’s never been very good on the phone. “So what’s up?”
“I. Am bored. And I wanna go to Mexico. Yes. Tijuana, man, what do you say?”
The rail’s started to hurt. Zito takes his feet down and he can see a red line on his Achilles’ tendon, perpendicular and making a cross. “Are you serious?”
The drumbeats disappear suddenly, and Chavez’s voice sounds too loud in the silence. “Totally serious. It will be, like. I promise you tequila. And, possibly, a lapdance.”
“You’re gonna give me a lapdance?”
“Ack. Ew. No. Are you gonna come, or am I gonna have to say dirty things about your sister?”
“Jesus Christ, Eric, you’ve got a sister too,” Zito says, rolling his eyes, thinking that this is a pretty fucked up conversation they’re having. Thinking about how he’s got a full tank of gas and a bunch of new mix CDs. And he’s got to go to San Diego anyways, drop off the Cy Young at his parents’ house.
“You say one word about my sister and I’ll fuckin’ kill you.” Chavez sounds way too serious, and like maybe his throat is sore.
Zito’s got nothing in particular to do today. Or, really, any day until he leaves for Europe. Sally said he couldn’t play with her band anymore until he learned how to properly slide-change off the break, because, like, every single song they play has a slide-change off the break. He’s already pretty tired of Hollywood.
“You’re at your parents’ place?”
Chavez’s voice brightens, sensing that he’s almost won. “Yep.”
“’Kay. I’ll be down by dinnertime. You gonna feed me?”
“Yep yep yep.” Chavez in the off-season is kind of a weird guy.
“’Kay.”
Zito hangs up, and finishes his coffee, the sun in his eyes.
*
Chavez’s idea of having a guest over for dinner is apparently to throw another couple of Hot Pockets in the microwave, but they stop and get some In ‘N Out, so it works out okay.
Chavez comes with him to his folks’ house, and manages to keep the vulgarity to a minimum. Zito’s mom gives them cookies and Kool-Aid, and Chavez says please and thank you, ma’am and sir, though Zito’s dad keeps telling him to knock it off. Chavez is way too good with parents. Everybody always wants to take him home and put him in the top bunk, make sure he eats enough green stuff and puts Band-Aids on his scrapes. It’s kind of sickening.
Zito helps his dad nail the Cy Young plaque up over the mantle, and manages to hammer his thumb almost flat, at which point his dad tells him to just stay back and supervise. Zito sucks on his thumb and watches his father’s hands straightening the plaque, brushing his fingers over his son’s name. Zito makes a note to remember this, later.
Chavez comes up from behind and throws an arm around Zito’s shoulders. He’s got to reach up to do it, and Zito bends his knees a little to take the pressure off. Chavez is grinning as Zito’s dad puts the hammer down on the mantle, a scatter of short nails and one of them rolling off the side, bouncing with a click on the fireplace bricks.
“I’ll be damned,” Chavez says, and Zito’s dad turns, a giant smile on his face, looking at Chavez. “Pretty proud of your boy, Joe?”
Zito pushes Chavez off him, blushing. “Shut up, dude.”
Zito’s dad just keeps beaming, clapping Zito on the arm and then pulling him fast into a tight hug. Zito’s arms are pinned at his sides because he wasn’t expecting it, and he coughs out a breath, choked by Aqua Velva and the brass smell of the plaque that are clinging to his father.
“My boy,” Joe says, close to his ear. “My boy.” Over his dad’s shoulder, half hidden by a blur of silver hair, Zito can see Chavez grinning like he’s responsible for all of this.
*
They get on the road after night has fallen. They don’t talk for awhile.
Zito’s going too fast to count the highway lights, so he rattles his fingers on the wheel in tune with the music. Chavez keeps making disgruntled noises and hitting the song forward button, muttering about ball-less emo crap, until Zito raps him across the knuckles with the CD case and says shortly, “Excuse me, are you driving? Fuckin’ leave it alone.”
Chavez puts his knuckles up to his mouth and glares murderously at Zito, but it’s dark and Zito’s keeping his eyes on the road.
From around his hand, Chavez says, “I think you should know that I’m not having fun yet.”
Zito passes a long silver-blue Cadillac that looks cooler than just about everything Zito owns. “Yeah, I’m real broken up about that.”
“Zeee-to.”
“Quit saying it like that.”
They pull up into traffic a few miles shy of the border. Zito leans his elbow on the edge of the window and pushes his hand through his hair a couple of times.
“Hey, look, see.”
Chavez is tugging on his sleeve, and Zito looks over. Chavez is pointing at a highway sign, regular yellow diamond-shape. There are the black silhouette shapes of a man, holding the hand of a woman, holding the hand of child. The edges of the people are frayed, clearly meant to indicate ragged clothes, unkempt hair, general slovenliness, something to be shunned. The text under reads in bold capital letters: ‘WATCH FOR ALIENS.’
“Aliens?” Zito asks, raising his eyebrows.
Chavez is scowling at the sign. “Man, if I see a family like that on the side of the road, I’m offering them a fucking ride.”
“Yeah?”
He nods, his hand curled around the grip on the side of the door. “Goddamn right.”
Zito rubs his face, yawning into his palm. He’s not actually tired, but driving on the highway always makes him want to yawn. “But, like, that’s not how your. Um. Well.” He stops talking, biting his tongue.
Chavez narrows his eyes. “Yeah, Zito, my dad hid in the back of a truck hauling chickens and got himself smuggled across the border. Don’t fucking tell anybody, all right?”
Zito looks at him in shock. “For real?”
Chavez socks him on the arm. “Of course not! Jesus.”
Zito rubs his arm, feeling like a dumb white boy. “Just wondering, god.”
“Have you heard from Mulder?”
Zito blinks, and double-takes, his hands tightening on the wheel. “Um. What?”
He glances over and Chavez is looking out the window with an expression of intent concentration on his face, though they’re not moving. The border crossing is coming up, cars funneling through into the little stations, all of it flooded with white light.
“Mark Mulder. Tall guy. Good slider.”
“Thanks,” Zito sneers, but it’s pretty much just a show. He’s thinking quickly, flicking past different responses.
Zito got a postcard last week with a picture of the Sears Tower, and nothing written on the back.
He shrugs. “Nah.” It might be true. Anybody in Chicago could have sent that postcard. He swallows. “You?”
“Nope.” Zito looks over again but he can only see Chavez’s ear, a partway curve of his cheekbone, the dark rough on his jaw. Can’t see his face or tell if he’s lying.
Zito hmms, and notices that Chavez’s hand is picking at his jeans compulsively. “Guess he’s probably doing all right. Guess we’d, um. Know. If something had happened.”
“How exactly would we know?” Chavez asks with a strange bitter tone to it.
Zito clears his throat. “Well. His mom and my mom. They. Talk to each other. They’re, like, friends. It’s really weird.”
That gets Chavez to turn, his face thinned like he’s pulling his cheeks in. “You’re kidding.”
Zito shakes his head. “I know. Freaks me the fuck out.”
“Huh.”
Zito waits, but Chavez doesn’t say anything else. Zito sighs, and puts his window down for the customs guy.
*
Tijuana’s just like it always is, dirty and bright and loud, a teenaged version of heaven. There are rainbow-colored carnival lights strung up in long arcs across alleys and storefronts, and neon signs hooked up to blown fuses, and people on the sidewalks laughing half-bent over, hanging onto each other. There are many more Americans than there are Mexicans, and all of them seem to have a bottle in hand, flushed and wild-eyed and kicking through the loose paper and broken glass in the gutters.
Zito parks a few blocks back from the main drag, and Chavez says something about how it’s a good thing Zito’s car is such a piece of shit, they won’t have to worry about it getting broken into. Zito answers that Chavez, being such a fucking comedian, gets to buy the first round.
“Thought you were the best pitcher in the league, motherfucker. Fuckin’ cheapskate punk.”
Zito shoulders him into a wall. There’s the plaque over his parents’ mantle, and then there’s the $295,000 dollars he made this season. But what can you do? How can he complain about something like that, he’s only twenty-four years old.
They go into the first bar they see, ratty little place carved out of brown wood and bleeding liquor from the walls, and the bartender asks Chavez, “¿Qué usted desean, mi amigo?”
Chavez looks at him blankly, and hooks a hand around Zito’s elbow, pulling him close and whispering urgently into his ear, “Dude, would you please. Ah. He thinks I’m a native.” Chavez makes a nervous smile at the bartender, continuing to Zito, “But he’s okay. Think he called me friend. That’s good, right?”
“Jesus, Eric.” Zito pushes him away, moves up to the bar, his foot looking for a low brass rail that isn’t there. “Dos tequilas, por favor.” He smiles reassuringly, but the bartender’s face falls into hard lines, turning his back on them to fix the drinks.
Chavez is looking around at everything, red light on his face from the buzzing Dos Equis sign over the bar. He grins at a girl down the bar with black hair and dark eyes, who looks like a native too, but Zito knows better than to make that assumption, considering who he’s traveling with. The girl smiles back, showing clean white teeth.
Zito elbows Chavez, hands him one of the shots. “Mexico,” he says as a toast.
Chavez nods, clinking their glasses soberly. “Mexico,” he agrees.
There’s a quick burn and Zito’s eyes water, and when the room comes back into focus, Chavez has slid down the bar away from him, closer to the girl. She keeps looking over at him and flicking her hair. Zito asks the bartender for two more, and watches with his mouth curled up halfway between a smirk and a grimace as Chavez and the girl draw nearer to each other.
Zito hears Chavez say, “hi,” just as the bartender tocks the shots down in front of him, and hears the girl, low-voiced and surprised, answer, “¿Eres americano?”
Chavez nods kind of helplessly. “American? Yeah. Yeah. But, um. Hi. Eric.” He points at himself, and Zito mutters, “Christ,” and takes their tequilas, bumping into Chavez’s back and pushing the shot at him.
Chavez looks over his shoulder, his face stricken. “Zito, she speaks Spanish.”
“Would you drink your fucking shot and take a look around, please.” Zito smiles at the girl over Chavez’s head. “¿Como estás?” She looks relieved, and bends a quiet smile his way. Chavez scowls.
“You better be fuckin’ talking me up, dude, because I definitely saw her first.” He throws back his shot with a vengeance.
Zito rolls his eyes, fingering the shot glass and watching the tequila roll back and forth. “Yeah, yeah.”
Chavez leans towards him. “Tell her my name.”
Zito takes his shot, and slides in between Chavez and the girl, who is looking at them both with growing suspicion. “Me llamo Barry.” He claps Chavez’s shoulder. “Y él. Um. Su nombre es Eric.” Chavez grins happily, and Zito sighs. Three shots of tequila from now and he’s not going to know any more of the language than Chavez.
The girl licks her lips, sips the skinny straw of her drink. She looks at them out of the corner of her eye, sizing them up. She says to Zito, “Él no habla Español.” while studying Chavez from under her eyelashes.
He shakes his head. “No.”
Chavez presses against him urgently. “What’d she say? Did she say she likes me? Dude!”
Zito pulls his arm away, glaring at Chavez. “You wanna calm the fuck down? And buy a fucking phrase book or something? God. All the fucking Speedy Gonzalez you watch, you think you would have picked up something.”
“Speedy Gonzalez doesn’t speak real Spanish,” Chavez answers with his forehead lined seriously. Zito looks at him in disbelief for a moment, and then turns back to the girl.
“Uh, no, no se preocupe. Sobre él. Él tiene gusto de. De los muchachos.” He’s not sure if he got it right, drawing way back to eleventh grade, but then the girl’s eyebrows crawl up and her shiny red mouth opens and he knows she understood.
“¿Es verdad?” she asks in a near-whisper, keeping it a secret. He nods solemnly. She gives Chavez a look that’s half-disgusted and half-disappointed, and turns away. Chavez punches Zito’s shoulder blade.
“What the fuck! What’d you say to her?”
Zito hits him back, knuckling Chavez’s chest. “She’s got a boyfriend, for Christ’s sake. See if I do any more fucking favors for you.”
“Oh. Well.” Chavez shrugs, his mouth pulled into a bow. “Whatever. Get some more drinks, willya.”
They stay in the bar until the Dos Equis sign above the bar flickers and gutters and goes out. As they’re leaving, Zito’s hand on Chavez’s back to keep his balance, he can hear the girl say conspiratorially to the bartender, “Esos americanos son homosexuales,” and Zito ends up laughing so hard he almost passes out.
*
They go to a few more bars, and they argue over who knows the town better. Chavez talks about high school, spring break with his folks away in Los Angeles and a free weekend, going missing and coming home unconscious in the backseat of his friend’s car. Zito tops him with his buddy who can start a true story by saying, “So I wake up, and I’m in this Tijuana prison cell.”
It’s weird, because sometimes it’s like they’ve lived the same life, the two of them. They grew up on different sides of San Diego, but they both know about the big community pool in Palmedge, with the Olympic diving towers and the kids who would dare cannonballs from thirty feet up. They both know about Alta Vista, the ghetto high school where you’d go after getting kicked out of everywhere else, and also the freeway underpass where if you bought the homeless guys a pack of cigarettes, they’d let you sleep there and make sure no one fucked with you. They both know about Charlie Eddie down by the ballpark who could tell you who would win the game and sell you tickets for five bucks over cover.
It’s really just a small town disguised as a big city, and Chavez is always finishing his stories for him, saying, “oh yeah, I know how this one ends,” when he’s never heard it before.
They get pretty drunk. Zito teaches Chavez how to order beers, and how to politely say, I’m sorry, I don’t speak Spanish, and Chavez gets confused, needling him, if I say that, I’ll be speaking Spanish. Chavez can be kind of annoying, especially seven hours in.
Zito doesn’t really know all that much Spanish, but Chavez is under the impression that he’s fluent, pulling on Zito’s shirt and saying, “Tell her about how I used to come here when I was seventeen and there was this guy named Ramon with crazy red hair, ask her if he still comes around, go’head, man, ask her.” Zito wants to put him in a taxicab and send him back to America.
But they end up at a motel instead. Two in the morning and Chavez is fading, his eyes getting heavy and swollen, his head rolling on his neck. Zito finds enough cash in Chavez’s wallet to cover the room, and signs them in under fake names, just because it seems like the thing to do. Chavez has got his arms folded on the high counter and his head snugged down, and the guy working the check-in desk is talking too swiftly for Zito’s tired mind to pick up any of it, gesturing impatiently at Chavez and sounding angry.
Zito pulls him up, the room key in his teeth, and drags him down the hall. The room’s appropriately seedy, water spots and strange orange-brown discolorations on the ceiling, long fly-paper strips hanging from the corners with the things at the end, the film canister things, slowly turning back and forth. Chavez falls back onto one of the beds and Zito’s head flips, spins, dives, and he falls down next to him, keeps his eyes focused on the light fixture until things get clear again.
“Tijuana. Teeee-wanna,” Chavez says, like the way he’s been saying Zito’s name all fucking day.
“How’s it. How’s it possible that you know no Spanish?” Zito asks, feeling Chavez’s arm up against his own. Chavez shrugs, then makes a little moan, his hand on his stomach.
“I know some. Mi amigo. Dos cervezas, por favor. Beisbol. Uh. Los Angeles.”
Zito smirks, and rests his forearm over his eyes for a minute. “I never got my lapdance, either.”
“Well, man, I’d help you out, but I might vomit.”
“Okay, definitely, don’t fucking move.”
They’re quiet for a while, and Zito thinks that he should probably haul himself up and get in the other bed. His T-shirt’s started to itch, all along his shoulders and the middle of his back. He wonders if the shower is something that can be trusted.
“You told her I was gay, didn’t you?”
Zito’s eyes flick open. Chavez sounds pretty normal. Zito doesn’t look over at him. “What. When? Who?”
Chavez’s hand comes up in his peripheral vision, cutting around drunkenly. “The girl. In the first bar. I heard her say something when we were leaving.”
Zito swallows, licks his lips. His eyes hurt, gritty and old. “I didn’t. I mean. She thought we both were.”
Chavez laughs through his nose. “Smart girl.”
Zito feels a flush crawling up his neck, and he can explain this, sure. “Chavez-”
“Did Mulder say I was? Is that how you. He told you.”
Zito rolls his head, ignoring the twist in his stomach. Chavez is just staring up at the ceiling like he’s never seen anything so fascinating. Zito’s suddenly very aware of how close they are, the shiny worn-thin sheets and the splinters in the headboard.
“No, man, he didn’t. I, um. Saw you.”
Now Chavez turns, his hair rasping on the bed, and their faces are maybe five inches apart. Zito shifts backwards. Chavez has an unreadable expression on his face, foggy eyes and the corner of his lower lip is pretty badly chewed.
“What do you mean, you saw me?”
Zito looks back up at the ceiling. His throat is very dry. “Ah. Last year. The night he won his twentieth. That, that alley?”
Chavez hisses out a breath between his teeth. Zito remembers it all very clearly. It was somewhere in Alameda, and he’d stepped out of the bar, looking for them. Something about a darts tournament. Something. They were all so happy, because they were heading for their first hundred-win season, though they would finish in second place and have to settle for the wild card. But they’d beat the Mariners that night, the Mariners who were breaking a record a day, and Mulder was their first twenty-game winner, twenty-four years old and a Cy Young favorite, though he wouldn’t end up getting it.
Anyway, Zito had stepped out of the bar and heard some weird noise in the alley, and when he went exploring, happy and drunk, he saw them. Saw it in bits and pieces, really, and he remembers being aware at the time how utterly fucking cliché it was, but he also remembers that really, really not mattering.
Chavez was on his knees and Mulder’s head was tipped all the way back against the concrete wall, his eyes closed and his mouth open. His left hand was on the back of Chavez’s head, woven through the strips of black hair so that it looked like pieces of his fingers were missing. Mulder’s shirt was rucked up and Chavez had a hand pressed flat against Mulder’s bare hip and the other vanished in Mulder’s open jeans. His cheeks were hollowed, eyebrows pulled down, and it didn’t look like the first time.
Zito thinks maybe there was a moment when Chavez’s forehead was resting on Mulder’s stomach and his throat was working, but it’s entirely possible he imagined that, because he spent basically the entire off-season imagining it, recreating it. It stayed with him until the spring training day when he pushed Mulder up against a wall and Mulder looked down at him all surprised with his eyes light-colored. Stayed with him until he decided, I can do better than that, and set about proving it. Stayed with him anyway, forever, okay, tell the truth.
Mainly, he remembers the show of Mulder’s hip and side, under Chavez’s hand and then Chavez’s hand had moved to tug Mulder’s jeans down a little farther, and Zito could see a triangle of Mulder’s skin, caught out yellow in the streetlight that came in shards. It was strange, because Zito had seen Mulder shower-naked a hundred times, but just that clean triangle of skin nearly buckled his knees.
Zito left before either of them noticed, and begged some painkillers off Giambi, went home and jerked off for about an hour. The most unreal part about it, he remembers thinking, was that he and Mulder were both rookies. Not really, because they’d both come up mid-summer the year before, so they’d already been around, but it was their first full year and they were in a weird halfway rookie place where they usually went ahead and fetched Gatorades when asked, but just said “ah fuck off,” to the bigger stuff like hauling suitcases.
Mulder was a rookie. He was the one who should have been on his knees. Then Zito came so hard he almost went blind.
“You saw that,” Chavez says, his voice flat and hard.
“I. I didn’t mean to.”
“You never said anything.”
Zito scoffs, rubbing a hand across his mouth. “What the fuck was I supposed to say? Hey, dude, thanks for sucking off our ace, I’m sure he appreciated it. C’mon.”
“You’re really one to fucking talk, Zito.”
Zito’s not sure how Chavez knows about him and Mulder. He guesses maybe they weren’t so subtle. Guesses maybe Chavez had something invested in keeping an eye on Mulder, and they lived in the same house, after all. He only hopes that Chavez doesn’t have a memory of him on his knees. Or worse. God.
“Look, I’m sorry, all right?” Zito attempts, pushing his tongue against the back of his teeth. The ceiling’s pretty fucking boring, all things considered.
Chavez sighs. “Whatever.” He scratches his stomach, and the bristly sound of it is much louder than it should be. “I’m not gay, is the fucking point. I don’t like guys.” There’s a low click as he swallows. “I just. I like Mulder.”
Zito exhales, heat prickling away behind his eyelids. “Yeah, me too,” he says, feeling unaccountably sad.
Chavez pushes up on an elbow, the bed shifting. He looks down at Zito, his teeth bit into his lip, worrying it. “What happened between you guys, anyway?”
Zito makes a rough laughing sound. He’s still pretty drunk, and figures the whole confession thing is working out pretty well right now, why not keep it going.
“I went to bed with him a couple of weeks ago and woke up with a fucking note. It was all very Crash Davis, but I haven’t heard from him since.”
One of Chavez’s eyebrows hikes up like it’s on a string. “A note?”
Zito sighs, and levers up to pull his wallet out of his back pocket. He digs the folded square of paper out, wondering for probably the seven hundredth time since that morning why he doesn’t get rid of the fucking thing already. He hands it to Chavez, and Chavez’s brow furrows as he struggles to get it unfolded, falling back on his back.
Chavez’s lips move slightly as he reads it, which usually Zito would make fun of, but he’s pretty tired.
The note says, in Mark Mulder’s autograph handwriting, ‘You won the Cy.’
Chavez looks at the back, his mouth drawn taut. “That’s it? That’s all he said?” Zito nods. “What the fuck, man? And that’s how you found out about the award?”
Zito shrugs. “Well, I kinda knew it was coming, you know? But, yeah. Right after I saw that, I got the phone call. Whatever.”
Chavez gives him the note back. Zito folds it carefully and tucks it back into his wallet, then chucks the whole thing on the floor.
“You think he’s mad because you won it this year and he didn’t win it last year?”
“Trust me, man, I do my very best not to think about what’s going on in his head.”
Chavez walks his fingers slowly across his own stomach, tapping his thumb speculatively. “He’s kind of an asshole.”
“There’s no kinda about it, dude.”
The edge of Chavez’s mouth crooks. They’re close again, arms together. “I guess probably we should stop fucking him, then.”
Zito closes his eyes. “Guess so.”
“I mean, not that I am. Anymore. But, well. I’ma be living with him again next year, you know?”
The room goes crazy and hook-slides inside Zito’s head, and he wrenches his eyes open again, focusing tightly on the light fixture and clenching his teeth, counting backwards from twenty-three. Twenty-three is his new lucky number. “I know,” he answers.
Chavez nods, the back of his hair getting all pushed out of shape so that Zito knows it’ll poke up when he’s not lying down anymore. “Pretty much, yeah. Not gonna sleep with him, though. No matter what he does. Even if he begs.”
Zito rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
“I swear, man,” Chavez insists, his voice going sleepy. Zito looks over to see that his eyes are shut. “I’ll even pinky-swear if you want.” He holds up his fisted hand, pinky sticking out. That’s another thing they both know. The proper way to pinky-swear, kissing your thumb to seal it for good. All these things they have in common. They’re basically the same person.
Zito folds his hand around Chavez’s, the line of Chavez’s knuckles pressed into his palm. He half-sits up, and lets their hands drop onto Chavez’s stomach, which is warm and hard through his shirt. Zito fans out his fingers, pattering them on Chavez’s stomach. He slides Chavez’s shirt up and gets a nice expanse of skin, a place for his hand to go riding along and Chavez’s breath hitching, Chavez’s eyes opening all dark and confused.
“Dude,” Chavez says, but Zito shakes his head, and leans down to flatten his tongue on Chavez’s stomach. His hand goes to work on Chavez’s jeans. Chavez tastes sharp like salt and metal, and the thin hair on his stomach is coarser than Mulder’s. Zito bites him, lightly just to the side of his belly button, and Chavez’s hips twitch once as he breathes in hard through his nose.
“Dude, I. Jesus. Not fucking gay, Zito, would you. Um. Oh. Fuckin’ quit it, man.” But Chavez’s hand is finding the back of his head, combing through Zito’s hair and his palm curving around Zito’s skull.
Mulder always presses down harder with his pinky and ring finger when his hand is on Zito, and probably it’s, like, a technique. Zito presses those two down and strokes his hand down Chavez’s chest, drawing the side of his thumb across Chavez’s nipple the way Mulder does. He closes his teeth on the elastic of Chavez’s boxers and pulls it up just to snap back again and hear Chavez gasp, shifting from side to side and rolling his shoulders.
Chavez whispers again, touching Zito’s ears, petting his hair, “Not fucking gay.”
“I know,” Zito mumbles into Chavez’s stomach. “Neither am I. So it’s okay. Because we’re not. It’s just him, he’s the only one.”
Chavez makes a choked sound from way back in his throat, and fists his hand in Zito’s hair, pushing him closer and his back arching. There’s technique, and things specific to left-handed pitchers and people with broken hearts. Zito thinks that if he can make Chavez say Mulder’s name when he comes, he’ll consider this trip a success.
THE END
Endnotes: Zito’s Cy Young is definitely hanging over his parents’ mantle. Which is just adorable. I do, in fact, have a friend who can start a true story with “So I wake up, and I’m in this Tijuana prison cell.” Charlie Eddie is not from San Diego, he kicks it on the BART overpass at the Oakland Coliseum. He is awesome. The highway sign down by the border is ever-so-real.
And this one time, back when I used to hitchhike home from work because we got done after the buses stopped running, and because I was fifteen and fuckin’ stupid, I got picked up by this couple who told me about how they came over on the run and only stayed out of the INS detention center and deportation because they got picked up by a guy in a beat blue van who took them all the way to Fresno, and twenty-five years later, their son is at UC Berkeley working on his physics degree, and it basically reaffirmed my faith in humanity. That’s a true story, too.
More epic for y'alls tomorr, if they don't kick me off campus for being such an utter slacker.