and he knows everything you know
All right. Yeah yeah yeah. I won't be acting like myself for awhile. If you're not an A's fan, stay the fuck away, seriously. I mean no offense. Well. Fuckin' right now I do. But I won't, later.
God.
And, okay. I'm gonna have to go ahead and call precedence on all your asses. I was there at the Coliseum in 1999, when he was this skinny gawky-looking kid with rough buzzed hair and his cheek poked out by bubble gum. And Jason Giambi used to come over and almost knock him over celebrating, and Hudson looked like a fuckin' bat boy next to him. Hudson who I thought was maybe just a bush league stopgap and didn't know by name or sight or nothing, because I didn't keep up on the farm system back then.
Back before we had any idea what truly good pitching was. Back when Barry Zito was in Class A and Mark Mulder was in Canada. Back when Rich Harden was still in fuckin' high school.
I thought maybe he was a punk. I had my eyes trained for big arms, wide shoulders. Pitchers like statues. This skinny kid. What the fuck? Then he struck someone out with this sinker, man, you could hear the stadium drawing in one breath. Could feel the concrete give a bit under your feet. Could see, motherfucker, could see something like the future and Tim Hudson had his mouth open and his cap pushed back on his head. Tim Hudson had his fist up, his arm cutting through the air, he didn't have any tattoos back then and he didn't look like anybody who'd ever won a bar fight or a major league baseball game, didn't look like anybody who might some day take your heart away with him to Atlanta.
You think you know pain? Go tell that sixteen year old kid I was about fuckin' pain. Five and a half years later, and I swear to God, as good a pitcher as I've ever seen. And I've been here since the beginning.
Goddamn, Huddy. I'm gonna miss you.
Table of Contents
Pictures courtesy bradausmus12
The Rest of Your Life
By Candle Beck
Part the Seventh: Meant to Be
(the famous eric chavez)
Eric Chavez meets a girl. He also goes to the Show.
These two things happen on the same day, which is probably why he ends up marrying her.
Edmonton, Canada, where he plays for the Triple-A Trappers, is like a dream that’s neither good nor bad, halfway between wet dream and nightmare, the kind of place that will bore you awake. It’s just flat, oil-field tundra, closed off at the corners.
He missed his flight from Alabama, having arrived at the airport without his birth certificate, and he leaves all his stuff behind in Huntsville, he’s got the shirt on his back and one bag that’s got more baseball gear in it than clothes, and this is how he’ll get through the rest of the season.
He’s in Canada for less than two months, he stays hot and on the 7th of September, 1998, after the big league rosters expand, Eric Chavez gets a plane ticket to San Francisco.
He calls Eric Munson from the stadium parking lot, walking on crazy zig-zagging paths around the cars, not content to stay still. Munson doesn’t pick up, and Chavez hollers into his voicemail, “Eric, you little punk, where the fuck are you, I’ve been called up, I’m going to the Show and you’re not there! Call me back, motherfucker!”
He ends the call and he can barely get his phone back into his pocket, he’s shaking that hard. He goes to the first church he sees, and kneels down, thanks God. He can’t stop grinning for the life of him.
Munson doesn’t call him back, that night. He gets Chavez’s message and they haven’t talked in better than a month. Munson feels sick and happy and he doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t think he knows the words for this. He leaves his cell phone at home and drives up the coast to Santa Marita with Everclear and Sublime playing loud. He swims in the ocean, out as far as he can go, and sleeps on the beach, dreams about Fenway Park.
When he gets back to Los Angeles the next day, he pulls into the student parking lot and all around him are kids, returning for the fall term, half-grown with new haircuts and stiff unbroken-in jeans, different kinds of uncertain and a fucking encyclopedia of fear. There are school notebooks in the small backseat of Munson’s truck, textbooks and a stuffed Trojan with a yellow mustache and gray felt helmet on the shotgun seat, a red and gold USC bumper sticker on the back. In his glove compartment is the ring he got for winning the College World Series.
Munson sits with his hands on the wheel for a long time, static sounds and the muffled chatter of the university through his windows. His best friend got there first, which Munson knew would happen. Munson thinks that he’s gonna have to start practicing with wooden bats, pretty soon. Maybe Chavez will send him extras. Yeah.
In Edmonton, Chavez gets back to his apartment and paces around, packs in feverish bursts of energy, waiting for his phone to ring. He eventually calls his parents, needing to talk to somebody, at least, someone who’ll be there.
Ruby cries over the phone and then Cesar cries too, though he tries to play it off as a coughing fit, but Eric sees right through him, beaming in his empty apartment, and they say how proud they are, they can hardly get it out, but they’re so proud of him.
He calls the Munsons, too, and Steve crows joyfully, says, “I knew you would, I knew it,” over and over again, and Chavez doesn’t ask him where his son is, swallows it back from the tip of his tongue.
He flies out to California the next day, skying in over the San Francisco Bay, where the islands and the bridges are laid out like a map, the climbed rake of the skyscrapers at the tip of the peninsula, and he looks for Oakland out the window, the ring of the stadium.
He’s there within the hour, straight out from the airport, and his legs are weak as he walks into the mostly empty clubhouse, his eyes gaping and astonished. He meets Art Howe, the A’s manager, and is told that he probably won’t play that night, but Chavez doesn’t care, he just wants to be here, the clubhouse with its clean patterned carpet and arcade machine, the open fresh-painted lockers and the bleached baseballs that roll around chaotically, as white as sheets.
He’s got a locker. There’s a green jersey there with his name in bright yellow on the back.
Eric Chavez has to sit down for awhile.
And then the reporters crowd in, seven of them in a rustling knot around him, and they tell him that Baseball America has named him the Minor League Player of the Year, and he keeps waiting to wake up in Canada.
Before the A’s take the field against the Orioles, the announcer tells the fans about the kid in the dugout, the Minor League Player of the Year and Oakland’s future, and Eric gets pushed up the steps, each step like coming up from underwater, and when the sun hits his eyes, the small crowd claps politely and he tips his cap, a rainbow hooking in the sky over his head.
He does end up playing that night, incredibly. He’s just sitting on the bench for seven innings, unable to really follow the game, giddy and terrified, his stomach roiling, his baffled mind, when Howe tells him to get loose, he’ll be pinch-hitting to lead off the A’s half of the eighth.
Cesar Chavez is sitting with Steve Munson in the Munsons’ living room, and when they see Eric swinging nervously in the on-deck circle as the pitcher takes his warm-up, Cesar pulls a wavering hand across his eyes, and Steve says quietly, “Would you look at that.”
The two men catch each other’s eyes, and it’s the kind of strange moment that you’d think would be remembered, in tense intricate detail, forever. A moment where you see the light through the window blinds in a ladder on the carpet, and the chipped corner of the coffee table from when one of the boys chucked a roller skate at the other and missed, and the framed pictures on top of the television set and the empty VHS boxes around the VCR on the floor. A moment where all of this is clear and still and will not be forgotten.
But Steve and Cesar just grin at each other, and the specifics of the room and the moment slide away like marbles on ice, and later, the only thing either of them will remember about the day they first saw Eric Chavez in a major league uniform is that Steve was there, Cesar was there, they saw it together.
Eric Chavez takes his first major league at-bat. Everything is so much bigger, the pitcher a mile away, the outfield wall in another country. His hands around the bat look telescoped. He can’t imagine ever getting used to this.
He strikes out on a 2-2 fastball, and as he walks back to the dugout, his first really coherent thought of the day sheers into his brain, ‘the stitches were over the top, that was the two-seam,’ and he’ll know it when he sees it next.
The day’s a blur. Mark McGwire breaks Roger Maris’s record and they see it happen in the clubhouse, McGwire’s big arms thrown up, the ball vanishing into the wild red St. Louis crowd, his son waiting for him at home plate. It’s historic, and Eric Chavez would have remembered this day anyway, even if he were still in Edmonton, even if he’d never signed and was going to USC with Munson and never making it to class. Because he knows all the important dates of his game, all the records and the famous spring-summer-autumn days, and even if he hadn’t made his debut today, he’d still never forget September 8th. It’s, like, intentional, but that’s not the right word. Preordained. Destined.
Eric’s having trouble getting his bearings, trouble clearing his vision. Nothing stops moving until he gets to his hotel, his head full of arched pastel colors and spun red stitches, and everything looks blessed, looks meant to be.
In the hotel lobby, he runs into Paula Bott.
She’s a reporter with the Union-Tribune, and she’s been following him and Munson around since they were in high school, writing a series of articles about their friendship and their upward strive towards the big leagues.
It was weird at first, and for a while both Erics kind of wanted to back out of the agreement, too much at stake and too much to be found out about them, but they played it off boldly, because press attention, that’s always been due them.
Paula’s familiar enough, but there’s a girl with her, Paula’s baby daughter on her hip, a girl with shiny hair the color of cedar and big brown eyes. Chavvy comes over and Paula gives him a kiss on the cheek, a huge smile, and tells him, “You did it.”
Chavez grins back, his eyes flitting back to the girl with Paula, the fine lines of her face, the way she looks at him from under her eyelashes and then darts her eyes away, blushing.
“Oh, this is my niece, this is Amber. Amber Tarpy,” Paula says off-hand, and the girl, Amber, smiles at him shyly, says “hello” so quietly Eric has to read her lips.
“Pleased to meet you,” he answers, wishing she wasn’t holding the infant so they could shake hands. She’s got nice hands, pale slender fingers and a sterling silver ring on her thumb.
She lifts her face, gives him her best look, all sweet wide eyes and a color of surprise on her cheeks. Chavez realizes he’s staring, and quickly excuses himself, moving to the elevators and only turning back once to see Amber Tarpy flipping her hair, a flash of her shoulders.
He keeps thinking about the girl, in the elevator and in the hallway and in his room and in the shower, he can’t shake her. She’s not even blonde, but she’s got those eyes, like all things made honest.
Then Eric Munson calls.
Chavez is just coming out of the bathroom, his boxers on and sticking to his hips in splotchy wet patches, and his jeans on the bed start to vibrate. He thinks, right away, ‘Munce,’ and goes for his phone so quick he trips over his bag, rug burn on his knees and scrabbling to the bed, pulling the covers halfway to the floor and not questioning his eagerness, his near-panic as he sorts the phone out from his pants, snaps it open and says breathlessly, “Hey.”
“The famous Eric Chavez,” Munson answers, a sharp little grin in his voice.
Chavvy lets his shoulders fall, his spine relaxing, rolling over onto his back. His soaked hair bleeds into the mattress like ink, and his eyes are closed. He’s almost overcome with relief, though he doesn’t know why.
“Dude,” he begins, but he doesn’t have the first clue what to say, there’s so much. “Aw, Jesus, Eric, I, I can’t . . .”
“Chavvy?” Munce says, rough at the edges. “I . . . I saw you on TV.”
“Did you?” Chavez manages. There’s something wrong in his chest, this heat that shouldn’t be there, like Alabama in August, crowding him out.
“Yeah man. You looked good, you looked real good, dude.”
Chavez’s hand is over his eyes, two fingertips against his temples, and he can feel the pound of his mind, the beats counting time. “It’s . . . Munson, it’s amazing,” he breathes out. He’s thinking, ‘major league baseball, major league baseball,’ over and over again.
“It’s the best day of your life,” Munson tells him plainly, and Chavez isn’t sure if that’s true, but he knows it should be.
“Where are you?” he asks suddenly. “Are you . . . can you come up? Get away for a day or two?”
Munce takes a long moment. “Nah, man,” he replies finally. “I . . . you know, classes just got started, I can’t . . . there’s no way.” He sounds a bit choked, pulled back.
Chavez is doing the math in his head, Los Angeles three hundred and fifty miles away, he could make it in four hours if he doesn’t get pulled over on I-5, he could be there by midnight. Be back for infield practice.
Eric Chavez, right this moment, is going to rent a car and fly down through the valley. He’s going to whisk through L.A. with the city lights like daggers in his bloodstream, silver bullets and shooting stars. He’s going to find his best friend and fit his hands around Munson’s arms, press him down to the closest wall. He’s going to kiss him, so hard Munson’s head will thunk back against the wall hollowly, and then Munson will recover and give as good as he gets, and Chavez’s mouth will be bitten and tender, his throat sore. They’ll lose buttons and belts tearing their clothes off, and Chavez will draw blood on Munson’s stomach, ebony strands of his hair tied around Munson’s fingers. He’s going to get down on his knees. He’s going to jackknife Munson over the back of the couch, his hand on the nape of Munson’s neck and his tongue in Munson’s ear. They’re gonna be all night with it, and when Munson passes into stunned, exhausted sleep, Eric Chavez will stagger out to his rented car and drive north with a clean faded-bruise dawn slinking into the empty shotgun side.
He’s a major league ballplayer. He can do anything.
Oh, but then, oh. It crashes in, it’s a ten-car wreck. They’re not doing that anymore. They haven’t been doing that for almost a year now. He’s got his first dream now, he doesn’t need that.
He forces the white flash of Amber Tarpy’s shoulders back into his mind. He squeezes his eyes shut so tightly he sees wormholes.
“It’s just . . . it’s amazing, man,” Chavez says again, and the air-conditioner chill crawls across his bare chest, his skin drawing taut and rashes of goosebumps, a plague, a curse.
Munson breathes out against the receiver. “I know, Eric,” he answers, though he doesn’t, he doesn’t have the slightest idea.
“It happened, Munson. I’m here.”
Chavez hears the click of Munson swallowing, hears Munson telling him, “It’s where you’re meant to be.”
They talk until Eric Chavez falls asleep, about McGwire and Maris and eventually Mantle too, because you can’t really talk about one without talking about the other, and Rickey Henderson and the ugly concrete stadium in Oakland that might just be the most beautiful place in the world, until Chavez nods off in the middle of telling Munson about the two-seam fastball that he swung through, and Eric Munson listens to his friend’s slow deep breathing for a long time, Eric Chavez’s body drying on a hotel bed in San Francisco, shivering a bit on top of the covers, and it doesn’t matter what Munson says to him then, because he’s asleep and he’ll never know.
*
(four sheets to the wind in arlington)
Eric Chavez falls in love with Amber Tarpy so quickly he doesn’t even remember when it happened, the first time he realized.
They talk on the phone every night and he plays major league baseball every day. She’s got this hitch in her laugh when it’s a true laugh, a breath-pause like a piece of hair being tucked behind an ear, and Eric makes it his singular goal to spur it out of her.
When she says his name, it’s careful, like she’s afraid of breaking it. She’s shy and never uses profanity, and he starts to talk clean too, just because. She makes him smile all the time and she keeps up with him when he teases her, never letting him get the upper hand.
He tells her about his old girlfriends and about his family, his dog, about how all he’s ever wanted to do is play baseball. She knows a lot about the game, more than he gives her credit for, and when they’re watching the same broadcast, her in San Diego and him in Oakland, he’s always surprised to hear her murmur unthinkingly, “Throw the slider,” and then seeing the pitcher throw it like he was listening in.
She tells him about her three broken hearts, fourteen, seventeen, and nineteen years old, and when he promises he won’t be her fourth, he’s only half-joking.
There are moments, in the short small hours of the morning when they’ve been on the phone all night long, when he’s red-eyed and beat with weariness, easily at peace, and he thinks that he could even tell her about Munson, that she would understand. It feels wrong, to talk about his ex-girlfriends like they actually meant something, and meanwhile Amber knows next to nothing about the most important person in his life.
She knows they’re best friends, of course, knows they’ve known each other as long as they’ve known anyone not related to them, and a week in, she can recite Munson’s stats when Chavez starts to go off again, talking about how Munson won the College World Series for USC, about how he’s the best player on the best team, about how he’s gonna be the number one pick in ’99, number one without a doubt.
Chavez can hear her rolling her eyes affectionately when he’s talking about Munson, listening to all the stuff she’s heard before without complaint because she’s in the process of falling in love with him, and he gets a gnawing unease in his stomach, guilty and hating that he’s supposed to be ashamed of it.
But in the daytime, on the field, when he can think straight again, he knows that she would break up with him in a second, if she ever found out. Good boyfriends don’t fuck their best friends, even if they’re not doing that anymore, the distinction would be lost, and he will have broken her heart anyway.
He’s trying, very very hard, not to break her heart.
Then he goes to Texas.
It’s his first road trip with the A’s and he’s uncomfortable in the dress-code slacks and jacket he’s got to wear, wanting the heaviness of jeans on his legs, a T-shirt hole venting air over his back.
He can’t keep still on the plane, striding up and down the length of the aisle and trying to bug someone into keeping him occupied. Jason Giambi and Matt Stairs eventually pass a new rule, rookies are not allowed out of their seats, though Chavez is the only one they enforce it for.
Chavez jitters as quietly as possible for the rest of the flight, drumming his hands on his knees, flipping the tray table up and down.
Eric Munson is flying out to see him play in Arlington. Chavez should probably not be this excited.
They haven’t seen each other in six months, not since Eric Chavez woke up his last morning in Manhattan Beach with his face against Munson’s shoulder, his arm skewed over Munson’s chest and his hand inside Munson’s boxers, curled innocently around Munson’s hip.
He doesn’t call it running away, slipping out before Munson woke up. He had a plane to catch. And Munson shouldn’t have been in his bed, anyway.
They haven’t seen each other. A lot of stuff has happened, and all of it has happened over the phone.
Chavez is taking ground balls at third before batting practice, the fans filtering in slowly, clutching programs and beers and cardboard trays of food. The new Ballpark at Arlington is pretty as a picture, a twixt of modern and classic and the grass is so green it’s almost gold. He thinks, ‘sky blue, green light, glove down,’ and then he sees Munson, sitting in the stands over the dugout.
Chavez doesn’t even hesitate. He runs over, a struck grounder skipping behind his heels, the infield coach Ron Washington yelling his name and Chavvy barely even hears it. He calls, “Munce!” and sees Munson grin, rise to his feet. Chavez hits the fence hands-first and vaults into the stands, throwing his arms around his friend, his glove still on and flapping on Munson’s back.
Munson hugs him tight, smiling against his neck, and his eyes are closed, the sun and the field fighting through, reverse photograph.
Chavvy’s wild, ecstatic, banging him on the shoulder hard enough to hurt. Munce pulls back to see his face and Chavez doesn’t look the same, whitened by Canada and a slender gold chain around his neck, disappearing into his jersey. Chavez is still handsome and still young and the press of him against Munson’s chest hurts more than his shoulder.
Munce lets him go, shuffling back a step. Any possibility that he might not still be totally fucking helpless as far as Eric Chavez is concerned is wiped out in an instant.
“Look at you, man, big leaguer, look at this,” Munson says, playing it off like he always does.
“Dude, it’s, like, so good to see you,” Chavvy grins. “I missed the fuck out of you.”
Munce almost hugs him again, just to get that close again, where he can smell the skin of Chavez’s neck, feel the scratch of Chavez’s chin on his face, the brim of Chavez’s cap knocking into his forehead. But then Ron comes over and says ironically, “Pardon me, fellas, but one of you has got a ballgame to play, if you can be torn away.”
Chavvy hauls Munson down the steps to the rail, his hand pressure-cuffed around Munson’s arm. “Wash, this is Eric Munson, he’s my best friend.”
Washington gives him a long look, his well-lined face and his mouth tilted slightly, close to a smile. “There’s two of you? God help us.”
Chavvy beams, hooks an arm around Munson’s neck and tells him, “So, okay, you’re gonna watch the game, and I’m gonna, you know, play the game, and then we’ll go out. Gonna tear the place down tonight, man, no doubt about it.”
Munce’s throat closes up, and he makes a thin-lipped smile, nods, and Chavez hops back onto the field, jogging back to the diamond and taking his position again. Munson watches him down there, his best friend on a major league field, and Chavez turns to wave at him, distracted and getting a late break on a shot to the hole, but he makes the play with all easy skill that Munson knows by heart.
Munson takes his seat again. His chest aches like he’s been held underwater. He wants to be out there so bad, but for the life of him he can’t say whether it’s the field or the third baseman he wants the most.
The A’s lose the game, mired firmly in the cellar of the division, but Eric Chavez couldn’t care less. He bounces around the dugout, steals Rickey Henderson’s cap and spills Gatorade on Ben Grieve’s spikes, but Grieve doesn’t get too mad, because he’s the front-runner for the Rookie of the Year and pretty soon he’ll be able to afford all the new shoes he wants.
Chavez’s head isn’t in the game, thinking about Texas bars and the sun-warm stretch of Munson’s back under his hand when they embraced, but he makes every play and goes 2-for-4 with dust on the front of his jersey from diving back to first eight times, because he’s already a threat to steal.
Munson meets him at the clubhouse door, skulking around and feeling like a groupie, but Chavez keeps his arm around Munson’s back all the way across the parking lot to Munson’s rented car, talking a mile a minute and rubbing his fingers on Munson’s side.
Munson’s mouth is dry, and he’s so ready to start drinking, it’s not even funny.
He’s drunk, they’re both drunk, a couple of hours later, and they’re back at the hotel where Munson’s staying, stumbling and giggling down the hallway, Munce dropping the keycard about six times, laminated and slipping through his fingers.
Chavez body-checks him into the wall affectionately, so Munce trips him, and Chavez is lying there on his back on the swirly maroon rug, laughing so hard tears are sneaking out of his eyes. Munson feels something tighten low in his stomach, and he holds out his hand, Chavez latching onto his forearm and allowing himself to be pulled up.
Munson’s so plastered, he can barely walk, but he figures out the room door and pushes them both inside, and he’s breathing hard, his sense of balance gone and his feet betraying him. He’s overheated, liquid inside, and they’re still getting mixed up together, their hands and arms in knots, Chavez’s head rattling off his back, Chavez hiccupping and panting with laughter, sounding the same as when he’s lying strewn on the bed, bucking and whipping around, biting his lip.
Munson feels something snap, and he shoves Chavez up against the wall, kissing his open mouth.
For a moment, it’s messy and one-sided, and Munson’s good intentions dart inside him, his heart shattered and terrified, and he desperately licks at the inside of Chavez’s mouth, stroking his hands hard and graceless across Chavez’s stomach, until Chavez moans rustily, starts to kiss him back, and Munce could weep, he’s so grateful.
It’s just like he remembers, a year later, just like it was. The way Chavez wraps his arms around him with all his strength, and Munson can feel his ribs creak in protest. The way Chavez arches up against him when he nips his earlobe, sucks a hickey onto his neck. The way Chavez breathes out his name unevenly when they draw back for air, and his eyes are as big as pennies and flint glazed clean, obsidian.
Munson rips Chavez’s shirt down the middle, the plastic patter of buttons raining on the carpet, and angles down to scald his mouth on Chavez’s chest, gnashing his teeth and tonguing Chavez’s collarbone, the chain-link of his sternum, and Chavez’s hands are on the back of his head, pressing him closer, Chavez’s head thrown back against the wall.
Eric Munson falls to his knees, his thumbs digging below Chavez’s ribs, and he mumbles thoughtlessly into the board of Chavez’s stomach, heat on the backs of his eyelids, “Gonna fuck you so hard, gonna fuck you till you scream,” and Chavez shudders, the muscles burring under Munson’s tongue.
And Eric Chavez, Eric Chavez is as drunk as he’s ever been, the harsh chafe of the wall on his shoulder blades and Munson’s filthy mouth moving wetly, Munson’s hands clumsily tugging at his belt, Chavez’s mind spiraling, swooping, and he’s so hard, already, he’s so hard, because it’s Eric Munson on his knees, talking dirty and gnawing on the fabric of his road-trip slacks, pressing his face against the fly and mouthing him through the thin wool, making these little gasped groans and his hair soft and thick and longer than it was the last time Chavez buried his hands in it.
Then Eric Chavez’s cell phone rings in his back pocket, and it’s ten o’clock in California and Amber Tarpy is calling him like she always does.
His eyes fly open, and he pushes Munson off him before he can even think about it.
Munson, shocked and on his back on the floor, doesn’t miss the irony.
‘How fucking perfect,’ he thinks, and Chavez is staring down at him, his eyes enormous, the damp trail down his chest glistening. Chavez’s hand is on his back pocket, where the phone is still buzzing, screeching, but he doesn’t pull it out, doesn’t answer it, and after a while it stops.
They’re still, Chavez against the wall and Munson on the floor, and the only sound is the ragged pull of air.
“Wh-wuh-wuh-” Chavez stammers, his tongue not working right, sounding dumb and useless. He stops, drags in a long shaking breath, and tries again, “Munson, you . . . we, we’re not . . . doing that. Anymore.”
Munce sits up, his head swan-diving, the rollercoaster flip of his stomach. He’s just, God, he’s stupid drunk, he wants to pull Chavez down and kiss him again, hold him down when Chavez tries to get free, because Munson’s still bigger and maybe not that much stronger, but he wants this more, he’ll hold him down, break him up.
“Why not?” he asks instead, curling his hands into fists and bracing his knuckles on the carpet, his restraint shredded, barely hanging on.
Chavez shakes his head, still looking black-eyed stunned and so turned on he’s afraid to move. “You-you know why not.”
Munce’s mouth twists angrily. “Fuck that. Fuck what happened a year ago, it . . . it happened a year ago, it doesn’t count.” He’s aware that he’s not making much sense, his mind sluggish and grief-stricken, but he pushes on. “It won’t hurt nobody, you know it won’t hurt anybody.”
He wants to crawl over to him, his arms around Chavez’s legs, just touch him again, and he’s so pathetic, he never thought it’d get this bad. He sniffs hard, swiping a fierce hand across his face, his eyes on fire.
“It’s because of that religion shit, isn’t it?” Munson says, not hiding his contempt. “You’re too Christian to fuck me anymore.”
Chavez jerks his head, wobbling on his feet. Munson wishes he’d put his shirt back on, he’s not thinking clearly with Chavez standing there naked to the waist, the small cross sweet and cool high on his chest.
“No,” Chavez answers, sounding sad, disappointed. “Fuck you. No.”
Munson tries to pull in a breath, but it comes as if through wet cotton. There are a couple other reasons, a couple other possibilities. They’re all very hard to even think about.
“You think you’re better than me,” Munson says, and he doesn’t think he’d be able to recognize himself if he could see this scene from outside his own body, this doesn’t feel like him at all. “Big fuckin’ leaguer now, right? I’m just some punk college kid you knew once and you’re. You’re the fuckin’ golden boy.”
“You can just shut the fuck up with that shit, right fucking now,” Chavez snaps, and his hands are shaking, his chest moving fast like he’s panicked. “You don’t believe that, you know it’s not. That’s not fucking true, and you goddamn well know it.”
“Then what?” Munce asks, hating how his voice cracks.
Chavez makes a terrible sound, a moan and a sob and he slips down the wall, sitting on the floor, his hand over his face. “Munce, I . . . I got a girlfriend.”
Munson blinks. Somehow, he’d never even considered that. “For real?”
Chavez nods, looking beaten up, at the end of his rope. “Yeah, man.”
Munce just stares at him for a moment, then snaps his head back and forth briskly. “So what?” he challenges, and he’s grasping at everything in reach, the worst arguments and the lamest rationale, anything. “You’ve had girlfriends before. So’ve I. This . . . it’s never been a problem before.”
Chavez rests his chin on his knees, and Munson thinks for a moment that he’s about to cry. “It’s a problem this time, Munce,” he whispers.
Light is dawning in Munson’s alcohol-clouded head, and he asks bleakly, “That was her, wasn’t it? On the phone.”
Chavez moves his head slightly, a restricted nod. “We talk every night,” and Munce isn’t expecting for that to hurt. “She’s the journalist lady’s niece. Paula, you know? Her name’s Amber Tarpy, she’s so cool, man-”
“Shut up,” Munce interrupts him, his head starting to pound. “Don’t . . . don’t tell me her name,” but he’s too late for that, and he ends up just feeling like more of an idiot.
He lowers his head into his hands, scrubbing his hands fast across his face, the calluses on his palms rasping the fresh skin. He isn’t aware he’s speaking out loud until he hears Chavez inhale sharply with surprise:
“I want you so bad.”
Munson cringes, flushing with humiliation, but lifts his head, because he’s drunk and doesn’t care, honestly, can’t care. Chavez is staring at him, his face cleaned out and a little bit scared. Munson digs a hand into his hair, tells him with his voice rising and falling and splintering, “I want you all the time. All year, it’s been like this, and I, I can’t stand it, man. I know it was my fault and I guess you got this girl now so you probably don’t even care, but . . .” he sobs once, dryly, into the crook of his elbow.
“I’m still so fucking in love with you, Eric, it’s gonna kill me, I swear to God it is.”
Munson’s face is against his arm, and on some level he knows he’s gonna regret this in the morning, but right now Eric Munson doesn’t believe that this night will ever end, it’s just going to be horrible and drunken and Chavez will never put his shirt back on, the path of Munson’s tongue will never fade from his skin.
He hears the cuff of Chavez moving, the rustle of his pants on the carpet, so he’s expecting it when Chavez’s hand touches his head, brushes at his hair, but Munson still hisses and snatches himself away.
“Munce,” Chavez whispers, going to touch him again, and Munson pulls away again.
“You should go,” Munson says, toneless. “I . . . I’m drunk. I’m sorry. You should go.”
“No, man,” Chavvy says pleadingly. “Don’t make me leave.”
Munson shakes his head, his eyes screwed shut. “It . . . doesn’t mean anything. I’m used to it. And it’s . . . it’s not usually this hard. Just . . . seeing you. And seeing you play. And then we almost . . . I mean, getting to . . . it’s not usually this hard.”
He swallows thickly, says again, “Go away, dude, seriously, get out of here.”
He’s wrenched up into a ball, and Chavez can feel his heart breaking, over and over again, and each time he can’t believe there’s anything left, each time he’s wrong. He knee-walks closer, flattens his hand on Munson’s shoulder, and when Munson winces again, Chavez doesn’t give up, slides his arm around Munson’s back, Munson vibrating under him, making small noises of protest.
Chavez whispers into his ear, Munson’s hair tickling his nose, “C’mon, babe, c’mon,” folding his hand under Munson’s arm and drawing him up.
Munson rises slowly, his legs feeling boneless, and Chavez guides him carefully to the bed, lays him down.
Chavez tugs off Munson’s shoes, pulling the covers over him. Munson rolls onto his side, his back to his friend, and Chavez can hear him trying to catch his breath, his shoulders rigid and his face turned into the pillow.
Chavez, one knee on the bed, gazes down at him miserably, and he wants to sink in behind him, smooth the tension out of Munson’s back and sleep with his hand on Munson’s chest, his forehead on the nape of Munson’s neck.
He bends down, kisses Munson’s throat, under his jaw, and Munson flinches away. Chavez stands, picks his shirt up off the floor and walks out.
His shirt’s ruined, hanging open and making him look like a kid on spring break, and Eric Chavez watches Arlington through the taxi cab window, the breeze skittering across his chest, and he thinks that he’s finally got everything he’s ever wanted.
*
(wicked mind)
Eric Chavez gets back to his Arlington hotel room and Ben Grieve is sleeping like a big snoring rock in the other bed, one arm over the side of the bed and his knuckles brushing the floor.
He rummages in his suitcase, his old red jacket and the secret pocket just inside the right sleeve, the cocaine-smuggling pocket, where he’s got an unmarked prescription bottle that rattles softly and knocks white pill chalk onto his palm. He swallows the tablets dry, and pulls the covers over his head.
He wakes up hungover, gritty-eyed guilty and the worst person in the world. He didn’t brush his teeth the night before and he can still taste Munson, or imagines he can, at any rate.
Chavez goes into the bathroom with his cell phone and sends flowers to Amber Tarpy’s parents’ house, watching himself in the fluorescent mirror. His hands are numb, his head still painkilled and drunk as he dictates the note over the phone to the guy at the florist shop, he’s got to repeat it four times before he can stop slurring and stuttering enough to make it clear.
‘Waiting to spend the rest of my life with you. Love, Eric.’
They go out to the yard and he doesn’t say much of anything.
Munson’s in love with him, a year after they stopped, that shouldn’t change anything. He’s got a girl, the best girl, with her hitched laugh and her remembered dark eyes. Maybe if they were still seventeen, if he was still in the minors, if he still lived in Manhattan Beach. Maybe it would matter then, but it doesn’t matter now. Everything’s different now.
Munson balled up around himself on the floor, Munson on his knees, Munson’s hands ripping open his shirt like it was woven out of wax. Chavez thinks about Superman, phone booths, a red Spiderman flashlight in a sick bed. He hopes Amber will like her flowers, that sometime soon she will tell him she loves him.
He gets back to California and wakes up one morning in an empty apartment that he doesn’t recognize, on the gray carpet of a hallway with his shirt half-unbuttoned and his driver’s license stuck to his stomach. He throws up in the unfamiliar kitchen sink and his legs give out in the stairwell as he’s trying to get away, mortified and trembling.
He remembers this. Bruises on his neck, somebody else’s fingerprints on his body, a new television and a state-of-the-art stereo with speakers so crisp and clean every song sounds like a hymn. He’s not even sure if he fucked anyone, if he got fucked, he doesn’t stick around long enough to find out. All he’s got to go on is the sick hateful sense of déjà vu, the stairwell cold and shiny pasty beige.
He sends Amber Tarpy three mix tapes and a postcard from Seattle, Pike’s Place Market and piles of silver-shining salmon, and his brambly scrawl on the back: ‘I like fish. I love you. In the contest between you and fish, you win. Love, Eric.’
He’s pretty sure this is what’s known as trying too hard.
Amber Tarpy thinks he’s so sweet. She tells him that, but she doesn’t tell him she loves him.
He calls Munson, after nearly a week of being paralyzed, hands tied behind his back and his shoulders dislocated, and Munson sounds so uncomfortable, so embarrassed, and Chavez wants to tell him, no man, don’t feel bad, please don’t be sorry, but he doesn’t because Munson’s in a ball on a hotel room floor in Arlington and Chavez is so far gone he can’t even see straight.
“Look, let’s . . . let’s not talk for awhile, okay?” Munson says awkwardly. “I got . . . you know, shit to deal with. To get over.”
“Don’t get over it,” Chavez says without thinking, his mind dim and his connection to the world thready.
Munson is quiet, then asks, “What?”
Chavez bites on the heel of his hand, crescent smile. “Um,” he answers dumbly, muffled.
“Are you . . . I mean, are we gonna . . . has anything changed?” Munce says with a dangerous slit to his voice.
Chavez thinks he might do better blind. Deaf. Mute. Stop fucking everything up. “No,” he whispers.
“Then fuck you,” Munce tells him, and hangs up.
The season ends with the Oakland Athletics in last place. They talk about rebuilding. They talk about young talent and in the implied background of that is Eric Chavez’s name. They talk about next year and no one really doubts that Billy Beane will find a way.
He goes home to San Diego for four days before he’s got to report back to the instructional league in Phoenix, and Amber Tarpy gives him the flu, but won’t sleep with him and won’t tell him that she loves him. He doesn’t go to USC. He drives around without destination a lot, gets lost near the Mexican border and sees the decaying metal hulks of decade-old car crashes on the side of the road.
He gets a blowjob from a stranger in the backroom of a bar down on Sunset, and fucks a girl up against an alley’s brick wall in a light clouded rain. He’s not even drunk for the first, he just wanted to get his hands into the guy’s uncut hair, get his back up against a wall and feel heat on him.
Chavez doesn’t understand this. That he can fuck randomly and anonymously but he can’t fuck Eric Munson or Amber Tarpy. That half of this is his fault and the other half isn’t, no way to tell which is which.
He goes to Phoenix, dogged across time changes by Amber Tarpy’s flu, watery-eyed, hacking and spitting in the dust. It’s been a long year, the longest year he can remember, through Alabama and Edmonton and Oakland, and when he feels something rubber-band snap in his back after taking a hard cut, he thinks for a moment, ‘perfect excuse,’ before wiping that out of his mind.
His back tightens up and he has to leave the game. He doesn’t sleep that night, because he doesn’t want to take his pain pills again, he’s been doing that too much recently. It’s too late to call Amber and Munce still doesn’t want to talk to him.
Chavez takes a long walk, gingerly stepping off curbs so as not to jar his injury. He walks on the side of the highway, the loose sand at the shoulder, the hard-as-concrete tack scattered with withered desert blooms, nervy skittish animals that explode out of the dark places, scrambling over his feet and baring their pinprick teeth at him.
He thinks about the scars on Munson’s arms, the rock-cut stitch on his back, how they turn pink in the cold. He thinks of when Eric Munson was a warm lanky boy, sleeping in his socks, jostling into him as they played video games on the carpet. He thinks of splash-wrestling in the YMCA pool, and racing each other to the shore with windmilling arms, how they used to punch their bodies into the waves and try to beat the ocean into submission.
He’s requested to wear the number three on his uniform next year, because Bip Roberts is retiring. Munce wears three at USC, it’s lucky for them both. They’re just fucking worlds apart right now, that’s all. Eric Chavez is two inches better at baseball, if that, and it’s a distance like distances in space, something that can’t ever be really comprehended.
He thinks about Amber Tarpy and the care she takes with his name. Amber Tarpy who doesn’t think he’s weak or hypocritical for believing in God, Amber Tarpy who hasn’t been trying and failing to be better than him at everything since she was five years old, Amber Tarpy who’s never seen him cry and never told him to hit her. Amber Tarpy who knows only the best parts, blind to the evil in him.
Chavez is not doing right by either of them, and he’s not a good man anymore, not close.
The next day, he calls Billy Beane and asks to quit the fall league. Beane’s not happy, Eric can tell, probably the latest in a long line to think he’s a punk, but the general manager lets him go.
Eric Chavez comes home to California, and there’s a herniated disk in his spine. He’s ordered to rest, rehabilitate, and it’s something that can be healed but not cured, never goes away forever, he’ll play through it for the rest of his career.
Amber Tarpy flutters her hands over him and lets him lie down in her childhood bed, his dirty sneakers over the side. The comforter’s pale blue and the pillowcases are yellow-striped. It smells clean like fabric softener and Eric turns his face into a pillow, breathing deep, and Amber puts her hand on his side, blows on the back of his neck and says into his ear, “Half-hour till my parents get back.”
She curls up against his back, and she’s soft too, like her new-sheets bed, fresh like the bright wallpaper and the sunlight refracting through the Windex. Chavez rolls over and kisses her, his fingers on her cheek. She giggles against his mouth and he says over and over again, “I love you, I love you.”
He kicks off his shoes and sneaks a hand up under her shirt, so soft, it’s incredible. He can see the frayed stuffed dog on her dresser, missing a button eye and all the stuffing hugged into the arms and legs. He can see the photographs taped around the edges of her mirror, the Pike’s Place Market postcard stuck in the frame. He thinks about high school, girls with white blonde hair and boyband posters.
He slows, settling back with his head on her shoulder. He moves his hand curiously on her stomach, feathery little spurs, nervous skin. She touches his hair uncertainly, touches his back under the collar of his shirt. “Eric?” she asks softly.
“I love you,” he says without looking at her. It’s all he can think to say. He slips his hand out of her shirt, closes his eyes very tightly. He can hear her heartbeat, metronoming, unconcerned.
Amber Tarpy, breathing warmly on his forehead, answers, “I love you too,” and then laughs lightly, laughs high and without a hitch.
Eric Chavez, having failed to have sex with his girlfriend when he had the chance, eats dinner with her parents, polite charming boy who doesn’t fuck strangers in back alleys, and then kisses her good-night, drives to Los Angeles.
He finds Eric Munson’s small off-campus house after stopping at three gas stations and a Safeway to ask for directions, the address smudged on a scrap of paper like a stone-rubbing.
He knocks on the door but no one answers, so he sits down on the front porch and waits. He could just call, figure out where Munson is, when he’ll be back, if they can meet up, but he doesn’t.
He watches the silent residential street, the dusky rust color of the sky past midnight because there’s no such thing as full dark in L.A., and he doesn’t really know what he’s doing there.
Munson’s truck pulls into the driveway and the headlights wink off, but Munce doesn’t get out for a long time. Chavez squints, tries to figure out if Munson’s got someone in the cab with him, but the streetlight glare makes the windshield opaque and he can’t see anything.
Munson gets out alone, and stops in front of the truck, a short length between the two of them. Chavez makes a little half-hearted wave, his vocal chords not seeming to work right.
“What’s going on, man?” Munson breaks the pause, sounding reined in and cautious like the words are landmines.
Chavez’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out. He shrugs helplessly, wringing his hands into knots between his knees. Munson looks at him warily, then sighs and comes over to sit next to him on the step.
Munson keeps his eyes straight ahead on the street, waits patiently. Chavez doesn’t know where to start, doesn’t know the beginning or the middle or the end.
“I couldn’t sleep with Amber,” he says, looking surprised at the sound of his own voice.
Munson twitches, sidles him a glance out of the corner of his eye. Chavez stares down at his complicated hands. “I mean, I guess I didn’t really . . . try very hard. I stopped before anything really happened. So maybe I would have been able to. But I . . . I didn’t.”
Chavez waits for Munson to ask him why not, but Munson seems content to just sit there and not look at him, his eyes on the satellites of the streetlamps, the brown-green of the autumn trees.
“You shouldn’t have said that stuff in Arlington,” Chavez says, a weird frantic edge to it.
Munson nods with an impassive expression on his face. “I know.” He lifts his shoulders, and Chavez sees the tendon in his neck flexing and relaxing, realizes that Munson’s only staying this calm because he’s using everything in him. “I was drunk. It was stupid.”
“It was true, though, wasn’t it?” Chavez asks hesitantly, and Munce pauses for an instant, the time it takes a traffic signal to change from yellow to red, and then nods jerkily.
Chavez blows out a hard breath, covers his face with his hands. “See, that’s the problem, Munson, you asshole,” he mumbles against his palms. “You said that stuff and now I can’t stop thinking about it and I can’t sleep with my girlfriend and everything is getting so fucked up, man. They’re gonna find me in an alley somewhere and it’s gonna be all your fault.”
Munson places a hand on his back gently, but then takes it away a second later. “An alley?” he repeats, idly confused.
“Dead in a fucking alley, Munce, because you waited until now to drop this shit on me,” Chavez says with a bad mix of anger and sadness. He wants Munson’s hand on his back again.
“I’m sorry, dude, but it . . . it took me awhile to figure it out. And then even longer to figure out that it wasn’t going to go away,” Munson tries to explain, stalling and cutting up his tone into off-kilter patterns.
Chavez lifts his head, glares at his friend. “You know what I think? I think this is you wanting something you can’t have. You never made any big fucking proclamations before it ended, but now that I don’t want you anymore, apparently I’m your fucking holy grail.”
Munson shakes his head immediately, because he’s all for re-writing history, but there are some things that are gonna remain untouched. “No. It’s not like that. Maybe, yeah, okay, maybe it took you getting rid of me to make me realize what I had, but that doesn’t make it any less real. I don’t want you because I can’t have you. I want you in spite of that.”
Chavez chokes off a moan in his throat, buries his face in his folded arms. “Will you please for Christ’s sake quit saying shit like that,” he begs.
Munson’s mouth ticks, a blink of a smile, but Chavez misses it. Munce draws in a deep breath, looks at Chavez all bent over his knees with his head in his arms, the graying streaks of gold in his hair, fading highlights, the back of his neck and the shell-whorls of his ears.
Munson exhales, puts his hand on the back of Chavez’s head and pets him down to the first bump of his spine, Chavez’s hair rough and unwashed, running into smooth tight skin. Chavez murmurs like he wants to pull away, but he doesn’t, tilting unconsciously towards Munson’s body.
“Dude, if this is really fucking you up that much, maybe that should tell you something,” Munson says hypothetically. “I mean, my own ego aside, it usually takes kind of a lot to make you go off the rails.”
Chavez doesn’t raise his head, asking into the cave of his body, “What should it tell me, Eric? What . . . what’s wrong with me?”
Munson’s hand stops, his fingers on the nape of Chavez’s neck and his thumb in Chavez’s hair. “There’s nothing wrong with you, man. You’re just . . . I got you all confused, and now you don’t know what to do.”
Chavez moves his head slightly, almost nodding, and then he’s quiet for a long time. Munson takes his hand away, pushes his thumb against the protruding lump at the heel, the bone-spur.
Chavez sits up, pulling the back of his hand across his nose. “Munson,” he says, the corners of his eyes turned down so that he looks guilty and fearful. “Do you . . . do you think it’s possible to be in love with two people at the same time?”
Munson stares at him. Munson’s having trouble swallowing, some dense obstruction in his throat like breathing through honey. Chavez looks so scared, so sad, and Munce knows the answer to that.
But he lifts one shoulder, says as easily as he can manage, “I don’t know, man, you tell me.”
Chavez’s face collapses, and he nods, nods quickly and he’s proud because he’s not crying, but that’s the end of the good, everything else is just a fucking disaster.
“What am I gonna do, Munce?” Chavvy asks, wide-eyed and desperate, and Munson grabs him, hauls him in. Chavez’s face gets pressed against Munson’s chest, Munson’s arms around his shoulders.
Chavez snakes his arms around Munson’s waist and Munson tells him, “Any way I can get you. Any way. Just . . . tell me what you want, dude.”
Chavez breathes against his chest for awhile, Munson hard all over, muscle and bone, Munson’s chin on the top of his head, and Munson’s warm, blood-warm, something known by heart.
He pulls away, out of Munson’s arms, and sits up. Their knees are together, and Munson keeps a hand cupped around his elbow. Chavez wipes his fingers across his face, and says, “I want you to fuck me. As soon as possible.”
Munce is frozen, and in that moment Chavez is sure that he’s going to say no, it’s not right and not fair, and it won’t help, all of which is true, but then a brutal haze flags through his eyes, and Munson’s hand on his elbow clenches, crushing the tendons painfully against the calciate, and Munson rasps, “Inside.”
Chavez yanks himself up and his legs are asleep, but Munson’s got a hand strong on his back, fingers clawing at his shirt, and Chavez stumbles across the porch. Munson reaches around him to fumble sweaty-palmed for the doorknob, and Chavez wants to make some joke about that, leaving the house unlocked, jesus man don’t you learn from our mistakes, but Munce is already biting at his shoulder and neck, wet branding swipe of his tongue across Chavez’s ear, and Chavez is lost to it.
Barely through the door, in the unlit front hallway, and it’s Arlington, the sequel, kissing sharp with teeth and the taste of copper, Eric Chavez against the wall. But they’re not wasting any time, and Munson flips him easily, chipped paint in Chavez’s mouth and the light-switch jabbing into his chest. He shifts over to where there’s nothing but wall and Munson is pressed against his back, grinding and swearing hotly into Chavez’s ear, and Chavez thinks in fragments, ‘with abandon, I know, like this, just like this.’
Chavez braces his hands on the wall and pants, “Yeah, man, yeah,” and his shirt is pulled all the way up, bandaged under his arms, and Munson is licking his shoulder blades, Munson is kissing the little knobs of his spine with something mistaken for tenderness, Munson’s mouth is open in the dip at the small of his back, where Chavez’s first true injury makes his perfect swing unbearably painful, and Chavez needs Munson to stop messing around, rise to his feet and fuck him through the wall.
He reaches back, finds the thatch of Munson’s hair and pulls impatiently. Munson growls and stings him with his teeth, but skims his way back up, his hands around Chavez’s waist and working at his belt. Chavez presses his face into his bicep, his mouth moving mindlessly, chewing dragged bruises into his skin.
Munson winds a hand in Chavez’s hair and pulls his head up and back, kissing him at this weird cramped angle, and Chavez feels Munson’s hands sliding down and around, wants to say please but won’t, and it’s caught on his mind, it’s stuck: ‘abandon abandon abandon.’
When it’s over and he’s a gasping mess on the floor, Munson staggers to his feet and goes down the hall swaying like he’s on a bus, a minor league road trip, catching his balance with a hand against the wall. Eric Chavez stares woozily up at the ceiling, and Munson comes back with a damp washcloth, kneeling beside him and cleaning his face first, the steel-wool cotton over Chavez’s mouth and eyes, then his body, putting Chavez’s clothes back in order for him. Munson pats him on the chest and keeps cutting his gaze away.
Chavez touches Munson’s face, pulling him down and angling up to meet him, kissing him close-mouthed like an old movie, a church kiss. Munson lies down next to him and they don’t touch.
“You’re not gonna break up with her, are you,” Munce says flatly.
Chavez squints his eyes shut, shakes his head.
“And you’re gonna keep coming back here and we’re gonna keep doing this.” Munson’s got no inflection, no hint of accusation or anger, and Chavez kind of wishes Eric would just go ahead and hit him, it would be easier to deal with.
“Tell me it’s wrong, Munson,” Chavez says, scratching at the carpet, lint under his nails. “Tell me you won’t let me do this.”
But Munson won’t say that. His mouth is a taut line and his eyes are shining as he blinks fast at the ceiling.
Chavez wants to touch him very badly, but he stays on his side of the line. He’s post-sex relaxed, tingling and flushed, and it’s only his mind that’s sick now, tired mind, wicked mind.
“I wish one of you would just disappear,” Eric Chavez says hollowly.
Eric Munson closes his eyes. “That’s funny,” he replies, praying for weakness and strength in the same breath. “I keep thinking the same thing about you and me.”
(end part seven)
*
part eight
God.
And, okay. I'm gonna have to go ahead and call precedence on all your asses. I was there at the Coliseum in 1999, when he was this skinny gawky-looking kid with rough buzzed hair and his cheek poked out by bubble gum. And Jason Giambi used to come over and almost knock him over celebrating, and Hudson looked like a fuckin' bat boy next to him. Hudson who I thought was maybe just a bush league stopgap and didn't know by name or sight or nothing, because I didn't keep up on the farm system back then.
Back before we had any idea what truly good pitching was. Back when Barry Zito was in Class A and Mark Mulder was in Canada. Back when Rich Harden was still in fuckin' high school.
I thought maybe he was a punk. I had my eyes trained for big arms, wide shoulders. Pitchers like statues. This skinny kid. What the fuck? Then he struck someone out with this sinker, man, you could hear the stadium drawing in one breath. Could feel the concrete give a bit under your feet. Could see, motherfucker, could see something like the future and Tim Hudson had his mouth open and his cap pushed back on his head. Tim Hudson had his fist up, his arm cutting through the air, he didn't have any tattoos back then and he didn't look like anybody who'd ever won a bar fight or a major league baseball game, didn't look like anybody who might some day take your heart away with him to Atlanta.
You think you know pain? Go tell that sixteen year old kid I was about fuckin' pain. Five and a half years later, and I swear to God, as good a pitcher as I've ever seen. And I've been here since the beginning.
Goddamn, Huddy. I'm gonna miss you.
Table of Contents
Pictures courtesy bradausmus12
The Rest of Your Life
By Candle Beck
Part the Seventh: Meant to Be
(the famous eric chavez)
Eric Chavez meets a girl. He also goes to the Show.
These two things happen on the same day, which is probably why he ends up marrying her.
Edmonton, Canada, where he plays for the Triple-A Trappers, is like a dream that’s neither good nor bad, halfway between wet dream and nightmare, the kind of place that will bore you awake. It’s just flat, oil-field tundra, closed off at the corners.
He missed his flight from Alabama, having arrived at the airport without his birth certificate, and he leaves all his stuff behind in Huntsville, he’s got the shirt on his back and one bag that’s got more baseball gear in it than clothes, and this is how he’ll get through the rest of the season.
He’s in Canada for less than two months, he stays hot and on the 7th of September, 1998, after the big league rosters expand, Eric Chavez gets a plane ticket to San Francisco.
He calls Eric Munson from the stadium parking lot, walking on crazy zig-zagging paths around the cars, not content to stay still. Munson doesn’t pick up, and Chavez hollers into his voicemail, “Eric, you little punk, where the fuck are you, I’ve been called up, I’m going to the Show and you’re not there! Call me back, motherfucker!”
He ends the call and he can barely get his phone back into his pocket, he’s shaking that hard. He goes to the first church he sees, and kneels down, thanks God. He can’t stop grinning for the life of him.
Munson doesn’t call him back, that night. He gets Chavez’s message and they haven’t talked in better than a month. Munson feels sick and happy and he doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t think he knows the words for this. He leaves his cell phone at home and drives up the coast to Santa Marita with Everclear and Sublime playing loud. He swims in the ocean, out as far as he can go, and sleeps on the beach, dreams about Fenway Park.
When he gets back to Los Angeles the next day, he pulls into the student parking lot and all around him are kids, returning for the fall term, half-grown with new haircuts and stiff unbroken-in jeans, different kinds of uncertain and a fucking encyclopedia of fear. There are school notebooks in the small backseat of Munson’s truck, textbooks and a stuffed Trojan with a yellow mustache and gray felt helmet on the shotgun seat, a red and gold USC bumper sticker on the back. In his glove compartment is the ring he got for winning the College World Series.
Munson sits with his hands on the wheel for a long time, static sounds and the muffled chatter of the university through his windows. His best friend got there first, which Munson knew would happen. Munson thinks that he’s gonna have to start practicing with wooden bats, pretty soon. Maybe Chavez will send him extras. Yeah.
In Edmonton, Chavez gets back to his apartment and paces around, packs in feverish bursts of energy, waiting for his phone to ring. He eventually calls his parents, needing to talk to somebody, at least, someone who’ll be there.
Ruby cries over the phone and then Cesar cries too, though he tries to play it off as a coughing fit, but Eric sees right through him, beaming in his empty apartment, and they say how proud they are, they can hardly get it out, but they’re so proud of him.
He calls the Munsons, too, and Steve crows joyfully, says, “I knew you would, I knew it,” over and over again, and Chavez doesn’t ask him where his son is, swallows it back from the tip of his tongue.
He flies out to California the next day, skying in over the San Francisco Bay, where the islands and the bridges are laid out like a map, the climbed rake of the skyscrapers at the tip of the peninsula, and he looks for Oakland out the window, the ring of the stadium.
He’s there within the hour, straight out from the airport, and his legs are weak as he walks into the mostly empty clubhouse, his eyes gaping and astonished. He meets Art Howe, the A’s manager, and is told that he probably won’t play that night, but Chavez doesn’t care, he just wants to be here, the clubhouse with its clean patterned carpet and arcade machine, the open fresh-painted lockers and the bleached baseballs that roll around chaotically, as white as sheets.
He’s got a locker. There’s a green jersey there with his name in bright yellow on the back.
Eric Chavez has to sit down for awhile.
And then the reporters crowd in, seven of them in a rustling knot around him, and they tell him that Baseball America has named him the Minor League Player of the Year, and he keeps waiting to wake up in Canada.
Before the A’s take the field against the Orioles, the announcer tells the fans about the kid in the dugout, the Minor League Player of the Year and Oakland’s future, and Eric gets pushed up the steps, each step like coming up from underwater, and when the sun hits his eyes, the small crowd claps politely and he tips his cap, a rainbow hooking in the sky over his head.
He does end up playing that night, incredibly. He’s just sitting on the bench for seven innings, unable to really follow the game, giddy and terrified, his stomach roiling, his baffled mind, when Howe tells him to get loose, he’ll be pinch-hitting to lead off the A’s half of the eighth.
Cesar Chavez is sitting with Steve Munson in the Munsons’ living room, and when they see Eric swinging nervously in the on-deck circle as the pitcher takes his warm-up, Cesar pulls a wavering hand across his eyes, and Steve says quietly, “Would you look at that.”
The two men catch each other’s eyes, and it’s the kind of strange moment that you’d think would be remembered, in tense intricate detail, forever. A moment where you see the light through the window blinds in a ladder on the carpet, and the chipped corner of the coffee table from when one of the boys chucked a roller skate at the other and missed, and the framed pictures on top of the television set and the empty VHS boxes around the VCR on the floor. A moment where all of this is clear and still and will not be forgotten.
But Steve and Cesar just grin at each other, and the specifics of the room and the moment slide away like marbles on ice, and later, the only thing either of them will remember about the day they first saw Eric Chavez in a major league uniform is that Steve was there, Cesar was there, they saw it together.
Eric Chavez takes his first major league at-bat. Everything is so much bigger, the pitcher a mile away, the outfield wall in another country. His hands around the bat look telescoped. He can’t imagine ever getting used to this.
He strikes out on a 2-2 fastball, and as he walks back to the dugout, his first really coherent thought of the day sheers into his brain, ‘the stitches were over the top, that was the two-seam,’ and he’ll know it when he sees it next.
The day’s a blur. Mark McGwire breaks Roger Maris’s record and they see it happen in the clubhouse, McGwire’s big arms thrown up, the ball vanishing into the wild red St. Louis crowd, his son waiting for him at home plate. It’s historic, and Eric Chavez would have remembered this day anyway, even if he were still in Edmonton, even if he’d never signed and was going to USC with Munson and never making it to class. Because he knows all the important dates of his game, all the records and the famous spring-summer-autumn days, and even if he hadn’t made his debut today, he’d still never forget September 8th. It’s, like, intentional, but that’s not the right word. Preordained. Destined.
Eric’s having trouble getting his bearings, trouble clearing his vision. Nothing stops moving until he gets to his hotel, his head full of arched pastel colors and spun red stitches, and everything looks blessed, looks meant to be.
In the hotel lobby, he runs into Paula Bott.
She’s a reporter with the Union-Tribune, and she’s been following him and Munson around since they were in high school, writing a series of articles about their friendship and their upward strive towards the big leagues.
It was weird at first, and for a while both Erics kind of wanted to back out of the agreement, too much at stake and too much to be found out about them, but they played it off boldly, because press attention, that’s always been due them.
Paula’s familiar enough, but there’s a girl with her, Paula’s baby daughter on her hip, a girl with shiny hair the color of cedar and big brown eyes. Chavvy comes over and Paula gives him a kiss on the cheek, a huge smile, and tells him, “You did it.”
Chavez grins back, his eyes flitting back to the girl with Paula, the fine lines of her face, the way she looks at him from under her eyelashes and then darts her eyes away, blushing.
“Oh, this is my niece, this is Amber. Amber Tarpy,” Paula says off-hand, and the girl, Amber, smiles at him shyly, says “hello” so quietly Eric has to read her lips.
“Pleased to meet you,” he answers, wishing she wasn’t holding the infant so they could shake hands. She’s got nice hands, pale slender fingers and a sterling silver ring on her thumb.
She lifts her face, gives him her best look, all sweet wide eyes and a color of surprise on her cheeks. Chavez realizes he’s staring, and quickly excuses himself, moving to the elevators and only turning back once to see Amber Tarpy flipping her hair, a flash of her shoulders.
He keeps thinking about the girl, in the elevator and in the hallway and in his room and in the shower, he can’t shake her. She’s not even blonde, but she’s got those eyes, like all things made honest.
Then Eric Munson calls.
Chavez is just coming out of the bathroom, his boxers on and sticking to his hips in splotchy wet patches, and his jeans on the bed start to vibrate. He thinks, right away, ‘Munce,’ and goes for his phone so quick he trips over his bag, rug burn on his knees and scrabbling to the bed, pulling the covers halfway to the floor and not questioning his eagerness, his near-panic as he sorts the phone out from his pants, snaps it open and says breathlessly, “Hey.”
“The famous Eric Chavez,” Munson answers, a sharp little grin in his voice.
Chavvy lets his shoulders fall, his spine relaxing, rolling over onto his back. His soaked hair bleeds into the mattress like ink, and his eyes are closed. He’s almost overcome with relief, though he doesn’t know why.
“Dude,” he begins, but he doesn’t have the first clue what to say, there’s so much. “Aw, Jesus, Eric, I, I can’t . . .”
“Chavvy?” Munce says, rough at the edges. “I . . . I saw you on TV.”
“Did you?” Chavez manages. There’s something wrong in his chest, this heat that shouldn’t be there, like Alabama in August, crowding him out.
“Yeah man. You looked good, you looked real good, dude.”
Chavez’s hand is over his eyes, two fingertips against his temples, and he can feel the pound of his mind, the beats counting time. “It’s . . . Munson, it’s amazing,” he breathes out. He’s thinking, ‘major league baseball, major league baseball,’ over and over again.
“It’s the best day of your life,” Munson tells him plainly, and Chavez isn’t sure if that’s true, but he knows it should be.
“Where are you?” he asks suddenly. “Are you . . . can you come up? Get away for a day or two?”
Munce takes a long moment. “Nah, man,” he replies finally. “I . . . you know, classes just got started, I can’t . . . there’s no way.” He sounds a bit choked, pulled back.
Chavez is doing the math in his head, Los Angeles three hundred and fifty miles away, he could make it in four hours if he doesn’t get pulled over on I-5, he could be there by midnight. Be back for infield practice.
Eric Chavez, right this moment, is going to rent a car and fly down through the valley. He’s going to whisk through L.A. with the city lights like daggers in his bloodstream, silver bullets and shooting stars. He’s going to find his best friend and fit his hands around Munson’s arms, press him down to the closest wall. He’s going to kiss him, so hard Munson’s head will thunk back against the wall hollowly, and then Munson will recover and give as good as he gets, and Chavez’s mouth will be bitten and tender, his throat sore. They’ll lose buttons and belts tearing their clothes off, and Chavez will draw blood on Munson’s stomach, ebony strands of his hair tied around Munson’s fingers. He’s going to get down on his knees. He’s going to jackknife Munson over the back of the couch, his hand on the nape of Munson’s neck and his tongue in Munson’s ear. They’re gonna be all night with it, and when Munson passes into stunned, exhausted sleep, Eric Chavez will stagger out to his rented car and drive north with a clean faded-bruise dawn slinking into the empty shotgun side.
He’s a major league ballplayer. He can do anything.
Oh, but then, oh. It crashes in, it’s a ten-car wreck. They’re not doing that anymore. They haven’t been doing that for almost a year now. He’s got his first dream now, he doesn’t need that.
He forces the white flash of Amber Tarpy’s shoulders back into his mind. He squeezes his eyes shut so tightly he sees wormholes.
“It’s just . . . it’s amazing, man,” Chavez says again, and the air-conditioner chill crawls across his bare chest, his skin drawing taut and rashes of goosebumps, a plague, a curse.
Munson breathes out against the receiver. “I know, Eric,” he answers, though he doesn’t, he doesn’t have the slightest idea.
“It happened, Munson. I’m here.”
Chavez hears the click of Munson swallowing, hears Munson telling him, “It’s where you’re meant to be.”
They talk until Eric Chavez falls asleep, about McGwire and Maris and eventually Mantle too, because you can’t really talk about one without talking about the other, and Rickey Henderson and the ugly concrete stadium in Oakland that might just be the most beautiful place in the world, until Chavez nods off in the middle of telling Munson about the two-seam fastball that he swung through, and Eric Munson listens to his friend’s slow deep breathing for a long time, Eric Chavez’s body drying on a hotel bed in San Francisco, shivering a bit on top of the covers, and it doesn’t matter what Munson says to him then, because he’s asleep and he’ll never know.
*
(four sheets to the wind in arlington)
Eric Chavez falls in love with Amber Tarpy so quickly he doesn’t even remember when it happened, the first time he realized.
They talk on the phone every night and he plays major league baseball every day. She’s got this hitch in her laugh when it’s a true laugh, a breath-pause like a piece of hair being tucked behind an ear, and Eric makes it his singular goal to spur it out of her.
When she says his name, it’s careful, like she’s afraid of breaking it. She’s shy and never uses profanity, and he starts to talk clean too, just because. She makes him smile all the time and she keeps up with him when he teases her, never letting him get the upper hand.
He tells her about his old girlfriends and about his family, his dog, about how all he’s ever wanted to do is play baseball. She knows a lot about the game, more than he gives her credit for, and when they’re watching the same broadcast, her in San Diego and him in Oakland, he’s always surprised to hear her murmur unthinkingly, “Throw the slider,” and then seeing the pitcher throw it like he was listening in.
She tells him about her three broken hearts, fourteen, seventeen, and nineteen years old, and when he promises he won’t be her fourth, he’s only half-joking.
There are moments, in the short small hours of the morning when they’ve been on the phone all night long, when he’s red-eyed and beat with weariness, easily at peace, and he thinks that he could even tell her about Munson, that she would understand. It feels wrong, to talk about his ex-girlfriends like they actually meant something, and meanwhile Amber knows next to nothing about the most important person in his life.
She knows they’re best friends, of course, knows they’ve known each other as long as they’ve known anyone not related to them, and a week in, she can recite Munson’s stats when Chavez starts to go off again, talking about how Munson won the College World Series for USC, about how he’s the best player on the best team, about how he’s gonna be the number one pick in ’99, number one without a doubt.
Chavez can hear her rolling her eyes affectionately when he’s talking about Munson, listening to all the stuff she’s heard before without complaint because she’s in the process of falling in love with him, and he gets a gnawing unease in his stomach, guilty and hating that he’s supposed to be ashamed of it.
But in the daytime, on the field, when he can think straight again, he knows that she would break up with him in a second, if she ever found out. Good boyfriends don’t fuck their best friends, even if they’re not doing that anymore, the distinction would be lost, and he will have broken her heart anyway.
He’s trying, very very hard, not to break her heart.
Then he goes to Texas.
It’s his first road trip with the A’s and he’s uncomfortable in the dress-code slacks and jacket he’s got to wear, wanting the heaviness of jeans on his legs, a T-shirt hole venting air over his back.
He can’t keep still on the plane, striding up and down the length of the aisle and trying to bug someone into keeping him occupied. Jason Giambi and Matt Stairs eventually pass a new rule, rookies are not allowed out of their seats, though Chavez is the only one they enforce it for.
Chavez jitters as quietly as possible for the rest of the flight, drumming his hands on his knees, flipping the tray table up and down.
Eric Munson is flying out to see him play in Arlington. Chavez should probably not be this excited.
They haven’t seen each other in six months, not since Eric Chavez woke up his last morning in Manhattan Beach with his face against Munson’s shoulder, his arm skewed over Munson’s chest and his hand inside Munson’s boxers, curled innocently around Munson’s hip.
He doesn’t call it running away, slipping out before Munson woke up. He had a plane to catch. And Munson shouldn’t have been in his bed, anyway.
They haven’t seen each other. A lot of stuff has happened, and all of it has happened over the phone.
Chavez is taking ground balls at third before batting practice, the fans filtering in slowly, clutching programs and beers and cardboard trays of food. The new Ballpark at Arlington is pretty as a picture, a twixt of modern and classic and the grass is so green it’s almost gold. He thinks, ‘sky blue, green light, glove down,’ and then he sees Munson, sitting in the stands over the dugout.
Chavez doesn’t even hesitate. He runs over, a struck grounder skipping behind his heels, the infield coach Ron Washington yelling his name and Chavvy barely even hears it. He calls, “Munce!” and sees Munson grin, rise to his feet. Chavez hits the fence hands-first and vaults into the stands, throwing his arms around his friend, his glove still on and flapping on Munson’s back.
Munson hugs him tight, smiling against his neck, and his eyes are closed, the sun and the field fighting through, reverse photograph.
Chavvy’s wild, ecstatic, banging him on the shoulder hard enough to hurt. Munce pulls back to see his face and Chavez doesn’t look the same, whitened by Canada and a slender gold chain around his neck, disappearing into his jersey. Chavez is still handsome and still young and the press of him against Munson’s chest hurts more than his shoulder.
Munce lets him go, shuffling back a step. Any possibility that he might not still be totally fucking helpless as far as Eric Chavez is concerned is wiped out in an instant.
“Look at you, man, big leaguer, look at this,” Munson says, playing it off like he always does.
“Dude, it’s, like, so good to see you,” Chavvy grins. “I missed the fuck out of you.”
Munce almost hugs him again, just to get that close again, where he can smell the skin of Chavez’s neck, feel the scratch of Chavez’s chin on his face, the brim of Chavez’s cap knocking into his forehead. But then Ron comes over and says ironically, “Pardon me, fellas, but one of you has got a ballgame to play, if you can be torn away.”
Chavvy hauls Munson down the steps to the rail, his hand pressure-cuffed around Munson’s arm. “Wash, this is Eric Munson, he’s my best friend.”
Washington gives him a long look, his well-lined face and his mouth tilted slightly, close to a smile. “There’s two of you? God help us.”
Chavvy beams, hooks an arm around Munson’s neck and tells him, “So, okay, you’re gonna watch the game, and I’m gonna, you know, play the game, and then we’ll go out. Gonna tear the place down tonight, man, no doubt about it.”
Munce’s throat closes up, and he makes a thin-lipped smile, nods, and Chavez hops back onto the field, jogging back to the diamond and taking his position again. Munson watches him down there, his best friend on a major league field, and Chavez turns to wave at him, distracted and getting a late break on a shot to the hole, but he makes the play with all easy skill that Munson knows by heart.
Munson takes his seat again. His chest aches like he’s been held underwater. He wants to be out there so bad, but for the life of him he can’t say whether it’s the field or the third baseman he wants the most.
The A’s lose the game, mired firmly in the cellar of the division, but Eric Chavez couldn’t care less. He bounces around the dugout, steals Rickey Henderson’s cap and spills Gatorade on Ben Grieve’s spikes, but Grieve doesn’t get too mad, because he’s the front-runner for the Rookie of the Year and pretty soon he’ll be able to afford all the new shoes he wants.
Chavez’s head isn’t in the game, thinking about Texas bars and the sun-warm stretch of Munson’s back under his hand when they embraced, but he makes every play and goes 2-for-4 with dust on the front of his jersey from diving back to first eight times, because he’s already a threat to steal.
Munson meets him at the clubhouse door, skulking around and feeling like a groupie, but Chavez keeps his arm around Munson’s back all the way across the parking lot to Munson’s rented car, talking a mile a minute and rubbing his fingers on Munson’s side.
Munson’s mouth is dry, and he’s so ready to start drinking, it’s not even funny.
He’s drunk, they’re both drunk, a couple of hours later, and they’re back at the hotel where Munson’s staying, stumbling and giggling down the hallway, Munce dropping the keycard about six times, laminated and slipping through his fingers.
Chavez body-checks him into the wall affectionately, so Munce trips him, and Chavez is lying there on his back on the swirly maroon rug, laughing so hard tears are sneaking out of his eyes. Munson feels something tighten low in his stomach, and he holds out his hand, Chavez latching onto his forearm and allowing himself to be pulled up.
Munson’s so plastered, he can barely walk, but he figures out the room door and pushes them both inside, and he’s breathing hard, his sense of balance gone and his feet betraying him. He’s overheated, liquid inside, and they’re still getting mixed up together, their hands and arms in knots, Chavez’s head rattling off his back, Chavez hiccupping and panting with laughter, sounding the same as when he’s lying strewn on the bed, bucking and whipping around, biting his lip.
Munson feels something snap, and he shoves Chavez up against the wall, kissing his open mouth.
For a moment, it’s messy and one-sided, and Munson’s good intentions dart inside him, his heart shattered and terrified, and he desperately licks at the inside of Chavez’s mouth, stroking his hands hard and graceless across Chavez’s stomach, until Chavez moans rustily, starts to kiss him back, and Munce could weep, he’s so grateful.
It’s just like he remembers, a year later, just like it was. The way Chavez wraps his arms around him with all his strength, and Munson can feel his ribs creak in protest. The way Chavez arches up against him when he nips his earlobe, sucks a hickey onto his neck. The way Chavez breathes out his name unevenly when they draw back for air, and his eyes are as big as pennies and flint glazed clean, obsidian.
Munson rips Chavez’s shirt down the middle, the plastic patter of buttons raining on the carpet, and angles down to scald his mouth on Chavez’s chest, gnashing his teeth and tonguing Chavez’s collarbone, the chain-link of his sternum, and Chavez’s hands are on the back of his head, pressing him closer, Chavez’s head thrown back against the wall.
Eric Munson falls to his knees, his thumbs digging below Chavez’s ribs, and he mumbles thoughtlessly into the board of Chavez’s stomach, heat on the backs of his eyelids, “Gonna fuck you so hard, gonna fuck you till you scream,” and Chavez shudders, the muscles burring under Munson’s tongue.
And Eric Chavez, Eric Chavez is as drunk as he’s ever been, the harsh chafe of the wall on his shoulder blades and Munson’s filthy mouth moving wetly, Munson’s hands clumsily tugging at his belt, Chavez’s mind spiraling, swooping, and he’s so hard, already, he’s so hard, because it’s Eric Munson on his knees, talking dirty and gnawing on the fabric of his road-trip slacks, pressing his face against the fly and mouthing him through the thin wool, making these little gasped groans and his hair soft and thick and longer than it was the last time Chavez buried his hands in it.
Then Eric Chavez’s cell phone rings in his back pocket, and it’s ten o’clock in California and Amber Tarpy is calling him like she always does.
His eyes fly open, and he pushes Munson off him before he can even think about it.
Munson, shocked and on his back on the floor, doesn’t miss the irony.
‘How fucking perfect,’ he thinks, and Chavez is staring down at him, his eyes enormous, the damp trail down his chest glistening. Chavez’s hand is on his back pocket, where the phone is still buzzing, screeching, but he doesn’t pull it out, doesn’t answer it, and after a while it stops.
They’re still, Chavez against the wall and Munson on the floor, and the only sound is the ragged pull of air.
“Wh-wuh-wuh-” Chavez stammers, his tongue not working right, sounding dumb and useless. He stops, drags in a long shaking breath, and tries again, “Munson, you . . . we, we’re not . . . doing that. Anymore.”
Munce sits up, his head swan-diving, the rollercoaster flip of his stomach. He’s just, God, he’s stupid drunk, he wants to pull Chavez down and kiss him again, hold him down when Chavez tries to get free, because Munson’s still bigger and maybe not that much stronger, but he wants this more, he’ll hold him down, break him up.
“Why not?” he asks instead, curling his hands into fists and bracing his knuckles on the carpet, his restraint shredded, barely hanging on.
Chavez shakes his head, still looking black-eyed stunned and so turned on he’s afraid to move. “You-you know why not.”
Munce’s mouth twists angrily. “Fuck that. Fuck what happened a year ago, it . . . it happened a year ago, it doesn’t count.” He’s aware that he’s not making much sense, his mind sluggish and grief-stricken, but he pushes on. “It won’t hurt nobody, you know it won’t hurt anybody.”
He wants to crawl over to him, his arms around Chavez’s legs, just touch him again, and he’s so pathetic, he never thought it’d get this bad. He sniffs hard, swiping a fierce hand across his face, his eyes on fire.
“It’s because of that religion shit, isn’t it?” Munson says, not hiding his contempt. “You’re too Christian to fuck me anymore.”
Chavez jerks his head, wobbling on his feet. Munson wishes he’d put his shirt back on, he’s not thinking clearly with Chavez standing there naked to the waist, the small cross sweet and cool high on his chest.
“No,” Chavez answers, sounding sad, disappointed. “Fuck you. No.”
Munson tries to pull in a breath, but it comes as if through wet cotton. There are a couple other reasons, a couple other possibilities. They’re all very hard to even think about.
“You think you’re better than me,” Munson says, and he doesn’t think he’d be able to recognize himself if he could see this scene from outside his own body, this doesn’t feel like him at all. “Big fuckin’ leaguer now, right? I’m just some punk college kid you knew once and you’re. You’re the fuckin’ golden boy.”
“You can just shut the fuck up with that shit, right fucking now,” Chavez snaps, and his hands are shaking, his chest moving fast like he’s panicked. “You don’t believe that, you know it’s not. That’s not fucking true, and you goddamn well know it.”
“Then what?” Munce asks, hating how his voice cracks.
Chavez makes a terrible sound, a moan and a sob and he slips down the wall, sitting on the floor, his hand over his face. “Munce, I . . . I got a girlfriend.”
Munson blinks. Somehow, he’d never even considered that. “For real?”
Chavez nods, looking beaten up, at the end of his rope. “Yeah, man.”
Munce just stares at him for a moment, then snaps his head back and forth briskly. “So what?” he challenges, and he’s grasping at everything in reach, the worst arguments and the lamest rationale, anything. “You’ve had girlfriends before. So’ve I. This . . . it’s never been a problem before.”
Chavez rests his chin on his knees, and Munson thinks for a moment that he’s about to cry. “It’s a problem this time, Munce,” he whispers.
Light is dawning in Munson’s alcohol-clouded head, and he asks bleakly, “That was her, wasn’t it? On the phone.”
Chavez moves his head slightly, a restricted nod. “We talk every night,” and Munce isn’t expecting for that to hurt. “She’s the journalist lady’s niece. Paula, you know? Her name’s Amber Tarpy, she’s so cool, man-”
“Shut up,” Munce interrupts him, his head starting to pound. “Don’t . . . don’t tell me her name,” but he’s too late for that, and he ends up just feeling like more of an idiot.
He lowers his head into his hands, scrubbing his hands fast across his face, the calluses on his palms rasping the fresh skin. He isn’t aware he’s speaking out loud until he hears Chavez inhale sharply with surprise:
“I want you so bad.”
Munson cringes, flushing with humiliation, but lifts his head, because he’s drunk and doesn’t care, honestly, can’t care. Chavez is staring at him, his face cleaned out and a little bit scared. Munson digs a hand into his hair, tells him with his voice rising and falling and splintering, “I want you all the time. All year, it’s been like this, and I, I can’t stand it, man. I know it was my fault and I guess you got this girl now so you probably don’t even care, but . . .” he sobs once, dryly, into the crook of his elbow.
“I’m still so fucking in love with you, Eric, it’s gonna kill me, I swear to God it is.”
Munson’s face is against his arm, and on some level he knows he’s gonna regret this in the morning, but right now Eric Munson doesn’t believe that this night will ever end, it’s just going to be horrible and drunken and Chavez will never put his shirt back on, the path of Munson’s tongue will never fade from his skin.
He hears the cuff of Chavez moving, the rustle of his pants on the carpet, so he’s expecting it when Chavez’s hand touches his head, brushes at his hair, but Munson still hisses and snatches himself away.
“Munce,” Chavez whispers, going to touch him again, and Munson pulls away again.
“You should go,” Munson says, toneless. “I . . . I’m drunk. I’m sorry. You should go.”
“No, man,” Chavvy says pleadingly. “Don’t make me leave.”
Munson shakes his head, his eyes screwed shut. “It . . . doesn’t mean anything. I’m used to it. And it’s . . . it’s not usually this hard. Just . . . seeing you. And seeing you play. And then we almost . . . I mean, getting to . . . it’s not usually this hard.”
He swallows thickly, says again, “Go away, dude, seriously, get out of here.”
He’s wrenched up into a ball, and Chavez can feel his heart breaking, over and over again, and each time he can’t believe there’s anything left, each time he’s wrong. He knee-walks closer, flattens his hand on Munson’s shoulder, and when Munson winces again, Chavez doesn’t give up, slides his arm around Munson’s back, Munson vibrating under him, making small noises of protest.
Chavez whispers into his ear, Munson’s hair tickling his nose, “C’mon, babe, c’mon,” folding his hand under Munson’s arm and drawing him up.
Munson rises slowly, his legs feeling boneless, and Chavez guides him carefully to the bed, lays him down.
Chavez tugs off Munson’s shoes, pulling the covers over him. Munson rolls onto his side, his back to his friend, and Chavez can hear him trying to catch his breath, his shoulders rigid and his face turned into the pillow.
Chavez, one knee on the bed, gazes down at him miserably, and he wants to sink in behind him, smooth the tension out of Munson’s back and sleep with his hand on Munson’s chest, his forehead on the nape of Munson’s neck.
He bends down, kisses Munson’s throat, under his jaw, and Munson flinches away. Chavez stands, picks his shirt up off the floor and walks out.
His shirt’s ruined, hanging open and making him look like a kid on spring break, and Eric Chavez watches Arlington through the taxi cab window, the breeze skittering across his chest, and he thinks that he’s finally got everything he’s ever wanted.
*
(wicked mind)
Eric Chavez gets back to his Arlington hotel room and Ben Grieve is sleeping like a big snoring rock in the other bed, one arm over the side of the bed and his knuckles brushing the floor.
He rummages in his suitcase, his old red jacket and the secret pocket just inside the right sleeve, the cocaine-smuggling pocket, where he’s got an unmarked prescription bottle that rattles softly and knocks white pill chalk onto his palm. He swallows the tablets dry, and pulls the covers over his head.
He wakes up hungover, gritty-eyed guilty and the worst person in the world. He didn’t brush his teeth the night before and he can still taste Munson, or imagines he can, at any rate.
Chavez goes into the bathroom with his cell phone and sends flowers to Amber Tarpy’s parents’ house, watching himself in the fluorescent mirror. His hands are numb, his head still painkilled and drunk as he dictates the note over the phone to the guy at the florist shop, he’s got to repeat it four times before he can stop slurring and stuttering enough to make it clear.
‘Waiting to spend the rest of my life with you. Love, Eric.’
They go out to the yard and he doesn’t say much of anything.
Munson’s in love with him, a year after they stopped, that shouldn’t change anything. He’s got a girl, the best girl, with her hitched laugh and her remembered dark eyes. Maybe if they were still seventeen, if he was still in the minors, if he still lived in Manhattan Beach. Maybe it would matter then, but it doesn’t matter now. Everything’s different now.
Munson balled up around himself on the floor, Munson on his knees, Munson’s hands ripping open his shirt like it was woven out of wax. Chavez thinks about Superman, phone booths, a red Spiderman flashlight in a sick bed. He hopes Amber will like her flowers, that sometime soon she will tell him she loves him.
He gets back to California and wakes up one morning in an empty apartment that he doesn’t recognize, on the gray carpet of a hallway with his shirt half-unbuttoned and his driver’s license stuck to his stomach. He throws up in the unfamiliar kitchen sink and his legs give out in the stairwell as he’s trying to get away, mortified and trembling.
He remembers this. Bruises on his neck, somebody else’s fingerprints on his body, a new television and a state-of-the-art stereo with speakers so crisp and clean every song sounds like a hymn. He’s not even sure if he fucked anyone, if he got fucked, he doesn’t stick around long enough to find out. All he’s got to go on is the sick hateful sense of déjà vu, the stairwell cold and shiny pasty beige.
He sends Amber Tarpy three mix tapes and a postcard from Seattle, Pike’s Place Market and piles of silver-shining salmon, and his brambly scrawl on the back: ‘I like fish. I love you. In the contest between you and fish, you win. Love, Eric.’
He’s pretty sure this is what’s known as trying too hard.
Amber Tarpy thinks he’s so sweet. She tells him that, but she doesn’t tell him she loves him.
He calls Munson, after nearly a week of being paralyzed, hands tied behind his back and his shoulders dislocated, and Munson sounds so uncomfortable, so embarrassed, and Chavez wants to tell him, no man, don’t feel bad, please don’t be sorry, but he doesn’t because Munson’s in a ball on a hotel room floor in Arlington and Chavez is so far gone he can’t even see straight.
“Look, let’s . . . let’s not talk for awhile, okay?” Munson says awkwardly. “I got . . . you know, shit to deal with. To get over.”
“Don’t get over it,” Chavez says without thinking, his mind dim and his connection to the world thready.
Munson is quiet, then asks, “What?”
Chavez bites on the heel of his hand, crescent smile. “Um,” he answers dumbly, muffled.
“Are you . . . I mean, are we gonna . . . has anything changed?” Munce says with a dangerous slit to his voice.
Chavez thinks he might do better blind. Deaf. Mute. Stop fucking everything up. “No,” he whispers.
“Then fuck you,” Munce tells him, and hangs up.
The season ends with the Oakland Athletics in last place. They talk about rebuilding. They talk about young talent and in the implied background of that is Eric Chavez’s name. They talk about next year and no one really doubts that Billy Beane will find a way.
He goes home to San Diego for four days before he’s got to report back to the instructional league in Phoenix, and Amber Tarpy gives him the flu, but won’t sleep with him and won’t tell him that she loves him. He doesn’t go to USC. He drives around without destination a lot, gets lost near the Mexican border and sees the decaying metal hulks of decade-old car crashes on the side of the road.
He gets a blowjob from a stranger in the backroom of a bar down on Sunset, and fucks a girl up against an alley’s brick wall in a light clouded rain. He’s not even drunk for the first, he just wanted to get his hands into the guy’s uncut hair, get his back up against a wall and feel heat on him.
Chavez doesn’t understand this. That he can fuck randomly and anonymously but he can’t fuck Eric Munson or Amber Tarpy. That half of this is his fault and the other half isn’t, no way to tell which is which.
He goes to Phoenix, dogged across time changes by Amber Tarpy’s flu, watery-eyed, hacking and spitting in the dust. It’s been a long year, the longest year he can remember, through Alabama and Edmonton and Oakland, and when he feels something rubber-band snap in his back after taking a hard cut, he thinks for a moment, ‘perfect excuse,’ before wiping that out of his mind.
His back tightens up and he has to leave the game. He doesn’t sleep that night, because he doesn’t want to take his pain pills again, he’s been doing that too much recently. It’s too late to call Amber and Munce still doesn’t want to talk to him.
Chavez takes a long walk, gingerly stepping off curbs so as not to jar his injury. He walks on the side of the highway, the loose sand at the shoulder, the hard-as-concrete tack scattered with withered desert blooms, nervy skittish animals that explode out of the dark places, scrambling over his feet and baring their pinprick teeth at him.
He thinks about the scars on Munson’s arms, the rock-cut stitch on his back, how they turn pink in the cold. He thinks of when Eric Munson was a warm lanky boy, sleeping in his socks, jostling into him as they played video games on the carpet. He thinks of splash-wrestling in the YMCA pool, and racing each other to the shore with windmilling arms, how they used to punch their bodies into the waves and try to beat the ocean into submission.
He’s requested to wear the number three on his uniform next year, because Bip Roberts is retiring. Munce wears three at USC, it’s lucky for them both. They’re just fucking worlds apart right now, that’s all. Eric Chavez is two inches better at baseball, if that, and it’s a distance like distances in space, something that can’t ever be really comprehended.
He thinks about Amber Tarpy and the care she takes with his name. Amber Tarpy who doesn’t think he’s weak or hypocritical for believing in God, Amber Tarpy who hasn’t been trying and failing to be better than him at everything since she was five years old, Amber Tarpy who’s never seen him cry and never told him to hit her. Amber Tarpy who knows only the best parts, blind to the evil in him.
Chavez is not doing right by either of them, and he’s not a good man anymore, not close.
The next day, he calls Billy Beane and asks to quit the fall league. Beane’s not happy, Eric can tell, probably the latest in a long line to think he’s a punk, but the general manager lets him go.
Eric Chavez comes home to California, and there’s a herniated disk in his spine. He’s ordered to rest, rehabilitate, and it’s something that can be healed but not cured, never goes away forever, he’ll play through it for the rest of his career.
Amber Tarpy flutters her hands over him and lets him lie down in her childhood bed, his dirty sneakers over the side. The comforter’s pale blue and the pillowcases are yellow-striped. It smells clean like fabric softener and Eric turns his face into a pillow, breathing deep, and Amber puts her hand on his side, blows on the back of his neck and says into his ear, “Half-hour till my parents get back.”
She curls up against his back, and she’s soft too, like her new-sheets bed, fresh like the bright wallpaper and the sunlight refracting through the Windex. Chavez rolls over and kisses her, his fingers on her cheek. She giggles against his mouth and he says over and over again, “I love you, I love you.”
He kicks off his shoes and sneaks a hand up under her shirt, so soft, it’s incredible. He can see the frayed stuffed dog on her dresser, missing a button eye and all the stuffing hugged into the arms and legs. He can see the photographs taped around the edges of her mirror, the Pike’s Place Market postcard stuck in the frame. He thinks about high school, girls with white blonde hair and boyband posters.
He slows, settling back with his head on her shoulder. He moves his hand curiously on her stomach, feathery little spurs, nervous skin. She touches his hair uncertainly, touches his back under the collar of his shirt. “Eric?” she asks softly.
“I love you,” he says without looking at her. It’s all he can think to say. He slips his hand out of her shirt, closes his eyes very tightly. He can hear her heartbeat, metronoming, unconcerned.
Amber Tarpy, breathing warmly on his forehead, answers, “I love you too,” and then laughs lightly, laughs high and without a hitch.
Eric Chavez, having failed to have sex with his girlfriend when he had the chance, eats dinner with her parents, polite charming boy who doesn’t fuck strangers in back alleys, and then kisses her good-night, drives to Los Angeles.
He finds Eric Munson’s small off-campus house after stopping at three gas stations and a Safeway to ask for directions, the address smudged on a scrap of paper like a stone-rubbing.
He knocks on the door but no one answers, so he sits down on the front porch and waits. He could just call, figure out where Munson is, when he’ll be back, if they can meet up, but he doesn’t.
He watches the silent residential street, the dusky rust color of the sky past midnight because there’s no such thing as full dark in L.A., and he doesn’t really know what he’s doing there.
Munson’s truck pulls into the driveway and the headlights wink off, but Munce doesn’t get out for a long time. Chavez squints, tries to figure out if Munson’s got someone in the cab with him, but the streetlight glare makes the windshield opaque and he can’t see anything.
Munson gets out alone, and stops in front of the truck, a short length between the two of them. Chavez makes a little half-hearted wave, his vocal chords not seeming to work right.
“What’s going on, man?” Munson breaks the pause, sounding reined in and cautious like the words are landmines.
Chavez’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out. He shrugs helplessly, wringing his hands into knots between his knees. Munson looks at him warily, then sighs and comes over to sit next to him on the step.
Munson keeps his eyes straight ahead on the street, waits patiently. Chavez doesn’t know where to start, doesn’t know the beginning or the middle or the end.
“I couldn’t sleep with Amber,” he says, looking surprised at the sound of his own voice.
Munson twitches, sidles him a glance out of the corner of his eye. Chavez stares down at his complicated hands. “I mean, I guess I didn’t really . . . try very hard. I stopped before anything really happened. So maybe I would have been able to. But I . . . I didn’t.”
Chavez waits for Munson to ask him why not, but Munson seems content to just sit there and not look at him, his eyes on the satellites of the streetlamps, the brown-green of the autumn trees.
“You shouldn’t have said that stuff in Arlington,” Chavez says, a weird frantic edge to it.
Munson nods with an impassive expression on his face. “I know.” He lifts his shoulders, and Chavez sees the tendon in his neck flexing and relaxing, realizes that Munson’s only staying this calm because he’s using everything in him. “I was drunk. It was stupid.”
“It was true, though, wasn’t it?” Chavez asks hesitantly, and Munce pauses for an instant, the time it takes a traffic signal to change from yellow to red, and then nods jerkily.
Chavez blows out a hard breath, covers his face with his hands. “See, that’s the problem, Munson, you asshole,” he mumbles against his palms. “You said that stuff and now I can’t stop thinking about it and I can’t sleep with my girlfriend and everything is getting so fucked up, man. They’re gonna find me in an alley somewhere and it’s gonna be all your fault.”
Munson places a hand on his back gently, but then takes it away a second later. “An alley?” he repeats, idly confused.
“Dead in a fucking alley, Munce, because you waited until now to drop this shit on me,” Chavez says with a bad mix of anger and sadness. He wants Munson’s hand on his back again.
“I’m sorry, dude, but it . . . it took me awhile to figure it out. And then even longer to figure out that it wasn’t going to go away,” Munson tries to explain, stalling and cutting up his tone into off-kilter patterns.
Chavez lifts his head, glares at his friend. “You know what I think? I think this is you wanting something you can’t have. You never made any big fucking proclamations before it ended, but now that I don’t want you anymore, apparently I’m your fucking holy grail.”
Munson shakes his head immediately, because he’s all for re-writing history, but there are some things that are gonna remain untouched. “No. It’s not like that. Maybe, yeah, okay, maybe it took you getting rid of me to make me realize what I had, but that doesn’t make it any less real. I don’t want you because I can’t have you. I want you in spite of that.”
Chavez chokes off a moan in his throat, buries his face in his folded arms. “Will you please for Christ’s sake quit saying shit like that,” he begs.
Munson’s mouth ticks, a blink of a smile, but Chavez misses it. Munce draws in a deep breath, looks at Chavez all bent over his knees with his head in his arms, the graying streaks of gold in his hair, fading highlights, the back of his neck and the shell-whorls of his ears.
Munson exhales, puts his hand on the back of Chavez’s head and pets him down to the first bump of his spine, Chavez’s hair rough and unwashed, running into smooth tight skin. Chavez murmurs like he wants to pull away, but he doesn’t, tilting unconsciously towards Munson’s body.
“Dude, if this is really fucking you up that much, maybe that should tell you something,” Munson says hypothetically. “I mean, my own ego aside, it usually takes kind of a lot to make you go off the rails.”
Chavez doesn’t raise his head, asking into the cave of his body, “What should it tell me, Eric? What . . . what’s wrong with me?”
Munson’s hand stops, his fingers on the nape of Chavez’s neck and his thumb in Chavez’s hair. “There’s nothing wrong with you, man. You’re just . . . I got you all confused, and now you don’t know what to do.”
Chavez moves his head slightly, almost nodding, and then he’s quiet for a long time. Munson takes his hand away, pushes his thumb against the protruding lump at the heel, the bone-spur.
Chavez sits up, pulling the back of his hand across his nose. “Munson,” he says, the corners of his eyes turned down so that he looks guilty and fearful. “Do you . . . do you think it’s possible to be in love with two people at the same time?”
Munson stares at him. Munson’s having trouble swallowing, some dense obstruction in his throat like breathing through honey. Chavez looks so scared, so sad, and Munce knows the answer to that.
But he lifts one shoulder, says as easily as he can manage, “I don’t know, man, you tell me.”
Chavez’s face collapses, and he nods, nods quickly and he’s proud because he’s not crying, but that’s the end of the good, everything else is just a fucking disaster.
“What am I gonna do, Munce?” Chavvy asks, wide-eyed and desperate, and Munson grabs him, hauls him in. Chavez’s face gets pressed against Munson’s chest, Munson’s arms around his shoulders.
Chavez snakes his arms around Munson’s waist and Munson tells him, “Any way I can get you. Any way. Just . . . tell me what you want, dude.”
Chavez breathes against his chest for awhile, Munson hard all over, muscle and bone, Munson’s chin on the top of his head, and Munson’s warm, blood-warm, something known by heart.
He pulls away, out of Munson’s arms, and sits up. Their knees are together, and Munson keeps a hand cupped around his elbow. Chavez wipes his fingers across his face, and says, “I want you to fuck me. As soon as possible.”
Munce is frozen, and in that moment Chavez is sure that he’s going to say no, it’s not right and not fair, and it won’t help, all of which is true, but then a brutal haze flags through his eyes, and Munson’s hand on his elbow clenches, crushing the tendons painfully against the calciate, and Munson rasps, “Inside.”
Chavez yanks himself up and his legs are asleep, but Munson’s got a hand strong on his back, fingers clawing at his shirt, and Chavez stumbles across the porch. Munson reaches around him to fumble sweaty-palmed for the doorknob, and Chavez wants to make some joke about that, leaving the house unlocked, jesus man don’t you learn from our mistakes, but Munce is already biting at his shoulder and neck, wet branding swipe of his tongue across Chavez’s ear, and Chavez is lost to it.
Barely through the door, in the unlit front hallway, and it’s Arlington, the sequel, kissing sharp with teeth and the taste of copper, Eric Chavez against the wall. But they’re not wasting any time, and Munson flips him easily, chipped paint in Chavez’s mouth and the light-switch jabbing into his chest. He shifts over to where there’s nothing but wall and Munson is pressed against his back, grinding and swearing hotly into Chavez’s ear, and Chavez thinks in fragments, ‘with abandon, I know, like this, just like this.’
Chavez braces his hands on the wall and pants, “Yeah, man, yeah,” and his shirt is pulled all the way up, bandaged under his arms, and Munson is licking his shoulder blades, Munson is kissing the little knobs of his spine with something mistaken for tenderness, Munson’s mouth is open in the dip at the small of his back, where Chavez’s first true injury makes his perfect swing unbearably painful, and Chavez needs Munson to stop messing around, rise to his feet and fuck him through the wall.
He reaches back, finds the thatch of Munson’s hair and pulls impatiently. Munson growls and stings him with his teeth, but skims his way back up, his hands around Chavez’s waist and working at his belt. Chavez presses his face into his bicep, his mouth moving mindlessly, chewing dragged bruises into his skin.
Munson winds a hand in Chavez’s hair and pulls his head up and back, kissing him at this weird cramped angle, and Chavez feels Munson’s hands sliding down and around, wants to say please but won’t, and it’s caught on his mind, it’s stuck: ‘abandon abandon abandon.’
When it’s over and he’s a gasping mess on the floor, Munson staggers to his feet and goes down the hall swaying like he’s on a bus, a minor league road trip, catching his balance with a hand against the wall. Eric Chavez stares woozily up at the ceiling, and Munson comes back with a damp washcloth, kneeling beside him and cleaning his face first, the steel-wool cotton over Chavez’s mouth and eyes, then his body, putting Chavez’s clothes back in order for him. Munson pats him on the chest and keeps cutting his gaze away.
Chavez touches Munson’s face, pulling him down and angling up to meet him, kissing him close-mouthed like an old movie, a church kiss. Munson lies down next to him and they don’t touch.
“You’re not gonna break up with her, are you,” Munce says flatly.
Chavez squints his eyes shut, shakes his head.
“And you’re gonna keep coming back here and we’re gonna keep doing this.” Munson’s got no inflection, no hint of accusation or anger, and Chavez kind of wishes Eric would just go ahead and hit him, it would be easier to deal with.
“Tell me it’s wrong, Munson,” Chavez says, scratching at the carpet, lint under his nails. “Tell me you won’t let me do this.”
But Munson won’t say that. His mouth is a taut line and his eyes are shining as he blinks fast at the ceiling.
Chavez wants to touch him very badly, but he stays on his side of the line. He’s post-sex relaxed, tingling and flushed, and it’s only his mind that’s sick now, tired mind, wicked mind.
“I wish one of you would just disappear,” Eric Chavez says hollowly.
Eric Munson closes his eyes. “That’s funny,” he replies, praying for weakness and strength in the same breath. “I keep thinking the same thing about you and me.”
(end part seven)
*
part eight