i turned around and you weren't there, come home before i can't forgive you
man, i told you i'd be writing a lot. finals be damned because, like, seriously extenuating circumstances.
it's so cold outside my head almost fell off (tm kids in the hall). i'm ready to go home, man. i'm also definitely still in some sort of combination of shock and denial, and i think i'll stay here for awhile longer. it's just easier.
The story in which Barry Zito rediscovers his pothead roots. And drags Mark Mulder down with him. And, like, I’m sorry for those of you in denial, but the boy smokes more weed than your average traveling funk band. Also includes discussion of this terrible turn of events. You know. It all comes together. This is, like, much less depressing than I thought it’d be. And I did not write it while stoned, swear to god I didn’t. Heh. Hands up if you believed that.
This has nothing to do with the one that was up yesterday, and the title is from the Wilco song.
I Must Be High
So Zito gets out to Phoenix by Sunday, and he’s been giving interviews from the side of the highway, leaned back against his car with the metal hot under the heel of his hand, pressed to the underside of his wrist.
He knocks on Mark Mulder’s door and pushes the doorbell a bunch of times, something that drives Mulder nuts. He sees the long dark shape in the warped glass on the side of the door, coming down the hall, and Zito runs a hand through his hair, smoothing it back behind his ears.
Mulder opens the door and doesn’t look surprised to see him. He tilts on his shoulder against the frame, two fingers on the doorknob and his thumb pointing straight down. Zito’s having this whole thing where he sees the details perfectly, sees the very small elements of everything like there’s a pinpoint spotlight moving across the world and drawing his eyes like a magnet.
“Hey,” Mulder says, his top lip pulling up ever so slightly to show Zito his teeth.
Here’s the other thing about this aimless fucking trip Zito’s been on since Thursday-he’s spent most of it fantastically stoned. He picked up a quarter ounce in Hollywood from the guy down on Sunset, with the dirty green eyes and the old L.A. Raiders hat, who thinks Zito’s name is Joey, and tucked it under the shotgun seat.
He’s been keeping rolled joints in an empty Marlboro reds box, the cigarettes shook out into a gutter somewhere outside Los Angeles city limits. Zito’s got his blue glassy and he carved out an apple yesterday just because he hadn’t done that since he was about fourteen years old, and his car smells rank and sour like old sweat, his lips chapped and his mouth tacky.
He’s been giving interviews stoned. They say he sounds ‘detached,’ which is fairly accurate, all things considered. Highway driving with eyes as red as stoplights. Pulling over when a really good song comes on and the window open, smoking a jay and watching the desert.
He’s feeling pretty pathetic, right about now.
Mulder’s on a slant in the doorway, his shoulder down and the light from the hall hitting the back and side of his neck. He’s clean-shaven and his hair isn’t fixed. He looks expensive in his T-shirt and shorts, his forearms sunburned, and Zito figures that if he looks under Mulder’s T-shirt sleeve, he’ll see white skin as pale and cold as cream, Mulder’s farmer tan that he gets playing all that golf.
Zito’s fucked up, and hungry, and exhausted. He’s pretty sure his eyes are all black and red. Pretty sure his clothes reek. He smiles at Mulder. “Hello.”
Mulder sighs, and steps back to let him in. Zito goes right to the kitchen and starts digging around in the cabinets. He’s looking for some chips or crackers. Maybe some cereal. But Mulder never buys the good stuff. It’s all wheat and bran and no fun colors. Zito is pathetically torn between barbecue potato chips or Doritos. He just stares helplessly at the two packages, side by side on the shelf, feeling immobile.
“So,” Mulder says, coming up behind him. Zito can see his shadow on the counter, on Zito’s hand.
“Yeah.” Chips. Definitely. He takes them out of the cabinet and turns and runs into Mulder, because he forgot that Mulder was right behind him, because he’s just, really, very very stoned.
Mulder’s hand goes to his side, curving around. There’s this thing on the lowest rib on Zito’s left side. This bump that he can see in the mirror when he’s brushing his teeth without a shirt on, stretching one arm up against the wall and his chest pulling tense. The skin taut across his ribs and this weird little bump, pressing out. It’s a bone spur, a calciate formation. He’s gotten it all checked out and everything, because there was a possibility that something was inflamed and pushing his rib up, but it’s nothing. Just a hard clutch of bone, making him asymmetrical. It’s been there as long as he can remember. It never changes.
Mulder’s palm is right over it. His fingers are bent. He’s studying Zito and Zito can see the realization fogging in, Mulder’s eyes getting disgusted, lines wrinkling between his eyebrows, his mouth twisting.
“Jesus, Barry. You’re fucking high.”
Zito nods, seeing no point in denying it. Mulder blows out a breath through his nose and steps away, a cold spot on Zito’s chest and the missing folds of Mulder’s fingers around his side. Mulder goes and sits at the table, glaring at him.
“That’s how you’re dealing with it? Really fucking mature, man.”
Zito tears open the bag of chips and starts eating them messily, scowling at the floor. Whatever. What the fuck is he supposed to do? The linoleum in Mulder’s kitchen is patterned with all these crazy woven-together triangles, diamonds, and they’re not very clean. Probably Mulder doesn’t have a regular cleaning lady here like he does in Oakland. What was the name of that one they had last year? Darcy? Darla. Daria! No, that was the cartoon.
“-gonna be hard for you.”
Zito’s head comes up. He’s got a smear of orange barbecue powder on the side of his mouth. Mulder’s looking at him all earnest and patronizing. “What?”
Mulder presses his lips together. “Can’t fucking talk to you when you’re like this.”
“I’m not like anything,” Zito says around a mouthful of chips. He swallows, jagged pieces in his throat. “And it’s not gonna be hard for me. It’s. I’ll be fine. We’ll, all of us, we’ll be fine.”
Mulder flicks a finger at the newspaper on the table, a small snapping sound. “I’m not worried about me. I’m not worried about Huddy.”
“Oh, so what, it’s just me? Thanks a fucking lot, dude.”
His hand clenching for a moment on the table, Mulder lifts his eyes, slashed blue color and Zito leaning against the counter, sucking on his fingers. “Well, fuckin’ forgive me for being kinda concerned. After five years of you whining and asking me to fix you, me and Tim both, whenever you fucked up, excuse the fuck out of me for thinking you might have some trouble on your own.”
Zito jams the bag of chips back in the cabinet, not caring that he’s smashed them to smithereens, and jerks the refrigerator open with his sticky hand, stealing a Gatorade and his head spinning, faster and faster. He’s going to lose his balance, pretty soon. Just gonna fall right down and then Mulder will probably laugh at him.
“Dude, whatever. As if you fucking minded. Like it was so terrible for your ego. At least I know how to ask for help when I need it.” He wrenches the cap off the Gatorade and drinks until his teeth hurt. He closes his eyes. “I’ll be fine.”
There’s this whole theory about responsibility and respect, and all Barry Zito has ever wanted to be is the best pitcher in the history of the game. He was number three this year, and the kid from Canada pitched better than he did. But Zito comes alive in September. Get down to the wire and Zito’s heart turns on like stadium lights. Pressure, and fear, and adrenaline, and it’s the only place he wants to be.
Zito thinks this might be what he needs.
Mulder’s talking again. Zito forces himself to listen, his head feeling all cottony and loose.
“-your head on straight. And, you know. Stop thinking about everything so fucking much. Been all worried about getting traded, well, look at this, man. You’re the one they want. You’re the. The one they kept. So you gotta live up to that. I mean, it’s not like you need us.”
Mulder’s not really looking at him. He’s staring off over Zito’s shoulder, but there’s nothing back there but the cabinets. His voice gets all dim and kind of broken, and it takes awhile for Zito to realize that Mulder’s not even talking to him anymore.
“Dude,” Zito says, and takes his Gatorade over to the table. The chair screeches out and Mulder’s head twitches, looking at Zito with a glint of surprise in his eyes, like he forgot Zito was in the room. “You’re gonna be okay.”
Mulder blinks, and then shakes his head, his face drawing angry again. “I know. I. I don’t need you to tell me that. This. You’re the one who’s all fucked up.”
Zito scratches his head, remembering a moment too late that his fingers are still kind of gross from the chips. He sighs inwardly. Today sucks.
“I’m really not, though,” Zito says. “It’s weird. I feel like. Like I should be. But I’m not. I’m just. You know. Stoned.”
Mulder smirks, the corner of his mouth curling up. “But that’s not a defense mechanism, right? God forbid.”
“Whatever.”
Zito looks at him for awhile, Mulder’s shoulders slack and his hand itching on the table. Mulder who is something solid like a wall that you can lean your weight against, and how Mulder has these moments of stillness, this unexpected sort of quiet in him when you catch him off-guard. His long arms and plain even features, the way a baseball looks small in his hand and his hand looks wrong without a baseball in it.
He’s not very interesting and all he ever wants to do is play video games and talk about pitching. He’s unfinished, something incomplete in him because he found a life where he could stay nineteen years old forever, and never needed to think about anything past that. All he cares about is baseball. Zito thinks it’s possible that he’s sort of in love with Mulder, but only when he’s stoned.
“St. Louis, though. Closer to the family,” Zito says, and he really, he doesn’t like this at all. He’s not fucked up, he’s just. He’s tired. And sad. He wishes this didn’t have to happen, even though it’ll probably work out for the best, but he’s got no conception of the Oakland Coliseum without Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson somewhere nearby.
Mulder sighs. “They cried, you know? My folks. Both of them. It was. Very weird. I’ve, you know. Never seen my dad cry before. Except when I got drafted, but that was a different kind of crying.”
“Sure.”
Mulder looks over at him. Zito is slouched down and picking at the label of the Gatorade bottle with his chewed-up nails. His hair is stinging, biting, and Zito keeps flicking his head back. His eyes feel like they’re full of glue and sand.
“It’ll be all right,” Mulder says carefully. “Best offense in the league out there, right?”
Zito nods. “And now I got a bullpen.”
“And Huddy gets to hit.”
They both grin. But that doesn’t last too long.
The sun’s going down outside. Orange and red and sinking like tar. Zito yawns. It’s been four days since the three of them were on the same team. Zito thinks about when it will be four months since then, four years. There’s a part of his life, his future, abstractly labeled in his mind, ‘When We’re Not Anymore,’ and he didn’t expect it to happen like this. Not this soon.
“What the fuck is Billy thinking?”
Mulder starts, and Zito realizes that that was him speaking. “Um, I mean,” he says, his tongue feeling fuzzy. There’s a sharp cold slice of anger, right through his mind. “No, actually, for reals. What the fuck is he thinking about?”
Mulder exhales, long and low. The kitchen window is right there, facing west, and the light is turning Mulder this warm fiery color that makes strange things happen in Zito’s mind and stomach.
“2006.”
“Fuck.” Zito tried to make some authoritatively dismissive gesture with his hand, cutting through the air, but he’s hazed and Mulder’s gold and his hand hits the Gatorade bottle, knocks it with a watery thump to the floor. The top is on, for which he is thankful, because Mulder would definitely make him clean that up, and Zito’s not really in a cleaning mood. He picks the bottle up, setting it carefully back on the table. He tries to remember what he was talking about.
“I mean, what, four trips to the playoffs and it was just this year, and it was just one motherfucking game, man. We’re, it’s. We’re not broken, why is he trying to fix us?”
Mulder shrugs, his tongue pushing at his lower lip the way he does when he’s considering something. “Four trips to the playoffs and nothing to show for it.”
Zito barely even hears him. There are numbers and statistics going wild in his mind, confusing him. “Four days ago we had one of the best rotations of, like, ever. Not even playing around. You and me and Tim and Richie, that’s a fucking dream come true. Fifty years from now people won’t believe it. Now, we’ve got, fucking, like, fucking Dan Meyer. Danny fucking Haren. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Mulder rubs his hand across his face, looking sad. “Could you do me a favor? Could you stop saying ‘we’?”
Zito blinks at him in astonishment for a moment. Then he makes a groaning sound and bangs his head once on the tabletop, just to feel the smooth of the wood on his forehead. Mulder makes some resigned snorting laugh, and says, “All right, well. Are you staying tonight?”
Zito answers into the table, squeaking his forehead, “Yeah.”
He’s thinking about last chances and the first time Mulder discovered the bump low on Zito’s chest, running his fingers over it and pushing at it and licking it, inspecting it like a scientist and Zito squirming, laughing. Zito’s thinking about how it’s been two months since he's had his hands on Mulder and maybe two years since Zito has had sex while stoned, all the different things you pay attention to and the way stuff gets lyrical, profound, like watching a sunset or seeing the light off the outfield grass.
Zito’s thinking about St. Louis, and a river, a lake, an ocean, and how he’s been in a state of clear-eyed shock for four days now, and nothing was worse than yesterday, nothing could have been.
“Well, you wanna do something? Get some beers or something?” Mulder’s tone is casual and easy, but he’s got to know what Zito’s doing down here. He put his hand on Zito’s side, stood too close behind him. It’s been two months since Mulder’s had his hands on Zito too, and it’s got to go both ways.
Zito lifts his head up. He pulls the Marb pack out of his pocket and puts it on the table, rattling his fingers on the top of it. “I wanna smoke a joint in your backyard.”
Mulder looks at him like, dumb fucking kid, and says shortly, “The pothead thing is really not cool after the age of, like, seventeen.”
Zito pulls a jay out and tucks it behind his ear. “Whatever.” He gets up and pushes open the sliding door, looking back when the sun hits his eyes. “Are you coming, or what?”
*
“God, I haven’t done this since college,” Mulder says, inspecting the lit joint between his fingers, the smoke trailing up around his face.
“’s like riding a bike, man,” Zito mumbles, slumping back in the lawn chair and watching the stars come out.
Mulder takes a hit and immediately starts coughing violently. Zito starts giggling, and both their faces turn bright red. Mulder tries again and is more successful this time. He hands the joint back over and punches Zito on the shoulder for laughing.
Zito takes his time. He can picture his lungs, filling up slow and deep and everything getting obscured. He tips his head back and breathes out the smoke in a stream that feels endless, pouring out of him. He blows across the spark, flaring the orange, and passes it off.
“Danny fucking Haren,” Zito says again.
“I think probably we should stop talking about this now.” Mulder’s scowling at the joint. Zito’s very proud of his joint-rolling skills. It’s tight all the way down, and there’s a filter because he had a lot of time on his hands and a bunch of subway cards to tear up. There’s something distinctly classic about smoking joints. Better than using a piece or baking an apple.
“I just don’t understand anything,” Zito says, scratching his stomach. “Don’t understand how this happened.”
Mulder’s face gets all pinched up as he takes his hit, his eyes screwed shut. It makes Zito want to snicker, but he feels too tired to snicker, and then he forgets what was so funny.
Mulder holds the smoke with his shoulders pulled up, and gives Zito the jay back. Neither of them says anything for awhile, and then Mulder, with his voice getting rough and thick, says without looking at him, “It happened because I didn’t win a single game in September.”
Zito glances over. Mulder is looking up at the sky. Zito takes two quick hits, wanting to get out of his mind as soon as possible.
“That’s not why. It’s. I mean, you can’t think about it like that.”
“If I’d won one game in September, we woulda gone to the playoffs.”
“If we’d gone to the playoffs, we woulda lost again,” Zito counters, wishing he knew how to make this right again.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know it wasn’t your fucking fault, okay? Gimme that.” He takes the joint, which has gone out, back from Mulder and lights it up again, his cheeks hollowed as he takes a pull.
They smoke until Mulder burns his fingertips and swears and drops the joint on the patio. Zito’s, like, absurdly stoned. Mulder probably is too, because he’s got no tolerance and this is pretty good shit. The way Mulder’s staring up at the sky, his eyes all huge and amazed, the way Mulder’s hand has slid under his shirt and is stroking slowly along the line of his hip, yeah, Mulder’s pretty gone.
“You know what I wanna know?” Mulder says, drifting and sleepy.
“What’s that?”
“How come it was you. What’s so special about you?”
Zito traces lines between the stars, forming personalized constellations. A baseball field. A church. The figure of a man with his hands over his head. He thinks that Mulder was right, they really shouldn’t be talking about this right now.
“I dunno.”
He’s been thinking about it. When he thinks about anything. Because smoking a fuckload of pot is helpful in that it makes him feel less like his skin is about to peel off, but the downside is that he can’t so much control where his mind goes, and he ends up thinking about Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson, in slow curving patterns of thought that wrap around him and smother his breath.
Maybe someday Zito will be the best pitcher in the history of the game, but, well. It hasn’t happened yet. And if Zito was fielding his own private All-Star team, he would pick Hudson first and Mulder second and himself third, which is a kind of terrible thing to think about, but kind of reassuring too.
Billy Beane is a very smart man. Much smarter than any of them could hope to be. Billy Beane got rid of Tim Hudson and got rid of Mark Mulder and the weight of the team is on Barry Zito’s shoulders, and it really. It doesn’t make any sense.
“Maybe I’m a little fucked up about it,” Zito admits. “Just a little, but. Yeah.” He’s pushing his fingers at the square of the cigarette box in his pocket, feeling the corners through the denim.
“Yeah, me too,” Mulder sighs.
Zito rolls his head to the side and a moment later, Mulder does too. Zito smiles at him, wanting to touch Mulder’s hair or his neck or something. Mulder looks half-asleep, and he’s licking his lips. His eyes are all pupil, from the dark and the pot and everything.
“Let’s go inside, okay,” Zito says.
“Why?” Mulder asks, his face going clean with suspicion.
“Suddenly you need a reason? God.” Zito reaches and slides his fingers on Mulder’s face, down the line of his jaw and over his mouth. “Because you’ve never fucked me in this house, all right?”
Mulder’s eyes get comically big. His throat moves up and down and he nods dumbly. He gets up and leads the way, checking back over his shoulder again and again.
Zito pulls off his shirt in the hallway, kicks off his shoes. He watches Mulder’s back and every time Mulder looks back at him, Zito’s throat gets a bit tighter. Zito is thinking about tomorrow morning, when he won’t be stoned anymore, and Mulder will be standing in the doorway as Zito walks to his car. Mulder will raise a hand as Zito pulls out onto the street, and Zito will wave back.
Zito, he’s never really been very good at saying goodbye.
In Mulder’s bedroom, Mulder’s sitting on the edge of the bed and fiddling with the drawer of the nightstand. Zito goes and sits down next to him, pushes his hand up under Mulder’s shirt onto his back. Mulder sucks a breath in through his teeth. Zito counts spine notches and bites Mulder’s shoulder through his T-shirt.
Mulder’s eyes are closed and he lets Zito lay him back on the bed, making a bizarre, unMulder-like sound that’s all high and scared, coming from the back of his throat and it frightens Zito a little bit. But Mulder’s hand is on Zito’s arm, his thumb in the crook of Zito's elbow and his fingers curled, and Mulder is turning his face towards Zito, mouth already open.
Zito kisses him, thinking about how he’s stoned and Mulder’s perfect and the Mississippi River and old plantation houses and a bunch of dumb stuff like that. He presses his nose to Mulder’s cheek and whispers, “You know what I’m gonna miss more than this?”
Mulder shivers, because Zito’s hand is on his stomach now, and Mulder has probably never had sex while high, he doesn’t have any idea what he’s in for. His eyes are still closed, and he’s kissing Zito’s face but not answering. Zito pulls away, touches his hand to Mulder’s cheek.
“Mulder.” Mulder’s eyes open reluctantly, gleaming wet and bloodshot from the smoke. “You know what I’m gonna miss more than this?”
Mulder stares up at him, blind-stoned and breathing shallowly. “What?”
Zito smiles and his chest hurts. “Your slider.” Then he kisses Mulder again and thinks that, really, five years of something like this is five years longer than most people ever get.
THE END
it's so cold outside my head almost fell off (tm kids in the hall). i'm ready to go home, man. i'm also definitely still in some sort of combination of shock and denial, and i think i'll stay here for awhile longer. it's just easier.
The story in which Barry Zito rediscovers his pothead roots. And drags Mark Mulder down with him. And, like, I’m sorry for those of you in denial, but the boy smokes more weed than your average traveling funk band. Also includes discussion of this terrible turn of events. You know. It all comes together. This is, like, much less depressing than I thought it’d be. And I did not write it while stoned, swear to god I didn’t. Heh. Hands up if you believed that.
This has nothing to do with the one that was up yesterday, and the title is from the Wilco song.
I Must Be High
So Zito gets out to Phoenix by Sunday, and he’s been giving interviews from the side of the highway, leaned back against his car with the metal hot under the heel of his hand, pressed to the underside of his wrist.
He knocks on Mark Mulder’s door and pushes the doorbell a bunch of times, something that drives Mulder nuts. He sees the long dark shape in the warped glass on the side of the door, coming down the hall, and Zito runs a hand through his hair, smoothing it back behind his ears.
Mulder opens the door and doesn’t look surprised to see him. He tilts on his shoulder against the frame, two fingers on the doorknob and his thumb pointing straight down. Zito’s having this whole thing where he sees the details perfectly, sees the very small elements of everything like there’s a pinpoint spotlight moving across the world and drawing his eyes like a magnet.
“Hey,” Mulder says, his top lip pulling up ever so slightly to show Zito his teeth.
Here’s the other thing about this aimless fucking trip Zito’s been on since Thursday-he’s spent most of it fantastically stoned. He picked up a quarter ounce in Hollywood from the guy down on Sunset, with the dirty green eyes and the old L.A. Raiders hat, who thinks Zito’s name is Joey, and tucked it under the shotgun seat.
He’s been keeping rolled joints in an empty Marlboro reds box, the cigarettes shook out into a gutter somewhere outside Los Angeles city limits. Zito’s got his blue glassy and he carved out an apple yesterday just because he hadn’t done that since he was about fourteen years old, and his car smells rank and sour like old sweat, his lips chapped and his mouth tacky.
He’s been giving interviews stoned. They say he sounds ‘detached,’ which is fairly accurate, all things considered. Highway driving with eyes as red as stoplights. Pulling over when a really good song comes on and the window open, smoking a jay and watching the desert.
He’s feeling pretty pathetic, right about now.
Mulder’s on a slant in the doorway, his shoulder down and the light from the hall hitting the back and side of his neck. He’s clean-shaven and his hair isn’t fixed. He looks expensive in his T-shirt and shorts, his forearms sunburned, and Zito figures that if he looks under Mulder’s T-shirt sleeve, he’ll see white skin as pale and cold as cream, Mulder’s farmer tan that he gets playing all that golf.
Zito’s fucked up, and hungry, and exhausted. He’s pretty sure his eyes are all black and red. Pretty sure his clothes reek. He smiles at Mulder. “Hello.”
Mulder sighs, and steps back to let him in. Zito goes right to the kitchen and starts digging around in the cabinets. He’s looking for some chips or crackers. Maybe some cereal. But Mulder never buys the good stuff. It’s all wheat and bran and no fun colors. Zito is pathetically torn between barbecue potato chips or Doritos. He just stares helplessly at the two packages, side by side on the shelf, feeling immobile.
“So,” Mulder says, coming up behind him. Zito can see his shadow on the counter, on Zito’s hand.
“Yeah.” Chips. Definitely. He takes them out of the cabinet and turns and runs into Mulder, because he forgot that Mulder was right behind him, because he’s just, really, very very stoned.
Mulder’s hand goes to his side, curving around. There’s this thing on the lowest rib on Zito’s left side. This bump that he can see in the mirror when he’s brushing his teeth without a shirt on, stretching one arm up against the wall and his chest pulling tense. The skin taut across his ribs and this weird little bump, pressing out. It’s a bone spur, a calciate formation. He’s gotten it all checked out and everything, because there was a possibility that something was inflamed and pushing his rib up, but it’s nothing. Just a hard clutch of bone, making him asymmetrical. It’s been there as long as he can remember. It never changes.
Mulder’s palm is right over it. His fingers are bent. He’s studying Zito and Zito can see the realization fogging in, Mulder’s eyes getting disgusted, lines wrinkling between his eyebrows, his mouth twisting.
“Jesus, Barry. You’re fucking high.”
Zito nods, seeing no point in denying it. Mulder blows out a breath through his nose and steps away, a cold spot on Zito’s chest and the missing folds of Mulder’s fingers around his side. Mulder goes and sits at the table, glaring at him.
“That’s how you’re dealing with it? Really fucking mature, man.”
Zito tears open the bag of chips and starts eating them messily, scowling at the floor. Whatever. What the fuck is he supposed to do? The linoleum in Mulder’s kitchen is patterned with all these crazy woven-together triangles, diamonds, and they’re not very clean. Probably Mulder doesn’t have a regular cleaning lady here like he does in Oakland. What was the name of that one they had last year? Darcy? Darla. Daria! No, that was the cartoon.
“-gonna be hard for you.”
Zito’s head comes up. He’s got a smear of orange barbecue powder on the side of his mouth. Mulder’s looking at him all earnest and patronizing. “What?”
Mulder presses his lips together. “Can’t fucking talk to you when you’re like this.”
“I’m not like anything,” Zito says around a mouthful of chips. He swallows, jagged pieces in his throat. “And it’s not gonna be hard for me. It’s. I’ll be fine. We’ll, all of us, we’ll be fine.”
Mulder flicks a finger at the newspaper on the table, a small snapping sound. “I’m not worried about me. I’m not worried about Huddy.”
“Oh, so what, it’s just me? Thanks a fucking lot, dude.”
His hand clenching for a moment on the table, Mulder lifts his eyes, slashed blue color and Zito leaning against the counter, sucking on his fingers. “Well, fuckin’ forgive me for being kinda concerned. After five years of you whining and asking me to fix you, me and Tim both, whenever you fucked up, excuse the fuck out of me for thinking you might have some trouble on your own.”
Zito jams the bag of chips back in the cabinet, not caring that he’s smashed them to smithereens, and jerks the refrigerator open with his sticky hand, stealing a Gatorade and his head spinning, faster and faster. He’s going to lose his balance, pretty soon. Just gonna fall right down and then Mulder will probably laugh at him.
“Dude, whatever. As if you fucking minded. Like it was so terrible for your ego. At least I know how to ask for help when I need it.” He wrenches the cap off the Gatorade and drinks until his teeth hurt. He closes his eyes. “I’ll be fine.”
There’s this whole theory about responsibility and respect, and all Barry Zito has ever wanted to be is the best pitcher in the history of the game. He was number three this year, and the kid from Canada pitched better than he did. But Zito comes alive in September. Get down to the wire and Zito’s heart turns on like stadium lights. Pressure, and fear, and adrenaline, and it’s the only place he wants to be.
Zito thinks this might be what he needs.
Mulder’s talking again. Zito forces himself to listen, his head feeling all cottony and loose.
“-your head on straight. And, you know. Stop thinking about everything so fucking much. Been all worried about getting traded, well, look at this, man. You’re the one they want. You’re the. The one they kept. So you gotta live up to that. I mean, it’s not like you need us.”
Mulder’s not really looking at him. He’s staring off over Zito’s shoulder, but there’s nothing back there but the cabinets. His voice gets all dim and kind of broken, and it takes awhile for Zito to realize that Mulder’s not even talking to him anymore.
“Dude,” Zito says, and takes his Gatorade over to the table. The chair screeches out and Mulder’s head twitches, looking at Zito with a glint of surprise in his eyes, like he forgot Zito was in the room. “You’re gonna be okay.”
Mulder blinks, and then shakes his head, his face drawing angry again. “I know. I. I don’t need you to tell me that. This. You’re the one who’s all fucked up.”
Zito scratches his head, remembering a moment too late that his fingers are still kind of gross from the chips. He sighs inwardly. Today sucks.
“I’m really not, though,” Zito says. “It’s weird. I feel like. Like I should be. But I’m not. I’m just. You know. Stoned.”
Mulder smirks, the corner of his mouth curling up. “But that’s not a defense mechanism, right? God forbid.”
“Whatever.”
Zito looks at him for awhile, Mulder’s shoulders slack and his hand itching on the table. Mulder who is something solid like a wall that you can lean your weight against, and how Mulder has these moments of stillness, this unexpected sort of quiet in him when you catch him off-guard. His long arms and plain even features, the way a baseball looks small in his hand and his hand looks wrong without a baseball in it.
He’s not very interesting and all he ever wants to do is play video games and talk about pitching. He’s unfinished, something incomplete in him because he found a life where he could stay nineteen years old forever, and never needed to think about anything past that. All he cares about is baseball. Zito thinks it’s possible that he’s sort of in love with Mulder, but only when he’s stoned.
“St. Louis, though. Closer to the family,” Zito says, and he really, he doesn’t like this at all. He’s not fucked up, he’s just. He’s tired. And sad. He wishes this didn’t have to happen, even though it’ll probably work out for the best, but he’s got no conception of the Oakland Coliseum without Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson somewhere nearby.
Mulder sighs. “They cried, you know? My folks. Both of them. It was. Very weird. I’ve, you know. Never seen my dad cry before. Except when I got drafted, but that was a different kind of crying.”
“Sure.”
Mulder looks over at him. Zito is slouched down and picking at the label of the Gatorade bottle with his chewed-up nails. His hair is stinging, biting, and Zito keeps flicking his head back. His eyes feel like they’re full of glue and sand.
“It’ll be all right,” Mulder says carefully. “Best offense in the league out there, right?”
Zito nods. “And now I got a bullpen.”
“And Huddy gets to hit.”
They both grin. But that doesn’t last too long.
The sun’s going down outside. Orange and red and sinking like tar. Zito yawns. It’s been four days since the three of them were on the same team. Zito thinks about when it will be four months since then, four years. There’s a part of his life, his future, abstractly labeled in his mind, ‘When We’re Not Anymore,’ and he didn’t expect it to happen like this. Not this soon.
“What the fuck is Billy thinking?”
Mulder starts, and Zito realizes that that was him speaking. “Um, I mean,” he says, his tongue feeling fuzzy. There’s a sharp cold slice of anger, right through his mind. “No, actually, for reals. What the fuck is he thinking about?”
Mulder exhales, long and low. The kitchen window is right there, facing west, and the light is turning Mulder this warm fiery color that makes strange things happen in Zito’s mind and stomach.
“2006.”
“Fuck.” Zito tried to make some authoritatively dismissive gesture with his hand, cutting through the air, but he’s hazed and Mulder’s gold and his hand hits the Gatorade bottle, knocks it with a watery thump to the floor. The top is on, for which he is thankful, because Mulder would definitely make him clean that up, and Zito’s not really in a cleaning mood. He picks the bottle up, setting it carefully back on the table. He tries to remember what he was talking about.
“I mean, what, four trips to the playoffs and it was just this year, and it was just one motherfucking game, man. We’re, it’s. We’re not broken, why is he trying to fix us?”
Mulder shrugs, his tongue pushing at his lower lip the way he does when he’s considering something. “Four trips to the playoffs and nothing to show for it.”
Zito barely even hears him. There are numbers and statistics going wild in his mind, confusing him. “Four days ago we had one of the best rotations of, like, ever. Not even playing around. You and me and Tim and Richie, that’s a fucking dream come true. Fifty years from now people won’t believe it. Now, we’ve got, fucking, like, fucking Dan Meyer. Danny fucking Haren. It doesn’t make any sense.”
Mulder rubs his hand across his face, looking sad. “Could you do me a favor? Could you stop saying ‘we’?”
Zito blinks at him in astonishment for a moment. Then he makes a groaning sound and bangs his head once on the tabletop, just to feel the smooth of the wood on his forehead. Mulder makes some resigned snorting laugh, and says, “All right, well. Are you staying tonight?”
Zito answers into the table, squeaking his forehead, “Yeah.”
He’s thinking about last chances and the first time Mulder discovered the bump low on Zito’s chest, running his fingers over it and pushing at it and licking it, inspecting it like a scientist and Zito squirming, laughing. Zito’s thinking about how it’s been two months since he's had his hands on Mulder and maybe two years since Zito has had sex while stoned, all the different things you pay attention to and the way stuff gets lyrical, profound, like watching a sunset or seeing the light off the outfield grass.
Zito’s thinking about St. Louis, and a river, a lake, an ocean, and how he’s been in a state of clear-eyed shock for four days now, and nothing was worse than yesterday, nothing could have been.
“Well, you wanna do something? Get some beers or something?” Mulder’s tone is casual and easy, but he’s got to know what Zito’s doing down here. He put his hand on Zito’s side, stood too close behind him. It’s been two months since Mulder’s had his hands on Zito too, and it’s got to go both ways.
Zito lifts his head up. He pulls the Marb pack out of his pocket and puts it on the table, rattling his fingers on the top of it. “I wanna smoke a joint in your backyard.”
Mulder looks at him like, dumb fucking kid, and says shortly, “The pothead thing is really not cool after the age of, like, seventeen.”
Zito pulls a jay out and tucks it behind his ear. “Whatever.” He gets up and pushes open the sliding door, looking back when the sun hits his eyes. “Are you coming, or what?”
*
“God, I haven’t done this since college,” Mulder says, inspecting the lit joint between his fingers, the smoke trailing up around his face.
“’s like riding a bike, man,” Zito mumbles, slumping back in the lawn chair and watching the stars come out.
Mulder takes a hit and immediately starts coughing violently. Zito starts giggling, and both their faces turn bright red. Mulder tries again and is more successful this time. He hands the joint back over and punches Zito on the shoulder for laughing.
Zito takes his time. He can picture his lungs, filling up slow and deep and everything getting obscured. He tips his head back and breathes out the smoke in a stream that feels endless, pouring out of him. He blows across the spark, flaring the orange, and passes it off.
“Danny fucking Haren,” Zito says again.
“I think probably we should stop talking about this now.” Mulder’s scowling at the joint. Zito’s very proud of his joint-rolling skills. It’s tight all the way down, and there’s a filter because he had a lot of time on his hands and a bunch of subway cards to tear up. There’s something distinctly classic about smoking joints. Better than using a piece or baking an apple.
“I just don’t understand anything,” Zito says, scratching his stomach. “Don’t understand how this happened.”
Mulder’s face gets all pinched up as he takes his hit, his eyes screwed shut. It makes Zito want to snicker, but he feels too tired to snicker, and then he forgets what was so funny.
Mulder holds the smoke with his shoulders pulled up, and gives Zito the jay back. Neither of them says anything for awhile, and then Mulder, with his voice getting rough and thick, says without looking at him, “It happened because I didn’t win a single game in September.”
Zito glances over. Mulder is looking up at the sky. Zito takes two quick hits, wanting to get out of his mind as soon as possible.
“That’s not why. It’s. I mean, you can’t think about it like that.”
“If I’d won one game in September, we woulda gone to the playoffs.”
“If we’d gone to the playoffs, we woulda lost again,” Zito counters, wishing he knew how to make this right again.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know it wasn’t your fucking fault, okay? Gimme that.” He takes the joint, which has gone out, back from Mulder and lights it up again, his cheeks hollowed as he takes a pull.
They smoke until Mulder burns his fingertips and swears and drops the joint on the patio. Zito’s, like, absurdly stoned. Mulder probably is too, because he’s got no tolerance and this is pretty good shit. The way Mulder’s staring up at the sky, his eyes all huge and amazed, the way Mulder’s hand has slid under his shirt and is stroking slowly along the line of his hip, yeah, Mulder’s pretty gone.
“You know what I wanna know?” Mulder says, drifting and sleepy.
“What’s that?”
“How come it was you. What’s so special about you?”
Zito traces lines between the stars, forming personalized constellations. A baseball field. A church. The figure of a man with his hands over his head. He thinks that Mulder was right, they really shouldn’t be talking about this right now.
“I dunno.”
He’s been thinking about it. When he thinks about anything. Because smoking a fuckload of pot is helpful in that it makes him feel less like his skin is about to peel off, but the downside is that he can’t so much control where his mind goes, and he ends up thinking about Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson, in slow curving patterns of thought that wrap around him and smother his breath.
Maybe someday Zito will be the best pitcher in the history of the game, but, well. It hasn’t happened yet. And if Zito was fielding his own private All-Star team, he would pick Hudson first and Mulder second and himself third, which is a kind of terrible thing to think about, but kind of reassuring too.
Billy Beane is a very smart man. Much smarter than any of them could hope to be. Billy Beane got rid of Tim Hudson and got rid of Mark Mulder and the weight of the team is on Barry Zito’s shoulders, and it really. It doesn’t make any sense.
“Maybe I’m a little fucked up about it,” Zito admits. “Just a little, but. Yeah.” He’s pushing his fingers at the square of the cigarette box in his pocket, feeling the corners through the denim.
“Yeah, me too,” Mulder sighs.
Zito rolls his head to the side and a moment later, Mulder does too. Zito smiles at him, wanting to touch Mulder’s hair or his neck or something. Mulder looks half-asleep, and he’s licking his lips. His eyes are all pupil, from the dark and the pot and everything.
“Let’s go inside, okay,” Zito says.
“Why?” Mulder asks, his face going clean with suspicion.
“Suddenly you need a reason? God.” Zito reaches and slides his fingers on Mulder’s face, down the line of his jaw and over his mouth. “Because you’ve never fucked me in this house, all right?”
Mulder’s eyes get comically big. His throat moves up and down and he nods dumbly. He gets up and leads the way, checking back over his shoulder again and again.
Zito pulls off his shirt in the hallway, kicks off his shoes. He watches Mulder’s back and every time Mulder looks back at him, Zito’s throat gets a bit tighter. Zito is thinking about tomorrow morning, when he won’t be stoned anymore, and Mulder will be standing in the doorway as Zito walks to his car. Mulder will raise a hand as Zito pulls out onto the street, and Zito will wave back.
Zito, he’s never really been very good at saying goodbye.
In Mulder’s bedroom, Mulder’s sitting on the edge of the bed and fiddling with the drawer of the nightstand. Zito goes and sits down next to him, pushes his hand up under Mulder’s shirt onto his back. Mulder sucks a breath in through his teeth. Zito counts spine notches and bites Mulder’s shoulder through his T-shirt.
Mulder’s eyes are closed and he lets Zito lay him back on the bed, making a bizarre, unMulder-like sound that’s all high and scared, coming from the back of his throat and it frightens Zito a little bit. But Mulder’s hand is on Zito’s arm, his thumb in the crook of Zito's elbow and his fingers curled, and Mulder is turning his face towards Zito, mouth already open.
Zito kisses him, thinking about how he’s stoned and Mulder’s perfect and the Mississippi River and old plantation houses and a bunch of dumb stuff like that. He presses his nose to Mulder’s cheek and whispers, “You know what I’m gonna miss more than this?”
Mulder shivers, because Zito’s hand is on his stomach now, and Mulder has probably never had sex while high, he doesn’t have any idea what he’s in for. His eyes are still closed, and he’s kissing Zito’s face but not answering. Zito pulls away, touches his hand to Mulder’s cheek.
“Mulder.” Mulder’s eyes open reluctantly, gleaming wet and bloodshot from the smoke. “You know what I’m gonna miss more than this?”
Mulder stares up at him, blind-stoned and breathing shallowly. “What?”
Zito smiles and his chest hurts. “Your slider.” Then he kisses Mulder again and thinks that, really, five years of something like this is five years longer than most people ever get.
THE END