they play this song before every a's game, which makes me happy
Well, those guidelines didn't last long. Okay, be fair. This was already mostly written two days ago. Or however long it's been.
Again, something vaguely wrong with this. I need to corral the stories I like the best and isolate a comman thread that makes them good. And I need to stop worrying about it so much.
Yep.
Eric Chavez Goes to Hollywood
This is how it used to be:
Mark Mulder and Eric Chavez lived together in a rented house with gray carpets and white walls in 2000, Mulder’s first year up. They had a pool and a stove that filled the kitchen with the smell of gas whenever it was turned on. They had a single pot, a single pan, and five plates, three of which would be shattered before the All-Star break. Plastic cups and empty bottles were everywhere.
Chavez had the bigger bedroom, because Mulder was in Trip-A Sacramento for the first month of the season. They’d both been the A’s first draft pick, 1996 and 1998 respectively, but Mulder had been second overall and Chavez had been tenth. Not that it mattered.
The light in the hallway didn’t work. And Chavez could hear Mulder laughing on the phone through the wall they shared.
Mulder slept through his alarm most mornings, and it would howl and screech until Chavez pounded on the wall and shouted for Mulder to wake the fuck up, turn that shit off. The alarm would cut out, and Chavez would hold his breath, waiting for Mulder to appear in his doorway.
They shared the same box of cereal, went to Costco together because only Chavez had a membership card. It was weird, but good. Eric Chavez’s whole life, at that point: weird, but good.
Mulder wasn’t having a very good year. He’d leave the game when they were trailing, the fifth inning, the sixth, sometimes the fourth, having thrown too many pitches for a rookie. By the time they lost and everyone filed back down to the clubhouse, Mulder was already showered and dressed, acting like nothing had happened.
Chavez drove him home, a lot of the time, if they’d come in together or planned to tomorrow. Mulder made his seat go back as far as it could, fiddling with a baseball and talking shit. Chavez mostly just nodded along, watching to see the tension sink out of Mulder’s shoulders, his hands loosening.
Mulder was twenty-two years old for the first part of that first year, and everybody was waiting for him, but Chavez was the only one who could get him to come when he was called. Chavez figured that was because he knew how to keep quiet.
One morning, Chavez awoke to find Mulder asleep in the hall outside his door. He had gotten his shirt half off, still tied up around one arm and his neck, pulling his shoulder out of joint. His head was butted against the wall, flattening the spikes of his hair.
Chavez knelt beside him and flicked Mulder’s forehead until Mulder shivered and groaned, sank upwards. Mulder’s wet blue eyes stared up at him.
“Chavvy, I fucked it up,” Mulder whispered.
Chavez tipped his head to the side, his fingers on the hatch-marks crossing Mulder’s cheek. “What?” he asked, his voice equally low.
Mulder shook his head, turned his eyes away. “It’s just terrible,” he said, and Chavez pulled him to his feet, didn’t ask again.
He took Mulder to the kitchen and sat him down, chattered on about anything that came to mind, making them breakfast and not giving Mulder a chance to talk, not that Mulder would have. He tried to think what it could be, but no. He didn’t want to know. Mulder was better when he was perfect.
The smell of orange juice and burnt toast drew up around them, and Chavez kicked at Mulder’s feet under the table, his mouth tasting sticky and sweet.
Slowly, the lines on Mulder’s face disappeared.
*
In June, it got hot very quickly, and Mulder spent most of his time not wearing a shirt. Chavez spent most of his time trying not to stare. Skinny as a base line and way too tall, Mulder’s back got sunburned and his stomach trembled like a drum when he laughed. Eric Chavez had a recurring dream where he reached out to touch Mulder’s chest and his hand slid through skin and bone and heart, his bloody fingers emerging on the other side.
He had other dreams too, though. Worse than nightmares, because Mark Mulder was the best friend he’d made up here, best friend by far, and now he couldn’t stop picturing him facedown on a bed. The insides of his cheeks were ragged from being bitten.
Chavez had a fine grasp of what he was and wasn’t allowed to be at this level, but the idea that Mulder would stop riding back from the ballpark with him was more horrible than anything the press could do to him. So he kept his distance, played smart.
Mulder brought home girls and winked at Chavez with his hand on the small of her back, her hair brushing his arm. Chavez slept on the couch in the living room, because he could hear everything through the bedroom wall.
Chavez was good for awhile, a month or two at least, and then one night while drunk, he fell against Mulder and Mulder’s arms came up around his back, one of Mulder’s hands under his shirt. Chavez burrowed his face in Mulder’s neck and rubbed his nose, opened his mouth on the place where Mulder’s pulse beat fast and thready.
Mulder drew his hands down to Chavez’s hips and hesitated for a moment, a perfect beautiful moment that tasted like sweat and skin, before gently pushing Chavez away, blushing and stuttering, “okay, man, no more alcohol for you, you’re gone, you’re done.”
All of which was true.
Chavez stayed away for a week or two after, unable to believe that he had even tried something like that. He thought he had this bad part of himself under control. It’d been years since it had happened to him, years since he’d let it. High school, and the summer in San Diego when the sky looked like chalk and the ocean like sterling silver. The many things he thought he’d gotten over.
Mulder stayed behind the locked door of his bedroom, the stripe of yellow light, until he got lonely and visibly decided it had been a moment of temporary insanity, and started hollering Chavez’s name again when a funny commercial was on.
*
Towards the end of July, Barry Zito showed up.
Mulder knew him; they’d been in Triple-A together, in Sacramento and before that Vancouver, and before that the Cape Cod Baseball League, and before that the many past lives that Zito was convinced they’d shared. Because Zito was kinda nuts like that.
Mulder brought him home his first night in town, but it was quickly apparent that they weren’t really friends. Chavez ended up entertaining the kid when Mulder disappeared to make a phone call and never came back. Zito wasn’t good at video games, and he made a face when Chavez put on his best rap mix, and wanted to turn off the Playstation when it was time for some cartoon he liked to come on.
Chavez didn’t think he was serious, but Zito, it turned out, was serious almost all the time, or honest, anyway. Something like that.
He didn’t walk Zito to the door when the cab came, and when Mulder finally came back out, Chavez asked, “Is that guy for real?”
Mulder smirked and nodded, and sat next to Chavez on the couch in the sprawling way he had that brought their legs and elbows in close proximity. “You get used to it. Eventually you won’t even notice.”
After the first couple of weeks, it wasn’t Chavez’s concern any longer, because Zito had become Tim Hudson’s shadow and hardly ever came around anymore.
*
Nobody saw it coming. Nobody thought Hudson would be able to tolerate Zito and Zito’s stupid jokes for longer than a day, and Zito would slink like a kicked puppy back to Eric Byrnes, who’d known Zito since Double-A and whose jokes were even stupider.
But Hudson just sort of rolled his shoulders back and made room for Zito in his life, and then they were best friends.
Just like that.
Chavez couldn’t get a handle on it, but then, he didn’t particularly care. Zito and Hudson stood together with their arms folded on the rail, and in the clubhouse, Zito sat half-dressed in front of Hudson’s locker, writing things on small lavender Post-Its and sticking them up on Hudson’s mirror, over the faces in his photographs.
On the plane, Chavez could hear them, Hudson’s measured drawl and Zito’s quick excited chatter, running together like paint, lulling him to sleep. Zito’s handwriting and clumsy drawings were all over Hudson’s arms, blurring with the hours. Hudson’s eyes lit right the fuck up when Zito got to the yard each day.
In some hotel bar somewhere, an afternoon that threatened to kill them with boredom, Mulder and Chavez were playing gin rummy at a back table, only talking to tally up their scores, and Zito and Hudson came in, still wet from the pool.
Mulder waved them over and they moved to make room. Zito leaned over to look at Chavez’s cards and said, “What is that? Gin? What the fuck?”
Chavez scowled and pulled his cards to his chest. “Nothing wrong with gin.”
Zito smiled at Hudson. “We leave them alone for five minutes, look what happens.”
Hudson smiled back, and ordered beers for the two of them, Zito interrupting him to add, “Light, please, light for me.” Mulder covered his mouth with his hand in the way that meant he was holding back laughter.
Chavez was the only one of them who’d play that night, so he was drinking Coke. They were the only people in the bar.
Zito showed them some card tricks, telling the story of the king, queen, son Jack, and dog Ace, who’d gotten into a car crash on their way to the 7-11. Hudson built a card house, and Mulder blew it down.
After awhile, Zito and Hudson fell into some involved inside-joke conversation that revolved around a night neither Mulder nor Chavez had been a part of. They watched Hudson and Zito ramble on for a couple of minutes, and then Chavez kicked Mulder’s foot and asked, “So what’s new with you?”
Mulder half-smiled. “Oh, you know. Drinking in a bar on a Sunday in Cleveland. Still not on local time. Thinking about taking a nap at the park and going out to that club after the game. Same old.”
Chavez nodded, liking the fact that he’d be around for all of that. He drummed his fingers on the deck of cards. “Rematch?”
Nodding, Mulder sat up straighter, and they returned to their comfortable, speechless afternoon, bridge shuffling and dealing from the bottom as Zito and Hudson talked faster and faster beside them.
*
Chavez passed out in the bathroom of a bar in Alameda, and when he opened his eyes, he saw Mulder hyperventilating with his fist pressed into the wall, and Hudson and Zito standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway, casually placing bets on whether or not this would make the sports pages.
He kinda hated them both, right then. But then Hudson paid for the cab and Zito made sure Mulder was put in the backseat beside him, Mulder’s heavy arms around his neck, his forehead damp on Chavez’s cheek, and Chavez was still a good enough Christian to forgive them.
So, fifteen-twenty minutes later, in the front hallway of their house, at which they’d barely managed to arrive in one piece, Chavez was drunker than last time, and maybe Mulder was too, he figured circularly, maybe things were different now.
And he let Mulder slip through his hands, laughing hard with his back against the wall, and Chavez pushed his hand across Mulder’s stomach, asked breathlessly, “Sure you don’t want to fuck me?”
It was all very familiar. Mulder drew in a breath that moved his stomach away under Chavez’s hand, and shook his head, his eyes screwed shut. Chavez was gone again, and he twisted closer, his face against Mulder’s arm, thinking about Mulder’s forehead on his cheek, their messy embrace in the back of the cab.
“Just keep your eyes closed, you won’t even know the difference,” he said, and Mulder’s hand flattened on the side of his face, Mulder’s long fingers in the slick black of his hair. Chavez had the odd sensation of flight in every free part of his body.
And Mulder pushed him away, his ears colored dark red, and Mulder mumbled, “Knock it off, shut up. Don’t say anything else.”
Chavez lost his balance, scraped the heel of his hand on the wall, hit the carpet shoulder first. He laughed as if with someone else’s breath, a high loose cackle that echoed all around them, and he wouldn’t remember any of it.
Mulder would, of course, but Mulder was only a supporting character this time around.
*
Mulder, who’d denied him twice, one shy of the record, called his name from across the clubhouse and Chavez went over there with dirt in his hair and line-chalk on his hands.
“Orange juice, man,” Mulder said without a greeting. “It’s your turn to buy.”
Chavez sat down in the chair, keeping his eyes from tracking Mulder’s arms and legs, watching Zito and Hudson goofing around on the arcade game. “Too much sugar. I read about it in this thing. It’s really, might as well just drink Coke.”
“Fine. Buy some Coke. Buy something. I don’t care.”
Chavez glanced at him. “Are you okay?”
Mulder stuffed his glove into his bag, yanked his jersey off and let it drop to the floor. “I’m fine,” Mulder said, his voice clipped. “My shoulder hurts. But I’m fine.”
He pulled his undershirt over his head, and Chavez caught muscle, skin, the brief flare of his hips. Mulder stood with his shoulders fallen, rubbing the back of his neck. It wasn’t often, a time like this when Mulder looked his age.
“You need to get some sleep,” Chavez told him, his throat dust-clogged. Mulder nodded.
“I know.” He fell into the chair next to Chavez, twenty-three years old and bare-chested, showing more than he meant to. Chavez kept quiet, the slow pull of August weighted like hands on his shoulders, and Mulder exhaled, clearing the strength out of Chavez so that he would have enough to get through the rest of the season.
*
Zito was on their front lawn, yelling Mulder’s name, MarkMarkMark, and it was four in the morning.
Chavez rolled out of bed and tumbled to the floor. His head was on fire. He crawled to the window and shouted all sorts of broken, cursing things, until his voice was the only one echoing across the street.
He was on his knees, resting his forehead on the windowsill, still most of the way asleep. Zito came to the window and reached in, rapped his knuckles on Chavez’s head. Chavez could only wish that he’d left the window shut, that he’d stuffed his ears with cotton or taken a sleeping pill and been rendered dreamless, untouchable.
Instead, he got Zito slurring and saying like he was surprised, “not who I was lookin’ for, you’re a totally different person.”
Chavez lifted his head, pushed himself up with his hands on the sill. Zito was tottering, his hair greasy and matted, endlessly fucked up. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Mulder,” Zito said. “Want Mulder.”
“Yeah, don’t we all,” Chavez muttered under his breath, his mind clearing. “Hang on.”
He went to Mulder’s room and knocked four times before pushing the door open. Mulder’s bed was empty, the covers thrown back. Chavez went outside, found Zito studying his hands intently.
“He’s gone. Not home.”
Zito blinked at him, and then fell down. He just lost his balance standing, and crashed on the grass. Chavez stared down at him, stunned, but Zito got back up again a second later, like it was nothing, like it happened all the time.
“He, he owes me. Lotsa money,” Zito said earnestly. Chavez took his arm, not liking the unhooked glaze in Zito’s eyes. Zito shook him off. “Five hunnert dollars.”
Chavez raised his eyebrows. “He owes you five hundred dollars?”
Zito grinned, and nodded. “Bet me, like, awhile ago, bet me that I’d never drink with Hudson and Hudson’d pass out first. But I did.” Zito’s forehead lined. “He did. Passed out, I mean. Timmy, he just went down, like, pffft.”
Zito almost fell again, and Chavez reached out, but Zito caught himself on the side of the house.
“You drank Huddy under the table and then got in your fucking car? What are you, retarded?”
Zito looked at him helplessly. “Um.”
Chavez rolled his eyes. “Here, sit down before you fall again.” Zito folded himself down on the lawn with relief, and Chavez crouched next to him. “Did you leave Huddy on the floor of a bar somewhere?”
Zito’s face opened in indignation. “No. ‘Course not. He’d kill me, and then never talk to me again. I put him in a cab. I made sure.”
“Well, I don’t know where Mulder is.” Chavez thought about frisking Zito, getting his car keys and hiding them in the coffee jar or something. But it seemed like too much trouble; he was pretty tired. “You can sleep here if you want.”
“Sleep outside? But there’s bugs and stuff.”
Chavez rolled his eyes again. “Jesus, you can sleep inside, idiot. We got a couch.”
Zito scowled at him. “Don’t call me idiot just ‘cause I’m drunk. You’ve been drunk, I’ve seen it.”
Chavez fisted his hands in the grass, the soft ground giving under his knuckles. “Whatever, man. I’m going back to bed.”
He stood, and Zito clutched at his leg, his nails scratching at the back of Chavez’s knee. Chavez twitched-he’d always been ticklish there. “Take me with you,” Zito said with his upturned eyes huge and dark, and Chavez froze. “Take me inside,” Zito clarified. “I won’t find it on my own.”
Exhaling, Chavez offered him a hand and pulled him up, gave Zito a pillow and a blanket and the television remote in case he couldn’t sleep. Zito thanked him and Chavez left the room to the sound of Zito murmuring about how Hudson had been so drunk, shoulda seen, so drunk he almost said yes.
Chavez didn’t know why that sounded so familiar, and he fell asleep thinking about it, woke up to find that Zito had given up on the couch and usurped Mulder’s bed, the door wide open and Zito’s face jammed in the pillow, his arm slung down to the carpet. Chavez smiled without joy, and went to put the coffee on.
*
Then, fair enough, in Boston, it worked out neatly so that Chavez was getting ice for his shoulder when Hudson threw Zito out.
Their voices rose up behind the door, and Chavez cocked his head, cradling the bucket of ice on his hip. A muffled cracking sound, then the door slammed open and Hudson said hoarsely, “already told you no, I’m not like that, will you get the fuck out of here,” and then the scraped stumbling sound of Zito tripping, falling, landing hard on the carpet.
Chavez set the bucket of ice on the ground. He realized absently that he was grinning.
He sauntered out, and Zito was down there, his knees up against his chest, his face lowered. Chavez nudged his ankle, and Zito looked up, one eye gleaming wet, the other starting to swell. He blinked at Chavez, and said roughly, “I can’t believe this keeps happening to me.”
Chavez offered him a hand up, still grinning manically, and clasped Zito’s hand tightly as Zito swayed on his feet. “You, what? Actually expected him to say yes?” Chavez asked, and Zito’s hand jerked in his own, but Chavez wouldn’t let him go.
The skin around Zito’s eye was darkening. It was all just perfect.
Zito’s throat ducked as he swallowed, his good eye widening, and he shook his head, but let Chavez pull him into his room, let Chavez sit him down on the bed while he went back for the ice.
Chavez made an icepack out of a washcloth and stood over Zito, carefully holding it to his eye, his free hand cupped around the back of Zito’s head. Zito’s other eye stared up at him blankly.
“Motherfucker hits hard, doesn’t he?” Chavez asked softly, and Zito’s eye closed as he exhaled a shaky sigh.
Chavez thought about the thing that he was not, the thing that he could not be, and he had a vision of Zito in this hotel room bed tomorrow morning, bleach-white sheets and torn foil, a glass broken under the window.
Chavez thought, ‘so be it.’
*
Making not just one, but two drunken passes at Mark Mulder should have been the stupidest thing that Eric Chavez ever did in his life, but then he found himself pressed up against the door of Barry Zito’s apartment, Zito on his knees with one hand on Chavez’s stomach, holding him still.
Chavez’s hands were full of Zito’s hair. His eyes were full of stars.
It wasn’t what he’d expected, this awful second choice of his. Zito had all these jagged edges, places where Chavez figured he’d be smooth and easy. Zito woke up sharply every couple of nights, his breath caught up in his throat, his face pale and terrified, and never said anything about it.
Zito was on his knees, right where he belonged, and Chavez was moaning, his hands clenched, his heartbeat stammering. Zito was so good at this it was kind of scary. Chavez could hardly breathe. He kept picturing lights in his minds, filaments, fluorescents, naked bulbs swinging from the rafters. Nothing made any sense, and then Zito hollowed his cheeks and opened his throat and the light exploded.
It was that night, or some night like it, and Chavez was trying to get to sleep, impossible because Zito used the wrong kind of detergent on his sheets and it made Chavez’s skin itch. He would have just gone home (it wasn’t like Zito would have cared), but he didn’t like seeing Mulder after fucking around with Zito. He felt like everything they’d done was writ in glow-in-the-dark letters across his face, wouldn’t fade until morning.
Zito rolled over onto his back and asked the ceiling, “You think Hudson hates me?”
Chavez yawned. “Yeah, probably.” Zito glared at him, and Chavez rolled his eyes. “Ask a stupid question, Z.”
Zito rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, and Chavez watched the tight skin of his chest move and pull, slide back into place. “Why would he hate you?” Chavez asked, his fingers twitching against Zito’s leg.
“I keep getting drunk and trying to have sex with him.”
Chavez snorted. Zito didn’t even bother looking at him again. Chavez wanted to get his hands back in Zito’s hair, the pieces of dark blue still painted in among the brown, and he wanted his mouth on Zito’s chest and stomach. It was nothing more than the knowledge that Zito wasn’t going to push him away, unless he bit too hard or drew blood or left a mark, the simple fact that he was allowed-that was the only reason he kept coming around.
“Stop doing that, then,” Chavez told him, and licked Zito’s shoulder. “You got me for that now, right?”
Zito let Chavez’s mouth move down his arm, teeth in the crook of his elbow, Chavez’s tongue tracing the lines of his ribs, and Zito sighed, running his hand absently over Chavez’s back. “Poor substitute,” Zito said softly, and Chavez was pretty sure that was only a joke.
*
By the early fall, they talked about Zito like he was decked in laurel and roses, and Mulder started asking questions.
“Where do you go all the time?”
They were on the deck, reclined in patio chairs, drinking beer under the stars. Chavez stared up at the sky and asked, “What do you mean?”
He heard the plasticky rustle of Mulder shrugging. “You disappear. Like, a lot. I mean, you always have, but I never. I keep forgetting to ask why.”
Chavez shook his head automatically, because it hadn’t been forever, only a few months now. Then he remembered. As far as Mulder was concerned, that was forever. As far as all three of them were concerned, if he wanted to be honest about it, which he didn’t.
Mulder should have asked awhile ago. Chavez should have been prepared.
“I, um. I don’t know. I don’t go anywhere.” Chavez kept his eyes turned upwards, the trees, the stars, the moon, yeah the moon. Coins, he thought fuzzily, sky’s made of money tonight.
“You don’t come home sometimes,” Mulder pointed out, taking a drink of his beer. “I mean, dude. Where are you sleeping?”
Chavez swallowed, and flicked his hand abstractly. “Well, girls, you know?” he said fumblingly. “Like, they, um, take me home? Sometimes, I let them. You know.”
Mulder’s eyebrows twitched upwards. “Girls?”
Chavez flinched, too quickly to be seen. “Yeah,” he said with assurance. “Of course.”
He snuck a look and now Mulder was grinning at him. “Dude! You have to tell me these things. How’m I supposed to know you’re a player if you don’t tell me?”
Chavez’s face heated, and he curled one arm over his stomach. “Oh, well. You know.”
“You said that already,” Mulder answered, but he was grinning, his broad movie-star grin, and Chavez had the bright shabby feeling of getting away with something.
He drank too much and lost his ability to walk, and Mulder hauled him inside, his arm around Chavez’s waist, Chavez’s head bouncing on his shoulder. The words ‘dirty little secret’ had always sounded so good to him, so forbidden and romantic. He kept seeing all the faceless, heartless girls, who couldn’t resist him, who took him home and held him down. By the time he fell asleep, he’d forgotten that it had all been a lie.
*
Zito was scared of thunder. A summer storm, the sky cut to pieces, and every time the thunder came, he jerked, burrowed a little deeper under the covers.
Chavez couldn’t believe it. “Tell me you’re kidding,” he said, when Zito’s fearful breath fell on his ribs. He slid down, pulling the covers over them both.
Zito played dumb. “What? I’m cold.”
Chavez flattened his hand on Zito’s chest. “You are not,” he whispered. “You’re, look at you, you’re scared of the storm.”
“I’m not a fucking kid,” Zito answered sharply, but he didn’t move to pull the covers down. It was pitch-black in there, tar covering Chavez’s eyes.
“No, but you’re scared of the thunder,” he said teasingly, and then the thunder rolled and Zito jerked again, latched one hand on Chavez’s side, clinging to him in slight panic. Chavez snickered lightly. “See?”
“It’s just a bit loud,” Zito claimed, convincing no one, his hand drawing Chavez closer to him, until they were face to face, chest to chest, Zito’s breath on his cheek. “It’s. Sudden.”
“It’s thunder. It’s nothing.”
“Look, I know.” Zito shivered. “It’s not my fault. There was a storm and the power went out and I called for my dad but it was too loud for him to hear me. I musta been three or four.”
Chavez rubbed Zito’s chest comfortingly, still smirking, but of course Zito couldn’t see.
“I’m not scared of anything else,” Zito continued, his voice breaking. “Only one thing, I’m allowed.”
“Sure you are.” Chavez shook his head in amazement. “Bad luck, anyway.”
“Thunder?”
“Oh yeah. Worse than stepping on the line.”
Zito’s mouth twitched against Chavez’s jaw. “You’re just making stuff up now.”
“That’s true. But are you still scared?”
There was a long pause, and then Zito was wrapping an arm around Chavez’s back, burying his face in Chavez’s neck. Chavez laughed, the sound of it low and muffled, and he could feel the sockets of Zito’s eyes, hollowed against his throat.
*
Chavez had dreams that consisted entirely of neon signs. The space behind his eyes highly lit, he woke up more tired than he went to sleep, and sometimes Zito was there, sometimes he wasn’t. Either way, Chavez drank more coffee than was probably wise, his hands trembling, his eyesight blurred.
That year, Zito and Mulder’s first year, flew by.
He woke up and it was the ninth day of October. Their season was over, and Mulder had already gone back to Chicago, and Zito had come over the night before to keep him company, the house crowded with echoes and crushed-up paper cups.
Zito had been out at a club or something; he hadn’t gotten there until late, so they just went to bed without doing anything. It was strange to have Zito in the same bed with him and not be strained and fucked out, to be restless and dry.
He woke up. Zito was pressed against his back, his arm folded uncomfortably between them. The first thing Chavez remembered was that they’d lost the division series. It was a stuck place in his throat, an echo in his mind.
Zito stirred, murmured, and worked his arm free, draped it over Chavez’s body and started messing around, tugging at the hair on Chavez’s chest, scratching his nails on Chavez’s stomach. Chavez squirmed and pushed backwards, and Zito’s breath blew warmly on the back of his neck.
“Hollywood?” he asked with his voice sleep-rough, tipping his head back on Zito’s shoulder.
Zito bit his ear lightly. “Flight’s at two o’clock.”
Chavez hummed, bumping the back of his head into Zito’s nose. “We’ll get you there.” He reached back and curled his hand around Zito’s hip, pulling them flush, chest to back. “This first, okay?”
Zito nodded, kicked the blankets off. “This first.”
*
That off-season, Eric Chavez stayed in Oakland most of the time, and let his hair grow out, and watched the fog roll off San Francisco and disappear into the bay, the boats vanished and the metal rail frozen under his hands.
It was cold, and November felt about a million years old.
He went home to San Diego for Thanksgiving, and got drunk on red wine on the back porch with his brothers. It wasn’t until he was an hour north and still going ninety on the highway that he realized he’d left.
He had Zito’s address in Hollywood written on the back of a receipt, and it took him too long to find it, a ten-story brick building in a bad part of town, flicker-lit by trashcan fires and the guttering streetlamps. Chavez leaned on the buzzer, his eyelids coated with melted lead, his head throbbing.
It was five, ten, fifteen minutes before Zito’s pissed-off voice crackled through the intercom, and Chavez couldn’t help but smile.
“I came to see you,” he said when Zito stopped swearing long enough for him to get a word in. Zito took a long moment.
“Chavvy?”
“Yep. Happy Thanksgiving.”
“It’s three in the morning,” Zito answered, sounding tired. “It’s not Thanksgiving anymore.”
“Yeah, and last time it was four in the morning. Next time, who can say.” Chavez played his fingers over the intercom’s buttons, the messy scrawled names of Zito’s neighbors. “Let me up?”
There was another long pause, then the buzzer sliced through, and Chavez almost missed his grip, but caught it in the end.
Zito’s door was open, and Zito was already back in bed, all the lights off. Chavez tripped over a pair of shoes and laughed at himself, stumbled towards the movement of Zito under the sheets. He crawled in fully-dressed, and Zito’s hands were sleepy and cautious working his jeans off, his mouth hot and worth the drive.
Zito lifted his head, his hair getting in Chavez’s eyes, and held Chavez down by his hips, Chavez straining up, thinking in flags and swatches that he was stronger than Zito, he could get free if he needed to.
“You didn’t have to come so far,” Zito said, his thumbs rubbing Chavez’s stomach. “We mighta found someplace halfway.”
Chavez turned his head to the side, breathing in short pulls, knifes into his lungs. “Don’t wanna hear it, man. I’m here now and that’s all. Just. Here. Like this.” He took Zito’s wrist in his hand and slid it down, dug his teeth into his lip when Zito’s fingers closed around him and started to move. Chavez gasped, arched up. “See, yeah. Yeah.”
Zito lowered his head, biting at Chavez’s mouth, and Chavez saw the highway behind his eyes, flat and black, the clean awareness that he’d drive home in a few hours with a certain taste in his mouth and Zito’s teeth lined up on his throat.
*
The rest of the winter went by blurred, in fast-forward. Strange because it seemed so long in each moment, the quiet of Chavez’s apartment, the give of the street, the sirens in the night. But then it was time to go back to Phoenix, and Chavez couldn’t remember anything that had happened, none of the killer nights when he hadn’t slept, none of the days when he’d been motionless and bored, watching television for twelve hours straight.
He was shaking, on the plane, staring out the window the whole time.
The pitchers were already down, and Chavez was staying in the same condo complex as Mulder; he’d gotten the last available unit because Mulder had called when he’d seen boxes and a moving van. The whole place was packed with major league pitchers.
Chavez tried out his keys and dropped his stuff off, and then went down the hall to Mulder’s for a beer.
Mulder’s off-season had been painfully uninteresting. Chavez listened to the tell of a Midwest winter, the frostbite that had turned the tips of Mulder’s fingers white, then blue, then gray, and the warm water that had brought them back to life, burning like acid. He asked after Mulder’s parents and brothers, and wondered if Lake Michigan ever froze over, if you could walk to Canada in the middle of January.
Mulder looked exactly the same. He left the television on, a basketball game moving colorful and fast behind them.
The door was left slightly ajar, because they were all friends here, and Zito knocked perfunctorily before pushing it open.
“Dude, you wanna go get some-” Zito stopped abruptly, seeing Chavez, his eyes widening. “You’re here,” he said with a lace of excitement in his voice, and then flushed, cleared his throat. “How’s it going?” he asked more casually.
Chavez couldn’t take his eyes away, a stupid grin on his face. It’d been three months since the day after Thanksgiving, when Zito had walked him to the door and kissed the side of his mouth. Zito was more tan, the shadows back under his eyes. He was wearing a red shirt with a hole in the shoulder, and Chavez licked his lips unthinkingly.
They made small talk and Chavez had forgotten Mulder was in the room until he said, “We’ll go for dinner in a little bit, okay? I’ll call you.” Zito nodded, lifted his eyebrows slightly at Chavez, and left.
Chavez waited a minute or two before telling Mulder, “’Kay, I gotta go unpack.”
Mulder looked at him in surprise. “You didn’t finish your beer.”
Chavez tipped it back, draining the last of it in one long swallow. He clapped the bottle on the table, said, “See ya,” and was out the door without waiting for Mulder’s reply.
Zito was waiting at the stairs, leaning back against the wall, smiling when Chavez came for him. Chavez had his hand halfway down Zito’s jeans in the stairwell, had Zito snickering and pushing him away.
“Your hair got long,” Zito said in the hallway, running his hand through it, tugging.
Chavez rolled his head under Zito’s hand, a tight prickle skittering down his spine. “Too lazy to get it cut.”
“I like it, it’s good,” Zito said, and shouldered the door open.
Zito’s condo was the same as Mulder’s, the same as Chavez’s. His cell phone was vibrating in his pocket, against the back of Chavez’s hand, and Chavez extracted himself to pull the phone out, look at the little screen.
“It’s Huddy,” he said, his eyebrows pulling down, stepping back. Zito pulled him forward, took the phone out of his hand and tossed it on the couch.
“He’ll call back,” Zito said with a grin, and one hand went to the back of Chavez’s neck, the other hooked in his belt. Zito kissed him so hard it kinda hurt, and whispered against Chavez’s mouth, “Missed this.”
Chavez nodded blindly, pushed his hands up under Zito’s shirt, spring training and so happy his chest ached.
*
On and on, and 2001 was very similar to 2000, except that their team was better, and Zito turned up whenever Chavez wanted him, like a magic trick. The room, whichever room it happened to be at that moment, would empty eventually, if they gave it enough time, and they’d be left alone and Chavez couldn’t keep his hands off him.
Once, even, the room wasn’t empty, Byrnes was passed out under the window and Chavez went down on Zito on the bed, his head under the covers, Zito’s cargo shorts open and his boxers scrunched down just far enough, Zito biting down on his own hand. Afterwards, Zito kept petting his head and saying into his ear, “you’re crazy, you know that, fuckin’ lunatic,” the heat of their bodies under the blankets stifling.
Mulder was so good that year, Chavez almost couldn’t watch him pitch. He kept waiting for everything to go south, for Mulder’s shoulder to give out or maybe his back, looking for the slider to flatten, the curve to hang, but it never happened. The disaster of Mulder’s rookie year still hung around him like pieces of crepe paper, but Chavez seemed to be the only one who could see it.
They lived together again, this house very much like last year’s, painted blue instead of yellow, the kitchen floor tiled with octagons rather than hexagons, but when drunk, Chavez kept forgetting.
“You’re just a fucking rookie,” he told Mulder angrily at one point, swiping the bottle out of his hand, and Mulder had blinked at him for a moment before starting to laugh.
“Oh man, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Mulder said through his laughter.
Chavez remembered then, that this was Year Two of the best phase of his life, but he was often belligerent this time of night, sitting on the living room carpet the way they were.
“Rookie for life,” he muttered. “Rookie at heart, that’s what counts.”
Mulder shook his head, grinning. “Kid, kid, kid,” he hummed, and Chavez hated it when Mulder made a point of Chavez being younger than him.
“Shut up.” He punched his fingers at the videogame controller, sending his guy spiraling out in flames.
“It’s different this year, you know?” Mulder said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Chavez also hated it when Mulder started to attempt profundity, as typically happened six beers in.
“Not really.” Chavez waved a hand between them. “You’re still here. I’m still here. And the other guys, Huddy and Miguel and everybody. Zito, still here.” Chavez thought about Zito for awhile, Zito’s scrawny arms and smooth chest. He smiled without being aware of it. “All the important stuff’s the same.”
“Just because you get confused, doesn’t mean it’s the same.”
That only made Chavez’s head spin. He lay back on the floor to get his bearings. Mulder’s head bobbed in his peripheral vision.
“Are you giving up?” Mulder asked, nudging Chavez’s controller where it rested on his stomach.
Chavez sighed. “Yeah, think so.”
“Cool. I win.”
Chavez closed his eyes. “You always win.”
“This time, I barely even had to try.”
Chavez smiled slightly, seeing Mulder’s face in his mind’s eye, happy victorious bend to his mouth, the unlined skin around his eyes. Though idly about when Mulder used to drive him crazy, not so long ago. And maybe stuff had changed, whether or not that was what he’d intended.
*
Two-three-four nights later, Chavez asked Zito, “Are you still trying to have sex with Hudson?”
Zito’s hand, which was nicely occupied inside Chavez’s boxers, stopped moving, and Zito cocked an eyebrow. “Right this second? No.”
Chavez squirmed, wanting to get Zito’s hand going again, wanting his question answered. “Don’t be a jerk.”
Zito took his hand out entirely, and Chavez groaned, his lips pressed tightly together. “Okay,” Zito said agreeably, drumming his fingers on Chavez’s stomach. “Anything else you don’t want me to be?”
Chavez put one arm up over his eyes. “A fucking tease.”
“You’re the one asking totally rude questions instead of just lying there like you’re supposed to. I mean, jeez.”
“How is that a rude question?” Chavez asked defensively. “I’m just curious.”
“Considering where my hand just was, anything other than, ‘where have you been all my life,’ is a rude question.”
Chavez took his arm down, mocked a sarcastic smile up at Zito. “Ha.”
Zito grinned, and leaned down, licking Chavez’s stomach, making him start and clench his hand on Zito’s shoulder. “Where’ve you been, man,” Zito sing-songed, his breath warm and fantastic. “All my life, tell me please.”
“Crazy,” Chavez murmured, combing through Zito’s hair, pressing on the back of his head so that Zito would have no choice but to use his teeth.
Zito did, and then a little while later his tongue, and his fingers, and everything else, Chavez’s legs over his back, Chavez’s boxers hanging off his ankle. Chavez was left broken up, blown apart.
He was panting, waiting for his eyesight to return, and Zito slid up next to him, kissed him on the mouth and told him, “No, I’m not still trying to have sex with him. And you don’t want to sleep with Mulder anymore.”
Chavez inhaled sharply and pressed his nose against Zito’s cheek, squeezing his eyes shut even tighter. Zito shouldn’t have known, but how could he not? Zito wasn’t blind. “I don’t,” he whispered, astonished because he was telling the truth.
“I know.” Zito smiled against his face, stroking Chavez’s neck. “It’s enough, babe, I know that now.”
Chavez flipped him over, pinned him down. It would be years, he realized, years and years before he’d get over Zito being his second choice, before they’d each forgive that particular trespass. It didn’t matter; they had all the time in the world.
*
On and on. Chavez woke up one morning and it was July, he woke up the next day and it was August, woke up the next and it was September. He woke up with the slow and irresistible feeling that something was passing him by.
He woke up and the season was over, blink and you’d miss it. Zito wasn’t there; he’d flown to L.A. straight from New York. Mulder wasn’t there either. Chavez had heard from Giambi that Mulder had driven all night after losing the fifth game, and wound up in Canada, but he was pretty sure that was a lie.
So New York City was there beyond the window and it was raining, a low gray huddled around the buildings, and the adrenaline of the past three months had drained as he slept. Every piece of him hurt.
In the cab to the airport, he called Zito three times, and never got through. He didn’t leave a message-there wasn’t much to say.
He made a promise: won’t go to Hollywood this off-season. Won’t show up at Zito’s door with a duffel bag and half the rent. Won’t be this fucking gone on Barry Zito.
He watched the city scroll by and everyone looked scared and heartbroken. It had only been a month since what had happened, happened. Eric Chavez’s simple little life, his kid job and teenage romance, didn’t mean anything here, not now.
He was exhausted.
He slept on the plane and was jarred awake as the wheels hit the ground in San Diego. His back was twisted metal by that point, but he didn’t have to worry about it for four months. He had five voicemails waiting for him, two from his parents, one from an old friend, one hang-up, and one from Mark Mulder, who said something unintelligible with traffic behind him, sounding fall-down drunk and pissed off.
His father was waiting for him at baggage claim. Chavez wanted to turn and run back into the terminal, hijack a plane of his own, and fly north.
*
He couldn’t keep his promise, which anyone who could read the stitches the way he could really should seen coming.
A week into their off-season, Chavez borrowed his brother’s truck and made the drive to Hollywood in under an hour, and that had to be some kind of record. Zito let him in with a grin, and they spent three days locked up in that crummy apartment, until Chavez’s brother left a particularly threatening message and Chavez left Zito naked and asleep, knowing he would never leave if he woke Zito up first.
Zito didn’t call him. Two weeks later, Chavez went back to Oakland.
A day before his birthday, Zito came to see him, and that time it was six days. They only put on shirts to open the door for the delivery people. They ate Chinese food, and pizza, Thai and deli sandwiches, the case of oranges Chavez’s mom had sent, sticky-handed, sweet all over. They watched every movie Chavez owned a half dozen times, drank tap water and tasted like metal. At some point, Chavez claimed that there was no way he could ever have sex again, it was physically impossible, and Zito turned him onto his stomach, proved him wrong.
By the fifth day, it hurt to do anything except sleep. And when he slept, he dreamed of Zito, Zito on the field, Zito driving him somewhere, Zito leaning back against the kitchen counter, drinking coffee in his boxers. It was unclear what was real.
He was too sore to get out of bed, and Zito leaned over him fully dressed, whispered, “I’m going now, man, okay? I’ll see you in Phoenix.”
Chavez reached out groggily, closed his hand in Zito’s shirtfront, found the strength to pull him off balance, Zito collapsing on the bed beside him, laughing. His sneakers were mucking up the sheets and Chavez didn’t care. He pressed his face against Zito’s chest, breathed in through Zito’s shirt, Zito’s coat falling around his ears.
He said, “stay stay stay.”
Zito palmed his head. “I gotta go. My sister, the band, remember?”
Chavez wasn’t all the way awake, and didn’t want to be-it hurt to be awake. His legs, his lower back, the backs of his arms, throbbing like individual heartbeats. His neck had been wrenched at some point. But Zito smelled good, fresh out of the shower, and Zito’s hand was wide and warm on the back of his neck.
Zito had obligations, though, a life beyond this. Chavez couldn’t stand it.
“Yeah, go,” he mumbled, releasing his grip on Zito’s shirt and slumping back. “Tell her I say hi.”
Zito’s hand rested on his chest, tapping his fingers thoughtfully. “You know, I never thought it’d be like this,” he said, and Chavez opened his eyes, saw Zito smile and kiss his fingertips, press them down on Chavez’s sternum, and Chavez closed his eyes again.
*
read this second.
Again, something vaguely wrong with this. I need to corral the stories I like the best and isolate a comman thread that makes them good. And I need to stop worrying about it so much.
Yep.
Eric Chavez Goes to Hollywood
This is how it used to be:
Mark Mulder and Eric Chavez lived together in a rented house with gray carpets and white walls in 2000, Mulder’s first year up. They had a pool and a stove that filled the kitchen with the smell of gas whenever it was turned on. They had a single pot, a single pan, and five plates, three of which would be shattered before the All-Star break. Plastic cups and empty bottles were everywhere.
Chavez had the bigger bedroom, because Mulder was in Trip-A Sacramento for the first month of the season. They’d both been the A’s first draft pick, 1996 and 1998 respectively, but Mulder had been second overall and Chavez had been tenth. Not that it mattered.
The light in the hallway didn’t work. And Chavez could hear Mulder laughing on the phone through the wall they shared.
Mulder slept through his alarm most mornings, and it would howl and screech until Chavez pounded on the wall and shouted for Mulder to wake the fuck up, turn that shit off. The alarm would cut out, and Chavez would hold his breath, waiting for Mulder to appear in his doorway.
They shared the same box of cereal, went to Costco together because only Chavez had a membership card. It was weird, but good. Eric Chavez’s whole life, at that point: weird, but good.
Mulder wasn’t having a very good year. He’d leave the game when they were trailing, the fifth inning, the sixth, sometimes the fourth, having thrown too many pitches for a rookie. By the time they lost and everyone filed back down to the clubhouse, Mulder was already showered and dressed, acting like nothing had happened.
Chavez drove him home, a lot of the time, if they’d come in together or planned to tomorrow. Mulder made his seat go back as far as it could, fiddling with a baseball and talking shit. Chavez mostly just nodded along, watching to see the tension sink out of Mulder’s shoulders, his hands loosening.
Mulder was twenty-two years old for the first part of that first year, and everybody was waiting for him, but Chavez was the only one who could get him to come when he was called. Chavez figured that was because he knew how to keep quiet.
One morning, Chavez awoke to find Mulder asleep in the hall outside his door. He had gotten his shirt half off, still tied up around one arm and his neck, pulling his shoulder out of joint. His head was butted against the wall, flattening the spikes of his hair.
Chavez knelt beside him and flicked Mulder’s forehead until Mulder shivered and groaned, sank upwards. Mulder’s wet blue eyes stared up at him.
“Chavvy, I fucked it up,” Mulder whispered.
Chavez tipped his head to the side, his fingers on the hatch-marks crossing Mulder’s cheek. “What?” he asked, his voice equally low.
Mulder shook his head, turned his eyes away. “It’s just terrible,” he said, and Chavez pulled him to his feet, didn’t ask again.
He took Mulder to the kitchen and sat him down, chattered on about anything that came to mind, making them breakfast and not giving Mulder a chance to talk, not that Mulder would have. He tried to think what it could be, but no. He didn’t want to know. Mulder was better when he was perfect.
The smell of orange juice and burnt toast drew up around them, and Chavez kicked at Mulder’s feet under the table, his mouth tasting sticky and sweet.
Slowly, the lines on Mulder’s face disappeared.
*
In June, it got hot very quickly, and Mulder spent most of his time not wearing a shirt. Chavez spent most of his time trying not to stare. Skinny as a base line and way too tall, Mulder’s back got sunburned and his stomach trembled like a drum when he laughed. Eric Chavez had a recurring dream where he reached out to touch Mulder’s chest and his hand slid through skin and bone and heart, his bloody fingers emerging on the other side.
He had other dreams too, though. Worse than nightmares, because Mark Mulder was the best friend he’d made up here, best friend by far, and now he couldn’t stop picturing him facedown on a bed. The insides of his cheeks were ragged from being bitten.
Chavez had a fine grasp of what he was and wasn’t allowed to be at this level, but the idea that Mulder would stop riding back from the ballpark with him was more horrible than anything the press could do to him. So he kept his distance, played smart.
Mulder brought home girls and winked at Chavez with his hand on the small of her back, her hair brushing his arm. Chavez slept on the couch in the living room, because he could hear everything through the bedroom wall.
Chavez was good for awhile, a month or two at least, and then one night while drunk, he fell against Mulder and Mulder’s arms came up around his back, one of Mulder’s hands under his shirt. Chavez burrowed his face in Mulder’s neck and rubbed his nose, opened his mouth on the place where Mulder’s pulse beat fast and thready.
Mulder drew his hands down to Chavez’s hips and hesitated for a moment, a perfect beautiful moment that tasted like sweat and skin, before gently pushing Chavez away, blushing and stuttering, “okay, man, no more alcohol for you, you’re gone, you’re done.”
All of which was true.
Chavez stayed away for a week or two after, unable to believe that he had even tried something like that. He thought he had this bad part of himself under control. It’d been years since it had happened to him, years since he’d let it. High school, and the summer in San Diego when the sky looked like chalk and the ocean like sterling silver. The many things he thought he’d gotten over.
Mulder stayed behind the locked door of his bedroom, the stripe of yellow light, until he got lonely and visibly decided it had been a moment of temporary insanity, and started hollering Chavez’s name again when a funny commercial was on.
*
Towards the end of July, Barry Zito showed up.
Mulder knew him; they’d been in Triple-A together, in Sacramento and before that Vancouver, and before that the Cape Cod Baseball League, and before that the many past lives that Zito was convinced they’d shared. Because Zito was kinda nuts like that.
Mulder brought him home his first night in town, but it was quickly apparent that they weren’t really friends. Chavez ended up entertaining the kid when Mulder disappeared to make a phone call and never came back. Zito wasn’t good at video games, and he made a face when Chavez put on his best rap mix, and wanted to turn off the Playstation when it was time for some cartoon he liked to come on.
Chavez didn’t think he was serious, but Zito, it turned out, was serious almost all the time, or honest, anyway. Something like that.
He didn’t walk Zito to the door when the cab came, and when Mulder finally came back out, Chavez asked, “Is that guy for real?”
Mulder smirked and nodded, and sat next to Chavez on the couch in the sprawling way he had that brought their legs and elbows in close proximity. “You get used to it. Eventually you won’t even notice.”
After the first couple of weeks, it wasn’t Chavez’s concern any longer, because Zito had become Tim Hudson’s shadow and hardly ever came around anymore.
*
Nobody saw it coming. Nobody thought Hudson would be able to tolerate Zito and Zito’s stupid jokes for longer than a day, and Zito would slink like a kicked puppy back to Eric Byrnes, who’d known Zito since Double-A and whose jokes were even stupider.
But Hudson just sort of rolled his shoulders back and made room for Zito in his life, and then they were best friends.
Just like that.
Chavez couldn’t get a handle on it, but then, he didn’t particularly care. Zito and Hudson stood together with their arms folded on the rail, and in the clubhouse, Zito sat half-dressed in front of Hudson’s locker, writing things on small lavender Post-Its and sticking them up on Hudson’s mirror, over the faces in his photographs.
On the plane, Chavez could hear them, Hudson’s measured drawl and Zito’s quick excited chatter, running together like paint, lulling him to sleep. Zito’s handwriting and clumsy drawings were all over Hudson’s arms, blurring with the hours. Hudson’s eyes lit right the fuck up when Zito got to the yard each day.
In some hotel bar somewhere, an afternoon that threatened to kill them with boredom, Mulder and Chavez were playing gin rummy at a back table, only talking to tally up their scores, and Zito and Hudson came in, still wet from the pool.
Mulder waved them over and they moved to make room. Zito leaned over to look at Chavez’s cards and said, “What is that? Gin? What the fuck?”
Chavez scowled and pulled his cards to his chest. “Nothing wrong with gin.”
Zito smiled at Hudson. “We leave them alone for five minutes, look what happens.”
Hudson smiled back, and ordered beers for the two of them, Zito interrupting him to add, “Light, please, light for me.” Mulder covered his mouth with his hand in the way that meant he was holding back laughter.
Chavez was the only one of them who’d play that night, so he was drinking Coke. They were the only people in the bar.
Zito showed them some card tricks, telling the story of the king, queen, son Jack, and dog Ace, who’d gotten into a car crash on their way to the 7-11. Hudson built a card house, and Mulder blew it down.
After awhile, Zito and Hudson fell into some involved inside-joke conversation that revolved around a night neither Mulder nor Chavez had been a part of. They watched Hudson and Zito ramble on for a couple of minutes, and then Chavez kicked Mulder’s foot and asked, “So what’s new with you?”
Mulder half-smiled. “Oh, you know. Drinking in a bar on a Sunday in Cleveland. Still not on local time. Thinking about taking a nap at the park and going out to that club after the game. Same old.”
Chavez nodded, liking the fact that he’d be around for all of that. He drummed his fingers on the deck of cards. “Rematch?”
Nodding, Mulder sat up straighter, and they returned to their comfortable, speechless afternoon, bridge shuffling and dealing from the bottom as Zito and Hudson talked faster and faster beside them.
*
Chavez passed out in the bathroom of a bar in Alameda, and when he opened his eyes, he saw Mulder hyperventilating with his fist pressed into the wall, and Hudson and Zito standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the doorway, casually placing bets on whether or not this would make the sports pages.
He kinda hated them both, right then. But then Hudson paid for the cab and Zito made sure Mulder was put in the backseat beside him, Mulder’s heavy arms around his neck, his forehead damp on Chavez’s cheek, and Chavez was still a good enough Christian to forgive them.
So, fifteen-twenty minutes later, in the front hallway of their house, at which they’d barely managed to arrive in one piece, Chavez was drunker than last time, and maybe Mulder was too, he figured circularly, maybe things were different now.
And he let Mulder slip through his hands, laughing hard with his back against the wall, and Chavez pushed his hand across Mulder’s stomach, asked breathlessly, “Sure you don’t want to fuck me?”
It was all very familiar. Mulder drew in a breath that moved his stomach away under Chavez’s hand, and shook his head, his eyes screwed shut. Chavez was gone again, and he twisted closer, his face against Mulder’s arm, thinking about Mulder’s forehead on his cheek, their messy embrace in the back of the cab.
“Just keep your eyes closed, you won’t even know the difference,” he said, and Mulder’s hand flattened on the side of his face, Mulder’s long fingers in the slick black of his hair. Chavez had the odd sensation of flight in every free part of his body.
And Mulder pushed him away, his ears colored dark red, and Mulder mumbled, “Knock it off, shut up. Don’t say anything else.”
Chavez lost his balance, scraped the heel of his hand on the wall, hit the carpet shoulder first. He laughed as if with someone else’s breath, a high loose cackle that echoed all around them, and he wouldn’t remember any of it.
Mulder would, of course, but Mulder was only a supporting character this time around.
*
Mulder, who’d denied him twice, one shy of the record, called his name from across the clubhouse and Chavez went over there with dirt in his hair and line-chalk on his hands.
“Orange juice, man,” Mulder said without a greeting. “It’s your turn to buy.”
Chavez sat down in the chair, keeping his eyes from tracking Mulder’s arms and legs, watching Zito and Hudson goofing around on the arcade game. “Too much sugar. I read about it in this thing. It’s really, might as well just drink Coke.”
“Fine. Buy some Coke. Buy something. I don’t care.”
Chavez glanced at him. “Are you okay?”
Mulder stuffed his glove into his bag, yanked his jersey off and let it drop to the floor. “I’m fine,” Mulder said, his voice clipped. “My shoulder hurts. But I’m fine.”
He pulled his undershirt over his head, and Chavez caught muscle, skin, the brief flare of his hips. Mulder stood with his shoulders fallen, rubbing the back of his neck. It wasn’t often, a time like this when Mulder looked his age.
“You need to get some sleep,” Chavez told him, his throat dust-clogged. Mulder nodded.
“I know.” He fell into the chair next to Chavez, twenty-three years old and bare-chested, showing more than he meant to. Chavez kept quiet, the slow pull of August weighted like hands on his shoulders, and Mulder exhaled, clearing the strength out of Chavez so that he would have enough to get through the rest of the season.
*
Zito was on their front lawn, yelling Mulder’s name, MarkMarkMark, and it was four in the morning.
Chavez rolled out of bed and tumbled to the floor. His head was on fire. He crawled to the window and shouted all sorts of broken, cursing things, until his voice was the only one echoing across the street.
He was on his knees, resting his forehead on the windowsill, still most of the way asleep. Zito came to the window and reached in, rapped his knuckles on Chavez’s head. Chavez could only wish that he’d left the window shut, that he’d stuffed his ears with cotton or taken a sleeping pill and been rendered dreamless, untouchable.
Instead, he got Zito slurring and saying like he was surprised, “not who I was lookin’ for, you’re a totally different person.”
Chavez lifted his head, pushed himself up with his hands on the sill. Zito was tottering, his hair greasy and matted, endlessly fucked up. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Mulder,” Zito said. “Want Mulder.”
“Yeah, don’t we all,” Chavez muttered under his breath, his mind clearing. “Hang on.”
He went to Mulder’s room and knocked four times before pushing the door open. Mulder’s bed was empty, the covers thrown back. Chavez went outside, found Zito studying his hands intently.
“He’s gone. Not home.”
Zito blinked at him, and then fell down. He just lost his balance standing, and crashed on the grass. Chavez stared down at him, stunned, but Zito got back up again a second later, like it was nothing, like it happened all the time.
“He, he owes me. Lotsa money,” Zito said earnestly. Chavez took his arm, not liking the unhooked glaze in Zito’s eyes. Zito shook him off. “Five hunnert dollars.”
Chavez raised his eyebrows. “He owes you five hundred dollars?”
Zito grinned, and nodded. “Bet me, like, awhile ago, bet me that I’d never drink with Hudson and Hudson’d pass out first. But I did.” Zito’s forehead lined. “He did. Passed out, I mean. Timmy, he just went down, like, pffft.”
Zito almost fell again, and Chavez reached out, but Zito caught himself on the side of the house.
“You drank Huddy under the table and then got in your fucking car? What are you, retarded?”
Zito looked at him helplessly. “Um.”
Chavez rolled his eyes. “Here, sit down before you fall again.” Zito folded himself down on the lawn with relief, and Chavez crouched next to him. “Did you leave Huddy on the floor of a bar somewhere?”
Zito’s face opened in indignation. “No. ‘Course not. He’d kill me, and then never talk to me again. I put him in a cab. I made sure.”
“Well, I don’t know where Mulder is.” Chavez thought about frisking Zito, getting his car keys and hiding them in the coffee jar or something. But it seemed like too much trouble; he was pretty tired. “You can sleep here if you want.”
“Sleep outside? But there’s bugs and stuff.”
Chavez rolled his eyes again. “Jesus, you can sleep inside, idiot. We got a couch.”
Zito scowled at him. “Don’t call me idiot just ‘cause I’m drunk. You’ve been drunk, I’ve seen it.”
Chavez fisted his hands in the grass, the soft ground giving under his knuckles. “Whatever, man. I’m going back to bed.”
He stood, and Zito clutched at his leg, his nails scratching at the back of Chavez’s knee. Chavez twitched-he’d always been ticklish there. “Take me with you,” Zito said with his upturned eyes huge and dark, and Chavez froze. “Take me inside,” Zito clarified. “I won’t find it on my own.”
Exhaling, Chavez offered him a hand and pulled him up, gave Zito a pillow and a blanket and the television remote in case he couldn’t sleep. Zito thanked him and Chavez left the room to the sound of Zito murmuring about how Hudson had been so drunk, shoulda seen, so drunk he almost said yes.
Chavez didn’t know why that sounded so familiar, and he fell asleep thinking about it, woke up to find that Zito had given up on the couch and usurped Mulder’s bed, the door wide open and Zito’s face jammed in the pillow, his arm slung down to the carpet. Chavez smiled without joy, and went to put the coffee on.
*
Then, fair enough, in Boston, it worked out neatly so that Chavez was getting ice for his shoulder when Hudson threw Zito out.
Their voices rose up behind the door, and Chavez cocked his head, cradling the bucket of ice on his hip. A muffled cracking sound, then the door slammed open and Hudson said hoarsely, “already told you no, I’m not like that, will you get the fuck out of here,” and then the scraped stumbling sound of Zito tripping, falling, landing hard on the carpet.
Chavez set the bucket of ice on the ground. He realized absently that he was grinning.
He sauntered out, and Zito was down there, his knees up against his chest, his face lowered. Chavez nudged his ankle, and Zito looked up, one eye gleaming wet, the other starting to swell. He blinked at Chavez, and said roughly, “I can’t believe this keeps happening to me.”
Chavez offered him a hand up, still grinning manically, and clasped Zito’s hand tightly as Zito swayed on his feet. “You, what? Actually expected him to say yes?” Chavez asked, and Zito’s hand jerked in his own, but Chavez wouldn’t let him go.
The skin around Zito’s eye was darkening. It was all just perfect.
Zito’s throat ducked as he swallowed, his good eye widening, and he shook his head, but let Chavez pull him into his room, let Chavez sit him down on the bed while he went back for the ice.
Chavez made an icepack out of a washcloth and stood over Zito, carefully holding it to his eye, his free hand cupped around the back of Zito’s head. Zito’s other eye stared up at him blankly.
“Motherfucker hits hard, doesn’t he?” Chavez asked softly, and Zito’s eye closed as he exhaled a shaky sigh.
Chavez thought about the thing that he was not, the thing that he could not be, and he had a vision of Zito in this hotel room bed tomorrow morning, bleach-white sheets and torn foil, a glass broken under the window.
Chavez thought, ‘so be it.’
*
Making not just one, but two drunken passes at Mark Mulder should have been the stupidest thing that Eric Chavez ever did in his life, but then he found himself pressed up against the door of Barry Zito’s apartment, Zito on his knees with one hand on Chavez’s stomach, holding him still.
Chavez’s hands were full of Zito’s hair. His eyes were full of stars.
It wasn’t what he’d expected, this awful second choice of his. Zito had all these jagged edges, places where Chavez figured he’d be smooth and easy. Zito woke up sharply every couple of nights, his breath caught up in his throat, his face pale and terrified, and never said anything about it.
Zito was on his knees, right where he belonged, and Chavez was moaning, his hands clenched, his heartbeat stammering. Zito was so good at this it was kind of scary. Chavez could hardly breathe. He kept picturing lights in his minds, filaments, fluorescents, naked bulbs swinging from the rafters. Nothing made any sense, and then Zito hollowed his cheeks and opened his throat and the light exploded.
It was that night, or some night like it, and Chavez was trying to get to sleep, impossible because Zito used the wrong kind of detergent on his sheets and it made Chavez’s skin itch. He would have just gone home (it wasn’t like Zito would have cared), but he didn’t like seeing Mulder after fucking around with Zito. He felt like everything they’d done was writ in glow-in-the-dark letters across his face, wouldn’t fade until morning.
Zito rolled over onto his back and asked the ceiling, “You think Hudson hates me?”
Chavez yawned. “Yeah, probably.” Zito glared at him, and Chavez rolled his eyes. “Ask a stupid question, Z.”
Zito rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, and Chavez watched the tight skin of his chest move and pull, slide back into place. “Why would he hate you?” Chavez asked, his fingers twitching against Zito’s leg.
“I keep getting drunk and trying to have sex with him.”
Chavez snorted. Zito didn’t even bother looking at him again. Chavez wanted to get his hands back in Zito’s hair, the pieces of dark blue still painted in among the brown, and he wanted his mouth on Zito’s chest and stomach. It was nothing more than the knowledge that Zito wasn’t going to push him away, unless he bit too hard or drew blood or left a mark, the simple fact that he was allowed-that was the only reason he kept coming around.
“Stop doing that, then,” Chavez told him, and licked Zito’s shoulder. “You got me for that now, right?”
Zito let Chavez’s mouth move down his arm, teeth in the crook of his elbow, Chavez’s tongue tracing the lines of his ribs, and Zito sighed, running his hand absently over Chavez’s back. “Poor substitute,” Zito said softly, and Chavez was pretty sure that was only a joke.
*
By the early fall, they talked about Zito like he was decked in laurel and roses, and Mulder started asking questions.
“Where do you go all the time?”
They were on the deck, reclined in patio chairs, drinking beer under the stars. Chavez stared up at the sky and asked, “What do you mean?”
He heard the plasticky rustle of Mulder shrugging. “You disappear. Like, a lot. I mean, you always have, but I never. I keep forgetting to ask why.”
Chavez shook his head automatically, because it hadn’t been forever, only a few months now. Then he remembered. As far as Mulder was concerned, that was forever. As far as all three of them were concerned, if he wanted to be honest about it, which he didn’t.
Mulder should have asked awhile ago. Chavez should have been prepared.
“I, um. I don’t know. I don’t go anywhere.” Chavez kept his eyes turned upwards, the trees, the stars, the moon, yeah the moon. Coins, he thought fuzzily, sky’s made of money tonight.
“You don’t come home sometimes,” Mulder pointed out, taking a drink of his beer. “I mean, dude. Where are you sleeping?”
Chavez swallowed, and flicked his hand abstractly. “Well, girls, you know?” he said fumblingly. “Like, they, um, take me home? Sometimes, I let them. You know.”
Mulder’s eyebrows twitched upwards. “Girls?”
Chavez flinched, too quickly to be seen. “Yeah,” he said with assurance. “Of course.”
He snuck a look and now Mulder was grinning at him. “Dude! You have to tell me these things. How’m I supposed to know you’re a player if you don’t tell me?”
Chavez’s face heated, and he curled one arm over his stomach. “Oh, well. You know.”
“You said that already,” Mulder answered, but he was grinning, his broad movie-star grin, and Chavez had the bright shabby feeling of getting away with something.
He drank too much and lost his ability to walk, and Mulder hauled him inside, his arm around Chavez’s waist, Chavez’s head bouncing on his shoulder. The words ‘dirty little secret’ had always sounded so good to him, so forbidden and romantic. He kept seeing all the faceless, heartless girls, who couldn’t resist him, who took him home and held him down. By the time he fell asleep, he’d forgotten that it had all been a lie.
*
Zito was scared of thunder. A summer storm, the sky cut to pieces, and every time the thunder came, he jerked, burrowed a little deeper under the covers.
Chavez couldn’t believe it. “Tell me you’re kidding,” he said, when Zito’s fearful breath fell on his ribs. He slid down, pulling the covers over them both.
Zito played dumb. “What? I’m cold.”
Chavez flattened his hand on Zito’s chest. “You are not,” he whispered. “You’re, look at you, you’re scared of the storm.”
“I’m not a fucking kid,” Zito answered sharply, but he didn’t move to pull the covers down. It was pitch-black in there, tar covering Chavez’s eyes.
“No, but you’re scared of the thunder,” he said teasingly, and then the thunder rolled and Zito jerked again, latched one hand on Chavez’s side, clinging to him in slight panic. Chavez snickered lightly. “See?”
“It’s just a bit loud,” Zito claimed, convincing no one, his hand drawing Chavez closer to him, until they were face to face, chest to chest, Zito’s breath on his cheek. “It’s. Sudden.”
“It’s thunder. It’s nothing.”
“Look, I know.” Zito shivered. “It’s not my fault. There was a storm and the power went out and I called for my dad but it was too loud for him to hear me. I musta been three or four.”
Chavez rubbed Zito’s chest comfortingly, still smirking, but of course Zito couldn’t see.
“I’m not scared of anything else,” Zito continued, his voice breaking. “Only one thing, I’m allowed.”
“Sure you are.” Chavez shook his head in amazement. “Bad luck, anyway.”
“Thunder?”
“Oh yeah. Worse than stepping on the line.”
Zito’s mouth twitched against Chavez’s jaw. “You’re just making stuff up now.”
“That’s true. But are you still scared?”
There was a long pause, and then Zito was wrapping an arm around Chavez’s back, burying his face in Chavez’s neck. Chavez laughed, the sound of it low and muffled, and he could feel the sockets of Zito’s eyes, hollowed against his throat.
*
Chavez had dreams that consisted entirely of neon signs. The space behind his eyes highly lit, he woke up more tired than he went to sleep, and sometimes Zito was there, sometimes he wasn’t. Either way, Chavez drank more coffee than was probably wise, his hands trembling, his eyesight blurred.
That year, Zito and Mulder’s first year, flew by.
He woke up and it was the ninth day of October. Their season was over, and Mulder had already gone back to Chicago, and Zito had come over the night before to keep him company, the house crowded with echoes and crushed-up paper cups.
Zito had been out at a club or something; he hadn’t gotten there until late, so they just went to bed without doing anything. It was strange to have Zito in the same bed with him and not be strained and fucked out, to be restless and dry.
He woke up. Zito was pressed against his back, his arm folded uncomfortably between them. The first thing Chavez remembered was that they’d lost the division series. It was a stuck place in his throat, an echo in his mind.
Zito stirred, murmured, and worked his arm free, draped it over Chavez’s body and started messing around, tugging at the hair on Chavez’s chest, scratching his nails on Chavez’s stomach. Chavez squirmed and pushed backwards, and Zito’s breath blew warmly on the back of his neck.
“Hollywood?” he asked with his voice sleep-rough, tipping his head back on Zito’s shoulder.
Zito bit his ear lightly. “Flight’s at two o’clock.”
Chavez hummed, bumping the back of his head into Zito’s nose. “We’ll get you there.” He reached back and curled his hand around Zito’s hip, pulling them flush, chest to back. “This first, okay?”
Zito nodded, kicked the blankets off. “This first.”
*
That off-season, Eric Chavez stayed in Oakland most of the time, and let his hair grow out, and watched the fog roll off San Francisco and disappear into the bay, the boats vanished and the metal rail frozen under his hands.
It was cold, and November felt about a million years old.
He went home to San Diego for Thanksgiving, and got drunk on red wine on the back porch with his brothers. It wasn’t until he was an hour north and still going ninety on the highway that he realized he’d left.
He had Zito’s address in Hollywood written on the back of a receipt, and it took him too long to find it, a ten-story brick building in a bad part of town, flicker-lit by trashcan fires and the guttering streetlamps. Chavez leaned on the buzzer, his eyelids coated with melted lead, his head throbbing.
It was five, ten, fifteen minutes before Zito’s pissed-off voice crackled through the intercom, and Chavez couldn’t help but smile.
“I came to see you,” he said when Zito stopped swearing long enough for him to get a word in. Zito took a long moment.
“Chavvy?”
“Yep. Happy Thanksgiving.”
“It’s three in the morning,” Zito answered, sounding tired. “It’s not Thanksgiving anymore.”
“Yeah, and last time it was four in the morning. Next time, who can say.” Chavez played his fingers over the intercom’s buttons, the messy scrawled names of Zito’s neighbors. “Let me up?”
There was another long pause, then the buzzer sliced through, and Chavez almost missed his grip, but caught it in the end.
Zito’s door was open, and Zito was already back in bed, all the lights off. Chavez tripped over a pair of shoes and laughed at himself, stumbled towards the movement of Zito under the sheets. He crawled in fully-dressed, and Zito’s hands were sleepy and cautious working his jeans off, his mouth hot and worth the drive.
Zito lifted his head, his hair getting in Chavez’s eyes, and held Chavez down by his hips, Chavez straining up, thinking in flags and swatches that he was stronger than Zito, he could get free if he needed to.
“You didn’t have to come so far,” Zito said, his thumbs rubbing Chavez’s stomach. “We mighta found someplace halfway.”
Chavez turned his head to the side, breathing in short pulls, knifes into his lungs. “Don’t wanna hear it, man. I’m here now and that’s all. Just. Here. Like this.” He took Zito’s wrist in his hand and slid it down, dug his teeth into his lip when Zito’s fingers closed around him and started to move. Chavez gasped, arched up. “See, yeah. Yeah.”
Zito lowered his head, biting at Chavez’s mouth, and Chavez saw the highway behind his eyes, flat and black, the clean awareness that he’d drive home in a few hours with a certain taste in his mouth and Zito’s teeth lined up on his throat.
*
The rest of the winter went by blurred, in fast-forward. Strange because it seemed so long in each moment, the quiet of Chavez’s apartment, the give of the street, the sirens in the night. But then it was time to go back to Phoenix, and Chavez couldn’t remember anything that had happened, none of the killer nights when he hadn’t slept, none of the days when he’d been motionless and bored, watching television for twelve hours straight.
He was shaking, on the plane, staring out the window the whole time.
The pitchers were already down, and Chavez was staying in the same condo complex as Mulder; he’d gotten the last available unit because Mulder had called when he’d seen boxes and a moving van. The whole place was packed with major league pitchers.
Chavez tried out his keys and dropped his stuff off, and then went down the hall to Mulder’s for a beer.
Mulder’s off-season had been painfully uninteresting. Chavez listened to the tell of a Midwest winter, the frostbite that had turned the tips of Mulder’s fingers white, then blue, then gray, and the warm water that had brought them back to life, burning like acid. He asked after Mulder’s parents and brothers, and wondered if Lake Michigan ever froze over, if you could walk to Canada in the middle of January.
Mulder looked exactly the same. He left the television on, a basketball game moving colorful and fast behind them.
The door was left slightly ajar, because they were all friends here, and Zito knocked perfunctorily before pushing it open.
“Dude, you wanna go get some-” Zito stopped abruptly, seeing Chavez, his eyes widening. “You’re here,” he said with a lace of excitement in his voice, and then flushed, cleared his throat. “How’s it going?” he asked more casually.
Chavez couldn’t take his eyes away, a stupid grin on his face. It’d been three months since the day after Thanksgiving, when Zito had walked him to the door and kissed the side of his mouth. Zito was more tan, the shadows back under his eyes. He was wearing a red shirt with a hole in the shoulder, and Chavez licked his lips unthinkingly.
They made small talk and Chavez had forgotten Mulder was in the room until he said, “We’ll go for dinner in a little bit, okay? I’ll call you.” Zito nodded, lifted his eyebrows slightly at Chavez, and left.
Chavez waited a minute or two before telling Mulder, “’Kay, I gotta go unpack.”
Mulder looked at him in surprise. “You didn’t finish your beer.”
Chavez tipped it back, draining the last of it in one long swallow. He clapped the bottle on the table, said, “See ya,” and was out the door without waiting for Mulder’s reply.
Zito was waiting at the stairs, leaning back against the wall, smiling when Chavez came for him. Chavez had his hand halfway down Zito’s jeans in the stairwell, had Zito snickering and pushing him away.
“Your hair got long,” Zito said in the hallway, running his hand through it, tugging.
Chavez rolled his head under Zito’s hand, a tight prickle skittering down his spine. “Too lazy to get it cut.”
“I like it, it’s good,” Zito said, and shouldered the door open.
Zito’s condo was the same as Mulder’s, the same as Chavez’s. His cell phone was vibrating in his pocket, against the back of Chavez’s hand, and Chavez extracted himself to pull the phone out, look at the little screen.
“It’s Huddy,” he said, his eyebrows pulling down, stepping back. Zito pulled him forward, took the phone out of his hand and tossed it on the couch.
“He’ll call back,” Zito said with a grin, and one hand went to the back of Chavez’s neck, the other hooked in his belt. Zito kissed him so hard it kinda hurt, and whispered against Chavez’s mouth, “Missed this.”
Chavez nodded blindly, pushed his hands up under Zito’s shirt, spring training and so happy his chest ached.
*
On and on, and 2001 was very similar to 2000, except that their team was better, and Zito turned up whenever Chavez wanted him, like a magic trick. The room, whichever room it happened to be at that moment, would empty eventually, if they gave it enough time, and they’d be left alone and Chavez couldn’t keep his hands off him.
Once, even, the room wasn’t empty, Byrnes was passed out under the window and Chavez went down on Zito on the bed, his head under the covers, Zito’s cargo shorts open and his boxers scrunched down just far enough, Zito biting down on his own hand. Afterwards, Zito kept petting his head and saying into his ear, “you’re crazy, you know that, fuckin’ lunatic,” the heat of their bodies under the blankets stifling.
Mulder was so good that year, Chavez almost couldn’t watch him pitch. He kept waiting for everything to go south, for Mulder’s shoulder to give out or maybe his back, looking for the slider to flatten, the curve to hang, but it never happened. The disaster of Mulder’s rookie year still hung around him like pieces of crepe paper, but Chavez seemed to be the only one who could see it.
They lived together again, this house very much like last year’s, painted blue instead of yellow, the kitchen floor tiled with octagons rather than hexagons, but when drunk, Chavez kept forgetting.
“You’re just a fucking rookie,” he told Mulder angrily at one point, swiping the bottle out of his hand, and Mulder had blinked at him for a moment before starting to laugh.
“Oh man, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Mulder said through his laughter.
Chavez remembered then, that this was Year Two of the best phase of his life, but he was often belligerent this time of night, sitting on the living room carpet the way they were.
“Rookie for life,” he muttered. “Rookie at heart, that’s what counts.”
Mulder shook his head, grinning. “Kid, kid, kid,” he hummed, and Chavez hated it when Mulder made a point of Chavez being younger than him.
“Shut up.” He punched his fingers at the videogame controller, sending his guy spiraling out in flames.
“It’s different this year, you know?” Mulder said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. Chavez also hated it when Mulder started to attempt profundity, as typically happened six beers in.
“Not really.” Chavez waved a hand between them. “You’re still here. I’m still here. And the other guys, Huddy and Miguel and everybody. Zito, still here.” Chavez thought about Zito for awhile, Zito’s scrawny arms and smooth chest. He smiled without being aware of it. “All the important stuff’s the same.”
“Just because you get confused, doesn’t mean it’s the same.”
That only made Chavez’s head spin. He lay back on the floor to get his bearings. Mulder’s head bobbed in his peripheral vision.
“Are you giving up?” Mulder asked, nudging Chavez’s controller where it rested on his stomach.
Chavez sighed. “Yeah, think so.”
“Cool. I win.”
Chavez closed his eyes. “You always win.”
“This time, I barely even had to try.”
Chavez smiled slightly, seeing Mulder’s face in his mind’s eye, happy victorious bend to his mouth, the unlined skin around his eyes. Though idly about when Mulder used to drive him crazy, not so long ago. And maybe stuff had changed, whether or not that was what he’d intended.
*
Two-three-four nights later, Chavez asked Zito, “Are you still trying to have sex with Hudson?”
Zito’s hand, which was nicely occupied inside Chavez’s boxers, stopped moving, and Zito cocked an eyebrow. “Right this second? No.”
Chavez squirmed, wanting to get Zito’s hand going again, wanting his question answered. “Don’t be a jerk.”
Zito took his hand out entirely, and Chavez groaned, his lips pressed tightly together. “Okay,” Zito said agreeably, drumming his fingers on Chavez’s stomach. “Anything else you don’t want me to be?”
Chavez put one arm up over his eyes. “A fucking tease.”
“You’re the one asking totally rude questions instead of just lying there like you’re supposed to. I mean, jeez.”
“How is that a rude question?” Chavez asked defensively. “I’m just curious.”
“Considering where my hand just was, anything other than, ‘where have you been all my life,’ is a rude question.”
Chavez took his arm down, mocked a sarcastic smile up at Zito. “Ha.”
Zito grinned, and leaned down, licking Chavez’s stomach, making him start and clench his hand on Zito’s shoulder. “Where’ve you been, man,” Zito sing-songed, his breath warm and fantastic. “All my life, tell me please.”
“Crazy,” Chavez murmured, combing through Zito’s hair, pressing on the back of his head so that Zito would have no choice but to use his teeth.
Zito did, and then a little while later his tongue, and his fingers, and everything else, Chavez’s legs over his back, Chavez’s boxers hanging off his ankle. Chavez was left broken up, blown apart.
He was panting, waiting for his eyesight to return, and Zito slid up next to him, kissed him on the mouth and told him, “No, I’m not still trying to have sex with him. And you don’t want to sleep with Mulder anymore.”
Chavez inhaled sharply and pressed his nose against Zito’s cheek, squeezing his eyes shut even tighter. Zito shouldn’t have known, but how could he not? Zito wasn’t blind. “I don’t,” he whispered, astonished because he was telling the truth.
“I know.” Zito smiled against his face, stroking Chavez’s neck. “It’s enough, babe, I know that now.”
Chavez flipped him over, pinned him down. It would be years, he realized, years and years before he’d get over Zito being his second choice, before they’d each forgive that particular trespass. It didn’t matter; they had all the time in the world.
*
On and on. Chavez woke up one morning and it was July, he woke up the next day and it was August, woke up the next and it was September. He woke up with the slow and irresistible feeling that something was passing him by.
He woke up and the season was over, blink and you’d miss it. Zito wasn’t there; he’d flown to L.A. straight from New York. Mulder wasn’t there either. Chavez had heard from Giambi that Mulder had driven all night after losing the fifth game, and wound up in Canada, but he was pretty sure that was a lie.
So New York City was there beyond the window and it was raining, a low gray huddled around the buildings, and the adrenaline of the past three months had drained as he slept. Every piece of him hurt.
In the cab to the airport, he called Zito three times, and never got through. He didn’t leave a message-there wasn’t much to say.
He made a promise: won’t go to Hollywood this off-season. Won’t show up at Zito’s door with a duffel bag and half the rent. Won’t be this fucking gone on Barry Zito.
He watched the city scroll by and everyone looked scared and heartbroken. It had only been a month since what had happened, happened. Eric Chavez’s simple little life, his kid job and teenage romance, didn’t mean anything here, not now.
He was exhausted.
He slept on the plane and was jarred awake as the wheels hit the ground in San Diego. His back was twisted metal by that point, but he didn’t have to worry about it for four months. He had five voicemails waiting for him, two from his parents, one from an old friend, one hang-up, and one from Mark Mulder, who said something unintelligible with traffic behind him, sounding fall-down drunk and pissed off.
His father was waiting for him at baggage claim. Chavez wanted to turn and run back into the terminal, hijack a plane of his own, and fly north.
*
He couldn’t keep his promise, which anyone who could read the stitches the way he could really should seen coming.
A week into their off-season, Chavez borrowed his brother’s truck and made the drive to Hollywood in under an hour, and that had to be some kind of record. Zito let him in with a grin, and they spent three days locked up in that crummy apartment, until Chavez’s brother left a particularly threatening message and Chavez left Zito naked and asleep, knowing he would never leave if he woke Zito up first.
Zito didn’t call him. Two weeks later, Chavez went back to Oakland.
A day before his birthday, Zito came to see him, and that time it was six days. They only put on shirts to open the door for the delivery people. They ate Chinese food, and pizza, Thai and deli sandwiches, the case of oranges Chavez’s mom had sent, sticky-handed, sweet all over. They watched every movie Chavez owned a half dozen times, drank tap water and tasted like metal. At some point, Chavez claimed that there was no way he could ever have sex again, it was physically impossible, and Zito turned him onto his stomach, proved him wrong.
By the fifth day, it hurt to do anything except sleep. And when he slept, he dreamed of Zito, Zito on the field, Zito driving him somewhere, Zito leaning back against the kitchen counter, drinking coffee in his boxers. It was unclear what was real.
He was too sore to get out of bed, and Zito leaned over him fully dressed, whispered, “I’m going now, man, okay? I’ll see you in Phoenix.”
Chavez reached out groggily, closed his hand in Zito’s shirtfront, found the strength to pull him off balance, Zito collapsing on the bed beside him, laughing. His sneakers were mucking up the sheets and Chavez didn’t care. He pressed his face against Zito’s chest, breathed in through Zito’s shirt, Zito’s coat falling around his ears.
He said, “stay stay stay.”
Zito palmed his head. “I gotta go. My sister, the band, remember?”
Chavez wasn’t all the way awake, and didn’t want to be-it hurt to be awake. His legs, his lower back, the backs of his arms, throbbing like individual heartbeats. His neck had been wrenched at some point. But Zito smelled good, fresh out of the shower, and Zito’s hand was wide and warm on the back of his neck.
Zito had obligations, though, a life beyond this. Chavez couldn’t stand it.
“Yeah, go,” he mumbled, releasing his grip on Zito’s shirt and slumping back. “Tell her I say hi.”
Zito’s hand rested on his chest, tapping his fingers thoughtfully. “You know, I never thought it’d be like this,” he said, and Chavez opened his eyes, saw Zito smile and kiss his fingertips, press them down on Chavez’s sternum, and Chavez closed his eyes again.
*
read this second.