stealing from newspaper boxes
Tonight I had to talk two friends out of flying to Jackson, Mississippi, renting a car and driving into the storm, accompanied only by cameras and cell phones and the wish to properly depict what's happening in New Orleans right now. I said, a city gets evacuated for a reason. They said, this is something that won't happen again. I said, yeah, god willing. They said, how can we miss this? I said, it's not a fucking opening night.
Anyway, I'm not too happy with them. Nor they with me.
I fear for the Supreme Court, and the sense of impending disaster, but it might just be the time of year.
I worry sometimes that baseball is causing my life to go by too quickly. Last week, pitchers and catchers were reporting and we were making plans to go to Phoenix. Four days ago, we were fifteen games under. The summer, it has flown. That happens every year. Of course, the slowness of the off-season would seem to balance that out nicely. Still.
I wanna find that kid in the green hockey mask who's at the Coliseum every day, and tell him, I get to twenty or thirty games a year, and you are my hero. Someday I'll be rich and follow the team around all season. And I'll be able to say, road trip life, man, I feelya.
Gravitation, or How I Got Over Their Names Being One Letter Apart
By Candle Beck
You park around back. You cut through the neighbor’s yard, a gray cat with white circles around its eyes hunching over its paws on their patio and tracking you without blinking, almost vibrating. You walk on the outsides of your feet like an Indian, push open the gate, the wood swollen from the mist and soft against your hand. There’s a pink Japanese paper lantern hanging over the deck, and every light is on inside.
The sliding door sticks for a second when you try to push it open. There are voices rattling down the hallway from the kitchen, and you follow them down. Huston Street calls softly from his room, “hey man,” and you lift your hand.
Crosby hollers, “Danny!” and tosses you a beer. Crosby’s telling some convoluted Long Beach story, gesturing messily with his beer, and Nick Swisher’s nodding, wide-eyed and agreeing, “oh absolutely, sure, sure.”
Rap music on the stereo in the next room bleeds through, the occasional coarse shouts of the guys playing Grand Theft Auto, and you want to join them, steal cars and pick up prostitutes. Instead, you drink your beer, and sit at the kitchen table, the conversation weaving around you.
You close your eyes and tilt your head back to rest on the wall. You can feel the pulse in your wrist where it presses against the tabletop, and you wish faintly that the humidity could find this place the way it found Peoria and St. Louis. Tick tick tock, and Barry Zito’s camera is snapping away without any of you being warned.
“Danny?”
Rich Harden is hailing you. He’s standing on a diagonal in the doorway, one hand in his pocket. He’s got a nondescript blue baseball cap pulled on backwards, and when you meet his eyes, he half-smiles, looking already hungover, ready to go back to bed.
Your head starts to ache in a steady, tolerable rhythm, your mouth going dry. Harden’s lips curl up like smoke, and you count down the hours on your fingers, biting your tongue.
*
You dream fitfully of batting practice, sitting in foul ground, in the sun. You feel drunk in the dream, squinting yourself blind, tracking the line drives and home runs, thock-whap, over and over again. One of the coaches is lazily slapping grounders for the utility infielders to turn into double plays. The infielders turn into shadows, and then torn pieces of cotton; they’re constantly in motion.
You lay back on the grass, which crackles under you like newspaper, and Harden comes floating above you, his face black with the sun behind him, his shoulders heavy and wide. He grins, and you fall asleep.
You wake up.
You’re in the living room, on the floor with somebody indistinct a yard or two away, a jacket over his head. The videogame controller’s cord is wrapped around your arm. You feel slow and dull from still being kind of buzzed, still kind of asleep.
Lifting a hand, you touch your face and can feel the pattern of the carpet imprinted on your cheek. Your chest feels oddly flattened, your heart weighted like a magnet.
You get up and go down the hall. Rich Harden’s door opens smoothly, the hinges fresh-oiled, and in here there are posters of cars and mostly naked women, a pixilated baseball bouncing around the screen of Harden’s computer. In here, Rich Harden is way over on one side of the bed, foggy streetlight coming in through his blinds.
He’s not asleep.
He rolls over when you click the door shut, and you lean back with your hands pinned behind you, looking closely for the blue of his eyes in the air. But it’s too dark.
“All right?” you ask, shifting so that you can cross your fingers.
Harden tips his head to the side and the dim light falls golden on the side of his face, picking out the curve of his ear, the twist of his mouth.
“Lock the door,” he says, and now you can’t help but grin, a hard white grin that stretches painfully on your face.
You lock the door and take off your shirt. Harden half-sits up and flips the covers back; your hands start to shake.
He pulls you down. His mouth attaches to your throat and you bunch his shirt up, sliding your hands higher. Your fingers are cold from sleeping on the floor, and he hisses, jerks against you. You work your hands under his body to warm them up. He sighs against your mouth and says your name.
Harden is all ripped arms and pale stomach, his hair stiff with gel and scratching under your chin. His eyes make you feel like you’re still unconscious, passed out drunk.
He lets you guide him onto his side, lets you draw his boxers down past his knees and drag your open mouth over his shoulder blades. He bends his head down, concentrating very hard, and you get him all ready, start off slow to hear him curse.
Your hand is on his hip, gripping for leverage, digging your chin into his shoulder, and he covers your hand with his own, pulls your hand up to his mouth. He does this every time, though he’s not that vocal, really. He just likes to have something to bite down on. And you like the feel of his teeth cutting into your palm.
If you had your way about it, the entirety of your life would be spent fucking Rich Harden. As it is, all you’ve got is about twenty minutes.
*
Five months ago, in Phoenix, you’d caught some kind of strange fever and couldn’t think straight for a couple of days. You were just getting to know everybody and didn’t want them to think you were some punk kid who couldn’t remember anything, but you couldn’t help it. Everyone kept asking you about the World Series; you’d been trying to forget all winter.
You liked Zito and you liked Crosby. You liked Joe Blanton and Nick Swisher and the way they made ‘redneck’ sound like the highest form of flattery. You liked how the pitchers would soft-toss to each other in the outfield, taking mighty hopeless swings with borrowed bats, the everyday players hooting and calling advice. You liked to talk pitching with Eric Chavez, because he was the kind of hitter you’d always had a hell of a time getting out, patient and quick-handed lefty, and he told you that splitters inside just ate him up. You made careful note.
It was a good team. It wasn’t strange for you to be twenty-four years old.
One afternoon, Rich Harden was talking on the phone outside the clubhouse door, pacing around in a small circle. You hesitated, wanting to wish him a good night, but he held up one finger and widened his eyes at you.
You waited, squinting at the bottom edge of the sky, where the desert threw up red dust and made everything look purple.
Harden finished his call and tucked his phone in his pocket, turning to you and saying, “Hey, you know how to jumpstart a car?”
“Um. No,” you answered, thinking absently that your father would have known how.
Harden sighed and of course you ended up driving him back to the condo where he was staying with Crosby. Of course you picked up beers on the way and sat out by the pool until it was full dark.
You kept testing your own forehead, pressing your fingers under your jaw to see if your glands were swollen. Harden asked if you were getting sick and you said, “yeah, think so.”
He nodded, his profile silhouetted, the slight upturn of his nose making him look regal. He said that at least it wasn’t cold, and you agreed.
Something there in the clink of glass bottles on cement, the small desert lizards scrambling across the deck, the rubbery give of the chair, the wobble of the pool’s water, blue as the sky, and Rich Harden’s eyes, hidden in the shadows on his face.
You followed him inside and Crosby was still out. Harden made you both toast with cheese, and you ate sitting across from him at the table, your heels dragging on the linoleum.
He washed your plates and you came to stand close behind him, drawn by the hazy glint of interest in his face when he was watching you, and the ease of your conversation, and the fact that he’d made you toast.
He turned and inhaled sharply to find you right there. You took his wrist and his hands were still wet, slick-sliding against your fingers. You pinned his wrist down to the edge of the counter, dripping water, and he met your eyes, just barely smiling.
You almost bit through his lip, the first time. He almost broke your arm.
You slept beside him until he pushed you awake and whispered, “listen, Bobby came home, you gotta get lost.”
You got dressed in the dark room and he got up to sneak you out, checking to make sure the coast was clear, murmuring to you, stay back, wait a second. You clutched the back of his shirt and rubbed your knuckles on his back, hearing Crosby’s music trickling through the wall.
At the front door, he kissed you and said, “Come find me tomorrow, okay?”
And you did.
*
You leave Walnut Creek at dawn, Harden left twisted up in the covers and washed with cold morning light. You’re carrying your flip-flops and the grass is damp and soft under your feet, the sky overcast.
You drive back to San Francisco on an empty eight-lane highway, downtown Oakland flashing past, the city across the water piled up like a jewelry box overturned. You sing along to the radio.
It’s been a long night, and a long week, month, season. You’re exhausted and beat up on the inside, your hands sticky, your lower back throbbing, but you run your tongue over your teeth and the roof of your mouth, thinking about Rich Harden shivering and craning back into you.
Newspaper trucks trundle by, men with large arms hefting bound stacks into the doorways of stores. Night watchmen are still in uniform, smoking cigarettes and waiting for the bus. All the neon signs are turned off.
You get to your apartment and turn on the coffee. You climb out onto the fire escape as you wait for it to be ready, and lean your weight on the cast-iron rail, which is freezing cold and leaves scraped bits of rust on your palms.
You look east, into the rising sun, and feel a staggering pull in your chest. You remind yourself, over and over, that it’s only a couple of hours, just a little while to kill and then you can drive back over the bridge, go to the ballpark and see him, not too much longer before your life will begin again.
THE END
Anyway, I'm not too happy with them. Nor they with me.
I fear for the Supreme Court, and the sense of impending disaster, but it might just be the time of year.
I worry sometimes that baseball is causing my life to go by too quickly. Last week, pitchers and catchers were reporting and we were making plans to go to Phoenix. Four days ago, we were fifteen games under. The summer, it has flown. That happens every year. Of course, the slowness of the off-season would seem to balance that out nicely. Still.
I wanna find that kid in the green hockey mask who's at the Coliseum every day, and tell him, I get to twenty or thirty games a year, and you are my hero. Someday I'll be rich and follow the team around all season. And I'll be able to say, road trip life, man, I feelya.
Gravitation, or How I Got Over Their Names Being One Letter Apart
By Candle Beck
You park around back. You cut through the neighbor’s yard, a gray cat with white circles around its eyes hunching over its paws on their patio and tracking you without blinking, almost vibrating. You walk on the outsides of your feet like an Indian, push open the gate, the wood swollen from the mist and soft against your hand. There’s a pink Japanese paper lantern hanging over the deck, and every light is on inside.
The sliding door sticks for a second when you try to push it open. There are voices rattling down the hallway from the kitchen, and you follow them down. Huston Street calls softly from his room, “hey man,” and you lift your hand.
Crosby hollers, “Danny!” and tosses you a beer. Crosby’s telling some convoluted Long Beach story, gesturing messily with his beer, and Nick Swisher’s nodding, wide-eyed and agreeing, “oh absolutely, sure, sure.”
Rap music on the stereo in the next room bleeds through, the occasional coarse shouts of the guys playing Grand Theft Auto, and you want to join them, steal cars and pick up prostitutes. Instead, you drink your beer, and sit at the kitchen table, the conversation weaving around you.
You close your eyes and tilt your head back to rest on the wall. You can feel the pulse in your wrist where it presses against the tabletop, and you wish faintly that the humidity could find this place the way it found Peoria and St. Louis. Tick tick tock, and Barry Zito’s camera is snapping away without any of you being warned.
“Danny?”
Rich Harden is hailing you. He’s standing on a diagonal in the doorway, one hand in his pocket. He’s got a nondescript blue baseball cap pulled on backwards, and when you meet his eyes, he half-smiles, looking already hungover, ready to go back to bed.
Your head starts to ache in a steady, tolerable rhythm, your mouth going dry. Harden’s lips curl up like smoke, and you count down the hours on your fingers, biting your tongue.
*
You dream fitfully of batting practice, sitting in foul ground, in the sun. You feel drunk in the dream, squinting yourself blind, tracking the line drives and home runs, thock-whap, over and over again. One of the coaches is lazily slapping grounders for the utility infielders to turn into double plays. The infielders turn into shadows, and then torn pieces of cotton; they’re constantly in motion.
You lay back on the grass, which crackles under you like newspaper, and Harden comes floating above you, his face black with the sun behind him, his shoulders heavy and wide. He grins, and you fall asleep.
You wake up.
You’re in the living room, on the floor with somebody indistinct a yard or two away, a jacket over his head. The videogame controller’s cord is wrapped around your arm. You feel slow and dull from still being kind of buzzed, still kind of asleep.
Lifting a hand, you touch your face and can feel the pattern of the carpet imprinted on your cheek. Your chest feels oddly flattened, your heart weighted like a magnet.
You get up and go down the hall. Rich Harden’s door opens smoothly, the hinges fresh-oiled, and in here there are posters of cars and mostly naked women, a pixilated baseball bouncing around the screen of Harden’s computer. In here, Rich Harden is way over on one side of the bed, foggy streetlight coming in through his blinds.
He’s not asleep.
He rolls over when you click the door shut, and you lean back with your hands pinned behind you, looking closely for the blue of his eyes in the air. But it’s too dark.
“All right?” you ask, shifting so that you can cross your fingers.
Harden tips his head to the side and the dim light falls golden on the side of his face, picking out the curve of his ear, the twist of his mouth.
“Lock the door,” he says, and now you can’t help but grin, a hard white grin that stretches painfully on your face.
You lock the door and take off your shirt. Harden half-sits up and flips the covers back; your hands start to shake.
He pulls you down. His mouth attaches to your throat and you bunch his shirt up, sliding your hands higher. Your fingers are cold from sleeping on the floor, and he hisses, jerks against you. You work your hands under his body to warm them up. He sighs against your mouth and says your name.
Harden is all ripped arms and pale stomach, his hair stiff with gel and scratching under your chin. His eyes make you feel like you’re still unconscious, passed out drunk.
He lets you guide him onto his side, lets you draw his boxers down past his knees and drag your open mouth over his shoulder blades. He bends his head down, concentrating very hard, and you get him all ready, start off slow to hear him curse.
Your hand is on his hip, gripping for leverage, digging your chin into his shoulder, and he covers your hand with his own, pulls your hand up to his mouth. He does this every time, though he’s not that vocal, really. He just likes to have something to bite down on. And you like the feel of his teeth cutting into your palm.
If you had your way about it, the entirety of your life would be spent fucking Rich Harden. As it is, all you’ve got is about twenty minutes.
*
Five months ago, in Phoenix, you’d caught some kind of strange fever and couldn’t think straight for a couple of days. You were just getting to know everybody and didn’t want them to think you were some punk kid who couldn’t remember anything, but you couldn’t help it. Everyone kept asking you about the World Series; you’d been trying to forget all winter.
You liked Zito and you liked Crosby. You liked Joe Blanton and Nick Swisher and the way they made ‘redneck’ sound like the highest form of flattery. You liked how the pitchers would soft-toss to each other in the outfield, taking mighty hopeless swings with borrowed bats, the everyday players hooting and calling advice. You liked to talk pitching with Eric Chavez, because he was the kind of hitter you’d always had a hell of a time getting out, patient and quick-handed lefty, and he told you that splitters inside just ate him up. You made careful note.
It was a good team. It wasn’t strange for you to be twenty-four years old.
One afternoon, Rich Harden was talking on the phone outside the clubhouse door, pacing around in a small circle. You hesitated, wanting to wish him a good night, but he held up one finger and widened his eyes at you.
You waited, squinting at the bottom edge of the sky, where the desert threw up red dust and made everything look purple.
Harden finished his call and tucked his phone in his pocket, turning to you and saying, “Hey, you know how to jumpstart a car?”
“Um. No,” you answered, thinking absently that your father would have known how.
Harden sighed and of course you ended up driving him back to the condo where he was staying with Crosby. Of course you picked up beers on the way and sat out by the pool until it was full dark.
You kept testing your own forehead, pressing your fingers under your jaw to see if your glands were swollen. Harden asked if you were getting sick and you said, “yeah, think so.”
He nodded, his profile silhouetted, the slight upturn of his nose making him look regal. He said that at least it wasn’t cold, and you agreed.
Something there in the clink of glass bottles on cement, the small desert lizards scrambling across the deck, the rubbery give of the chair, the wobble of the pool’s water, blue as the sky, and Rich Harden’s eyes, hidden in the shadows on his face.
You followed him inside and Crosby was still out. Harden made you both toast with cheese, and you ate sitting across from him at the table, your heels dragging on the linoleum.
He washed your plates and you came to stand close behind him, drawn by the hazy glint of interest in his face when he was watching you, and the ease of your conversation, and the fact that he’d made you toast.
He turned and inhaled sharply to find you right there. You took his wrist and his hands were still wet, slick-sliding against your fingers. You pinned his wrist down to the edge of the counter, dripping water, and he met your eyes, just barely smiling.
You almost bit through his lip, the first time. He almost broke your arm.
You slept beside him until he pushed you awake and whispered, “listen, Bobby came home, you gotta get lost.”
You got dressed in the dark room and he got up to sneak you out, checking to make sure the coast was clear, murmuring to you, stay back, wait a second. You clutched the back of his shirt and rubbed your knuckles on his back, hearing Crosby’s music trickling through the wall.
At the front door, he kissed you and said, “Come find me tomorrow, okay?”
And you did.
*
You leave Walnut Creek at dawn, Harden left twisted up in the covers and washed with cold morning light. You’re carrying your flip-flops and the grass is damp and soft under your feet, the sky overcast.
You drive back to San Francisco on an empty eight-lane highway, downtown Oakland flashing past, the city across the water piled up like a jewelry box overturned. You sing along to the radio.
It’s been a long night, and a long week, month, season. You’re exhausted and beat up on the inside, your hands sticky, your lower back throbbing, but you run your tongue over your teeth and the roof of your mouth, thinking about Rich Harden shivering and craning back into you.
Newspaper trucks trundle by, men with large arms hefting bound stacks into the doorways of stores. Night watchmen are still in uniform, smoking cigarettes and waiting for the bus. All the neon signs are turned off.
You get to your apartment and turn on the coffee. You climb out onto the fire escape as you wait for it to be ready, and lean your weight on the cast-iron rail, which is freezing cold and leaves scraped bits of rust on your palms.
You look east, into the rising sun, and feel a staggering pull in your chest. You remind yourself, over and over, that it’s only a couple of hours, just a little while to kill and then you can drive back over the bridge, go to the ballpark and see him, not too much longer before your life will begin again.
THE END