tick tick tock
I am tired and I have a grand total of one day off between now and when I leave for DC on the 4th. My little brother's got a scar on his stomach that makes him look way tough, and we're debating, should he tell people it was a knife fight or being gored by a rhino? Either way, he is stepdad to his girlfriend's puppy, whose name is Max and who is a black lab and who is ridiculous with the cuteness.
Karaoke tonight at the punk bar down the street, reaffirming that there's nothing quite like a bunch of kids with tatoos and fucked-up hair howling along to 'Living On A Prayer.' Ah, Bon Jovi. You are the poor man's Bruce, which is sad for you, because, you know . . . we've got Bruce for that. Still, 'Living On A Prayer' means instant fun.
Been hanging out with a friend of mine from school who's just recently moved out here, which is interesting and makes me feel nineteen years old again. He's basically as charming as is physically possible, made friends with half the bar in three hours and fell in love with my brother's fake leather coat. I'm terrifically excited to have someone new to go to baseball games with (soon, soon), though he is a Red Sox fan (but from Southie, and so forgiven).
Now I am tired. I'm, like, always fuckin' tired these days. Two weeks until Phoenix and I need a big countdown clock in my room somewhere, because I can't keep this up.
Phases
Harden was in the kitchen, reading the delivery menus stuck to the refrigerator, waiting for the coffee to be ready. He was mostly asleep and unsure of what was going on. There were gray shadows like ash in the light and a half-full can of PBR on the counter. Static electricity from the hallway carpet made the hair on his legs stand up.
Crosby was sitting on the living room carpet in swim trunks and a red tank top, playing videogames. Harden collapsed onto the couch.
“Hey.”
“Morning.”
Crosby didn’t turn around. There was a green bowl of cereal on the coffee table, soggy Cheerios like lifesavers. Crosby was playing the newest MLB game, at which they’d all gotten very good, their team against the Rockies. Crosby was up by twenty-four runs in the third inning. He had it set on the easiest level, Harden could tell.
Harden watched for awhile but it wasn’t very interesting. Crosby was perfectly still, except for the minute shifts of his shoulders, the tick-tap of his fingers.
“Didn’t we have a rule?” Harden asked, trying to catch Crosby’s eyes in the reflection of television.
“Huh?”
“We weren’t supposed to be us in this game.” Harden gave the game a suspicious look. Kotsay was pitching, he realized. Zito seemed to be playing first.
“I’m winning, though.”
“I don’t think that was why.”
Crosby made a dismissive noise. Harden decided it probably didn’t matter. He let himself slide down on the couch, his knee close to Crosby’s shoulder. There was lint in Crosby’s hair, a scratch on the back of his neck.
Harden closed his eyes and wondered if they would leave the house today. They’d been getting more and more entrenched as the season wore on, stuck in a short loop of the pool and the living room and the kitchen. Yesterday, he’d stumbled into the metal part of the chair on the patio and seared his arm bad enough to blister.
Maybe there was something they needed to buy. Brand-new gadgets from Sharper Image, DVDs of shows they’d heard were kinda good, watches made of real silver. Milk and beer.
“Dude,” he said, his head tilted back so that his voice bounced off the ceiling and floated down to him. Crosby hmm’d. “There was this pre-season hockey thing I wanted to watch at noon.”
“Is it noon?”
“Soon, I think.” A siren went by outside and Harden opened his eyes, could see the sunlight pouring through the skylight in the hallway, solid enough to fall against.
“I’m just messing around here. It’s cool.” Crosby was quiet for a moment, then said apropos of nothing, “Tiger Woods added to his lead in the British Open yesterday with a score of 67 in his second round.”
Crosby didn’t really follow golf, but he slept every night with his headphones in and ESPN Radio murmuring quietly in his ears. He said stuff like that occasionally, out of nowhere, and half the time he didn’t even seem to notice.
Harden said, “Good to know,” and watched as Crosby-on-the-floor guided Crosby-on-the-screen to his third home run of the game.
*
The batteries in his PSP died halfway to Chicago, and out of desperation, Harden borrowed a magazine from Zito, read an article about photography during the Civil War. Zito destroyed everything he touched; the pages were all wrinkled and torn, scrawled with phone numbers and Santa Fe addresses.
There was a card game going on in the back of the plane, and Crosby came up the aisle, his shoes off and his cap on backwards. He took the seat next to Harden’s and put his arm around Harden’s shoulders right away. Harden tensed, distrustful.
“The fucking new guy is cheating,” Crosby said. With his head held stiff, Harden could feel the bones of his spine pressing into the hollow of Crosby’s elbow.
“Danny?”
“Goddamned card shark.”
“Card sharp.”
Crosby blinked. “Really?”
“Bobby.”
Crosby smiled. “Lend me a hundred dollars.”
Harden turned and his neck swiveled in the neat pocket of Crosby’s arm. He lifted his eyebrows, Crosby’s face near to his. “You swore it was the last time, you know that, you swore to me.”
“Ah, that was a lie. You knew that was a lie.”
Harden had known. Never really trusted that look on Crosby’s face. “You’ve kinda got a problem.”
“Yeah.” Crosby sighed and slumped against Harden, his hand dangling down Harden’s chest. “C’mon, man. I’d just go and fine one of the rookies for, like, breathing too loudly or something, but I know you don’t want that.”
Harden shifted and Crosby moved with him, chest flat on the curve of Harden’s shoulder, forehead rolling on his temple. Crosby was dazzling and inconstant, but also three weeks off the disabled list and there’d been days earlier when Harden would have paid thousands of dollars to be able to say that.
He pushed Crosby off, dug his wallet out and counted out a hundred. Crosby grinned hugely and kissed the side of his neck, happily whacked him across the cheek with the money and then he was gone.
Harden listened to them playing for awhile, Crosby getting louder and louder as he lost more money, and then fell asleep. He dreamt of Atlanta burning in black-and-white, railroad tracks tied up like shoelaces.
*
The tomato story, most often related while Crosby was drunk, was one of Harden’s favorite things to hear, though he couldn’t really say why.
Crosby was drunk that night, so it looked promising. And Dan Haren was new and so was Huston Street and so was Joe Blanton and Nick Swisher, they’d never heard it before.
They were sitting on the grass in the front yard, under the waxed moon, because Zito had wanted to light candles for some fucking reason, and Melhuse was inordinately fearful of the house catching fire. They were in loose circle, Crosby reclined on his side with his elbow drawn up, hand wedged under his chin. A candle flame was perfectly framed in the triangle his arm made.
He’d been seven or eight years old and his best friend was a skinny kid with shock-orange hair and more freckles than skin. Crosby’s dad had at the time been several years retired from playing major league baseball, and he’d taken up home gardening. But the only thing he could get to grow was tomatoes, in a little four-by-six patch against the back fence.
“Carrots are supposed to be easy to grow,” Swisher offered, sitting with his knee against Joe Blanton’s, Blanton’s wedding ring reflecting the candlelight and throwing a little gold piece onto Swisher’s face, caught up under his right eye like a hard jab. “Like, just sprinkle the seeds and then they come up like weeds.”
Crosby shot him an irritated look. “Are you telling the story?”
Swisher flushed and sunk back into his shoulders. Blanton patted him reassuringly on the arm, smirking.
It had been a long afternoon, summertime, and Crosby’s dad had been somewhere, the garage was for some reason locked, so they couldn’t get to their stash of yellowed baseballs. Crosby slept with his bat in his room, so they had that, but he didn’t want to play with rocks because that would chip it up.
It was out of season for pinecones.
“Lemme guess,” said Haren, his teeth shining whitely against the green glass of his bottle. Zito booed and hissed and threw a twig at him. Haren looked surprised. “No guessing?”
Crosby shook his head, his mouth thinned. Harden liked the look of him like this, shadows careful on his cheeks and under his jaw, his eyes jittering nervously with flame.
Using the tomatoes had seemed brilliant in the moment. They were seven or eight years old and not incredibly attune to the vagaries of consequence. Crosby’d made his friend pitch to him first. Crosby liked hitting far better than fielding, even now, though Harden had never been able to get him to admit that out loud.
He’d stood with his back to the house and his mitt at his feet, standing in for home plate. The first tomato flew and Crosby missed it because it was smaller than he was used to. It exploded against the white of the house, speckling his shirt. The second tomato, he obliterated, and his friend yelped, wiped bits of it off his face.
“Yo, that’s awesome,” said Zito, lying on the grass and staring up at the sky. He’d heard this story as many times as Harden had, but it was like he forgot it every time. Zito had forgotten almost everything.
They’d played until the patch was plucked clean and there was smashed tomato pulp in their hair and soaking into their shoes. Crosby smiled and tasted the juice as it rolled down his face, red-sweet and both of them looking like murderers or victims or maybe one of each.
His hands had slid on the bat’s grip. His mitt would be stained with blood-like stains for years and years, the bat barrel similarly gruesome. Crosby’s dad came home and found them and Crosby didn’t even have time to tell him how cool it had been before he was being grounded.
Everybody laughed, mostly at the image of little Bobby Crosby covered in tomato, standing up to his ankles in the summer grass with his wooden bat (wooden even then, because Ed Crosby would buy his son nothing else) against his side. His dad hollering at him and maybe tears skating in clean tracks down Crosby’s face.
Crosby grinned, because it was a good story. Harden chewed on his beer, the glass squealing. Street wanted to know if they’re allowed to grow tomatoes at this house, and how long would that take, would they be done by October?
That wasn’t really the question, more to the point was, would the team be done by October, but of course no one pointed that out, because they traded daily in faith.
Crosby drank slowly and Harden watched his throat as he swallowed.
*
Crosby was lying across a row of seats in the Detroit airport, trying to sleep with somebody’s sweatshirt under his head. He had a cap tugged down over his face, arms crossed on his chest, and Harden was sick with exhaustion and thinking about Speedy Gonzalez.
He walked the length of the terminal, flat shimmery smears of fluorescent on the tile. They were delayed; rain lashed at the huge windows like it was trying to get inside. Chavez was pacing a slow circle, talking on his cell phone, stepping over Zito’s legs.
Harden wanted to get the fuck out of Michigan. He hadn’t seen the sun in a week.
He bought coffee and ate half a roll of Lifesavers, his mouth burning. He went to sit on the floor, strategically positioned so that he could watch Crosby flinch and mutter without letting on. He wasn’t very good at it, though. A couple of minutes passed and then Crosby was craning to look back at him. The position made his shirt pull interestingly, riding up so that Harden could see a slice of his stomach.
Harden lifted an eyebrow. Crosby grinned.
Harden got up and his knees popped. He considered offering Crosby his hand, absurd storybook pictures in his mind, but Crosby was already scrambling to his feet, shivering like a wet dog. They walked for a long time, through one terminal and into another. Crosby kept mumbling, rubbing his eyes with his fist.
They got someplace where no one was speaking English and Harden read the destinations, Copenhagen, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, and he wanted to hold onto Crosby’s wrist and be hijacked.
The farthest stall in the bathroom, water dripping in half the sinks, and Crosby leaned heavily upon him, more tired than turned on. Harden laced his fingers together on the back of Crosby’s neck and kissed him like they were underwater. Crosby’s hands scratched into Harden’s pockets curiously, crawled back out and caught on his belt.
Two men talking in Japanese came into the bathroom, and Harden and Crosby froze, staring at each other, silently daring the other to laugh. Crosby nipped at Harden’s lip and Harden dodged, put his hand up next to Crosby’s head, Crosby’s ear warm against his wrist. He mouthed nonsense at Crosby to see Crosby’s face twist in confusion.
The Japanese men left and Harden snickered, pressed his face into Crosby’s throat with teeth and Crosby’s hand sliding into his jeans. He felt like he was suffocating.
They were interrupted, paged from above, please come to Gate 23F for boarding. Richard and Robert, because one of their teammates was trying to be funny, and Crosby shook his head, “That’s not us, we’re okay,” and kissed him again.
*
Harden awoke in their house and there was dust on his hands. He got kinda weirded out, took a shower even though the pipes clanged around like chains. Not so surprising, then, for Crosby to be sprawled out on his bed when he came back. Harden was pretty sure Crosby hadn’t been there when he’d left.
Harden put his boxers back on, Crosby’s eyes following him nicely across the room. Harden got under the covers and put his forehead against Crosby’s shoulder.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
“Did I wake you up?”
Crosby shrugged, bumping Harden’s face. “Kinda. Whatever.” He tipped his fingers onto Harden’s side and Harden faintly shook.
They were quiet and so was everything else. Harden looked and his alarm clock was stuck on twelve o’clock, though it must have been later than that, because they’d seen part of Saturday Night Live before going to bed.
“I think time stopped.”
Crosby shifted to glance at the clock and hummed, touching Harden’s back. “That thing’s a piece of shit, man.”
“But it’s got blue numbers. I’ve never even seen another one with blue numbers.” Harden gnawed Crosby’s shoulder thoughtfully.
“We used to play in the grass all the time and I don’t know, something in the chemicals. The ball turned green. I mean, like, bright green and we were always losing it because it was the exact same color,” Crosby said.
“Crazy,” Harden replied.
Harden tapped his fingers on Crosby’s stomach, thinking that they should have gotten a house near the highway or something. There would be a constant rush of noise in the background, and Crosby would fall asleep like he did on planes while Harden locked the door and shuttered the windows.
“Anyway,” Crosby sighed. “I just stopped by to say hey.” He kissed Harden’s closed eyelids and flicked his ear, shower-wet hair sliding through his fingers, and then rose and went back to his own room.
*
Crosby didn’t come home one night and Harden fell asleep on the couch, his fingers twitching on the Playstation controller. Street woke him up in the morning, making pancakes with far more noise than seemed necessary. Crosby was out on the porch, his back curved.
Harden brought him some pancakes and ate his own with his bare hands, dry. He sat on the concrete in front of Crosby and didn’t say anything, though Crosby had a bruise on his cheekbone that hadn’t been there the day before.
The sun climbed up over the house and Harden could already feel sweat breaking on his back. It was going to be an impossible day.
“Mickey Owen died,” Crosby said eventually. Harden bit his pancake into a square.
“Who’s that?”
“Played for the Dodgers. In Brooklyn.”
Harden wondered if Crosby learned that from listening to ESPN Radio while he slept, then remembered that Crosby hadn’t been home last night. He poked holes in his pancake and it was momentarily a mask before he ate it.
“Do you want some orange juice? I’ma get some orange juice.” Harden stood, his shadow crashing down on Crosby. He had a bad feeling that Crosby was beginning to cycle away from him again, disappearing and returning to talk only of random sports trivia and videogames. Crosby changed like the weather.
Crosby shrugged, the bruise making his face look lopsided. Harden was halfway to the house when Crosby stopped him, saying:
“I didn’t do anything stupid.”
Harden didn’t turn, his hands twitching at his sides. He needed to buy some sweatpants with goddamned pockets. Crosby exhaled.
“It was just a weird night. I should have stayed home.”
Harden looked back over his shoulder. Crosby was staring at him, his hands balled up in fists. Harden gave him a half-smile, then went to get them orange juice.
*
In the clubhouse, Crosby played the arcade game with Scott Hatteberg, cursing steadily as he lost each round. Harden was reading the comics, taking up too much of the couch.
“Fuck, Scotty. Bitch.” Crosby slammed his hand on the side of the machine. “This thing’s broken, I keep doing a kick but it won’t let me.”
“Kick’s B button,” Hatteberg said mildly.
“Shut up.”
Harden cast a glance their way, over the top of the paper. Crosby’s shoulders were drawn tight, his back stiff. Somebody was speaking Spanish just around the corner, but Harden couldn’t place the voice. Harden idly considered taking Crosby to the far equipment room before the infielders had to go up for warm-ups, run some of this boredom out of town on a rail, leave some marks. But Crosby wasn’t really looking at him anymore, two weeks separating them from the full moon and each other.
Street came up to him, smiling slightly. “Can I sit down?”
Harden rolled his eyes. Anyone else would have just shoved his legs out of the way-and that if he was lucky. “Yes, you freak.” He straightened, and Street settled next to him. Harden handed him the half of the comics that he’d already read.
Harden got along pretty well with Street, when he had the time to pay attention to him. It had been almost a week since Crosby had shown up in Harden’s bed in the middle of the night for no particular reason, but Street was still making waffles and muffins enough for all four of them almost every morning.
“It’s kinda weird,” Street said, his hands rustling the paper.
“Hmm?”
“That they still print Charlie Brown even though the guy died.”
Harden considered that for a minute, watching the movement of Crosby’s shoulders under his shirt, the vague sunburn on the backs of his arms. “Fifty years of something happening every day is hard to take away from people.”
Street grinned. “There woulda been, like, huge protests. Massive uprisings, is what you’re saying.”
“Sure.” Harden glanced at him with a small smile and Street was sitting too straight, good posture irreparably ingrained in him.
“Not that I don’t, you know, appreciate Charlie Brown. Even if it is just reruns.” Street whistled under his breath and flapped the paper open, reminding Harden of his father at the kitchen table.
Crosby accused Hatteberg of cheating and abandoned the game, stalking over to his locker, stripping off his shirt. Harden’s breath caught. He cut his eyes down to the comics, making little tears in the edges and trying to work out the word scramble mentally. He wondered if there was anything he could do to make this midway time go faster.
“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Street said, and Harden snapped up, looked at him sharply, but Street was just reading the comics with his mouth snickered slightly, and Harden figured he must have been hearing things.
*
Harden found Crosby behind the ballpark, in the player’s lot, talking on the phone. Crosby had his back to the wheel of Chavez’s car, curled up so that his head was against his knees. Harden put his hands in his pockets and counted constellations, the sky pallid.
“It’s pretty good,” Crosby said. “I don’t really know what to say.”
Harden wasn’t sure if Crosby had noticed him, scuffed his feet to make his presence known, but Crosby didn’t look up.
“Yeah, I guess. Stuff falling apart like that, so, okay.”
Harden nudged Crosby’s shoe with his toe and thought that maybe Crosby was ignoring him. He drew in breath through his teeth and turned his eyes upwards again. The stars were falling towards the edge of the sky; the summer was going by so quickly.
“We’ll be in Anaheim in a couple of weeks. I could maybe come home for dinner,” Crosby said, and Harden realized that he was talking to one of his parents. “Maybe with one of the guys?”
Harden fingered the coins in his pockets and got nervous, didn’t want to be taken home to meet the folks when in another week or two Crosby would be on the far side of his orbit again. He heard Crosby’s neck pop and looked down to find Crosby gazing up at him with a smirk. Harden made a face.
“We’ve stopped locking our doors,” and Crosby held his hand up. Harden cocked his head to the side and Crosby blinked, showed Harden his palm as if to say, no threat. Hesitantly, Harden hooked his fingers with Crosby’s, not really believing the look on his face.
“Don’t see the point anymore. Nobody even drives down our street.” Crosby listened, angling his chin down so that shadows cupped his eyes. “I’m not a kid, Dad, and I can afford a new TV if I need to.”
Harden checked over his shoulder, but it was quiet. The game wasn’t over. Crosby had left in the sixth, his back acting up. The parking lot lights shone dully off his wet hair.
Tapping his thumb on Harden’s finger, Crosby said, “Listen, I’ve got to go. There’s something I’ve got to take care of.”
He said his goodbyes and hung up. Harden looked down at him expectantly, a raw place like carpet burn scratching in the back of his mind. Crosby twisted their hands slowly, watching Harden, and after a while, he asked, “Drive me home?”
Harden pulled him up.
*
It was very late at night when Crosby came home, and Harden wasn’t waiting up, because it wasn’t like that.
Harden was just up for some reason, Nick at Nite on the TV and painkillers left over from his month off blurring in his veins. He was alight, watching his hands glow in the dark.
Crosby stumbled in, tripping over the carpet and weaving like a fighter. Harden felt his sluggish heart kick up. Crosby was mumbling, holding up his hands for balance. He caught sight of Harden lying on the couch and smiled with relief, crawling on top of him. His head nudged into the hollow of Harden’s shoulder.
“My god,” Crosby said against Harden’s chest. Harden was frozen, wondering if this was a dream. He put his hand cautiously on Crosby’s back and Crosby’s legs wound with his own.
“You’re home?” he asked, though it was a stupid question. Crosby just nodded, his hair scuffing the underside of Harden’s jaw.
“Took me a real long time.”
Harden could smell beer and gasoline, not all that bad. Crosby was approximately six hundred degrees; the silver of Harden’s necklace was melting. Harden felt an incalculable triumph to have Crosby here with him now.
“Did you have a good time?” he asked, only making conversation. They were whispering and probably being stupid, lying all tied up together in full view. Melhuse had a tendency for midnight snacks. Street had been known to sleepwalk. Harden forgot to care.
Crosby shook his head, his breath blowing warm through Harden’s shirt. “You should have seen it. The signs were all broken.”
“Hmm.” Harden angled and placed his mouth to Crosby’s temple.
“And I don’t think it’s like I expected it would be.”
Harden slipped his hand under Crosby’s shirt and found the skin of his back. Crosby was warm, dead summer in the hills, the weather hanging like sheets on the window. “How’d you expect it would be?”
“Ah.” Crosby pushed up on one elbow, his fingers curling over Harden’s hair. He smiled. “I don’t remember. Never remember anything.”
That wasn’t exactly true. Crosby remembered the pitch sequence leading up to every one of the twenty-eight home runs he’d hit in the major leagues. Harden couldn’t fault him for it; he remembered the sequence of every home run he’d ever given up.
Harden leaned up and kissed him, wet and straight-clean, shot down to his stomach. Crosby murmured and smiled against his mouth.
“Something got caught inside,” Crosby told him, their foreheads touching. “You, I think.”
“Maybe,” Harden whispered. The moon was almost full, so Harden had to keep watch on what he said, nothing he might regret when Crosby waned again.
Crosby’s stomach pressed against Harden’s and Harden was a mile high. Harden was happy for now, bit like lightning. Crosby could swing away from him, drift like a tide, but Harden knew more than he let on, and he’d made himself into a fixed point, believing with all his heart that everything in motion would eventually come to rest.
THE END
Endnotes: The tomato story is true, happened to my uncle back in, like, 1962 or something like that.
Karaoke tonight at the punk bar down the street, reaffirming that there's nothing quite like a bunch of kids with tatoos and fucked-up hair howling along to 'Living On A Prayer.' Ah, Bon Jovi. You are the poor man's Bruce, which is sad for you, because, you know . . . we've got Bruce for that. Still, 'Living On A Prayer' means instant fun.
Been hanging out with a friend of mine from school who's just recently moved out here, which is interesting and makes me feel nineteen years old again. He's basically as charming as is physically possible, made friends with half the bar in three hours and fell in love with my brother's fake leather coat. I'm terrifically excited to have someone new to go to baseball games with (soon, soon), though he is a Red Sox fan (but from Southie, and so forgiven).
Now I am tired. I'm, like, always fuckin' tired these days. Two weeks until Phoenix and I need a big countdown clock in my room somewhere, because I can't keep this up.
Phases
Harden was in the kitchen, reading the delivery menus stuck to the refrigerator, waiting for the coffee to be ready. He was mostly asleep and unsure of what was going on. There were gray shadows like ash in the light and a half-full can of PBR on the counter. Static electricity from the hallway carpet made the hair on his legs stand up.
Crosby was sitting on the living room carpet in swim trunks and a red tank top, playing videogames. Harden collapsed onto the couch.
“Hey.”
“Morning.”
Crosby didn’t turn around. There was a green bowl of cereal on the coffee table, soggy Cheerios like lifesavers. Crosby was playing the newest MLB game, at which they’d all gotten very good, their team against the Rockies. Crosby was up by twenty-four runs in the third inning. He had it set on the easiest level, Harden could tell.
Harden watched for awhile but it wasn’t very interesting. Crosby was perfectly still, except for the minute shifts of his shoulders, the tick-tap of his fingers.
“Didn’t we have a rule?” Harden asked, trying to catch Crosby’s eyes in the reflection of television.
“Huh?”
“We weren’t supposed to be us in this game.” Harden gave the game a suspicious look. Kotsay was pitching, he realized. Zito seemed to be playing first.
“I’m winning, though.”
“I don’t think that was why.”
Crosby made a dismissive noise. Harden decided it probably didn’t matter. He let himself slide down on the couch, his knee close to Crosby’s shoulder. There was lint in Crosby’s hair, a scratch on the back of his neck.
Harden closed his eyes and wondered if they would leave the house today. They’d been getting more and more entrenched as the season wore on, stuck in a short loop of the pool and the living room and the kitchen. Yesterday, he’d stumbled into the metal part of the chair on the patio and seared his arm bad enough to blister.
Maybe there was something they needed to buy. Brand-new gadgets from Sharper Image, DVDs of shows they’d heard were kinda good, watches made of real silver. Milk and beer.
“Dude,” he said, his head tilted back so that his voice bounced off the ceiling and floated down to him. Crosby hmm’d. “There was this pre-season hockey thing I wanted to watch at noon.”
“Is it noon?”
“Soon, I think.” A siren went by outside and Harden opened his eyes, could see the sunlight pouring through the skylight in the hallway, solid enough to fall against.
“I’m just messing around here. It’s cool.” Crosby was quiet for a moment, then said apropos of nothing, “Tiger Woods added to his lead in the British Open yesterday with a score of 67 in his second round.”
Crosby didn’t really follow golf, but he slept every night with his headphones in and ESPN Radio murmuring quietly in his ears. He said stuff like that occasionally, out of nowhere, and half the time he didn’t even seem to notice.
Harden said, “Good to know,” and watched as Crosby-on-the-floor guided Crosby-on-the-screen to his third home run of the game.
*
The batteries in his PSP died halfway to Chicago, and out of desperation, Harden borrowed a magazine from Zito, read an article about photography during the Civil War. Zito destroyed everything he touched; the pages were all wrinkled and torn, scrawled with phone numbers and Santa Fe addresses.
There was a card game going on in the back of the plane, and Crosby came up the aisle, his shoes off and his cap on backwards. He took the seat next to Harden’s and put his arm around Harden’s shoulders right away. Harden tensed, distrustful.
“The fucking new guy is cheating,” Crosby said. With his head held stiff, Harden could feel the bones of his spine pressing into the hollow of Crosby’s elbow.
“Danny?”
“Goddamned card shark.”
“Card sharp.”
Crosby blinked. “Really?”
“Bobby.”
Crosby smiled. “Lend me a hundred dollars.”
Harden turned and his neck swiveled in the neat pocket of Crosby’s arm. He lifted his eyebrows, Crosby’s face near to his. “You swore it was the last time, you know that, you swore to me.”
“Ah, that was a lie. You knew that was a lie.”
Harden had known. Never really trusted that look on Crosby’s face. “You’ve kinda got a problem.”
“Yeah.” Crosby sighed and slumped against Harden, his hand dangling down Harden’s chest. “C’mon, man. I’d just go and fine one of the rookies for, like, breathing too loudly or something, but I know you don’t want that.”
Harden shifted and Crosby moved with him, chest flat on the curve of Harden’s shoulder, forehead rolling on his temple. Crosby was dazzling and inconstant, but also three weeks off the disabled list and there’d been days earlier when Harden would have paid thousands of dollars to be able to say that.
He pushed Crosby off, dug his wallet out and counted out a hundred. Crosby grinned hugely and kissed the side of his neck, happily whacked him across the cheek with the money and then he was gone.
Harden listened to them playing for awhile, Crosby getting louder and louder as he lost more money, and then fell asleep. He dreamt of Atlanta burning in black-and-white, railroad tracks tied up like shoelaces.
*
The tomato story, most often related while Crosby was drunk, was one of Harden’s favorite things to hear, though he couldn’t really say why.
Crosby was drunk that night, so it looked promising. And Dan Haren was new and so was Huston Street and so was Joe Blanton and Nick Swisher, they’d never heard it before.
They were sitting on the grass in the front yard, under the waxed moon, because Zito had wanted to light candles for some fucking reason, and Melhuse was inordinately fearful of the house catching fire. They were in loose circle, Crosby reclined on his side with his elbow drawn up, hand wedged under his chin. A candle flame was perfectly framed in the triangle his arm made.
He’d been seven or eight years old and his best friend was a skinny kid with shock-orange hair and more freckles than skin. Crosby’s dad had at the time been several years retired from playing major league baseball, and he’d taken up home gardening. But the only thing he could get to grow was tomatoes, in a little four-by-six patch against the back fence.
“Carrots are supposed to be easy to grow,” Swisher offered, sitting with his knee against Joe Blanton’s, Blanton’s wedding ring reflecting the candlelight and throwing a little gold piece onto Swisher’s face, caught up under his right eye like a hard jab. “Like, just sprinkle the seeds and then they come up like weeds.”
Crosby shot him an irritated look. “Are you telling the story?”
Swisher flushed and sunk back into his shoulders. Blanton patted him reassuringly on the arm, smirking.
It had been a long afternoon, summertime, and Crosby’s dad had been somewhere, the garage was for some reason locked, so they couldn’t get to their stash of yellowed baseballs. Crosby slept with his bat in his room, so they had that, but he didn’t want to play with rocks because that would chip it up.
It was out of season for pinecones.
“Lemme guess,” said Haren, his teeth shining whitely against the green glass of his bottle. Zito booed and hissed and threw a twig at him. Haren looked surprised. “No guessing?”
Crosby shook his head, his mouth thinned. Harden liked the look of him like this, shadows careful on his cheeks and under his jaw, his eyes jittering nervously with flame.
Using the tomatoes had seemed brilliant in the moment. They were seven or eight years old and not incredibly attune to the vagaries of consequence. Crosby’d made his friend pitch to him first. Crosby liked hitting far better than fielding, even now, though Harden had never been able to get him to admit that out loud.
He’d stood with his back to the house and his mitt at his feet, standing in for home plate. The first tomato flew and Crosby missed it because it was smaller than he was used to. It exploded against the white of the house, speckling his shirt. The second tomato, he obliterated, and his friend yelped, wiped bits of it off his face.
“Yo, that’s awesome,” said Zito, lying on the grass and staring up at the sky. He’d heard this story as many times as Harden had, but it was like he forgot it every time. Zito had forgotten almost everything.
They’d played until the patch was plucked clean and there was smashed tomato pulp in their hair and soaking into their shoes. Crosby smiled and tasted the juice as it rolled down his face, red-sweet and both of them looking like murderers or victims or maybe one of each.
His hands had slid on the bat’s grip. His mitt would be stained with blood-like stains for years and years, the bat barrel similarly gruesome. Crosby’s dad came home and found them and Crosby didn’t even have time to tell him how cool it had been before he was being grounded.
Everybody laughed, mostly at the image of little Bobby Crosby covered in tomato, standing up to his ankles in the summer grass with his wooden bat (wooden even then, because Ed Crosby would buy his son nothing else) against his side. His dad hollering at him and maybe tears skating in clean tracks down Crosby’s face.
Crosby grinned, because it was a good story. Harden chewed on his beer, the glass squealing. Street wanted to know if they’re allowed to grow tomatoes at this house, and how long would that take, would they be done by October?
That wasn’t really the question, more to the point was, would the team be done by October, but of course no one pointed that out, because they traded daily in faith.
Crosby drank slowly and Harden watched his throat as he swallowed.
*
Crosby was lying across a row of seats in the Detroit airport, trying to sleep with somebody’s sweatshirt under his head. He had a cap tugged down over his face, arms crossed on his chest, and Harden was sick with exhaustion and thinking about Speedy Gonzalez.
He walked the length of the terminal, flat shimmery smears of fluorescent on the tile. They were delayed; rain lashed at the huge windows like it was trying to get inside. Chavez was pacing a slow circle, talking on his cell phone, stepping over Zito’s legs.
Harden wanted to get the fuck out of Michigan. He hadn’t seen the sun in a week.
He bought coffee and ate half a roll of Lifesavers, his mouth burning. He went to sit on the floor, strategically positioned so that he could watch Crosby flinch and mutter without letting on. He wasn’t very good at it, though. A couple of minutes passed and then Crosby was craning to look back at him. The position made his shirt pull interestingly, riding up so that Harden could see a slice of his stomach.
Harden lifted an eyebrow. Crosby grinned.
Harden got up and his knees popped. He considered offering Crosby his hand, absurd storybook pictures in his mind, but Crosby was already scrambling to his feet, shivering like a wet dog. They walked for a long time, through one terminal and into another. Crosby kept mumbling, rubbing his eyes with his fist.
They got someplace where no one was speaking English and Harden read the destinations, Copenhagen, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro, and he wanted to hold onto Crosby’s wrist and be hijacked.
The farthest stall in the bathroom, water dripping in half the sinks, and Crosby leaned heavily upon him, more tired than turned on. Harden laced his fingers together on the back of Crosby’s neck and kissed him like they were underwater. Crosby’s hands scratched into Harden’s pockets curiously, crawled back out and caught on his belt.
Two men talking in Japanese came into the bathroom, and Harden and Crosby froze, staring at each other, silently daring the other to laugh. Crosby nipped at Harden’s lip and Harden dodged, put his hand up next to Crosby’s head, Crosby’s ear warm against his wrist. He mouthed nonsense at Crosby to see Crosby’s face twist in confusion.
The Japanese men left and Harden snickered, pressed his face into Crosby’s throat with teeth and Crosby’s hand sliding into his jeans. He felt like he was suffocating.
They were interrupted, paged from above, please come to Gate 23F for boarding. Richard and Robert, because one of their teammates was trying to be funny, and Crosby shook his head, “That’s not us, we’re okay,” and kissed him again.
*
Harden awoke in their house and there was dust on his hands. He got kinda weirded out, took a shower even though the pipes clanged around like chains. Not so surprising, then, for Crosby to be sprawled out on his bed when he came back. Harden was pretty sure Crosby hadn’t been there when he’d left.
Harden put his boxers back on, Crosby’s eyes following him nicely across the room. Harden got under the covers and put his forehead against Crosby’s shoulder.
“Hello.”
“Hi.”
“Did I wake you up?”
Crosby shrugged, bumping Harden’s face. “Kinda. Whatever.” He tipped his fingers onto Harden’s side and Harden faintly shook.
They were quiet and so was everything else. Harden looked and his alarm clock was stuck on twelve o’clock, though it must have been later than that, because they’d seen part of Saturday Night Live before going to bed.
“I think time stopped.”
Crosby shifted to glance at the clock and hummed, touching Harden’s back. “That thing’s a piece of shit, man.”
“But it’s got blue numbers. I’ve never even seen another one with blue numbers.” Harden gnawed Crosby’s shoulder thoughtfully.
“We used to play in the grass all the time and I don’t know, something in the chemicals. The ball turned green. I mean, like, bright green and we were always losing it because it was the exact same color,” Crosby said.
“Crazy,” Harden replied.
Harden tapped his fingers on Crosby’s stomach, thinking that they should have gotten a house near the highway or something. There would be a constant rush of noise in the background, and Crosby would fall asleep like he did on planes while Harden locked the door and shuttered the windows.
“Anyway,” Crosby sighed. “I just stopped by to say hey.” He kissed Harden’s closed eyelids and flicked his ear, shower-wet hair sliding through his fingers, and then rose and went back to his own room.
*
Crosby didn’t come home one night and Harden fell asleep on the couch, his fingers twitching on the Playstation controller. Street woke him up in the morning, making pancakes with far more noise than seemed necessary. Crosby was out on the porch, his back curved.
Harden brought him some pancakes and ate his own with his bare hands, dry. He sat on the concrete in front of Crosby and didn’t say anything, though Crosby had a bruise on his cheekbone that hadn’t been there the day before.
The sun climbed up over the house and Harden could already feel sweat breaking on his back. It was going to be an impossible day.
“Mickey Owen died,” Crosby said eventually. Harden bit his pancake into a square.
“Who’s that?”
“Played for the Dodgers. In Brooklyn.”
Harden wondered if Crosby learned that from listening to ESPN Radio while he slept, then remembered that Crosby hadn’t been home last night. He poked holes in his pancake and it was momentarily a mask before he ate it.
“Do you want some orange juice? I’ma get some orange juice.” Harden stood, his shadow crashing down on Crosby. He had a bad feeling that Crosby was beginning to cycle away from him again, disappearing and returning to talk only of random sports trivia and videogames. Crosby changed like the weather.
Crosby shrugged, the bruise making his face look lopsided. Harden was halfway to the house when Crosby stopped him, saying:
“I didn’t do anything stupid.”
Harden didn’t turn, his hands twitching at his sides. He needed to buy some sweatpants with goddamned pockets. Crosby exhaled.
“It was just a weird night. I should have stayed home.”
Harden looked back over his shoulder. Crosby was staring at him, his hands balled up in fists. Harden gave him a half-smile, then went to get them orange juice.
*
In the clubhouse, Crosby played the arcade game with Scott Hatteberg, cursing steadily as he lost each round. Harden was reading the comics, taking up too much of the couch.
“Fuck, Scotty. Bitch.” Crosby slammed his hand on the side of the machine. “This thing’s broken, I keep doing a kick but it won’t let me.”
“Kick’s B button,” Hatteberg said mildly.
“Shut up.”
Harden cast a glance their way, over the top of the paper. Crosby’s shoulders were drawn tight, his back stiff. Somebody was speaking Spanish just around the corner, but Harden couldn’t place the voice. Harden idly considered taking Crosby to the far equipment room before the infielders had to go up for warm-ups, run some of this boredom out of town on a rail, leave some marks. But Crosby wasn’t really looking at him anymore, two weeks separating them from the full moon and each other.
Street came up to him, smiling slightly. “Can I sit down?”
Harden rolled his eyes. Anyone else would have just shoved his legs out of the way-and that if he was lucky. “Yes, you freak.” He straightened, and Street settled next to him. Harden handed him the half of the comics that he’d already read.
Harden got along pretty well with Street, when he had the time to pay attention to him. It had been almost a week since Crosby had shown up in Harden’s bed in the middle of the night for no particular reason, but Street was still making waffles and muffins enough for all four of them almost every morning.
“It’s kinda weird,” Street said, his hands rustling the paper.
“Hmm?”
“That they still print Charlie Brown even though the guy died.”
Harden considered that for a minute, watching the movement of Crosby’s shoulders under his shirt, the vague sunburn on the backs of his arms. “Fifty years of something happening every day is hard to take away from people.”
Street grinned. “There woulda been, like, huge protests. Massive uprisings, is what you’re saying.”
“Sure.” Harden glanced at him with a small smile and Street was sitting too straight, good posture irreparably ingrained in him.
“Not that I don’t, you know, appreciate Charlie Brown. Even if it is just reruns.” Street whistled under his breath and flapped the paper open, reminding Harden of his father at the kitchen table.
Crosby accused Hatteberg of cheating and abandoned the game, stalking over to his locker, stripping off his shirt. Harden’s breath caught. He cut his eyes down to the comics, making little tears in the edges and trying to work out the word scramble mentally. He wondered if there was anything he could do to make this midway time go faster.
“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Street said, and Harden snapped up, looked at him sharply, but Street was just reading the comics with his mouth snickered slightly, and Harden figured he must have been hearing things.
*
Harden found Crosby behind the ballpark, in the player’s lot, talking on the phone. Crosby had his back to the wheel of Chavez’s car, curled up so that his head was against his knees. Harden put his hands in his pockets and counted constellations, the sky pallid.
“It’s pretty good,” Crosby said. “I don’t really know what to say.”
Harden wasn’t sure if Crosby had noticed him, scuffed his feet to make his presence known, but Crosby didn’t look up.
“Yeah, I guess. Stuff falling apart like that, so, okay.”
Harden nudged Crosby’s shoe with his toe and thought that maybe Crosby was ignoring him. He drew in breath through his teeth and turned his eyes upwards again. The stars were falling towards the edge of the sky; the summer was going by so quickly.
“We’ll be in Anaheim in a couple of weeks. I could maybe come home for dinner,” Crosby said, and Harden realized that he was talking to one of his parents. “Maybe with one of the guys?”
Harden fingered the coins in his pockets and got nervous, didn’t want to be taken home to meet the folks when in another week or two Crosby would be on the far side of his orbit again. He heard Crosby’s neck pop and looked down to find Crosby gazing up at him with a smirk. Harden made a face.
“We’ve stopped locking our doors,” and Crosby held his hand up. Harden cocked his head to the side and Crosby blinked, showed Harden his palm as if to say, no threat. Hesitantly, Harden hooked his fingers with Crosby’s, not really believing the look on his face.
“Don’t see the point anymore. Nobody even drives down our street.” Crosby listened, angling his chin down so that shadows cupped his eyes. “I’m not a kid, Dad, and I can afford a new TV if I need to.”
Harden checked over his shoulder, but it was quiet. The game wasn’t over. Crosby had left in the sixth, his back acting up. The parking lot lights shone dully off his wet hair.
Tapping his thumb on Harden’s finger, Crosby said, “Listen, I’ve got to go. There’s something I’ve got to take care of.”
He said his goodbyes and hung up. Harden looked down at him expectantly, a raw place like carpet burn scratching in the back of his mind. Crosby twisted their hands slowly, watching Harden, and after a while, he asked, “Drive me home?”
Harden pulled him up.
*
It was very late at night when Crosby came home, and Harden wasn’t waiting up, because it wasn’t like that.
Harden was just up for some reason, Nick at Nite on the TV and painkillers left over from his month off blurring in his veins. He was alight, watching his hands glow in the dark.
Crosby stumbled in, tripping over the carpet and weaving like a fighter. Harden felt his sluggish heart kick up. Crosby was mumbling, holding up his hands for balance. He caught sight of Harden lying on the couch and smiled with relief, crawling on top of him. His head nudged into the hollow of Harden’s shoulder.
“My god,” Crosby said against Harden’s chest. Harden was frozen, wondering if this was a dream. He put his hand cautiously on Crosby’s back and Crosby’s legs wound with his own.
“You’re home?” he asked, though it was a stupid question. Crosby just nodded, his hair scuffing the underside of Harden’s jaw.
“Took me a real long time.”
Harden could smell beer and gasoline, not all that bad. Crosby was approximately six hundred degrees; the silver of Harden’s necklace was melting. Harden felt an incalculable triumph to have Crosby here with him now.
“Did you have a good time?” he asked, only making conversation. They were whispering and probably being stupid, lying all tied up together in full view. Melhuse had a tendency for midnight snacks. Street had been known to sleepwalk. Harden forgot to care.
Crosby shook his head, his breath blowing warm through Harden’s shirt. “You should have seen it. The signs were all broken.”
“Hmm.” Harden angled and placed his mouth to Crosby’s temple.
“And I don’t think it’s like I expected it would be.”
Harden slipped his hand under Crosby’s shirt and found the skin of his back. Crosby was warm, dead summer in the hills, the weather hanging like sheets on the window. “How’d you expect it would be?”
“Ah.” Crosby pushed up on one elbow, his fingers curling over Harden’s hair. He smiled. “I don’t remember. Never remember anything.”
That wasn’t exactly true. Crosby remembered the pitch sequence leading up to every one of the twenty-eight home runs he’d hit in the major leagues. Harden couldn’t fault him for it; he remembered the sequence of every home run he’d ever given up.
Harden leaned up and kissed him, wet and straight-clean, shot down to his stomach. Crosby murmured and smiled against his mouth.
“Something got caught inside,” Crosby told him, their foreheads touching. “You, I think.”
“Maybe,” Harden whispered. The moon was almost full, so Harden had to keep watch on what he said, nothing he might regret when Crosby waned again.
Crosby’s stomach pressed against Harden’s and Harden was a mile high. Harden was happy for now, bit like lightning. Crosby could swing away from him, drift like a tide, but Harden knew more than he let on, and he’d made himself into a fixed point, believing with all his heart that everything in motion would eventually come to rest.
THE END
Endnotes: The tomato story is true, happened to my uncle back in, like, 1962 or something like that.