change your locks
Someone, who shall remain nameless but knows who she is, got me so godawful hooked on "Horatio Hornblower" that I do not know what to do with myself. ESPECIALLY SINCE NOW I'VE WATCHED THEM ALL. Goddamn eight-part miniseries when I require far more.
It's weird, my job. I've been getting static recently for stuff like playing Egyptian Ratscrew between classes and showing the kids how to bounce a superball hard enough to hit the thirty-foot ceilings. Apparently starting a paper ball fight is not what is expected of a grown-up-type person trying to set a good example. However. When the littlest devil, a pint-sized four year old who has been by turns tormenting us and learning how to read at a fantastic pace, got a stomach ache today, he crawled up me like a tree and curled up in my lap until his mom came. And three days ago, my boss had to bribe him with obscene amounts of candy just to get him off the table.
Although I do have to stop teaching the kids how to make that terrible squealing sound by pulling out the mouth of a balloon and letting the air escape. Because that does no one other than my destructive tendencies any good.
Strangely enough, I like my job. Or, anyway, getting to tell small children that I'm gonna put them in the incinerator, and them howling with laughter because they don't really know what an incinerator is.
Walk Year
Zito goes crazy in Phoenix and that’s awesome, right on time. He laughs like tin cans on a string and falls against Danny Haren, all fucked up and it’s the end of the world. He can’t believe he’s still here.
Haren straightens him with his hands hard on Zito’s shoulders, and then lets him go, and Zito stumbles away. Zito is burned out on shortcuts and postcards, his mind has been whittled down. It’ll be okay.
He gets into a fight with Rich Harden at the bar over what the color of the bottle labels reveal about what’s within, aware even while it’s happening that it’s astonishingly stupid. But Zito’s pulse has gone wicked and Harden keeps goading him, keeps laughing until Zito wants to put his teeth down his throat. He whirls away, mess of people, black light picking out socks and white T-shirts, and Danny is cheering on the other side of the room, holding his hand up as if to call for quiet.
Zito leaves the club alone even though he knows he should wait for one of the guys. He looks for his car for about an hour, pacing the clean sidewalks with his hands in his pockets and a box of wooden matches spilled open in the gutter.
Nice and quiet down here the farther away from the club he gets, though he imagines he can still hear the bass, and he can see Tim Hudson on the corner, in the streetlight. Zito wants to call out his name, but there’s something wrong with his throat. Anyway, Hudson’s a ghost, Zito knows that.
Zito adds up all the spring trainings and he’s spent a full year of his life in Phoenix. Danny Haren is leaning against his car when Zito finally finds it, smoking a joint. One of Zito’s ribs buckles at the sight of him.
He comes up to him and latches onto Haren’s wrist. “How’d you beat me here?”
Haren squints at him, smoke in his eyes. “Been waiting.”
“That. Is impossible.” Zito jabs his finger into Haren’s chest, thinking that he can push hard enough and Haren’s rib will go too, and they’ll have that in common. Haren catches his hand and twists it just enough to hurt, smiles at him.
Last year, Zito remembers, Haren tried to find his way through the team, testing them like they were an unfamiliar tree he was climbing and he had to be careful about where he put his weight. Half-smiles and fast snaps of his gaze from Zito to Rich Harden to Eric Chavez to Bobby Crosby and back again, trying to figure out where his allegiance should go. Zito won, in the end.
Zito focuses on the joint, spot of orange like fresh rust between Haren’s fingers. “Share?”
Haren nods and tucks the joint carefully between Zito’s lips, his knuckles brushing Zito’s chin.
Zito fists his hand in Haren’s shirt and opens his lungs. The sky is pasted and printed, writ like an autograph, and Zito misses Mulder and Hudson and he always has, even when they were still around. He leans back on the car and the metal digs uncomfortably into his hip.
“See, I love spring training,” he says, twiddling the jay.
Haren nods seriously. Between the pot and the darkness, Haren’s pupils appear to be roughly the size of hubcaps. There’s a pale scar at the end of his eyebrow, from when Zito knocked him out of bed last season. Zito had woken up to find Haren on the hard floor, blood on his face, still asleep.
“I do too,” Haren replies, a neat smile stretching. “Spend all winter thinking about it and thinking that it’ll never live up, but every fucking year, man.”
Zito rests his forehead on Haren’s shoulder and closes his eyes. “Yeah. Like that.”
He’s already pretty drunk and now his thoughts are starting to fracture kindly and he believes that if he looks up again, he’ll see the northern lights in the western sky.
Haren was probably a bad idea to begin with, because he brought out the best in Zito and Zito was patently unused to that. He could barely recognize himself. Haren wanted to know everything Zito knew, and Zito had lifted smoke rings into the air so that Haren could catch them on his fingers. Zito wanted to slick Haren’s hair back with his hand and check his forehead for a fever.
“It’s gonna be good, I think,” Zito says into Haren’s shirt. Haren smells of beer and pot and all the best parts of Zito’s childhood.
“The season?”
“Yeah,” Zito replies, though he’s not really sure that’s what he meant. Haren makes him want to be optimistic even as the summer recedes in the future like it’s already November and they’re already grief-stricken.
Haren gives him the end of the joint and Zito singes his fingertips, hissing and shaking. Haren’s got an arm around Zito’s waist and it’s still only pitchers and catchers down here, the city sucked dry. Zito is tired from mornings in the weight room and afternoons on the field, his muscles feeling like cardboard. But Haren is solid, bolted down at his elbows and the flat of his stomach.
Haren moves his head so that his mouth is briefly on Zito’s cheekbone, and then says, “Come on,” digging into Zito’s pocket and making him squirm.
Zito is polished all clean and Haren pulls out Zito’s keys, unlocks the back of the car. Zito is irritated that Haren is not touching him anymore, but then Haren comes back as if on a track, and pulls Zito into the cargo hold, where there is a blanket and beach towels and the raincoat that Zito is always forgetting he has.
Haren is treating him like he’s incapacitated, which would bother Zito if he didn’t enjoy it so much. Haren’s hands are like itty bitty stretches of land and Zito can rest his weight there, let Haren guide him into the back and fold his legs in, palming his stomach. Haren rises to his knees to pull the hatchback shut and Zito gets momentarily scared, thinking about serial killers.
“Don’t do anything to me, okay?” Zito mumbles, and Haren looks surprised, going still.
“Sure.” Haren leans back against the door, his eyes down, not touching Zito anywhere. Zito stares up at the roof of the car, white rips like receipts in the fabric. Tinted windows mean everything’s different in here.
“Wait,” Zito says to the roof. His eyes are on fire, red-rimmed in rearview mirrors and the moon has looked bone-dry for the past week. Zito came down to Phoenix fifteen pounds lighter and he can feel it now, smaller across his chest and the wings of his hips gouging into his jeans.
He pushes up on an elbow, gives Haren a helpless look. “I meant, don’t put me in a cellar and fuck with my skin.” Haren’s eyebrows shoot up. “We can still have sex, though.”
He waits, but Haren just stares at him, flecks of shadow on his face. “Or not,” Zito mutters, and slumps back down. He hates the world for a moment, heartbeat buzzing against his shirt and Haren’s weed fucking him up more than it should.
“Are you okay?” Haren asks. Zito half-shrugs. He hears Haren shifting, pulling off his shoes, thump thump on the floor, and then Haren’s hands are on Zito’s feet, undoing his shoelaces.
Last year, Zito had taken Haren’s arm and pushed him into traffic, but he hadn’t meant anything by it. It was just something to do, and Haren had wheeled on him, gasping, his shirt torn across the stomach. Zito wanted to put his hand there, apologize for maybe trying to kill him. Haren wanted to punch him, but they were both drunk, like now, like then, and Zito had been able to dodge it.
Zito doesn’t understand anything. He isn’t worried that Haren’s gonna murder him, but possibly a little bit worried that he’ll murder Haren out of some corrupt misinterpretation of brotherhood and sacrifice. Even spring training can’t fight this back.
“I only ask,” Haren says, scaling up Zito’s body, “because you’ve been a little weirder than normal since we got back.”
“Lies,” Zito tells him, and puts both hands in Haren’s hair. Haren hovers over him like the dome light, one fist loose on Zito’s chest and the other pressed next to Zito’s head.
Haren sighs and lies down next to him. Zito curves his fingers around Haren’s skull and feels the little bones moving. He thinks that there might be bugs in Haren’s mind, skittering around like this and the sprints they run every morning growing their lungs. Zito is pretty sure that he’ll soon be able to float.
“Tell me about your winter,” Haren says.
“Ah. Already did that.”
Haren snorts. “Right. Surfed, slept, fucked a Gap model, surfed some more. Wild life.”
“So?”
“So I haven’t seen you in four months and I’d like more than fucking cliff notes.”
Zito mouths up to the roof, cliff notes, turning it over in his mind though he’s pretty sure that Haren is getting something wrong here. Paperbacks with covers all yellow and black like a crime scene and Zito kinda likes the idea.
“Nothing much else happened,” he says truthfully. The off-season had been knock-down drag-out, bread going stale in the cupboard and beer cans lined up on the deck rail like an army. Thrown into exhilaration and fear every time the phone rang, ever-reminded that a war is ninety percent boredom and ten percent sheer terror. It was dumb. People could survive being traded, or if not, they could fake it pretty well, be funny in text messages and even Mark Mulder had learned how to live alone.
“Okay, don’t really believe you.” Haren sounds sleepy, his face pressed to Zito’s shoulder. Zito still has one hand in Haren’s hair, appreciating the pull of it and the fact that he could lead Haren someplace like this, somewhere darker than the very dark place that they are now.
“Yeah, well. That’s too bad.” Zito yawns.
The first time anything had happened, Haren had been too drunk to properly give consent, which did not affect Zito because he was even worse. On the floor of a hotel room, Haren’s eyes had rolled white and he’d clung to Zito’s arms, his legs a million miles long and messing with Zito’s rhythm. Too drunk to even talk, snarling and breath whistling between his teeth. They’d been still most of the way dressed, and Zito had ripped the dull brass button off Haren’s jeans. Haren had made him buy a replacement pair, once they’d sobered up and figured out how to meet each other’s eyes again.
“You said maybe you’d go to Mexico.” Haren idly opens the first few buttons of Zito’s shirt, cold fingers on Zito’s chest. “And you said you were gonna learn to throw a splitter. You said you’d call. You were gonna go to Disneyland for a Mickey Mouse ice cream stick.”
“Are you saying I’m unreliable?”
Haren laughs vaguely. “No. Optimistic, I think. Twenty-four hours in every day and you were gonna use them all.”
Zito pictures white-faced clocks and the gray-green digital numbers of his wristwatch, counting down all winter long as he waited to be traded and fought with his sister. He’d been mostly paralyzed, like now with Haren’s hand atop his heart. Twenty-four hours in every day and Zito hadn’t wanted to face a single one.
“I watched a lot of ‘Fresh Prince,’” he tells Haren. “I got kinda stuck.”
Haren blows out a breath, ruffling Zito’s sleeve. He’s gotten Zito’s shirt open down to the bottom of his ribs, his fingers rattling around in there like ghosts in the attic. “That’ll happen, I guess.”
“It’s over now. Doesn’t matter.”
“You say that, but, what? Like it wasn’t killing everybody else, too.” Haren taps Zito’s chest meaningfully, goosebumps chattering on Zito’s skin, spreading out from the places where Haren’s fingertips make dents.
Zito scowls at the roof. Stuffy in here with the two of them, too big, really, to just lie around in the cargo hold like this, their knees canted against the door. The stinging blue scent of Haren’s deodorant in the air and no grass to hang out on in Arizona and Zito doesn’t want to hear about how hard the winter was for everybody else.
He slowly wrenches his hand in Haren’s hair, pulling him up so they’re face to face. The tension of Zito’s hold draws Haren’s forehead perfectly clear.
“You. Do not know. What you’re talking about,” Zito says, pausing for effect because that’s allowed.
Haren rolls his eyes, funny-looking in photographs and handsome now with Zito’s hand in his hair and the sallow light tracing the angles of his face.
“Okay, fine.” Haren snickers, more stoned than he’s letting on. “Christ, I missed your fucking aura-of-mystery shit.”
Furrowing his brow, Zito loosens his grip, but Haren remains hovered above him. Zito isn’t much of a mystery-he could be solved by the second chapter, if people would just pay attention. It’s always gonna be the weird spooky-eyed teenager who hangs around the antique shop and pegs stones at rats in the alley; that little motherfucker is responsible for all the stuff that’s been done in Zito’s name.
“I think I missed you, too,” Zito says, thinking hard. Haren had left an odd imprint, punctured Zito’s memory with the smell of toothpaste and the carpet-burn scar on the heel of Zito’s hand that turned purple when it got cold.
Truth is, Zito hadn’t really missed him, but that’s only because he didn’t think they’d still be on the same team come spring, so he’d made a promise to get over Haren by November, and god knows Zito is good at keeping his promises.
Haren beams, and kisses him, and that hasn’t happened in a very long time. He tastes the same, though, and presses his teeth into Zito’s lower lip the same, and curves his fingers around Zito’s ribs under his shirt the same. Zito licks the inside of Haren’s mouth and the world is this easy slippery place that makes his mind roll like a kid down a hill.
Zito likes this, and that’s good to know, after all this fucking uncertainty, to be absolutely sure that this is something he wants to do.
Haren pulls away, half-lidded and lanterned. “Yeah,” he says shakily. “See, yeah.”
Zito nods. “Yeah,” and then he’s kissing Haren again, deep and lost in thought, the season ahead of them made up of decades instead of months, and they’ll be too old to walk by the end of it. Haren’s hair will turn white. Zito draws a shuffleboard pyramid on Haren’s back, Haren twisting and making fierce sounds against his mouth. And, fuck, but Zito can only pray that it’ll last that long. He could wake up tomorrow and it’d be October again, dragged through the mud and each muscle crying out.
Haren’s hand runs down to Zito’s stomach, and he asks into Zito’s throat, “Did you, like, stop eating?”
“I was occupied with. Other things,” Zito mumbles, kinda distracted by Haren’s tongue and Haren’s hand. He pushes Haren’s shirt up and Haren helps him out, stripping out of it and tossing it over the seat.
“What, life in Bel-Air?” Haren laughs and he’s been doing that a lot lately. He opens Zito’s jeans and Zito sighs, lifts his hips.
“No, we live in Van Nuys.” Zito’s confused, all of this seems to have happened before. The back of the car and the dry motionless freeze of Phoenix in February, Haren moving expertly and sucking on his collarbone. Zito could have sworn that he’d already put this behind him.
“Well.” Haren raises his head and his hair brushes across Zito’s face. Last year, they’d had stupid running dares about not getting haircuts and not using shampoo, until Zito could make spikes with his hands. “I think you missed the joke, but that’s okay.”
“Okay,” Zito echoes, not quite remembering what they were talking about, because Haren’s hand is inside now and all the old stuff is coming back to him.
The ceiling blurs and trembles, sweat in Zito’s eyes and his breath loud in his ears, scraping around the car. He says, “Danny,” for no real reason.
Zito feels his life shrinking down to right now, as if this is every time they’ve ever fucked and this simple handjob is a hundred other things, all the things that hold them together and will remain with them when they are apart.
Haren keeps kissing him, rubbing against Zito’s hip, and Zito knows he should be doing more than he is, but he’s tired and the off-season was as mean as a snake and he just wants to lie here in the back of his car and not think about it for a minute.
Haren bites Zito’s ear and neatly twists his wrist, and that’s it. That’s enough. Zito can’t catch his breath, absently aware of Haren’s hand leaving, cold all at once, shivering. He knows in a little while he’ll have to reconcile this, but he isn’t in the mood right now.
Haren rests quietly along his side, his head on Zito’s chest. Zito can taste soap in Haren’s hair, which more than anything proves that this is a whole new season.
Zito stretches as much as possible, pop crack snap in his spine, and skates his hand down Haren’s back, into his jeans. “You want me to?”
Haren shakes his head. “I’m good.”
“Um. What?” This is unprecedented. He gropes Haren a little to make sure Haren really understands what he’s offering. Haren exhales and thumps his head on Zito’s chest.
“Seriously.”
Zito settles back, feeling woozy. “’Kay.”
They’re just there for a long time. Zito feels the buzz running off him like two hours after a game, and he starts thinking about tomorrow, the sprints and the weight room and his session in the ‘pen. He can’t stay skinny like this for much longer, because April will tear him down and May will be worse.
He holds onto Haren, distractedly thinking about all that rides on this season, no room for momentary error or carelessness, though momentary error and carelessness are what Zito does best. No room for self-inflicted insanity, either, and he’s already there.
“Hey?” Haren says softly.
“Hmm.”
“It is gonna be a good year.”
Zito smiles up at nothing. “One more to send me off right.”
“Don’t say that,” Haren tells him sharply, dragging his thumb slow across Zito’s throat, marking him for execution.
Zito closes his eyes and faces down the black light shining off the pavement outside, believing that he will be made strong by love.
“Sorry,” he says, his blood running as thick as motor oil. Haren buttons Zito’s shirt back up, smooths his hand down Zito’s chest and puts him away for safekeeping, for this last spring in Phoenix.
THE END
this is, what? a talisman. like practicing what you'll say to the cop when he pulls you over for speeding, because if you're prepared, it'll never happen. this is me trying to forestall the inevitable.
It's weird, my job. I've been getting static recently for stuff like playing Egyptian Ratscrew between classes and showing the kids how to bounce a superball hard enough to hit the thirty-foot ceilings. Apparently starting a paper ball fight is not what is expected of a grown-up-type person trying to set a good example. However. When the littlest devil, a pint-sized four year old who has been by turns tormenting us and learning how to read at a fantastic pace, got a stomach ache today, he crawled up me like a tree and curled up in my lap until his mom came. And three days ago, my boss had to bribe him with obscene amounts of candy just to get him off the table.
Although I do have to stop teaching the kids how to make that terrible squealing sound by pulling out the mouth of a balloon and letting the air escape. Because that does no one other than my destructive tendencies any good.
Strangely enough, I like my job. Or, anyway, getting to tell small children that I'm gonna put them in the incinerator, and them howling with laughter because they don't really know what an incinerator is.
Walk Year
Zito goes crazy in Phoenix and that’s awesome, right on time. He laughs like tin cans on a string and falls against Danny Haren, all fucked up and it’s the end of the world. He can’t believe he’s still here.
Haren straightens him with his hands hard on Zito’s shoulders, and then lets him go, and Zito stumbles away. Zito is burned out on shortcuts and postcards, his mind has been whittled down. It’ll be okay.
He gets into a fight with Rich Harden at the bar over what the color of the bottle labels reveal about what’s within, aware even while it’s happening that it’s astonishingly stupid. But Zito’s pulse has gone wicked and Harden keeps goading him, keeps laughing until Zito wants to put his teeth down his throat. He whirls away, mess of people, black light picking out socks and white T-shirts, and Danny is cheering on the other side of the room, holding his hand up as if to call for quiet.
Zito leaves the club alone even though he knows he should wait for one of the guys. He looks for his car for about an hour, pacing the clean sidewalks with his hands in his pockets and a box of wooden matches spilled open in the gutter.
Nice and quiet down here the farther away from the club he gets, though he imagines he can still hear the bass, and he can see Tim Hudson on the corner, in the streetlight. Zito wants to call out his name, but there’s something wrong with his throat. Anyway, Hudson’s a ghost, Zito knows that.
Zito adds up all the spring trainings and he’s spent a full year of his life in Phoenix. Danny Haren is leaning against his car when Zito finally finds it, smoking a joint. One of Zito’s ribs buckles at the sight of him.
He comes up to him and latches onto Haren’s wrist. “How’d you beat me here?”
Haren squints at him, smoke in his eyes. “Been waiting.”
“That. Is impossible.” Zito jabs his finger into Haren’s chest, thinking that he can push hard enough and Haren’s rib will go too, and they’ll have that in common. Haren catches his hand and twists it just enough to hurt, smiles at him.
Last year, Zito remembers, Haren tried to find his way through the team, testing them like they were an unfamiliar tree he was climbing and he had to be careful about where he put his weight. Half-smiles and fast snaps of his gaze from Zito to Rich Harden to Eric Chavez to Bobby Crosby and back again, trying to figure out where his allegiance should go. Zito won, in the end.
Zito focuses on the joint, spot of orange like fresh rust between Haren’s fingers. “Share?”
Haren nods and tucks the joint carefully between Zito’s lips, his knuckles brushing Zito’s chin.
Zito fists his hand in Haren’s shirt and opens his lungs. The sky is pasted and printed, writ like an autograph, and Zito misses Mulder and Hudson and he always has, even when they were still around. He leans back on the car and the metal digs uncomfortably into his hip.
“See, I love spring training,” he says, twiddling the jay.
Haren nods seriously. Between the pot and the darkness, Haren’s pupils appear to be roughly the size of hubcaps. There’s a pale scar at the end of his eyebrow, from when Zito knocked him out of bed last season. Zito had woken up to find Haren on the hard floor, blood on his face, still asleep.
“I do too,” Haren replies, a neat smile stretching. “Spend all winter thinking about it and thinking that it’ll never live up, but every fucking year, man.”
Zito rests his forehead on Haren’s shoulder and closes his eyes. “Yeah. Like that.”
He’s already pretty drunk and now his thoughts are starting to fracture kindly and he believes that if he looks up again, he’ll see the northern lights in the western sky.
Haren was probably a bad idea to begin with, because he brought out the best in Zito and Zito was patently unused to that. He could barely recognize himself. Haren wanted to know everything Zito knew, and Zito had lifted smoke rings into the air so that Haren could catch them on his fingers. Zito wanted to slick Haren’s hair back with his hand and check his forehead for a fever.
“It’s gonna be good, I think,” Zito says into Haren’s shirt. Haren smells of beer and pot and all the best parts of Zito’s childhood.
“The season?”
“Yeah,” Zito replies, though he’s not really sure that’s what he meant. Haren makes him want to be optimistic even as the summer recedes in the future like it’s already November and they’re already grief-stricken.
Haren gives him the end of the joint and Zito singes his fingertips, hissing and shaking. Haren’s got an arm around Zito’s waist and it’s still only pitchers and catchers down here, the city sucked dry. Zito is tired from mornings in the weight room and afternoons on the field, his muscles feeling like cardboard. But Haren is solid, bolted down at his elbows and the flat of his stomach.
Haren moves his head so that his mouth is briefly on Zito’s cheekbone, and then says, “Come on,” digging into Zito’s pocket and making him squirm.
Zito is polished all clean and Haren pulls out Zito’s keys, unlocks the back of the car. Zito is irritated that Haren is not touching him anymore, but then Haren comes back as if on a track, and pulls Zito into the cargo hold, where there is a blanket and beach towels and the raincoat that Zito is always forgetting he has.
Haren is treating him like he’s incapacitated, which would bother Zito if he didn’t enjoy it so much. Haren’s hands are like itty bitty stretches of land and Zito can rest his weight there, let Haren guide him into the back and fold his legs in, palming his stomach. Haren rises to his knees to pull the hatchback shut and Zito gets momentarily scared, thinking about serial killers.
“Don’t do anything to me, okay?” Zito mumbles, and Haren looks surprised, going still.
“Sure.” Haren leans back against the door, his eyes down, not touching Zito anywhere. Zito stares up at the roof of the car, white rips like receipts in the fabric. Tinted windows mean everything’s different in here.
“Wait,” Zito says to the roof. His eyes are on fire, red-rimmed in rearview mirrors and the moon has looked bone-dry for the past week. Zito came down to Phoenix fifteen pounds lighter and he can feel it now, smaller across his chest and the wings of his hips gouging into his jeans.
He pushes up on an elbow, gives Haren a helpless look. “I meant, don’t put me in a cellar and fuck with my skin.” Haren’s eyebrows shoot up. “We can still have sex, though.”
He waits, but Haren just stares at him, flecks of shadow on his face. “Or not,” Zito mutters, and slumps back down. He hates the world for a moment, heartbeat buzzing against his shirt and Haren’s weed fucking him up more than it should.
“Are you okay?” Haren asks. Zito half-shrugs. He hears Haren shifting, pulling off his shoes, thump thump on the floor, and then Haren’s hands are on Zito’s feet, undoing his shoelaces.
Last year, Zito had taken Haren’s arm and pushed him into traffic, but he hadn’t meant anything by it. It was just something to do, and Haren had wheeled on him, gasping, his shirt torn across the stomach. Zito wanted to put his hand there, apologize for maybe trying to kill him. Haren wanted to punch him, but they were both drunk, like now, like then, and Zito had been able to dodge it.
Zito doesn’t understand anything. He isn’t worried that Haren’s gonna murder him, but possibly a little bit worried that he’ll murder Haren out of some corrupt misinterpretation of brotherhood and sacrifice. Even spring training can’t fight this back.
“I only ask,” Haren says, scaling up Zito’s body, “because you’ve been a little weirder than normal since we got back.”
“Lies,” Zito tells him, and puts both hands in Haren’s hair. Haren hovers over him like the dome light, one fist loose on Zito’s chest and the other pressed next to Zito’s head.
Haren sighs and lies down next to him. Zito curves his fingers around Haren’s skull and feels the little bones moving. He thinks that there might be bugs in Haren’s mind, skittering around like this and the sprints they run every morning growing their lungs. Zito is pretty sure that he’ll soon be able to float.
“Tell me about your winter,” Haren says.
“Ah. Already did that.”
Haren snorts. “Right. Surfed, slept, fucked a Gap model, surfed some more. Wild life.”
“So?”
“So I haven’t seen you in four months and I’d like more than fucking cliff notes.”
Zito mouths up to the roof, cliff notes, turning it over in his mind though he’s pretty sure that Haren is getting something wrong here. Paperbacks with covers all yellow and black like a crime scene and Zito kinda likes the idea.
“Nothing much else happened,” he says truthfully. The off-season had been knock-down drag-out, bread going stale in the cupboard and beer cans lined up on the deck rail like an army. Thrown into exhilaration and fear every time the phone rang, ever-reminded that a war is ninety percent boredom and ten percent sheer terror. It was dumb. People could survive being traded, or if not, they could fake it pretty well, be funny in text messages and even Mark Mulder had learned how to live alone.
“Okay, don’t really believe you.” Haren sounds sleepy, his face pressed to Zito’s shoulder. Zito still has one hand in Haren’s hair, appreciating the pull of it and the fact that he could lead Haren someplace like this, somewhere darker than the very dark place that they are now.
“Yeah, well. That’s too bad.” Zito yawns.
The first time anything had happened, Haren had been too drunk to properly give consent, which did not affect Zito because he was even worse. On the floor of a hotel room, Haren’s eyes had rolled white and he’d clung to Zito’s arms, his legs a million miles long and messing with Zito’s rhythm. Too drunk to even talk, snarling and breath whistling between his teeth. They’d been still most of the way dressed, and Zito had ripped the dull brass button off Haren’s jeans. Haren had made him buy a replacement pair, once they’d sobered up and figured out how to meet each other’s eyes again.
“You said maybe you’d go to Mexico.” Haren idly opens the first few buttons of Zito’s shirt, cold fingers on Zito’s chest. “And you said you were gonna learn to throw a splitter. You said you’d call. You were gonna go to Disneyland for a Mickey Mouse ice cream stick.”
“Are you saying I’m unreliable?”
Haren laughs vaguely. “No. Optimistic, I think. Twenty-four hours in every day and you were gonna use them all.”
Zito pictures white-faced clocks and the gray-green digital numbers of his wristwatch, counting down all winter long as he waited to be traded and fought with his sister. He’d been mostly paralyzed, like now with Haren’s hand atop his heart. Twenty-four hours in every day and Zito hadn’t wanted to face a single one.
“I watched a lot of ‘Fresh Prince,’” he tells Haren. “I got kinda stuck.”
Haren blows out a breath, ruffling Zito’s sleeve. He’s gotten Zito’s shirt open down to the bottom of his ribs, his fingers rattling around in there like ghosts in the attic. “That’ll happen, I guess.”
“It’s over now. Doesn’t matter.”
“You say that, but, what? Like it wasn’t killing everybody else, too.” Haren taps Zito’s chest meaningfully, goosebumps chattering on Zito’s skin, spreading out from the places where Haren’s fingertips make dents.
Zito scowls at the roof. Stuffy in here with the two of them, too big, really, to just lie around in the cargo hold like this, their knees canted against the door. The stinging blue scent of Haren’s deodorant in the air and no grass to hang out on in Arizona and Zito doesn’t want to hear about how hard the winter was for everybody else.
He slowly wrenches his hand in Haren’s hair, pulling him up so they’re face to face. The tension of Zito’s hold draws Haren’s forehead perfectly clear.
“You. Do not know. What you’re talking about,” Zito says, pausing for effect because that’s allowed.
Haren rolls his eyes, funny-looking in photographs and handsome now with Zito’s hand in his hair and the sallow light tracing the angles of his face.
“Okay, fine.” Haren snickers, more stoned than he’s letting on. “Christ, I missed your fucking aura-of-mystery shit.”
Furrowing his brow, Zito loosens his grip, but Haren remains hovered above him. Zito isn’t much of a mystery-he could be solved by the second chapter, if people would just pay attention. It’s always gonna be the weird spooky-eyed teenager who hangs around the antique shop and pegs stones at rats in the alley; that little motherfucker is responsible for all the stuff that’s been done in Zito’s name.
“I think I missed you, too,” Zito says, thinking hard. Haren had left an odd imprint, punctured Zito’s memory with the smell of toothpaste and the carpet-burn scar on the heel of Zito’s hand that turned purple when it got cold.
Truth is, Zito hadn’t really missed him, but that’s only because he didn’t think they’d still be on the same team come spring, so he’d made a promise to get over Haren by November, and god knows Zito is good at keeping his promises.
Haren beams, and kisses him, and that hasn’t happened in a very long time. He tastes the same, though, and presses his teeth into Zito’s lower lip the same, and curves his fingers around Zito’s ribs under his shirt the same. Zito licks the inside of Haren’s mouth and the world is this easy slippery place that makes his mind roll like a kid down a hill.
Zito likes this, and that’s good to know, after all this fucking uncertainty, to be absolutely sure that this is something he wants to do.
Haren pulls away, half-lidded and lanterned. “Yeah,” he says shakily. “See, yeah.”
Zito nods. “Yeah,” and then he’s kissing Haren again, deep and lost in thought, the season ahead of them made up of decades instead of months, and they’ll be too old to walk by the end of it. Haren’s hair will turn white. Zito draws a shuffleboard pyramid on Haren’s back, Haren twisting and making fierce sounds against his mouth. And, fuck, but Zito can only pray that it’ll last that long. He could wake up tomorrow and it’d be October again, dragged through the mud and each muscle crying out.
Haren’s hand runs down to Zito’s stomach, and he asks into Zito’s throat, “Did you, like, stop eating?”
“I was occupied with. Other things,” Zito mumbles, kinda distracted by Haren’s tongue and Haren’s hand. He pushes Haren’s shirt up and Haren helps him out, stripping out of it and tossing it over the seat.
“What, life in Bel-Air?” Haren laughs and he’s been doing that a lot lately. He opens Zito’s jeans and Zito sighs, lifts his hips.
“No, we live in Van Nuys.” Zito’s confused, all of this seems to have happened before. The back of the car and the dry motionless freeze of Phoenix in February, Haren moving expertly and sucking on his collarbone. Zito could have sworn that he’d already put this behind him.
“Well.” Haren raises his head and his hair brushes across Zito’s face. Last year, they’d had stupid running dares about not getting haircuts and not using shampoo, until Zito could make spikes with his hands. “I think you missed the joke, but that’s okay.”
“Okay,” Zito echoes, not quite remembering what they were talking about, because Haren’s hand is inside now and all the old stuff is coming back to him.
The ceiling blurs and trembles, sweat in Zito’s eyes and his breath loud in his ears, scraping around the car. He says, “Danny,” for no real reason.
Zito feels his life shrinking down to right now, as if this is every time they’ve ever fucked and this simple handjob is a hundred other things, all the things that hold them together and will remain with them when they are apart.
Haren keeps kissing him, rubbing against Zito’s hip, and Zito knows he should be doing more than he is, but he’s tired and the off-season was as mean as a snake and he just wants to lie here in the back of his car and not think about it for a minute.
Haren bites Zito’s ear and neatly twists his wrist, and that’s it. That’s enough. Zito can’t catch his breath, absently aware of Haren’s hand leaving, cold all at once, shivering. He knows in a little while he’ll have to reconcile this, but he isn’t in the mood right now.
Haren rests quietly along his side, his head on Zito’s chest. Zito can taste soap in Haren’s hair, which more than anything proves that this is a whole new season.
Zito stretches as much as possible, pop crack snap in his spine, and skates his hand down Haren’s back, into his jeans. “You want me to?”
Haren shakes his head. “I’m good.”
“Um. What?” This is unprecedented. He gropes Haren a little to make sure Haren really understands what he’s offering. Haren exhales and thumps his head on Zito’s chest.
“Seriously.”
Zito settles back, feeling woozy. “’Kay.”
They’re just there for a long time. Zito feels the buzz running off him like two hours after a game, and he starts thinking about tomorrow, the sprints and the weight room and his session in the ‘pen. He can’t stay skinny like this for much longer, because April will tear him down and May will be worse.
He holds onto Haren, distractedly thinking about all that rides on this season, no room for momentary error or carelessness, though momentary error and carelessness are what Zito does best. No room for self-inflicted insanity, either, and he’s already there.
“Hey?” Haren says softly.
“Hmm.”
“It is gonna be a good year.”
Zito smiles up at nothing. “One more to send me off right.”
“Don’t say that,” Haren tells him sharply, dragging his thumb slow across Zito’s throat, marking him for execution.
Zito closes his eyes and faces down the black light shining off the pavement outside, believing that he will be made strong by love.
“Sorry,” he says, his blood running as thick as motor oil. Haren buttons Zito’s shirt back up, smooths his hand down Zito’s chest and puts him away for safekeeping, for this last spring in Phoenix.
THE END
this is, what? a talisman. like practicing what you'll say to the cop when he pulls you over for speeding, because if you're prepared, it'll never happen. this is me trying to forestall the inevitable.