this should not be going up now
i should sleep on it and fiddle with it a little more tomorrow. but there's something else i've got to do tomorrow. so, you know. fuck it.
In Which I Get Disturbingly Meta
Or, Five Things That Have Not Yet Happened to Barry Zito
in which rich harden realizes it’s too late
That would be the day that Zito gets traded and the world seems to pause for a minute. This, right here, is Rich Harden driving over the bridge at two in the morning. Picture it, though maybe you’ve never seen San Francisco before. Lit up at night like any other city, different because the sightlines are higher. The TransAmerica Building is a pyramid, the Marriott is a jukebox, Coit Tower is tiny and not leaning at all up on the hill. The searchlight on Alcatraz whisking around every ten seconds
So, you got it? Harden’s gonna make some last stand, it’s gonna be great. He can feel it, and maybe it’s like a train running in his bloodstream, maybe his heart is going faster than the car or his best fastball.
Harden is in love with Zito, this we can assume, though the reasons behind that is a whole other ball of wax. Rely heavily on the idea that Zito’s brand of insanity is endearing. Losing his mind in front of a national television audience and looking really good doing it, that’s how Zito operates.
Harden is in love with Zito. They have been fucking around since Harden was a rookie, since Mulder and Hudson got traded, since Harden broke up with Bobby Crosby, since they went on that road trip to Canada together, Zito stuttering with painkillers. They stopped fucking around when Huston Street showed up. When Harden realized Zito was still hung up on Mulder (or Hudson. Or Chavez. Or, fuck. Danny Haren). They never stopped fucking around, and when Harden gets to Zito’s apartment building, he’s gonna press Zito up against the wall and his hands will probably be in fists.
Zito is not really in love with Harden, not this time, he just thinks Harden is really fucking hot. Which is enough, usually.
We’re not sure where Zito lives in the city, but Harden knows, so it’s okay. Harden doesn’t like driving on the hills, he’s afraid one of these days his brakes will have been cut. Doesn’t make sense, as far as phobias go, but Zito won’t use an electric toothbrush because he’s afraid of being electrocuted, so there you go.
There you go, Harden has made it to Zito’s place and the elevator takes too long, and he’s in love, Richie is just ripped up. Zito’s been traded and Harden expected it, didn’t see it coming at all, he’s got a plan to kidnap Zito and take him north of the border. He’s gonna be tough and strong and not show anything, fuck Zito one last time and not stay the night.
He stays the night, and Zito will miss him, either that or Zito doesn’t care at all. Zito is thinking of other right-handed pitchers. Zito is excited about his new team, his hands shaking hard pulling Harden’s shirt off, but we like it better when Zito is terrified. We like it better when Zito is coming unglued. He just does it so well.
Harden wakes up in Zito’s bed, Zito’s arm warm across his stomach, or Zito rolled away from him, slope of his bare back, shoulder blades, crooks of his ribs. Harden is thinking in baseball metaphors. The curve of the stitches. The clarity of the baselines.
Zito maybe smiles and kisses Harden deeply upon arising, but probably doesn’t. Zito’s stuff is already mostly packed; his flight’s at two o’clock (their flights are always at two o’clock). Harden tries to get angry, tries to say something about how he’s really, very much in love, and please don’t leave, and one of them ends up crying. Doesn’t really matter who.
No, it doesn’t happen like that. Harden doesn’t say anything, and Zito doesn’t know about the very much in love thing that is fucking shredding Harden from the inside out. Zito walks him to the door with a hand on the back of Harden’s neck, fingers slipped up into Harden’s hair. Zito grins and presses a kiss to Harden’s forehead and says something like, see you around, something like, that was fun, man, something like, good luck.
The door closes and Harden is standing in the hallway, saying to no one, you’re the only thing I want.
(don’t you just fucking love that.)
*
in which there is drama
This one is about Zito thinking he can turn back time, and ha. It’s about Zito in Billy Beane’s office, screaming at him, and you’ve got to imagine that the sun is going down through the broad windows and Beane’s office faces west, overlooks the highway and the airport and way far off the silver of the bay. Like this, see, it’s in Zito’s eyes and Beane’s just a silhouette.
They don’t really fight, because Beane won’t let him. They fight endlessly, about the many years they’ve known each other and the many times that they’ve let it go too far.
Okay, it’s never gone too far. Beane does not know what Zito’s mouth tastes like. Zito did not, at one point, stand fully-uniformed in the weight room and think about the sweat dampening Beane’s T-shirt.
Beane doesn’t watch his team’s games. It’s not his fault he had to trade Zito. Zito doesn’t believe him, knows Beane did it on purpose, but Beane (who did, in real life, do it on purpose) won’t even give him that. Beane won’t give him anything.
By the time Beane crosses the room and puts his hand on Zito’s stomach, by the time Beane is telling him to get the fuck out, all Zito can say is, I don’t want to go.
Blurs together like he’s drunk. Don’twannago, don’twannago, please. And again, for fun: please.
But for all the times Zito has sucked him off or anyway offered to, Beane never promised him a long-term contract. Beane is stupid about some things, like Zito’s face and hands, but not about anything that really matters. Beane acts only in the best interest of his team (his team, has that been made clear, more than Eric Chavez’s or Barry Zito’s), or maybe he just doesn’t want to see Zito every morning anymore, like a gutshot and he knows he’ll never be able to stay away if Zito is still the focus of the Oakland universe every fifth day.
Most likely, they’ll stumble over into the dangerous territory of Beane’s shameful professional baseball career, which never had anything to do with talent, everything to do with the fragility of his mind, and Zito, well, we already know about that.
Beane hates it when Zito brings that up, so Zito doesn’t. Zito just calls him a never-fucking-were, which, hey. Sounds familiar. And wasn’t he not supposed to bring it up? They must hate each other a little bit more this time, it’s always a fine line. Beane doesn’t like looking at Zito’s face, the hair over his forehead, the tightness of his stomach under Beane’s hand, Zito’s eyes that never ever change and are just so angry at him.
Beane says, I had to, and Zito sneers. Zito’s already out the door, driving away, he never came to see Beane, because there’s nothing left for them to talk about. Zito is either the worst son in the world or they’re going to hell. Or maybe both, hey.
And fade out here, will you, because nobody needs to see Beane fucking Zito one last time over the desk in his office, papers sliding under Zito’s body and the sunlight catching on the plastic cases of the baseball cards lined up like streetlights on Beane’s shelves. Nobody needs to see that.
Billy Beane would never sleep with one of his players, come on.
*
in which the air conditioning is broken
Some time set aside for Danny Haren, in Zito’s apartment in July where the air conditioning, as mentioned above, is broken. It’s a rare, actual hot night in the fogged-in San Francisco summer, and Zito is packing without a shirt on, his skin shining. Danny is over there sitting on the windowsill with one leg in and one leg out, not smoking a joint.
Not smoking a joint because neither of them is that stupid, though if they don’t test for human growth hormone, maybe they don’t test for this either. Haren breathes out smoke and watches the lines on Zito’s face dig deeper in.
Haren fit right in pretty much immediately. But that’s for another day.
Zito is talking a lot, his new team and the new city and Haren is doing math in his head, counting miles, not really thinking about it because Zito is not really talking about it, Zito is just packing swiftly and efficiently, his mouth a track. Haren has not known him nearly as long as he feels he should have, his memories tie back to this but whatever, whatever. Danny’s stoned.
Not gonna worry about what the room looks like, because we’ve done this before, and anyway, more important to focus on is Haren half out the window and half in, and Zito keeps saying, you’re gonna fucking fall.
So that will be the theme. It will take on great significance, more than meets the eye and all that. You’re gonna fall. A prediction.
Zito’s back moves as he reaches into the closet, and Haren is watching that, the faucet flow of the traffic twenty-seven stories below, always odd numbers when we bring up specifics. Zito’s back, shoulders set far apart and the bruised dents of his spine disappearing. Gleaming and shining and you’re gonna fall.
See?
Haren rests his head back against the window, and they’ve never had sex, him and Zito, though maybe it’s always been there and maybe Haren is, wonder of wonders, not actually gay. Not even a little bit. Zito is just secondhand buzzed on the smoke in Haren’s lungs and the red shattered windshield of his eyes.
So he comes over and takes the joint that Haren is not smoking out of his hand and nobody talks about the fact that Zito is leaving tomorrow (at two o’clock), that the plane will be empty and he’ll be able to stretch out across five seats and catch up on the sleep that he will not get tonight.
Zito’s hand on the side of Haren’s face, the crackle of the cherry eating up the paper, and okay, they’ve had sex, they’ve been sleeping together since two days after they first met, down in Phoenix when Zito made the most of his height and Haren forgot that he wasn’t gay when he saw Zito down on his knees. And Zito pushed him into traffic, fucked in the cargo hold of Zito’s truck, put his hand on Haren’s dick when Haren was drunk and confused and could feel nothing but Zito’s hair.
But fuck the past and Haren actually goes by Dan these days, as if it matters, as if there’s a difference, and Zito kisses him, keeping his two fingers holding the joint held up away from Haren’s face. Zito leans into him on the windowsill and Haren has to reach back and hold on to the wall because he’s gonna fall.
Oh yeah, that’s working out well. Joint flicked down into the flooding street and Zito is giving Haren his old T-shirts, not talking about it, they’re just fucking around, Zito leaving isn’t gonna change anything in particular and maybe Haren will end up with Rich Harden and vanish back into the second person, and that will be a step up for him.
Maybe Haren will just be alive for this moment with Zito’s mouth on his and both of Zito’s hands in his hair, pressing him back against the window, maybe Haren will be happy right now like clickclickclick and god. Maybe Haren will dig his heel into the outside of Zito’s apartment building and be glad to have known him, and nobody will be hurt and everybody will get off and Zito will think of him as the plane leaves California and it won’t be about falling, after all.
Maybe. Probably not.
*
in which old favorites reappear
This will be different, because this time Zito leaves on his own, after the season is over and they’ve gotten no further than they ever got before. Beane makes him an offer just for show, and Zito has spent all summer saying it’s never been about the money for him, then takes a five year deal for three times what the A’s could afford. Which we all knew would happen.
It’s either Mulder or Hudson who comes out to Hollywood after Zito signs with his new team, in either November or January or maybe a week before Christmas, slow too-warm time. Hudson or Mulder who shows up at Zito’s door with a duffel bag and a grin, a scowl, an immediate reproach, you don’t have any fucking clue what you’ve just given up.
But Zito knows. Oakland is in him too deep. He signed because it scares him to be so at home in one place. He signed because he wants to live somewhere where it snows in April. He signed because he was falling in love with Eric Chavez for the fourteenth goddamn time. He signed because he wanted the money. Fuck.
Mulder or Hudson pushes him halfway down the hall, pegging him in the chest, stupid fucking kid, and Zito spits back, not a fucking kid, but hey. That’s not really true, man, a couple years shy of thirty and still frightened of thunderstorms, yeah, still.
After the shouting is over, Zito makes Hudson or Mulder some coffee and they sit facing each other at the kitchen table. Zito, in his efforts to not be such a fucking kid, is not living with his sister this off-season, and the place is quiet enough to hear the dust gather.
Mulder or Hudson is still as good-looking as he ever was, and Zito is still kinda distracted by that, thinking about switchblades in back alleys and beer at picnic tables in the astonishing Atlanta heat, stress fractures and strained obliques, the way Zito was purely stunned to find himself able to live without the other man. Everything’s very obscure-that’s intentional.
They drink their coffee, mostly in silence, blowing on it first, like, real civilized out here, aren’t we. Hudson or Mulder is sick with anger at Zito, for turning down what hadn’t even been offered two years previous. Mulder or Hudson woke up one morning on another team, didn’t have the choice laid out for him, black ink on white paper, but Zito is pretty sure that if someone offered Hudson or Mulder sixty-five million dollars, he’d have fucking well taken it.
But it’s not about the money.
There’s not much to say to each other, stories about the Midwest and the Southeast, cell phones spurring on the table and interrupting them. Zito’s eyes are fixed on Mulder or Hudson’s mouth to the exclusion of all else. Zito is maybe a pretty simple guy who just wants to be obscenely rich and fuck his former best friend. Zito is maybe not this wild enigma that appeals to us so greatly, maybe just a guy like any of the other guys you’ve ever met.
Zito’s got an extra bedroom but Hudson or Mulder catches him at the sink and turns him around, counter digging into the small of his back, Mulder or Hudson’s hand wrenched in his shirt. Can’t stop holding onto each other, these guys. Something about the quality of the light, the shape of Hudson or Mulder’s mouth as it twists and bites, and picture postcards in Zito’s mind as he opens his mouth and undoes his belt one-handed.
Right there in the kitchen, coffee cups exploding on the tile floor, and then later, half-dragged to his bedroom because Mulder or Hudson has always been stronger, it might finally hit Zito, what he’s done.
Because he thought he couldn’t live without this, but he did, refusing to return calls, texting because he hated the way his voice would break, seeing Hudson or Mulder on road trips and twice in the off-season when he was in Scottsdale or Florida and they’d fucked quietly in the hall bathroom at four in the morning, wary of fiancées or wives and daughters. Take your pick.
Thought he couldn’t live without it, but with Mulder or Hudson’s hands back on him like nothing has ever been so hot, Zito is twenty-four years old again, the still undefeated best year of his life. He’s been losing bits and pieces of that season for years now, and being with Hudson or Mulder again does nothing but remind him that it’s completely gone now, twenty-four was a dream.
Mulder or Hudson mutters against the back of his neck, you’ll live to regret it, but Zito knows that’s not true as he hides his suddenly wet eyes in the pillow. Won’t live to regret it. Won’t live.
*
in which we come to terms
So at the end it’s harder to take, though none of it’s been easy. See the look on Eric Chavez’s face, okay, and it won’t end well.
Longevity is one thing, a good thing, stuff Zito and Chavez know that none of the other guys do, secret jokes and memories of Zito in a wedding dress in a hotel lobby, the white lace trailing sweetly on the floor behind him and his face stained rookie-red, the biggest grin you’ve ever in your life seen scrawled across. Zito and Chavez go back as far as either of them would like to remember, so yeah, it ends here.
It ends right here. Drinking in a bar the night before Zito leaves, the day that he was traded. Not fucking fair for it to be that fast, told at four o’clock and on a plane ten hours later (do the math). Turnaround leaves him dizzy.
They’re not even home, somewhere in the American League, Cleveland’s a good non-descript city for this kind of thing. Kansas City, which, as we’ve learned, is not in Kansas. Detroit, Toronto. Wherever. Thousands of miles away.
Also not fair that they are on the road when it happens, though the chances were fifty-fifty. Zito is worrying about his stuff, it takes him three solid days to get all the way packed up at the end of the season. They are drinking tequila or vodka or gin or whatever gets you drunk quicker, whatever has a black-out history with them.
So much history, filling in their conversation with stars and satellites, space between them like another person, like whoever they were both in love with first, before they were in love with each other, before they weren’t anymore. Before it happened again.
Chavez is leaning into Zito and that’s weird because he didn’t used to touch Zito that much in public, not like Hudson who was all backslaps and rough tousles, or Byrnes who was puppy-affectionate, or Mulder who just kinda materialized with his hand on Zito’s back and that was that. Zito is choked with the knowledge of everyone they’ve seen go, choked because it’s him now.
Chavez’s shoulder against his own and Zito’s eyes are on fire. He wanted at least a chance, wanted to leave with a fuck you grin and enough money to pull it off, or maybe he wanted to spend the rest of his life, the rest of his life, the rest of his life. Well. That’s been done before, too.
Zito wants to flick forward an hour or two and see Chavez loose-mouthed and hollow-eyes drunk, carry him back to the hotel and keep his arm around Chavez’s waist all the way through the lobby where maybe once he glided virgin-white. Kiss him in the elevator even though Chavez is married and that’s why, you know, that’s how come there’s never a happy ending and Eric Chavez exists to be crushed, because he is married and all it is, end of the day, is a betrayal. The reasons for why so totally don’t matter.
Ends and means and Zito just wants to take advantage of Chavez, who is freshly heartbroken and not even feeling it yet, not quite sober nor drunk enough to realize that he is alone now. Chavez is all that is left of the team that won twenty games without losing, the team that couldn’t sit still or get out of the first round, the team that howled like blood in each other’s veins and lifted up. The team that is every good part of them.
Zito is, oh, run out of his mind again, so that’s normal, and he is trying to remember if he still loves Chavez or maybe they’re just a bad habit he can’t break. Maybe he’s rationalizing, justifying the weird thrill in his chest at the thought of a different uniform, maybe he’s practicing avoidance, maybe he needs to call his shrink. Maybe he needs to drink some more and he loves Eric Chavez, he loves everyone who’s ever left.
Chavez is the one who carries him back, as it turns out, and the one who steers them into a convenient back alley, this has happened a million times. Chavez is the one who puts his fingers soft on Zito’s face and looks at him with eyes that pour darkly into Zito’s mind and wash him clean. Chavez is the one who brings their mouths together and Zito can feel the length of him, the touch of Chavez’s fingers, so fucking light on his cheek.
Chavez is his very best landmark, the man who will haunt him forever and ever because even if they only ever fucked around to kill the time, the time they were killing was as good as Zito’s life will ever be. And he knows that now.
He knows that if he presses on Chavez’s shoulder, Chavez’s legs will fold and Zito will feel Chavez’s face against his stomach through his shirt, awkward points and warm damp breath, but Zito doesn’t want to go out like that.
Zito wants somehow for this American League city to stretch out around them and the night to pass into some hole in the space-time continuum. He wants to die right here against this brick wall with Chavez’s hand tripping down his chest, live and die with the only team he has ever known.
And somewhere, this is a hallucination, brought on by fever and bad diner food, somewhere this is not really happening. Somewhere, Zito is just another pitcher who used to be better than he is now, and they’ll miss him but not mourn, be better in his absence, and shouldn’t that matter? Shouldn’t that make it okay?
It’s not okay, not okay at all, because this kind of thing sets deep inside you, see him with his hands back on the wall, wide open and the streetlight catching out the birthmark on his left wrist. He’ll be gone, leave for money or leave for love, maybe not as crazy as he’d like to be, because crazy he’d see just the road ahead, crazy he wouldn’t feel the night like black water in his mind, crazy he might be able to believe that he’s doing all right out there on his own, and never lie awake until dawn, pushing at the bruise on his heart.
THE END
played on a loop for the whole thing: available only in australia. first ten lucky fans. i must to bed.
In Which I Get Disturbingly Meta
Or, Five Things That Have Not Yet Happened to Barry Zito
in which rich harden realizes it’s too late
That would be the day that Zito gets traded and the world seems to pause for a minute. This, right here, is Rich Harden driving over the bridge at two in the morning. Picture it, though maybe you’ve never seen San Francisco before. Lit up at night like any other city, different because the sightlines are higher. The TransAmerica Building is a pyramid, the Marriott is a jukebox, Coit Tower is tiny and not leaning at all up on the hill. The searchlight on Alcatraz whisking around every ten seconds
So, you got it? Harden’s gonna make some last stand, it’s gonna be great. He can feel it, and maybe it’s like a train running in his bloodstream, maybe his heart is going faster than the car or his best fastball.
Harden is in love with Zito, this we can assume, though the reasons behind that is a whole other ball of wax. Rely heavily on the idea that Zito’s brand of insanity is endearing. Losing his mind in front of a national television audience and looking really good doing it, that’s how Zito operates.
Harden is in love with Zito. They have been fucking around since Harden was a rookie, since Mulder and Hudson got traded, since Harden broke up with Bobby Crosby, since they went on that road trip to Canada together, Zito stuttering with painkillers. They stopped fucking around when Huston Street showed up. When Harden realized Zito was still hung up on Mulder (or Hudson. Or Chavez. Or, fuck. Danny Haren). They never stopped fucking around, and when Harden gets to Zito’s apartment building, he’s gonna press Zito up against the wall and his hands will probably be in fists.
Zito is not really in love with Harden, not this time, he just thinks Harden is really fucking hot. Which is enough, usually.
We’re not sure where Zito lives in the city, but Harden knows, so it’s okay. Harden doesn’t like driving on the hills, he’s afraid one of these days his brakes will have been cut. Doesn’t make sense, as far as phobias go, but Zito won’t use an electric toothbrush because he’s afraid of being electrocuted, so there you go.
There you go, Harden has made it to Zito’s place and the elevator takes too long, and he’s in love, Richie is just ripped up. Zito’s been traded and Harden expected it, didn’t see it coming at all, he’s got a plan to kidnap Zito and take him north of the border. He’s gonna be tough and strong and not show anything, fuck Zito one last time and not stay the night.
He stays the night, and Zito will miss him, either that or Zito doesn’t care at all. Zito is thinking of other right-handed pitchers. Zito is excited about his new team, his hands shaking hard pulling Harden’s shirt off, but we like it better when Zito is terrified. We like it better when Zito is coming unglued. He just does it so well.
Harden wakes up in Zito’s bed, Zito’s arm warm across his stomach, or Zito rolled away from him, slope of his bare back, shoulder blades, crooks of his ribs. Harden is thinking in baseball metaphors. The curve of the stitches. The clarity of the baselines.
Zito maybe smiles and kisses Harden deeply upon arising, but probably doesn’t. Zito’s stuff is already mostly packed; his flight’s at two o’clock (their flights are always at two o’clock). Harden tries to get angry, tries to say something about how he’s really, very much in love, and please don’t leave, and one of them ends up crying. Doesn’t really matter who.
No, it doesn’t happen like that. Harden doesn’t say anything, and Zito doesn’t know about the very much in love thing that is fucking shredding Harden from the inside out. Zito walks him to the door with a hand on the back of Harden’s neck, fingers slipped up into Harden’s hair. Zito grins and presses a kiss to Harden’s forehead and says something like, see you around, something like, that was fun, man, something like, good luck.
The door closes and Harden is standing in the hallway, saying to no one, you’re the only thing I want.
(don’t you just fucking love that.)
*
in which there is drama
This one is about Zito thinking he can turn back time, and ha. It’s about Zito in Billy Beane’s office, screaming at him, and you’ve got to imagine that the sun is going down through the broad windows and Beane’s office faces west, overlooks the highway and the airport and way far off the silver of the bay. Like this, see, it’s in Zito’s eyes and Beane’s just a silhouette.
They don’t really fight, because Beane won’t let him. They fight endlessly, about the many years they’ve known each other and the many times that they’ve let it go too far.
Okay, it’s never gone too far. Beane does not know what Zito’s mouth tastes like. Zito did not, at one point, stand fully-uniformed in the weight room and think about the sweat dampening Beane’s T-shirt.
Beane doesn’t watch his team’s games. It’s not his fault he had to trade Zito. Zito doesn’t believe him, knows Beane did it on purpose, but Beane (who did, in real life, do it on purpose) won’t even give him that. Beane won’t give him anything.
By the time Beane crosses the room and puts his hand on Zito’s stomach, by the time Beane is telling him to get the fuck out, all Zito can say is, I don’t want to go.
Blurs together like he’s drunk. Don’twannago, don’twannago, please. And again, for fun: please.
But for all the times Zito has sucked him off or anyway offered to, Beane never promised him a long-term contract. Beane is stupid about some things, like Zito’s face and hands, but not about anything that really matters. Beane acts only in the best interest of his team (his team, has that been made clear, more than Eric Chavez’s or Barry Zito’s), or maybe he just doesn’t want to see Zito every morning anymore, like a gutshot and he knows he’ll never be able to stay away if Zito is still the focus of the Oakland universe every fifth day.
Most likely, they’ll stumble over into the dangerous territory of Beane’s shameful professional baseball career, which never had anything to do with talent, everything to do with the fragility of his mind, and Zito, well, we already know about that.
Beane hates it when Zito brings that up, so Zito doesn’t. Zito just calls him a never-fucking-were, which, hey. Sounds familiar. And wasn’t he not supposed to bring it up? They must hate each other a little bit more this time, it’s always a fine line. Beane doesn’t like looking at Zito’s face, the hair over his forehead, the tightness of his stomach under Beane’s hand, Zito’s eyes that never ever change and are just so angry at him.
Beane says, I had to, and Zito sneers. Zito’s already out the door, driving away, he never came to see Beane, because there’s nothing left for them to talk about. Zito is either the worst son in the world or they’re going to hell. Or maybe both, hey.
And fade out here, will you, because nobody needs to see Beane fucking Zito one last time over the desk in his office, papers sliding under Zito’s body and the sunlight catching on the plastic cases of the baseball cards lined up like streetlights on Beane’s shelves. Nobody needs to see that.
Billy Beane would never sleep with one of his players, come on.
*
in which the air conditioning is broken
Some time set aside for Danny Haren, in Zito’s apartment in July where the air conditioning, as mentioned above, is broken. It’s a rare, actual hot night in the fogged-in San Francisco summer, and Zito is packing without a shirt on, his skin shining. Danny is over there sitting on the windowsill with one leg in and one leg out, not smoking a joint.
Not smoking a joint because neither of them is that stupid, though if they don’t test for human growth hormone, maybe they don’t test for this either. Haren breathes out smoke and watches the lines on Zito’s face dig deeper in.
Haren fit right in pretty much immediately. But that’s for another day.
Zito is talking a lot, his new team and the new city and Haren is doing math in his head, counting miles, not really thinking about it because Zito is not really talking about it, Zito is just packing swiftly and efficiently, his mouth a track. Haren has not known him nearly as long as he feels he should have, his memories tie back to this but whatever, whatever. Danny’s stoned.
Not gonna worry about what the room looks like, because we’ve done this before, and anyway, more important to focus on is Haren half out the window and half in, and Zito keeps saying, you’re gonna fucking fall.
So that will be the theme. It will take on great significance, more than meets the eye and all that. You’re gonna fall. A prediction.
Zito’s back moves as he reaches into the closet, and Haren is watching that, the faucet flow of the traffic twenty-seven stories below, always odd numbers when we bring up specifics. Zito’s back, shoulders set far apart and the bruised dents of his spine disappearing. Gleaming and shining and you’re gonna fall.
See?
Haren rests his head back against the window, and they’ve never had sex, him and Zito, though maybe it’s always been there and maybe Haren is, wonder of wonders, not actually gay. Not even a little bit. Zito is just secondhand buzzed on the smoke in Haren’s lungs and the red shattered windshield of his eyes.
So he comes over and takes the joint that Haren is not smoking out of his hand and nobody talks about the fact that Zito is leaving tomorrow (at two o’clock), that the plane will be empty and he’ll be able to stretch out across five seats and catch up on the sleep that he will not get tonight.
Zito’s hand on the side of Haren’s face, the crackle of the cherry eating up the paper, and okay, they’ve had sex, they’ve been sleeping together since two days after they first met, down in Phoenix when Zito made the most of his height and Haren forgot that he wasn’t gay when he saw Zito down on his knees. And Zito pushed him into traffic, fucked in the cargo hold of Zito’s truck, put his hand on Haren’s dick when Haren was drunk and confused and could feel nothing but Zito’s hair.
But fuck the past and Haren actually goes by Dan these days, as if it matters, as if there’s a difference, and Zito kisses him, keeping his two fingers holding the joint held up away from Haren’s face. Zito leans into him on the windowsill and Haren has to reach back and hold on to the wall because he’s gonna fall.
Oh yeah, that’s working out well. Joint flicked down into the flooding street and Zito is giving Haren his old T-shirts, not talking about it, they’re just fucking around, Zito leaving isn’t gonna change anything in particular and maybe Haren will end up with Rich Harden and vanish back into the second person, and that will be a step up for him.
Maybe Haren will just be alive for this moment with Zito’s mouth on his and both of Zito’s hands in his hair, pressing him back against the window, maybe Haren will be happy right now like clickclickclick and god. Maybe Haren will dig his heel into the outside of Zito’s apartment building and be glad to have known him, and nobody will be hurt and everybody will get off and Zito will think of him as the plane leaves California and it won’t be about falling, after all.
Maybe. Probably not.
*
in which old favorites reappear
This will be different, because this time Zito leaves on his own, after the season is over and they’ve gotten no further than they ever got before. Beane makes him an offer just for show, and Zito has spent all summer saying it’s never been about the money for him, then takes a five year deal for three times what the A’s could afford. Which we all knew would happen.
It’s either Mulder or Hudson who comes out to Hollywood after Zito signs with his new team, in either November or January or maybe a week before Christmas, slow too-warm time. Hudson or Mulder who shows up at Zito’s door with a duffel bag and a grin, a scowl, an immediate reproach, you don’t have any fucking clue what you’ve just given up.
But Zito knows. Oakland is in him too deep. He signed because it scares him to be so at home in one place. He signed because he wants to live somewhere where it snows in April. He signed because he was falling in love with Eric Chavez for the fourteenth goddamn time. He signed because he wanted the money. Fuck.
Mulder or Hudson pushes him halfway down the hall, pegging him in the chest, stupid fucking kid, and Zito spits back, not a fucking kid, but hey. That’s not really true, man, a couple years shy of thirty and still frightened of thunderstorms, yeah, still.
After the shouting is over, Zito makes Hudson or Mulder some coffee and they sit facing each other at the kitchen table. Zito, in his efforts to not be such a fucking kid, is not living with his sister this off-season, and the place is quiet enough to hear the dust gather.
Mulder or Hudson is still as good-looking as he ever was, and Zito is still kinda distracted by that, thinking about switchblades in back alleys and beer at picnic tables in the astonishing Atlanta heat, stress fractures and strained obliques, the way Zito was purely stunned to find himself able to live without the other man. Everything’s very obscure-that’s intentional.
They drink their coffee, mostly in silence, blowing on it first, like, real civilized out here, aren’t we. Hudson or Mulder is sick with anger at Zito, for turning down what hadn’t even been offered two years previous. Mulder or Hudson woke up one morning on another team, didn’t have the choice laid out for him, black ink on white paper, but Zito is pretty sure that if someone offered Hudson or Mulder sixty-five million dollars, he’d have fucking well taken it.
But it’s not about the money.
There’s not much to say to each other, stories about the Midwest and the Southeast, cell phones spurring on the table and interrupting them. Zito’s eyes are fixed on Mulder or Hudson’s mouth to the exclusion of all else. Zito is maybe a pretty simple guy who just wants to be obscenely rich and fuck his former best friend. Zito is maybe not this wild enigma that appeals to us so greatly, maybe just a guy like any of the other guys you’ve ever met.
Zito’s got an extra bedroom but Hudson or Mulder catches him at the sink and turns him around, counter digging into the small of his back, Mulder or Hudson’s hand wrenched in his shirt. Can’t stop holding onto each other, these guys. Something about the quality of the light, the shape of Hudson or Mulder’s mouth as it twists and bites, and picture postcards in Zito’s mind as he opens his mouth and undoes his belt one-handed.
Right there in the kitchen, coffee cups exploding on the tile floor, and then later, half-dragged to his bedroom because Mulder or Hudson has always been stronger, it might finally hit Zito, what he’s done.
Because he thought he couldn’t live without this, but he did, refusing to return calls, texting because he hated the way his voice would break, seeing Hudson or Mulder on road trips and twice in the off-season when he was in Scottsdale or Florida and they’d fucked quietly in the hall bathroom at four in the morning, wary of fiancées or wives and daughters. Take your pick.
Thought he couldn’t live without it, but with Mulder or Hudson’s hands back on him like nothing has ever been so hot, Zito is twenty-four years old again, the still undefeated best year of his life. He’s been losing bits and pieces of that season for years now, and being with Hudson or Mulder again does nothing but remind him that it’s completely gone now, twenty-four was a dream.
Mulder or Hudson mutters against the back of his neck, you’ll live to regret it, but Zito knows that’s not true as he hides his suddenly wet eyes in the pillow. Won’t live to regret it. Won’t live.
*
in which we come to terms
So at the end it’s harder to take, though none of it’s been easy. See the look on Eric Chavez’s face, okay, and it won’t end well.
Longevity is one thing, a good thing, stuff Zito and Chavez know that none of the other guys do, secret jokes and memories of Zito in a wedding dress in a hotel lobby, the white lace trailing sweetly on the floor behind him and his face stained rookie-red, the biggest grin you’ve ever in your life seen scrawled across. Zito and Chavez go back as far as either of them would like to remember, so yeah, it ends here.
It ends right here. Drinking in a bar the night before Zito leaves, the day that he was traded. Not fucking fair for it to be that fast, told at four o’clock and on a plane ten hours later (do the math). Turnaround leaves him dizzy.
They’re not even home, somewhere in the American League, Cleveland’s a good non-descript city for this kind of thing. Kansas City, which, as we’ve learned, is not in Kansas. Detroit, Toronto. Wherever. Thousands of miles away.
Also not fair that they are on the road when it happens, though the chances were fifty-fifty. Zito is worrying about his stuff, it takes him three solid days to get all the way packed up at the end of the season. They are drinking tequila or vodka or gin or whatever gets you drunk quicker, whatever has a black-out history with them.
So much history, filling in their conversation with stars and satellites, space between them like another person, like whoever they were both in love with first, before they were in love with each other, before they weren’t anymore. Before it happened again.
Chavez is leaning into Zito and that’s weird because he didn’t used to touch Zito that much in public, not like Hudson who was all backslaps and rough tousles, or Byrnes who was puppy-affectionate, or Mulder who just kinda materialized with his hand on Zito’s back and that was that. Zito is choked with the knowledge of everyone they’ve seen go, choked because it’s him now.
Chavez’s shoulder against his own and Zito’s eyes are on fire. He wanted at least a chance, wanted to leave with a fuck you grin and enough money to pull it off, or maybe he wanted to spend the rest of his life, the rest of his life, the rest of his life. Well. That’s been done before, too.
Zito wants to flick forward an hour or two and see Chavez loose-mouthed and hollow-eyes drunk, carry him back to the hotel and keep his arm around Chavez’s waist all the way through the lobby where maybe once he glided virgin-white. Kiss him in the elevator even though Chavez is married and that’s why, you know, that’s how come there’s never a happy ending and Eric Chavez exists to be crushed, because he is married and all it is, end of the day, is a betrayal. The reasons for why so totally don’t matter.
Ends and means and Zito just wants to take advantage of Chavez, who is freshly heartbroken and not even feeling it yet, not quite sober nor drunk enough to realize that he is alone now. Chavez is all that is left of the team that won twenty games without losing, the team that couldn’t sit still or get out of the first round, the team that howled like blood in each other’s veins and lifted up. The team that is every good part of them.
Zito is, oh, run out of his mind again, so that’s normal, and he is trying to remember if he still loves Chavez or maybe they’re just a bad habit he can’t break. Maybe he’s rationalizing, justifying the weird thrill in his chest at the thought of a different uniform, maybe he’s practicing avoidance, maybe he needs to call his shrink. Maybe he needs to drink some more and he loves Eric Chavez, he loves everyone who’s ever left.
Chavez is the one who carries him back, as it turns out, and the one who steers them into a convenient back alley, this has happened a million times. Chavez is the one who puts his fingers soft on Zito’s face and looks at him with eyes that pour darkly into Zito’s mind and wash him clean. Chavez is the one who brings their mouths together and Zito can feel the length of him, the touch of Chavez’s fingers, so fucking light on his cheek.
Chavez is his very best landmark, the man who will haunt him forever and ever because even if they only ever fucked around to kill the time, the time they were killing was as good as Zito’s life will ever be. And he knows that now.
He knows that if he presses on Chavez’s shoulder, Chavez’s legs will fold and Zito will feel Chavez’s face against his stomach through his shirt, awkward points and warm damp breath, but Zito doesn’t want to go out like that.
Zito wants somehow for this American League city to stretch out around them and the night to pass into some hole in the space-time continuum. He wants to die right here against this brick wall with Chavez’s hand tripping down his chest, live and die with the only team he has ever known.
And somewhere, this is a hallucination, brought on by fever and bad diner food, somewhere this is not really happening. Somewhere, Zito is just another pitcher who used to be better than he is now, and they’ll miss him but not mourn, be better in his absence, and shouldn’t that matter? Shouldn’t that make it okay?
It’s not okay, not okay at all, because this kind of thing sets deep inside you, see him with his hands back on the wall, wide open and the streetlight catching out the birthmark on his left wrist. He’ll be gone, leave for money or leave for love, maybe not as crazy as he’d like to be, because crazy he’d see just the road ahead, crazy he wouldn’t feel the night like black water in his mind, crazy he might be able to believe that he’s doing all right out there on his own, and never lie awake until dawn, pushing at the bruise on his heart.
THE END
played on a loop for the whole thing: available only in australia. first ten lucky fans. i must to bed.