don't fuck up your hands
i fuckin' love brawls, you guys. even punk brawls where there's no blood. i love that jason kendall was all WHAT BITCH and right to it. i love that it was against the angels, who are battling hard with the yankees for second-most hated team. (points to those who can guess first-most.) i love that it wasn't just the angels, but john lackey (to quote jason lee: 'he looks like a DATE RAPIST'). i love bad blood and rivalries. i love last week, when mesa plunked vizquel and kruk and kuip spent the rest of the game all solemn, 'every man in the giants dugout wants to win this one for omar.' i love that they did win it.
i go to parent-teacher conferences now and make my case for why kids shouldn't be retained, because i'll teach her how to read by the end of the summer, it'll be okay. my life is nothing like i expected it to be, and someday i'm gonna get caught.
kay then. first of all, these things keep getting really long with no input from me. second of all, i've got to develop some patience, because this could be better if i just gave it the time, but it's very long and i'm tired of reading it over. third of all, i need to take a goddamn break. fourth of all, i haven't been to a game in nine days. it is itching me. a's sunday, giants monday. sleep is for the weak.
Outside In
By Candle Beck
So things move pretty fast when Street gets the closer job. Though it’s not really like that, it’s not like it was offered and he accepted, all interview-neat in his starched bleach-white shirt and red and blue striped tie. Dotel’s arm gives out and it’s an arithmetic equation of some kind, Tommy John surgery plus a torn slider equals Huston Street is the man.
It’s not like he had much of a choice. It probably would have happened anyway, glow-in-the-dark text on his arms, writ small like a tattoo inside his elbows.
Quickly, he comes home. Nice highways skirting the city of Oakland, Rich Harden sleeping in the shotgun seat with his cheek pressed pale to the window and his mouth open. Street gets very quiet and still when he’s pitching, and he loves the guys, honestly he does, with this kinda wild summer-burn inside him.
Street keeps track of numbers, takes the last out of each game to the clubhouse and writes in black ink, in the fat part between the red stitches, the date, the opponent, the score, and what save it is. Mostly, it’s a code, ‘7/8/05, Chicago, 4-2, #5.’ Twenty years down the line, twice as old as he is now, the numbers are gonna be the only thing he remembers, because green runs together and being on a plane so much is making everything shard.
And he can deal with that, the splinters in his palms, the slow roll-over from eleven fifty-nine to midnight. Bits and pieces like road trips, third innings, two blocks between stoplights. Street is still going to church, sometimes in airport chapels, freeze-dried Communion wafers, the bite of stale red wine. Everything is short-term, but that’s okay.
Street is living with Crosby and Harden and Melhuse, and that’s working out pretty well. Harden falls asleep on the living floor a lot, sweatshirt balled up for a pillow and his hand tucked between his knees. Crosby is probably insane, taking shots of hot sauce and tequila, angry spots of color on his face. Melhuse is just cool, silent and as calm as the field before batting practice. They’re always running late, and Harden pours water over his head in the car, streaks his hair flat and Crosby hollers at him for dripping on the leather.
Street likes his life very much. He doesn’t mind staying in hotels or eating at diners, because he can get chicken-fried steak anywhere, and the showers never run out of hot water. He can run with jetlag, light-headed and it’s easier to get drunk when your body is convinced it’s ten o’clock at night. Street doesn’t drink much, but he makes the best of it when he does.
Harden locks his keys in the car and that’s a good two hours, dry restaurant parking lot, waiting for the Triple-A guy to come, because they don’t really know where they are. Harden is pissed off, pacing a quick circle around his car, and Street is sitting on the hood, eating tortilla chips out of a white paper bag and swinging his feet.
“Quit that,” Harden says, coming up suddenly from Street’s side and placing a hand on his knee. Street jerks, surprised, blinks at him.
“You. Are making me nervous,” Harden tells him, drumming his fingers on the hook of Street’s kneecap. Harden looks irritated and kinda frantic, eyes too wide.
“Sorry.”
“Just, like. Be still for a second. Okay?”
Street nods assuredly, tightening his jaw, be still, he can do that. Harden sighs and leans against the car next to him, faded charcoal sky, smears of orange. Street sees Harden’s shoulders slowly relax, and the night feels like calendar pages, flip-booking. Three minutes before Harden starts talking about baseball and team gossip, and Street unconsciously starts to kick his leg again, short parabola and Harden’s hip against his knee. Waiting for Triple-A is, improbably, a fantastic way to spend the night.
Every other Sunday, when they’re home, Crosby washes and waxes his car, sunstruck out in the front driveway. Harden usually helps for about ten minutes and then wanders off to play basketball.
Crosby says it’s because his car is way better than anybody else’s on the team and he’s gotta maintain that, but Harden told Street that Crosby’s dad used to have the same routine when Crosby was a kid, little soaked Bobby scrubbing the hubcaps.
Street is slippery and his fingers are pruned, and the radio is pumping music across the yard, something loud and fast. There’s soap in his hair, white foam on Crosby’s shirt. Crosby never looks more at peace than when he’s washing his car.
Harden disappears for a while and Crosby and Street talk about random stuff, hollering over the music, gleaming black metal under their hands. When Harden comes back out, he’s got a big white David sunflower seeds bucket, filled with water balloons, and they peg the car until it’s rinsed off, wrinkled colorful balloon corpses scattering the driveway.
They turn on each other next, whooping and climbing onto the roof, and it’s a good day. Street can’t stop smiling, as Rich Harden uses him as a human shield, his hands hard on Street’s hips.
Crosby starts stories, “So this guy walks into a bar,” like, no joke. Street is waiting for punchlines, counting his blessings. Luck runs in him like blood, and this is something he can believe.
Pleasantly tired with caffeine drip in the back of his throat, talking to his girlfriend every night and Harden is gleefully shouting dirty words through the locked door, “Hey Huston get your fucking hand out of my pants, I’m not into that shit,” and Crosby is cackling with laughter, coughing and red-faced in the hallway when Street comes out with his best impression of anger.
“Knock it off, you guys, you’re freaking her out.”
As if that wasn’t the whole point. Street knows, okay. He’s kinda laughing too.
They get to play baseball every day, they go to the park under atomized pieces of clouds, threads straggling from the hems of their T-shirts. Crosby and Ellis are wrestling, arms necks elbows hands, and slamming into the wall, whole place shaking. Zito is dealing cards from the bottom of the deck, keeping up a steady stream of distracting chatter and literal aces up his sleeve, tucked into his watchband.
Street gets overwhelmed sometimes, the sheer weight of everything, the closer job and the team sprinting hard through the summer and being so happy. Being cleanly and unreservedly happy, like, like. Like stuff he can’t say out loud. Like this.
If he had to pick a favorite part, it would probably be Rich Harden, who takes care of him when he gets confused, when Dan Haren is drunk and speaking in rags, what did you when the tracks and there was this so fucking close man seen that because it’s not like it not gonna be different afterwards just shut the fuck up, and Zito is looking like a vampire with iced skin and avid dark eyes, Harden is there to explain that this is just what it’s like sometimes. And that isn’t much of an explanation, but, okay. It settles Street down and Harden levels him like a city, cut right back to basics, you are here, I am here, and we are going to be fine.
Street thinks maybe in a year or two, Harden might be his best friend, though it’s hard to say because they’re still so new to each other. He’s still learning what the angle of Harden’s hand means, and which of Harden’s stories are deeply exaggerated or completely made up. Street believes in longevity and he’s thankful that he doesn’t actually have to pick his favorite part, because he’s scared of jinxing it.
Goes for beer one night and gets back, smooth dark, crinkling plastic bag, crickets in the grass. Melhuse passes him yawning and says good night, and Street tries to get him to stay up, tries to make every night last as long as possible, but no good, Melhuse is half-asleep.
Street goes into the living room and starts to say, “Hey, listen-” but Crosby hisses at him, “quiet, man, he’s asleep.”
And so Harden is, slumped over against Crosby, his arms crossed on his chest. Loose hands, open fingers under the bends of Harden’s forearms. Crosby’s arm is around his shoulders and his hand is in Harden’s hair, bits of gold like lamplight and Street thinks there’s something not quite right about this, though it’s simple, it’s easy. Just the same as everything else this year, put together inch by inch until Street is made up somehow of pitches and infomercials, five miles an hour faster.
He ignores the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach and passes Crosby a beer, takes the armchair. Well, Street thinks, and that’s it. Well.
Brothers. Strange brotherly traditions, stuff that Street can’t question because it’s got nothing to do with him, not yet. In-jokes and history all red and yellow and white and blue. Green and gold. Harden, who rides with Street down out of the hills in search of fast food long past midnight, could fit right into Street’s own family with his blonde-brown hair and his compact shoulders, near-favorite. Crosby is like the tagalong friend who came for lunch and stuck around till breakfast.
Street doesn’t think much on it, falls asleep in the chair himself, and what can he say then? Melhuse is crunching his way through a bowl of cornflakes and they go back to the ballpark, and Street feels that same old joy, found a team with pairs of brothers and well-loved cousins, broad sprawling Texas family, can’t get any better.
Coast on the days and soon enough they’re back on the road, skyed, they’ve gone the long way to Los Angeles by way of Detroit and Baltimore, and now they’re flying north. Danny Haren’s still petitioning that they should get frequent flyer miles for this shit, and the traveling secretary is still saying, you don’t pay for the fucking flights, Dan.
Plane trip like a fifty-minute scan of summer, talking joyfully, the very many weeks behind them and a wide open highway before them, where the speed limit is safe and reasonable, and no fewer than four of them might win Rookie of the Year. Huston Street is emerging as the frontrunner, they’re the frontrunners, they’re in first place.
First place. Perfectly shaped words in Street’s mouth, Kirk Saarloos’s hair jagging up madly, backlit by the blue, tiny ovoid windows. Eric Chavez is grinning, his eyes wet, one week a father and winging home. Street can feel adrenaline burring in their faces, trembling eyelashes, shedding skins behind them, six hundred miles an hour through the air, and they just crushed the Orioles.
Zito finally gets caught cheating at cards, crumpled paper money and slick Bicycles cascading to the floor. Nobody’s as upset with him as they should be, though Crosby lunges for him, pauses with his hands out and Zito twitching, squirreling to get over the seat, run and hide in the lavatory, and Crosby looks back at Harden in the aisle behind him.
“Dude, hold me back,” Crosby implores, because he’s not really mad. Harden’s arms go around his waist, easy as that, and his face presses flush to Crosby’s back, and Crosby is shouting, “Fuckin’ cheater, I’ll kill you!” and Zito is laughing, begging for mercy.
They get home, good trip, see you tomorrow, and Crosby’s still got Zito’s money poking up gray-green from his pockets, stuffed into his shirt. They share a cab back to their house and Crosby and Harden and Street are shoved into the back, too much shoulder, too many arms, bruises in the shape of elbows forming on Street’s sides. Melhuse is in the front seat, chatting with the driver and ignoring them like unruly kids, which maybe they are. Crosby unearths a packet of sugar and spills it down the back of Melhuse’s shirt, and Melhuse swipes back at him, his hand brushing Street’s face, Crosby cowering into Harden.
They tumble inside and Melhuse is going to take a shower, rattling his shirt to get the sugar to rain out, calling Crosby unkind things. Street goes to call his girlfriend, but he can’t get a signal because the sky is gathering heavily above their house, and he comes back out to find Harden and Crosby still in the front hallway, except now Harden’s pressed up against the wall and Crosby is kissing him like it’s the end of the world.
Street can see it very clearly, Crosby’s forearm flat against the wall beside Harden’s head, hand spread out like a starfish, his other hand fisted on Harden’s stomach. Harden is tilting his head to the side and opening his mouth, and they’re both still kind of laughing. Doesn’t look like the first time, or anything near it, and Street turns, weird echo in his mind, almost audible draining in his chest, and goes back down the hall.
Doesn’t think about it. And the next morning he can’t meet their eyes.
Street goes through the motions, breakfast and Harden eating toast off a fork, biting off the edges in concentric circles, Crosby sharing a glass of orange juice with Melhuse, Huston Street curved into his shoulders and don’t say a word.
Crosby says something, must be funny, because Melhuse is snickering behind his hand and Harden is full-out laughing, his eyes screwed shut and his mouth half-open. Chewed-up toast visible and Street’s nose wrinkles, because that’s just gross. He watches Harden lean over to clock Crosby on the arm, and Crosby catches his hand, checking for a pulse, smiling at Harden like Harden just brought his hamster back to life, and Street looks away.
It’s none of his business.
They go to the ballpark and Street puts himself on the other side of the room, staring at a magazine. Zito and Crosby are arguing about what to play on the stereo, and Harden is sitting cross-legged on the couch, watching a game show with Haren. Street keeps seeing it, Crosby pressing Harden down, his knee between Harden’s legs, his hand flat on the wall. Eyes closed and laughing against each other’s mouths, like it was just normal, like it was a joke, like it wasn’t anything.
Zito comes over after a while and slumps down in a chair next to Street’s. Zito’s always doing that, long fold of his body and his legs going everywhere. “Boy,” Zito says, and Street’s not sure if that’s supposed to be directed at him or if it’s just Zito’s all-purpose expression of ennui. He doesn’t really know any of them that well.
Street hums noncommittally, thinking sickly that they were supposed to be brothers.
“You wanna play or something?” Zito asks, moving his hands in a way that could indicate either videogames or a guitar.
“Nah,” Street answers, runs his fingertip up and down the slick page of the magazine, trying to split the skin. Triangular flash of Harden’s white teeth when he turned his head and tipped his face up, Crosby had mumbled something and it made him smile.
“So, like, you’re just gonna be boring.” Zito sighs extravagantly and lets his head fall back, studying the ceiling. Zito makes everything look really interesting, but Street would follow his eyes and it would just be peeling plaster or highway signs.
Really tired, maybe he didn’t sleep so good last night. Maybe Harden and Crosby have gravitated towards each other across the room, and if Street looks over there, he’ll see Harden’s hand on the small of Crosby’s back, Harden’s low voice. Street doesn’t look over.
“Excuse me.” Zito thwacks him. “Trying to have a conversation, you know. A little civilization.”
Street blinks at him, feeling abruptly heartbroken.
“Hey,” Zito starts to say, his eyes widening, because whatever mean rumors they start up about him, he still won’t let any of them be hurt, but Street is up by then, and moving with the rasp of his feet on the carpet painfully loud in his ears.
Ducks into the bathroom and washes his hands, cold wet fingers against his eyes and breathing real careful, chanting the lineup in his mind, skipping over Bobby Crosby’s name, and he’s fine.
He’s fine.
And news travels fast, because Zito is very logical, in a very weird sort of way, and his immediate response to any problem is to try and fix it. His methods are usually less than reasonable, of course. First step is telling everybody that something is wrong with the kid, and then half the team is giving Street space and the other half is trying to cheer him out of it. Street can’t figure out which is worse. Both are pretty bad.
Crosby and Harden are distinctly in the cheer-him-up camp, greeting him with water balloons from the roof and changing all his radio pre-sets to mariachi music and thrash metal. Strange way of trying to make someone feel better, annoy them into a prank war, but Street’s mostly just tired, ineffably sad.
A week or two of avoiding everybody, eyes on the floor, hands in his pockets. Danny Haren is convinced that if he can just get Street drunk, everything will be okay. Street wants to disappear.
He plays basketball by himself in the driveway, past midnight and dully grateful that the house is soundproof and the rubber slap of the ball, the clang of the rim, won’t cause any harm inside. His hands turn black. The streetlights are far away and he keeps putting more force into his shots, exploding the ball against the pale outline of the backboard, making the house shake.
Throws too hard and the ball goes sailing onto the roof, clattering the shingles, whaps down into the yard. Street’s legs are trembling. He goes around the side of the house and the ball is resting in the grass under Harden’s window, curtains parted maybe three inches. Street can look inside, he can see Harden and Crosby on the bed in there, asleep.
Dead to the world, Harden on his back with his arm bent over his head, Crosby’s body crooked with his legs skewed, his fists tucked against Harden’s side. Harden is naked to the waist and Street stands there, holding the basketball, trying to find a place for this in his mind, trying to make it normal.
Crosby shifts and scrapes his buzzed hair against Harden’s biceps. Not enough light to see the look on Harden’s sleeping face, just enough to see him pull his arm free and slant it down across Crosby’s side, his loose hand hanging off over Crosby’s ribs. Street turns away, feels like he might be sick, and goes to bed without taking a shower, so that when he wakes up, there are grimy handprints on his sheets and sticky sweat all over him, and he can get through this, he’s gotten through worse.
Harden thumps down next to him on the couch and Street has let his guard down, glaze-eyed watching videos on VH1 Country, no time to leave the room. Harden tocks him on the knee and Street’s whole body twitches.
“So,” Harden says, scowling faintly at the television. Harden hates country music.
Street holds his elbows in his hands and tries not to move.
“You’re, like.” Harden trails off. Quiet for a minute and Street can try to wish himself away, wish himself all the way back to Austin, where none of his best friends ever make out with each other in the front hall and no one makes his stomach hurt the way Rich Harden does.
Harden shifts so that his leg is against Street’s. Street’s breath catches in his throat. “Did your girlfriend cheat on you or something?”
Aghast, Street shoots him a look without thinking about it, and that’s not a good idea because Harden’s face is concerned, blue eyes taking up space like streetlights, and Street can feel his heart rattle.
“No,” he manages. Though who knows, because he hasn’t spoken to his girlfriend in a week, cowardly dodging her calls, like she’ll be able to hear it through the phone lines, the warped places his mind keeps going.
“Your dog died?”
“Jeez, Richie. No.”
Street doesn’t like this, litany of all the things that might’ve gone wrong with him and how long before Rich stumbles over the real one. He doesn’t like Harden right here next to him on the couch and everyone on the television singing about tragic love and alcoholism.
“Well then, why’re you all-”
Quick sharp burst of something behind his eyes, unrecognizable and Street is snapping, “I don’t want to talk about it, man, ‘specially not with you.”
Black taste in the back of his mouth. Harden staring at him in shock, none of them have ever heard Street speak in anger, because Street hardly ever does, can’t remember the last time, and it sounds so foreign and wracked, twisting around inside his mind.
He immediately tries to apologize, but now Harden is cutting him off, which is only fair, Street supposes.
“What the fuck does that mean, especially not with me? What the fuck did I do?”
Street’s face is on fire, and he stands, feeling his shirt pull from where it was pinned against his side by Harden’s knee. Center-of-a-flame blue, set the world on fire and Harden is saying angrily, “Hey,” but Street is already out of the room.
He needs to stay out of rooms that contain Rich Harden.
That’s hard, hard thing to ask of himself, hard to go through days and not have Harden calm him down with a cool look, make him snort soda through his nose, grin at him from the passenger seat and tell him dryly that he missed the exit, but it’s okay.
Street’s swimming laps, pressure on his sinuses and his chest. Sunlight falling through the blue water in leaf-shaped pieces, passing under the floating chair and the shadow makes him cold. He comes up for air and Melhuse is sitting in one of the deck chairs, watching him.
Latching onto the side of the pool, Street breathes hard and asks, “What?”
Melhuse lifts a shoulder. “You tell me.”
Street bites the insides of his mouth. “It’s nothing, Adam. I’m fine,” and he ducks under again, silent world. Chlorine burning in his eyes, he might be crying, he’s not sure.
Second time up, and Melhuse has perfect timing, says as the water slides out of Street’s ears, “Rich thinks he did something wrong.”
Street rests his chin on the rough lip of the pool. “He didn’t,” he replies softly.
“Okay. Maybe you wanna stop acting like he’s invisible, then?”
Trying to glare at him, wishing he knew how to swear, Street pushes off the edge and cuts through another fast lap, planning his response.
Resurfaces and says, “I just want to be left alone.” Not very good, as responses go, but Street is half-drowned, dumb with hunger.
“Yeah, somehow I doubt it. C’mon, what’d he do?”
Street swipes his hand across his eyes. “Nothing, okay. I don’t care what he does.”
He chances a look and sees Melhuse’s face draw shrewd. “Fuck, you saw them, didn’t you?”
Street lets go of the side and sinks down under the water, crawling his fingers on the wall, tap-tap third-degree, heaviness on his shoulders, making his back ache. Comes up for air, and Melhuse is still there.
“You knew?” he asks. His throat feels slick.
“Of course I did. You’ll notice they’re not very subtle in their own house.”
Street swallows. “What about the others?”
Melhuse shrugs with one shoulder, watching Street very carefully. “Yeah, some of them. Are you all fucked up about it or something?”
Ignoring that, Street finds another question, intent on knowing everything. “How long? I mean. Them. How long?”
“Well, they never exactly told us the full story, but since Double-A, I think. Years.”
Street stares at his hands on the lip of the pool, skinny damp fingerprints pressed into the dull gray. He can feel his hair tinting green from the chlorine, his vision clouded with blue water. When Harden and Crosby were in the Texas League together, Street was halfway across the state, a sophomore in college and still eating most of his dinners at home.
“They shouldn’t be doing that,” he says almost too quiet to hear.
Melhuse doesn’t say anything for a while, and when Street looks up, Melhuse is showing more on his face than he ever has before, pure hard-eyed contempt. Street shivers from it.
“Look, Huston, you seem like a good kid and everything, so believe me when I tell you that saying shit like that is the quickest way to end up without any friends on this team. Those two would walk into fucking traffic for you.”
Melhuse gets up and stalks inside and Street is unbearably ashamed, wanting to call him back, because that’s not what he meant, it’s not like he thinks it’s wrong.
Ten laps later and Street is still trying to figure out why it bothers him so much if he doesn’t think it’s wrong.
The season goes on. Street guesses that was probably inevitable. They go back on the road and it’s impossibly difficult to be on the plane with everyone, wondering who knows and who doesn’t, hearing Harden and Crosby two rows up, talking and laughing sometimes, and Street remembers when he would have taken the seat right behind and popped his head into their conversation. The first few months of the season are already perfectly crystallized in his memory, like his seven-year-old summer, like his junior year in college. He didn’t expect that to happen, nostalgia this awful disease inside.
He plays spider solitaire on his computer until the battery dies, by which point most everyone is asleep, spaceship reading lights hovering above them. Fly into New York City and it makes his pulse jump, like Harden stretching in the aisle, his shirt riding up so that Street can see a shadowy wedge of his hip.
A knock on his hotel room door the next night, waking him up. He’d fallen asleep way too early, abstractly thinking that more sleep means less time to roll it over in his mind. Street rolls over. Pads to the door in pajama pants and Longhorns T-shirt, fuzzy like three-beers buzzed, forgetting to check the peephole.
Harden is slouched against the door on the opposite side of the hallway, his hands tucked behind his back. “Adam says you’ve got a problem.”
Biting back whatever cutting thing he would have said if he’d been wired that way, Street moves his shoulders and locks his eyes on the collar of Harden’s T-shirt. There’s a sculpted glass light fixture to the left of Harden, yellow slanting across his body at a bizarre angle.
“I do not.”
Harden lifts an eyebrow, looking cool as a cigarette ad. “Really? Because it’s not like anyone would blame you for freaking out a little bit. I mean, it’s not every day you find out your roommates are fuck-”
Street grabs him, moving in self-preservation, fists a hand in Harden’s shirt and hauls him inside, fearfully checking the hallway before slamming the door shut.
“What’s the matter with you?” Street asks fiercely, but Harden’s laughing.
Harden is laughing. Street is clear of thought.
“Oh, man, dude,” Harden says, grinning at him, settling down. “Jesus, it’s not that bad, is it?”
Street shakes his head. He doesn’t know what Harden’s talking about. He must look stricken, because Harden’s expression tightens and the remnants of his laughter escape under the door.
“You could stop looking like I’m gonna kill you, Huston, and that’d be good,” Harden tells him, his voice icing slightly.
Street turns away, thinks about getting a drink from the mini-bar but decides against it. He starts unpacking, loading his folded clothes into the dresser.
“Adam got it wrong, okay. I’m fine,” for maybe the six hundredth time in a month. Street stares at his hands moving, suitcase, T-shirts, drawer. Shiny wooden knobs, blue and yellow flower-patterned drawer liners inside.
“Right. So you’re unpacking even though we’re leaving tomorrow. Nice.”
Street flushes deeply but doesn’t stop. He can hear Harden sigh behind him, the soft sound as Harden sits down on the bed.
“Never took you for the type, man,” Harden says low.
Street glances at the mirror and sees Harden leaning back on his hands, shirt pulled tight across his chest, watching him hatefully like Street’s the worst kind of traitor. Street doesn’t say anything.
“Like, sorry if we’ve fucked with your expectations or whatever, but your expectations are not exactly our responsibility. Me and him, we came first. We fucking pre-date you.”
Voice rising, Harden is getting upset, on account of Street’s silence and Street’s humiliation and Street’s turned back. Harden is saying with a manic blue sneer, “I don’t know where you get the fucking balls, man, to act like we’re fucking beneath you or something, like I was only your friend so long as I didn’t make you uncomfortable, like, so fucking sorry, hate to fucking bring you down. Not gonna leave him because you’ve got a problem with it, can’t believe you think I would. You and him are just fucking miles apart, you think I’ve missed you the way I’d miss him?”
Street’s heart seems to be shrinking, leeching all the air out of him. He keeps cheating looks into the mirror and Harden’s arms, bigger than they should be bracketing his slight body, and Harden’s mouth like a gash chipped out of stone, and Harden’s eyes, dear god almighty, Harden’s eyes. Street could turn off all the lights and still be able to see in the dark, as long as Harden keeps his eyes open.
Street can’t stand to see him so disappointed and hurt, teeth raking out hard-syllabled words and his hands clenched in the bedspread. Street is putting Harden in danger somehow, swore he never would.
“Hey, hey,” Street says, interrupting whatever terrible things Harden is saying. He forces himself to meet Harden’s eyes in the mirror. “You’re right.”
Harden blinks. “I am?”
Street turns carefully, the room turning with him, leans back against the dresser. “I’m being dumb.”
Harden’s mouth closes slowly, and he nods, looking suspicious. “Little bit, yeah.”
Street waves his hand in the air, swallowing past something thick and sharp and his chest feels like it’s been cracked open. He smiles. “You and him, it’s great.”
Studying him for a long moment, his eyebrows pinched together, Harden’s hands loosen on the bedspread. “Don’t go zero to sixty, man. Take some time to adjust.” He sounds weird and flat.
“I’m adjusted,” Street protests, clutching at the edge of the dresser. Needs to hang on. He keeps thinking, they’ve had years, they’ve had Texas and Sacramento and a whole season in Oakland before Street showed up. Street was a different person when he was a sophomore in college, they’re probably changed too. It’s, like, a lifetime.
“So you’re not gonna be weird anymore?” Harden asks, but that gets lost because Street is saying stupidly at the same moment:
“You love him?”
“Christ, dude.” Harden’s face twists, half-disgusted, and Street is shaking his head fast, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Never mind, sorry, sorry.”
Quiet again. City quiet, anyway, shuffle-scream of street noise drifting up the eleven flights. Street’s heart is beating way too fast, his face dull brick red.
“Look,” Harden says, and Street waits for him to say, you’re a good kid and you’ll end up with no friends on this team, which almost sounds okay, nobody to mess him up, but Harden continues, “I just wanted to make sure that we’re cool. It shouldn’t change anything, because it’s always been like this, you just never knew.”
Street nods, terrified that he’s going to cry. Steady his voice and pull his shoulders up and what a nice smile, what a sweet boy.
“We’re cool, Richie. I. I am sorry.”
Harden tips his head to the side, vaguely confused, but that’s as much as Street can stomach tonight, and he’s half out the door, talking loudly about getting dinner, and four rooms down, looks back to see Harden following.
Right back to normal. Pretty bad, unsteady on his feet, showing his teeth when people ask him how he is, wishing he could get into every game, wishing he was a position player, something he has not been in almost ten years.
Harden is cautious for a couple of days, keeping an eye on him and keeping his hands off Crosby when Street is in the room, but Harden has a short attention span and by the end of the road trip, he’s hanging onto Crosby’s shoulders again, letting himself be carried with his face on the back of Crosby’s neck and his sneakers two inches off the ground.
Street thinks bitterly that his broken peace should mean more to Harden, should merit at least a week of not shoving it in his face. He wants to siphon off some of the tension in his back and the steady ache in his head, make Harden understand how bad it is now. Then he stops, hands gone all crazy. His own cruelty makes no sense to him, as if he’s altering cell by cell, mutating. He’s never had friends like this.
And they’re friends again, they get home to Oakland where the weather has been perfect for months and Harden bullies him into coming to the bar even though Street’s body is dense with overwork and praying for sleep. Harden buys him a few beers and then Cokes all night long, and Street lies awake, caffeine shattering in his veins, staring at the ceiling.
Crosby avoids him, mostly, and Street can’t figure out how Crosby really fits into all of this, so he’s thankful for that. He can imagine Crosby and Harden, talking in the dark, hands across each others’ bodies, Harden telling him that the kid is a little screwed up about it, and Crosby nodding, his chin on Harden’s chest. Crosby’s default response to distress is to quickly remove himself from the situation.
Crosby breaks his ankle, anyway, impossible to get away from, though he does his best, and he’s back on the field two and a half weeks later. Street watches Harden watching him, pinpoint anger. Harden didn’t want Crosby to go back so soon, Street had heard them arguing about it through the wall. Heard Harden’s voice crack, you want to fucking kill yourself, just stay down, and Crosby hadn’t responded, or at least not so Street could hear, just hopped in place for the coaches and his mouth a pencil line, pain shining brightly in his eyes.
So Crosby is back, and Harden’s hands are clenched on the rail, flinching at every hard slide into second, every falter in Crosby’s stride over first base. Street keeps repeating it to himself, half in disbelief, non-displaced fracture.
They’re coming fast upon the end of the season, and things are falling apart. Harden puts his arm around Street’s shoulders at the bar one night and doesn’t let him go for hours. Street can barely sleep, up all night on the internet reading Wikipedia and playing videogames.
Somewhere in there, Street’s girlfriend breaks up with him on his voicemail, crying and saying, “Maybe when you come home, baby, but I can’t keep this up all by myself.”
Street hasn’t talked to her in almost a month. Feels her absence like a keychain he liked a lot and lost in transit.
There’s a night, deep in September, after they’ve already lost the division and still have a week to play, when Street finds Harden sitting in the hallway with his head on his knees, his hands hooked on the back of his neck. Street pauses, hovering awkwardly above him. He doesn’t know if Harden is okay or if he’s even allowed to ask. He settles for a cough, and Harden promptly says, muffled:
“What.”
Street shrugs helplessly, though Harden can’t see him. Harden seems to get it, though, and after a moment Harden’s hoarse voice returns, “I don’t want to play anymore.”
It sticks like a burr. Doesn’t want to play for the week left in the season or forever? Harden shouldn’t say that kind of stuff to Street, shouldn’t expect Street to be smart enough to come up with a good answer. Street can do stuff like buy the right kind of soup to beat a cold and stitch patches into their jeans, because Street is the oldest of four and had to make sure the house didn’t burn down, but he doesn’t have a cure for this.
Street finds himself staring at where Harden’s hair is pushed up by his laced fingers, forming a soft hedge. His throat is dry and his head, his head is killing him.
“Stay for a minute, will you?” Harden asks roughly.
Street jerks a guilty look at the carpet, biting the inside of his lip. Crosby is somewhere. Light pours out from under Melhuse’s door. Street never wants to leave this house, never wants to go back to Texas, never wants to have to show up in Phoenix five months from now and face down a whole new season, see Rich Harden in the sunlight with their fragile shortstop foremost in his mind and Huston Street just the kid who sleeps down the hall.
Street sits down beside him, scared half to death, and for the rest of his life, looking for the end of his rookie year, Street will not remember the game the Angels clinched or the day they cleaned out their lockers. He’ll remember this, sitting next to Rich Harden in the unlit hallway of their hollow rented house, the carpet scuffing, the wall strict against his back, not saying a word as Harden leans over slowly until they are angled into each other and Harden is heavy-warm, and Street is not thinking about anything, not even drawing breath.
Off-season, terrible, flying down the hill on his bike and not seeing the curb, laws of physics because they are all still in motion and they will remain in motion even as the rest of the world comes to a stop around them. The wind has been knocked out of him and back home in Austin, Street doesn’t call his girlfriend.
His parents are very proud of him. They put his Rookie of the Year trophy on the mantle, arranging the family pictures carefully around it, and his dad keeps clapping him on the back, asking him if he wants to throw the football around in the front yard.
The team is scattered like loose change, and for a couple of weeks, as Street is trying to get used to being still, feeling caved in, he talks more to Danny Haren than anyone else.
It’s Haren who tells him that Harden is staying with Crosby in Long Beach. Danny’s rudely chewing gum on the phone and talking about how he met up with them last night at a California roadhouse twenty miles into the desert.
“And we went back to their place after, which, like, we need to seriously have an intervention or something,” Haren is saying.
Street is lying on his childhood bed, staring at the ceiling. “Intervention?”
“Bobby thinks he drives better when he’s drunk.”
“Um.” Tapping his fingers on his stomach, Street imagines ten-car pileups.
“Rich is good, though, steals his keys. Everybody gets through the winter alive, we’re gonna have to buy his drinks all year.”
That seems counterproductive, but Street’s mind is backtracking, catching up on something before Bobby Crosby’s bloody death. “Wait. Their place?”
Haren snaps his gum. “Yeah, this house down on the beach. Which, like, I don’t know why they wanna live down there, they hardly ever even go outside.”
Street can see it, skin paling out of the sun. But he’s trying to rearrange the words to be less implicit. He thought, without the team, they’d drift apart from each other, Rich Harden in Canada and Bobby Crosby two thousand miles down the coast. Street hadn’t realized it was a constant. He wonders if Haren knows, thinks probably not.
“I. I didn’t know Rich was staying with him.” Same exact cracks and water stains on the ceiling as when Street was sixteen years old, tiger in the corner, running man over the foot of the bed.
“Right? You’d think they woulda got sick of each other during the season.”
You’d think that, but Street knows better, because he once saw Harden and Crosby asleep in the same bed, saw how they shifted around each other unconsciously, and how long do you have to sleep with someone before you move when they move?
“You should come out, dude,” Haren tells him, and Street pictures it, gliding in the flat Los Angeles light, pulling up at intersections and seeing the ocean. But there are wide open spaces in Street’s mind and Texas is better at filling him up.
“Maybe.” Nicked wood dresser, photographs still in red and yellow envelopes, his collection of glass Coke bottles kaleidoscopic in the sunlight. Coming home, everything seems small.
Danny Haren, it turns out, is bored enough to fly out to get Street, calling him without warning from the airport and grinning when Street tells him he’s crazy. They spend three days careening around Austin at double the speed limit, and Street’s parents pretty much adopt Haren, who is well-mannered and helps clear the table and seems unnaturally tall in their little house. He sleeps in a sleeping bag on the floor of Street’s room, his face creased and hatch-marked by the carpet.
Then Haren essentially kidnaps him, ignoring Street’s low protests that he really needs to stay home, he’s got some stuff to do, and a bunch of people he still hasn’t seen, and there’s this concert he wants to go to, and UT is having some sort of thing for the baseball team that he was invited to, and, and, and.
And Haren is buying their plane tickets and reminding Street to take off his shoes as they go through security. Street’s socks don’t match, and the shuffle of his feet on the floor makes static electricity zing through his fingers when he reaches for Haren’s sleeve, when he says, “I really don’t want to go to California.”
“Sure you do,” Haren says smoothly, and somehow that shuts Street down, stymies him, thinking with his brow furrowed that it’s been a month and a half since he saw Harden and maybe his heart has grown fonder.
Sleeps on the plane, his cheek numb against the window. Can’t get his feet under him, stumbling through baggage claim and into the cab, almost falls walking up Haren’s front steps, and then Haren is showing him the spare bedroom and Street is sinking gratefully down, black-red spots on the backs of his eyelids and all the windows are open, bugs smashed on the screen.
He wakes up and finds Harden in Danny’s kitchen, eating Cheerios with a fork the way he always does.
“Oh, um.” Street stops in the doorway, weird state of mind, eyes working too hard to soak up the light that flies through the huge windows. Harden waves at him with his fork, grinning messily.
“Dude. Dan said he’d bring you, but I didn’t think you’d really come.”
Harden clatters his bowl onto the table and gives Street a tight hug, and Street feels the pull of the muscles in Harden’s forearms against his sides, doesn’t quite have time to hug him back before Harden is stepping away.
Street just stares at him, his mouth stupidly open. Haren comes into the room and puts Harden in a headlock for finishing off the milk, and Street is able to sorta fade into the white-painted walls and eat toast for breakfast and smile normally when they look to him expectantly after a joke.
It’s different and strange and Street keeps thinking that they’re missing something, running late, they were supposed to be at the ballpark an hour ago. Haren’s on his fourth beer and Street almost tells him to go easy because the coaches hate it when they come in hungover, and then he remembers.
Crosby turns up the second day, when the three of them are still hanging around in Haren’s living room with a soap opera on in the background. Cassandra is cheating on Luke with his twin brother Dallas, and it’s possible that she’s also their long-lost sister. Street is paying too much attention, because Crosby crashes down on the couch next to Harden and it’s important to ignore the fact that they’re pressed up against each other like shirts in a closet.
Which answers the question of whether or not Haren knows, because Haren is kicking at Crosby’s leg and saying, “Tell your fucking boyfriend to buy me some more milk.”
Cassandra slaps one of the brothers, Street can’t tell them apart, just the crack of her palm, startlingly loud, the side of Street’s face burning in sympathy and unable to stop hearing, boyfriend. your boyfriend.
They don’t care so much, in the off-season, about getting caught or offending someone, which Street guesses is fair, because he told Harden that he was cool with it and Street always lives up to his word. But it’s worse than he would have thought, to see the ease with which Harden hooks his arm around Crosby’s shoulders, the way Crosby’s hand is on Harden’s leg, rattling away, discontent to be still.
They go out to a bar and maybe this time it’s Street who has too much to drink, because Harden’s hand alights on the small of Crosby’s back, leaning in to shout something in his ear, and Street is reaching out, slapping it away.
Harden turns to look at him with surprise on his face. Street doesn’t know what he meant by that, just knows the slide of his fingers on Harden’s wrist, the prominent bones on the back of his hand like speedbumps.
“What?” Harden says, and Crosby glances back at them, then back to the bar where he’s finally got the bartender’s attention.
“Careful,” Street says, almost stuttering but not quite. Not quite. “You should. Be careful.”
Showing his teeth, Harden says, “I wasn’t gonna blow him on the dancefloor or anything, dude.”
Street hisses, his face warping at the image, which is alone in his mind for a minute, held up against the black, Harden on his knees and the crowd circled around them, Crosby’s hands clutching the back of Harden’s head and his jeans split, Harden’s fingers curled in the denim. Street wants to dig his nails into his eyes, but instead he says recklessly and without thought:
“Just don’t act like such a-”
And thank god he stops himself in time, but it doesn’t matter, because Harden’s eyes go wild, and he shoves Street hard, into a group of people and someone spills his beer, cold wet on Street’s back and Harden is yelling:
“Like what? Like a fucking faggot, Huston, you little bitch?”
Street spins, crashes into someone and feels the sweet rustle of silk on his face, run run, pushes through the crowd and into the night.
Haren finds him out there, confused worried expression and Street is sitting on the hood of the car, remembering a Mexican restaurant and the keys locked inside.
Haren puts his hands in his pockets and looks up at the sky. Street waits for him to say something, and waits, and waits, and eventually cracks his wrists and says, “I didn’t mean it. He knows I didn’t mean it.”
Glancing at him, Haren shrugs. Miserable, Street picks at the wet spot on his shirt, pulling it away from his skin.
“You just. You gotta think about what it’s like for them. Trusting people with something like this. You know what would happen if the wrong person found out.”
Street nods, not at all liking the man he has turned into, not at all sure how to fix it. Harden didn’t trust him with it, anyway, he found out by accident, and for the first time, Street wonders why Harden was keeping it a secret. They lived in the same house. Supposed to be brothers.
Haren continues, “And, like. You say something and it’s like he shouldn’t have trusted you, either. Like you’re no better than anybody who’d want. Want to fuck them over, ruin their lives. I mean, like,” and Haren widens his eyes, puts his hand on the hood of the car. “Ruin their lives. You get that, right?”
Street nods again. Tries to pinpoint this feeling, this shame and fear and despair, like his bones are dust and he’s collapsing inward. “I do. I’d never. I’d do anything to keep him safe.”
Haren’s eyebrows twitch up, and Street rewinds it in his mind, realizes he should have said ‘them,’ but of course it’s too late.
Haren lets it go, nods. “Okay then.” He rolls his neck. “You ready to head out?”
Running a hand through his hair, Street gestures at the bar. “What about them?”
Haren half-grins. “Bobby’s still trying to calm him down. They’ll find their own way home.”
They get in the car and Street watches Los Angeles float by through the window, calls Harden when he gets back in the guest room and leaves a bad message on his voicemail, just him saying, “I’m sorry, man, so sorry,” and that’s all he seems to be able to say to Rich Harden these days.
A week in California and Harden eventually comes by again, forgives Street implicitly by bringing a six of his favorite beer, though they don’t really talk. Whenever Haren leaves the room, they sit in terrible silence, picking at the damp labels on the bottles, scowling at their hands.
They drive east to Van Nuys one night to meet up with Zito, an unsettling off-season version of Zito who can’t follow a conversation and keeps scratching at the birthmark on his wrist. Crosby crawls all over him, trying to spur a reaction, but Zito only pushes Crosby towards Harden and says, bewildered, “What? What?” like he just woke up.
Street’s in the kitchen, waiting for the microwave and reading the postcards and movie tickets that Zito’s got magneted to his refrigerator. Crosby comes in, nudges him out of the way to get a fresh beer, bloodlessly washed by the chilled refrigerator light, and tells Street without looking at him, “Don’t ever say something like that to him again, do you fucking understand me?”
And then leaves.
Street is frozen, holding onto the counter with both hands. He didn’t even really say anything, Harden jumped to a conclusion and maybe it was the right one, but still. Still. The microwave’s high ping startles him, and he takes his hot chocolate out with shaking hands, swallowing thickly, trying to figure out why he thought hot chocolate would be a good idea.
Crosby doesn’t look at him when he comes back into the room and after an hour or so, Street’s heart stops beating so fast. There’s talk of going to Scottsdale to see Chavez and Mulder, but they can’t decide on a good weekend for it, which seems strange, because it’s not like any of them have pressing business or anything. Street never even met Mark Mulder, so he mainly just listens when the others tell old stories, and then it’s time to go.
Unlike his parents, Danny Haren lets him sleep as long as he wants, and Street loses most of his days, sunlight rich on his back when he finally stirs.
Harden’s there the morning Street leaves, rides along on the way to the airport, and he puts his hand on the back of Street’s neck at one point, just kinda brief and inconsequential, drawing Street’s attention to the joke he’s making, though really Street is impossibly distracted by the calluses on Harden’s fingers.
On the curb, Harden’s eyes are too blue to be read and he says, “Don’t be a stranger, man,” and Street says, “Tell Bobby I said see you later,” and it’s almost normal, except that Haren hugs him and Harden doesn’t, but whatever.
Back in Texas, he calls his ex-girlfriend and asks her to take him back. She sounds perfectly stunned, but agrees, and then for awhile Street is in high school again, hanging out with his same friends, shouting at his brother for using his razor.
His girlfriend tells him he’s different, one night in January, and Street puts his arms around her, doesn’t ask how she means.
He misses Rich Harden terribly in the flat weeks, no more than he misses Zito or Chavez or Mark Ellis or even Crosby, who’d actually handled the whole thing pretty well, all things considered. But Harden is a loose end right now, a very familiar guilt that Street can feel pushing at the roof of his mouth when he sits in confession every week. Street sits in the driveway waiting for songs to finish before he gets out of the car and goes inside. He never leaves a movie halfway through, and he can’t shake the feeling that Harden cut him off when he was trying to say something important. Life’s unfinished and Street can’t stand that.
Soon enough, though, it’s time to go back to Phoenix.
continues thisaway
i go to parent-teacher conferences now and make my case for why kids shouldn't be retained, because i'll teach her how to read by the end of the summer, it'll be okay. my life is nothing like i expected it to be, and someday i'm gonna get caught.
kay then. first of all, these things keep getting really long with no input from me. second of all, i've got to develop some patience, because this could be better if i just gave it the time, but it's very long and i'm tired of reading it over. third of all, i need to take a goddamn break. fourth of all, i haven't been to a game in nine days. it is itching me. a's sunday, giants monday. sleep is for the weak.
Outside In
By Candle Beck
So things move pretty fast when Street gets the closer job. Though it’s not really like that, it’s not like it was offered and he accepted, all interview-neat in his starched bleach-white shirt and red and blue striped tie. Dotel’s arm gives out and it’s an arithmetic equation of some kind, Tommy John surgery plus a torn slider equals Huston Street is the man.
It’s not like he had much of a choice. It probably would have happened anyway, glow-in-the-dark text on his arms, writ small like a tattoo inside his elbows.
Quickly, he comes home. Nice highways skirting the city of Oakland, Rich Harden sleeping in the shotgun seat with his cheek pressed pale to the window and his mouth open. Street gets very quiet and still when he’s pitching, and he loves the guys, honestly he does, with this kinda wild summer-burn inside him.
Street keeps track of numbers, takes the last out of each game to the clubhouse and writes in black ink, in the fat part between the red stitches, the date, the opponent, the score, and what save it is. Mostly, it’s a code, ‘7/8/05, Chicago, 4-2, #5.’ Twenty years down the line, twice as old as he is now, the numbers are gonna be the only thing he remembers, because green runs together and being on a plane so much is making everything shard.
And he can deal with that, the splinters in his palms, the slow roll-over from eleven fifty-nine to midnight. Bits and pieces like road trips, third innings, two blocks between stoplights. Street is still going to church, sometimes in airport chapels, freeze-dried Communion wafers, the bite of stale red wine. Everything is short-term, but that’s okay.
Street is living with Crosby and Harden and Melhuse, and that’s working out pretty well. Harden falls asleep on the living floor a lot, sweatshirt balled up for a pillow and his hand tucked between his knees. Crosby is probably insane, taking shots of hot sauce and tequila, angry spots of color on his face. Melhuse is just cool, silent and as calm as the field before batting practice. They’re always running late, and Harden pours water over his head in the car, streaks his hair flat and Crosby hollers at him for dripping on the leather.
Street likes his life very much. He doesn’t mind staying in hotels or eating at diners, because he can get chicken-fried steak anywhere, and the showers never run out of hot water. He can run with jetlag, light-headed and it’s easier to get drunk when your body is convinced it’s ten o’clock at night. Street doesn’t drink much, but he makes the best of it when he does.
Harden locks his keys in the car and that’s a good two hours, dry restaurant parking lot, waiting for the Triple-A guy to come, because they don’t really know where they are. Harden is pissed off, pacing a quick circle around his car, and Street is sitting on the hood, eating tortilla chips out of a white paper bag and swinging his feet.
“Quit that,” Harden says, coming up suddenly from Street’s side and placing a hand on his knee. Street jerks, surprised, blinks at him.
“You. Are making me nervous,” Harden tells him, drumming his fingers on the hook of Street’s kneecap. Harden looks irritated and kinda frantic, eyes too wide.
“Sorry.”
“Just, like. Be still for a second. Okay?”
Street nods assuredly, tightening his jaw, be still, he can do that. Harden sighs and leans against the car next to him, faded charcoal sky, smears of orange. Street sees Harden’s shoulders slowly relax, and the night feels like calendar pages, flip-booking. Three minutes before Harden starts talking about baseball and team gossip, and Street unconsciously starts to kick his leg again, short parabola and Harden’s hip against his knee. Waiting for Triple-A is, improbably, a fantastic way to spend the night.
Every other Sunday, when they’re home, Crosby washes and waxes his car, sunstruck out in the front driveway. Harden usually helps for about ten minutes and then wanders off to play basketball.
Crosby says it’s because his car is way better than anybody else’s on the team and he’s gotta maintain that, but Harden told Street that Crosby’s dad used to have the same routine when Crosby was a kid, little soaked Bobby scrubbing the hubcaps.
Street is slippery and his fingers are pruned, and the radio is pumping music across the yard, something loud and fast. There’s soap in his hair, white foam on Crosby’s shirt. Crosby never looks more at peace than when he’s washing his car.
Harden disappears for a while and Crosby and Street talk about random stuff, hollering over the music, gleaming black metal under their hands. When Harden comes back out, he’s got a big white David sunflower seeds bucket, filled with water balloons, and they peg the car until it’s rinsed off, wrinkled colorful balloon corpses scattering the driveway.
They turn on each other next, whooping and climbing onto the roof, and it’s a good day. Street can’t stop smiling, as Rich Harden uses him as a human shield, his hands hard on Street’s hips.
Crosby starts stories, “So this guy walks into a bar,” like, no joke. Street is waiting for punchlines, counting his blessings. Luck runs in him like blood, and this is something he can believe.
Pleasantly tired with caffeine drip in the back of his throat, talking to his girlfriend every night and Harden is gleefully shouting dirty words through the locked door, “Hey Huston get your fucking hand out of my pants, I’m not into that shit,” and Crosby is cackling with laughter, coughing and red-faced in the hallway when Street comes out with his best impression of anger.
“Knock it off, you guys, you’re freaking her out.”
As if that wasn’t the whole point. Street knows, okay. He’s kinda laughing too.
They get to play baseball every day, they go to the park under atomized pieces of clouds, threads straggling from the hems of their T-shirts. Crosby and Ellis are wrestling, arms necks elbows hands, and slamming into the wall, whole place shaking. Zito is dealing cards from the bottom of the deck, keeping up a steady stream of distracting chatter and literal aces up his sleeve, tucked into his watchband.
Street gets overwhelmed sometimes, the sheer weight of everything, the closer job and the team sprinting hard through the summer and being so happy. Being cleanly and unreservedly happy, like, like. Like stuff he can’t say out loud. Like this.
If he had to pick a favorite part, it would probably be Rich Harden, who takes care of him when he gets confused, when Dan Haren is drunk and speaking in rags, what did you when the tracks and there was this so fucking close man seen that because it’s not like it not gonna be different afterwards just shut the fuck up, and Zito is looking like a vampire with iced skin and avid dark eyes, Harden is there to explain that this is just what it’s like sometimes. And that isn’t much of an explanation, but, okay. It settles Street down and Harden levels him like a city, cut right back to basics, you are here, I am here, and we are going to be fine.
Street thinks maybe in a year or two, Harden might be his best friend, though it’s hard to say because they’re still so new to each other. He’s still learning what the angle of Harden’s hand means, and which of Harden’s stories are deeply exaggerated or completely made up. Street believes in longevity and he’s thankful that he doesn’t actually have to pick his favorite part, because he’s scared of jinxing it.
Goes for beer one night and gets back, smooth dark, crinkling plastic bag, crickets in the grass. Melhuse passes him yawning and says good night, and Street tries to get him to stay up, tries to make every night last as long as possible, but no good, Melhuse is half-asleep.
Street goes into the living room and starts to say, “Hey, listen-” but Crosby hisses at him, “quiet, man, he’s asleep.”
And so Harden is, slumped over against Crosby, his arms crossed on his chest. Loose hands, open fingers under the bends of Harden’s forearms. Crosby’s arm is around his shoulders and his hand is in Harden’s hair, bits of gold like lamplight and Street thinks there’s something not quite right about this, though it’s simple, it’s easy. Just the same as everything else this year, put together inch by inch until Street is made up somehow of pitches and infomercials, five miles an hour faster.
He ignores the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach and passes Crosby a beer, takes the armchair. Well, Street thinks, and that’s it. Well.
Brothers. Strange brotherly traditions, stuff that Street can’t question because it’s got nothing to do with him, not yet. In-jokes and history all red and yellow and white and blue. Green and gold. Harden, who rides with Street down out of the hills in search of fast food long past midnight, could fit right into Street’s own family with his blonde-brown hair and his compact shoulders, near-favorite. Crosby is like the tagalong friend who came for lunch and stuck around till breakfast.
Street doesn’t think much on it, falls asleep in the chair himself, and what can he say then? Melhuse is crunching his way through a bowl of cornflakes and they go back to the ballpark, and Street feels that same old joy, found a team with pairs of brothers and well-loved cousins, broad sprawling Texas family, can’t get any better.
Coast on the days and soon enough they’re back on the road, skyed, they’ve gone the long way to Los Angeles by way of Detroit and Baltimore, and now they’re flying north. Danny Haren’s still petitioning that they should get frequent flyer miles for this shit, and the traveling secretary is still saying, you don’t pay for the fucking flights, Dan.
Plane trip like a fifty-minute scan of summer, talking joyfully, the very many weeks behind them and a wide open highway before them, where the speed limit is safe and reasonable, and no fewer than four of them might win Rookie of the Year. Huston Street is emerging as the frontrunner, they’re the frontrunners, they’re in first place.
First place. Perfectly shaped words in Street’s mouth, Kirk Saarloos’s hair jagging up madly, backlit by the blue, tiny ovoid windows. Eric Chavez is grinning, his eyes wet, one week a father and winging home. Street can feel adrenaline burring in their faces, trembling eyelashes, shedding skins behind them, six hundred miles an hour through the air, and they just crushed the Orioles.
Zito finally gets caught cheating at cards, crumpled paper money and slick Bicycles cascading to the floor. Nobody’s as upset with him as they should be, though Crosby lunges for him, pauses with his hands out and Zito twitching, squirreling to get over the seat, run and hide in the lavatory, and Crosby looks back at Harden in the aisle behind him.
“Dude, hold me back,” Crosby implores, because he’s not really mad. Harden’s arms go around his waist, easy as that, and his face presses flush to Crosby’s back, and Crosby is shouting, “Fuckin’ cheater, I’ll kill you!” and Zito is laughing, begging for mercy.
They get home, good trip, see you tomorrow, and Crosby’s still got Zito’s money poking up gray-green from his pockets, stuffed into his shirt. They share a cab back to their house and Crosby and Harden and Street are shoved into the back, too much shoulder, too many arms, bruises in the shape of elbows forming on Street’s sides. Melhuse is in the front seat, chatting with the driver and ignoring them like unruly kids, which maybe they are. Crosby unearths a packet of sugar and spills it down the back of Melhuse’s shirt, and Melhuse swipes back at him, his hand brushing Street’s face, Crosby cowering into Harden.
They tumble inside and Melhuse is going to take a shower, rattling his shirt to get the sugar to rain out, calling Crosby unkind things. Street goes to call his girlfriend, but he can’t get a signal because the sky is gathering heavily above their house, and he comes back out to find Harden and Crosby still in the front hallway, except now Harden’s pressed up against the wall and Crosby is kissing him like it’s the end of the world.
Street can see it very clearly, Crosby’s forearm flat against the wall beside Harden’s head, hand spread out like a starfish, his other hand fisted on Harden’s stomach. Harden is tilting his head to the side and opening his mouth, and they’re both still kind of laughing. Doesn’t look like the first time, or anything near it, and Street turns, weird echo in his mind, almost audible draining in his chest, and goes back down the hall.
Doesn’t think about it. And the next morning he can’t meet their eyes.
Street goes through the motions, breakfast and Harden eating toast off a fork, biting off the edges in concentric circles, Crosby sharing a glass of orange juice with Melhuse, Huston Street curved into his shoulders and don’t say a word.
Crosby says something, must be funny, because Melhuse is snickering behind his hand and Harden is full-out laughing, his eyes screwed shut and his mouth half-open. Chewed-up toast visible and Street’s nose wrinkles, because that’s just gross. He watches Harden lean over to clock Crosby on the arm, and Crosby catches his hand, checking for a pulse, smiling at Harden like Harden just brought his hamster back to life, and Street looks away.
It’s none of his business.
They go to the ballpark and Street puts himself on the other side of the room, staring at a magazine. Zito and Crosby are arguing about what to play on the stereo, and Harden is sitting cross-legged on the couch, watching a game show with Haren. Street keeps seeing it, Crosby pressing Harden down, his knee between Harden’s legs, his hand flat on the wall. Eyes closed and laughing against each other’s mouths, like it was just normal, like it was a joke, like it wasn’t anything.
Zito comes over after a while and slumps down in a chair next to Street’s. Zito’s always doing that, long fold of his body and his legs going everywhere. “Boy,” Zito says, and Street’s not sure if that’s supposed to be directed at him or if it’s just Zito’s all-purpose expression of ennui. He doesn’t really know any of them that well.
Street hums noncommittally, thinking sickly that they were supposed to be brothers.
“You wanna play or something?” Zito asks, moving his hands in a way that could indicate either videogames or a guitar.
“Nah,” Street answers, runs his fingertip up and down the slick page of the magazine, trying to split the skin. Triangular flash of Harden’s white teeth when he turned his head and tipped his face up, Crosby had mumbled something and it made him smile.
“So, like, you’re just gonna be boring.” Zito sighs extravagantly and lets his head fall back, studying the ceiling. Zito makes everything look really interesting, but Street would follow his eyes and it would just be peeling plaster or highway signs.
Really tired, maybe he didn’t sleep so good last night. Maybe Harden and Crosby have gravitated towards each other across the room, and if Street looks over there, he’ll see Harden’s hand on the small of Crosby’s back, Harden’s low voice. Street doesn’t look over.
“Excuse me.” Zito thwacks him. “Trying to have a conversation, you know. A little civilization.”
Street blinks at him, feeling abruptly heartbroken.
“Hey,” Zito starts to say, his eyes widening, because whatever mean rumors they start up about him, he still won’t let any of them be hurt, but Street is up by then, and moving with the rasp of his feet on the carpet painfully loud in his ears.
Ducks into the bathroom and washes his hands, cold wet fingers against his eyes and breathing real careful, chanting the lineup in his mind, skipping over Bobby Crosby’s name, and he’s fine.
He’s fine.
And news travels fast, because Zito is very logical, in a very weird sort of way, and his immediate response to any problem is to try and fix it. His methods are usually less than reasonable, of course. First step is telling everybody that something is wrong with the kid, and then half the team is giving Street space and the other half is trying to cheer him out of it. Street can’t figure out which is worse. Both are pretty bad.
Crosby and Harden are distinctly in the cheer-him-up camp, greeting him with water balloons from the roof and changing all his radio pre-sets to mariachi music and thrash metal. Strange way of trying to make someone feel better, annoy them into a prank war, but Street’s mostly just tired, ineffably sad.
A week or two of avoiding everybody, eyes on the floor, hands in his pockets. Danny Haren is convinced that if he can just get Street drunk, everything will be okay. Street wants to disappear.
He plays basketball by himself in the driveway, past midnight and dully grateful that the house is soundproof and the rubber slap of the ball, the clang of the rim, won’t cause any harm inside. His hands turn black. The streetlights are far away and he keeps putting more force into his shots, exploding the ball against the pale outline of the backboard, making the house shake.
Throws too hard and the ball goes sailing onto the roof, clattering the shingles, whaps down into the yard. Street’s legs are trembling. He goes around the side of the house and the ball is resting in the grass under Harden’s window, curtains parted maybe three inches. Street can look inside, he can see Harden and Crosby on the bed in there, asleep.
Dead to the world, Harden on his back with his arm bent over his head, Crosby’s body crooked with his legs skewed, his fists tucked against Harden’s side. Harden is naked to the waist and Street stands there, holding the basketball, trying to find a place for this in his mind, trying to make it normal.
Crosby shifts and scrapes his buzzed hair against Harden’s biceps. Not enough light to see the look on Harden’s sleeping face, just enough to see him pull his arm free and slant it down across Crosby’s side, his loose hand hanging off over Crosby’s ribs. Street turns away, feels like he might be sick, and goes to bed without taking a shower, so that when he wakes up, there are grimy handprints on his sheets and sticky sweat all over him, and he can get through this, he’s gotten through worse.
Harden thumps down next to him on the couch and Street has let his guard down, glaze-eyed watching videos on VH1 Country, no time to leave the room. Harden tocks him on the knee and Street’s whole body twitches.
“So,” Harden says, scowling faintly at the television. Harden hates country music.
Street holds his elbows in his hands and tries not to move.
“You’re, like.” Harden trails off. Quiet for a minute and Street can try to wish himself away, wish himself all the way back to Austin, where none of his best friends ever make out with each other in the front hall and no one makes his stomach hurt the way Rich Harden does.
Harden shifts so that his leg is against Street’s. Street’s breath catches in his throat. “Did your girlfriend cheat on you or something?”
Aghast, Street shoots him a look without thinking about it, and that’s not a good idea because Harden’s face is concerned, blue eyes taking up space like streetlights, and Street can feel his heart rattle.
“No,” he manages. Though who knows, because he hasn’t spoken to his girlfriend in a week, cowardly dodging her calls, like she’ll be able to hear it through the phone lines, the warped places his mind keeps going.
“Your dog died?”
“Jeez, Richie. No.”
Street doesn’t like this, litany of all the things that might’ve gone wrong with him and how long before Rich stumbles over the real one. He doesn’t like Harden right here next to him on the couch and everyone on the television singing about tragic love and alcoholism.
“Well then, why’re you all-”
Quick sharp burst of something behind his eyes, unrecognizable and Street is snapping, “I don’t want to talk about it, man, ‘specially not with you.”
Black taste in the back of his mouth. Harden staring at him in shock, none of them have ever heard Street speak in anger, because Street hardly ever does, can’t remember the last time, and it sounds so foreign and wracked, twisting around inside his mind.
He immediately tries to apologize, but now Harden is cutting him off, which is only fair, Street supposes.
“What the fuck does that mean, especially not with me? What the fuck did I do?”
Street’s face is on fire, and he stands, feeling his shirt pull from where it was pinned against his side by Harden’s knee. Center-of-a-flame blue, set the world on fire and Harden is saying angrily, “Hey,” but Street is already out of the room.
He needs to stay out of rooms that contain Rich Harden.
That’s hard, hard thing to ask of himself, hard to go through days and not have Harden calm him down with a cool look, make him snort soda through his nose, grin at him from the passenger seat and tell him dryly that he missed the exit, but it’s okay.
Street’s swimming laps, pressure on his sinuses and his chest. Sunlight falling through the blue water in leaf-shaped pieces, passing under the floating chair and the shadow makes him cold. He comes up for air and Melhuse is sitting in one of the deck chairs, watching him.
Latching onto the side of the pool, Street breathes hard and asks, “What?”
Melhuse lifts a shoulder. “You tell me.”
Street bites the insides of his mouth. “It’s nothing, Adam. I’m fine,” and he ducks under again, silent world. Chlorine burning in his eyes, he might be crying, he’s not sure.
Second time up, and Melhuse has perfect timing, says as the water slides out of Street’s ears, “Rich thinks he did something wrong.”
Street rests his chin on the rough lip of the pool. “He didn’t,” he replies softly.
“Okay. Maybe you wanna stop acting like he’s invisible, then?”
Trying to glare at him, wishing he knew how to swear, Street pushes off the edge and cuts through another fast lap, planning his response.
Resurfaces and says, “I just want to be left alone.” Not very good, as responses go, but Street is half-drowned, dumb with hunger.
“Yeah, somehow I doubt it. C’mon, what’d he do?”
Street swipes his hand across his eyes. “Nothing, okay. I don’t care what he does.”
He chances a look and sees Melhuse’s face draw shrewd. “Fuck, you saw them, didn’t you?”
Street lets go of the side and sinks down under the water, crawling his fingers on the wall, tap-tap third-degree, heaviness on his shoulders, making his back ache. Comes up for air, and Melhuse is still there.
“You knew?” he asks. His throat feels slick.
“Of course I did. You’ll notice they’re not very subtle in their own house.”
Street swallows. “What about the others?”
Melhuse shrugs with one shoulder, watching Street very carefully. “Yeah, some of them. Are you all fucked up about it or something?”
Ignoring that, Street finds another question, intent on knowing everything. “How long? I mean. Them. How long?”
“Well, they never exactly told us the full story, but since Double-A, I think. Years.”
Street stares at his hands on the lip of the pool, skinny damp fingerprints pressed into the dull gray. He can feel his hair tinting green from the chlorine, his vision clouded with blue water. When Harden and Crosby were in the Texas League together, Street was halfway across the state, a sophomore in college and still eating most of his dinners at home.
“They shouldn’t be doing that,” he says almost too quiet to hear.
Melhuse doesn’t say anything for a while, and when Street looks up, Melhuse is showing more on his face than he ever has before, pure hard-eyed contempt. Street shivers from it.
“Look, Huston, you seem like a good kid and everything, so believe me when I tell you that saying shit like that is the quickest way to end up without any friends on this team. Those two would walk into fucking traffic for you.”
Melhuse gets up and stalks inside and Street is unbearably ashamed, wanting to call him back, because that’s not what he meant, it’s not like he thinks it’s wrong.
Ten laps later and Street is still trying to figure out why it bothers him so much if he doesn’t think it’s wrong.
The season goes on. Street guesses that was probably inevitable. They go back on the road and it’s impossibly difficult to be on the plane with everyone, wondering who knows and who doesn’t, hearing Harden and Crosby two rows up, talking and laughing sometimes, and Street remembers when he would have taken the seat right behind and popped his head into their conversation. The first few months of the season are already perfectly crystallized in his memory, like his seven-year-old summer, like his junior year in college. He didn’t expect that to happen, nostalgia this awful disease inside.
He plays spider solitaire on his computer until the battery dies, by which point most everyone is asleep, spaceship reading lights hovering above them. Fly into New York City and it makes his pulse jump, like Harden stretching in the aisle, his shirt riding up so that Street can see a shadowy wedge of his hip.
A knock on his hotel room door the next night, waking him up. He’d fallen asleep way too early, abstractly thinking that more sleep means less time to roll it over in his mind. Street rolls over. Pads to the door in pajama pants and Longhorns T-shirt, fuzzy like three-beers buzzed, forgetting to check the peephole.
Harden is slouched against the door on the opposite side of the hallway, his hands tucked behind his back. “Adam says you’ve got a problem.”
Biting back whatever cutting thing he would have said if he’d been wired that way, Street moves his shoulders and locks his eyes on the collar of Harden’s T-shirt. There’s a sculpted glass light fixture to the left of Harden, yellow slanting across his body at a bizarre angle.
“I do not.”
Harden lifts an eyebrow, looking cool as a cigarette ad. “Really? Because it’s not like anyone would blame you for freaking out a little bit. I mean, it’s not every day you find out your roommates are fuck-”
Street grabs him, moving in self-preservation, fists a hand in Harden’s shirt and hauls him inside, fearfully checking the hallway before slamming the door shut.
“What’s the matter with you?” Street asks fiercely, but Harden’s laughing.
Harden is laughing. Street is clear of thought.
“Oh, man, dude,” Harden says, grinning at him, settling down. “Jesus, it’s not that bad, is it?”
Street shakes his head. He doesn’t know what Harden’s talking about. He must look stricken, because Harden’s expression tightens and the remnants of his laughter escape under the door.
“You could stop looking like I’m gonna kill you, Huston, and that’d be good,” Harden tells him, his voice icing slightly.
Street turns away, thinks about getting a drink from the mini-bar but decides against it. He starts unpacking, loading his folded clothes into the dresser.
“Adam got it wrong, okay. I’m fine,” for maybe the six hundredth time in a month. Street stares at his hands moving, suitcase, T-shirts, drawer. Shiny wooden knobs, blue and yellow flower-patterned drawer liners inside.
“Right. So you’re unpacking even though we’re leaving tomorrow. Nice.”
Street flushes deeply but doesn’t stop. He can hear Harden sigh behind him, the soft sound as Harden sits down on the bed.
“Never took you for the type, man,” Harden says low.
Street glances at the mirror and sees Harden leaning back on his hands, shirt pulled tight across his chest, watching him hatefully like Street’s the worst kind of traitor. Street doesn’t say anything.
“Like, sorry if we’ve fucked with your expectations or whatever, but your expectations are not exactly our responsibility. Me and him, we came first. We fucking pre-date you.”
Voice rising, Harden is getting upset, on account of Street’s silence and Street’s humiliation and Street’s turned back. Harden is saying with a manic blue sneer, “I don’t know where you get the fucking balls, man, to act like we’re fucking beneath you or something, like I was only your friend so long as I didn’t make you uncomfortable, like, so fucking sorry, hate to fucking bring you down. Not gonna leave him because you’ve got a problem with it, can’t believe you think I would. You and him are just fucking miles apart, you think I’ve missed you the way I’d miss him?”
Street’s heart seems to be shrinking, leeching all the air out of him. He keeps cheating looks into the mirror and Harden’s arms, bigger than they should be bracketing his slight body, and Harden’s mouth like a gash chipped out of stone, and Harden’s eyes, dear god almighty, Harden’s eyes. Street could turn off all the lights and still be able to see in the dark, as long as Harden keeps his eyes open.
Street can’t stand to see him so disappointed and hurt, teeth raking out hard-syllabled words and his hands clenched in the bedspread. Street is putting Harden in danger somehow, swore he never would.
“Hey, hey,” Street says, interrupting whatever terrible things Harden is saying. He forces himself to meet Harden’s eyes in the mirror. “You’re right.”
Harden blinks. “I am?”
Street turns carefully, the room turning with him, leans back against the dresser. “I’m being dumb.”
Harden’s mouth closes slowly, and he nods, looking suspicious. “Little bit, yeah.”
Street waves his hand in the air, swallowing past something thick and sharp and his chest feels like it’s been cracked open. He smiles. “You and him, it’s great.”
Studying him for a long moment, his eyebrows pinched together, Harden’s hands loosen on the bedspread. “Don’t go zero to sixty, man. Take some time to adjust.” He sounds weird and flat.
“I’m adjusted,” Street protests, clutching at the edge of the dresser. Needs to hang on. He keeps thinking, they’ve had years, they’ve had Texas and Sacramento and a whole season in Oakland before Street showed up. Street was a different person when he was a sophomore in college, they’re probably changed too. It’s, like, a lifetime.
“So you’re not gonna be weird anymore?” Harden asks, but that gets lost because Street is saying stupidly at the same moment:
“You love him?”
“Christ, dude.” Harden’s face twists, half-disgusted, and Street is shaking his head fast, squeezing his eyes shut.
“Never mind, sorry, sorry.”
Quiet again. City quiet, anyway, shuffle-scream of street noise drifting up the eleven flights. Street’s heart is beating way too fast, his face dull brick red.
“Look,” Harden says, and Street waits for him to say, you’re a good kid and you’ll end up with no friends on this team, which almost sounds okay, nobody to mess him up, but Harden continues, “I just wanted to make sure that we’re cool. It shouldn’t change anything, because it’s always been like this, you just never knew.”
Street nods, terrified that he’s going to cry. Steady his voice and pull his shoulders up and what a nice smile, what a sweet boy.
“We’re cool, Richie. I. I am sorry.”
Harden tips his head to the side, vaguely confused, but that’s as much as Street can stomach tonight, and he’s half out the door, talking loudly about getting dinner, and four rooms down, looks back to see Harden following.
Right back to normal. Pretty bad, unsteady on his feet, showing his teeth when people ask him how he is, wishing he could get into every game, wishing he was a position player, something he has not been in almost ten years.
Harden is cautious for a couple of days, keeping an eye on him and keeping his hands off Crosby when Street is in the room, but Harden has a short attention span and by the end of the road trip, he’s hanging onto Crosby’s shoulders again, letting himself be carried with his face on the back of Crosby’s neck and his sneakers two inches off the ground.
Street thinks bitterly that his broken peace should mean more to Harden, should merit at least a week of not shoving it in his face. He wants to siphon off some of the tension in his back and the steady ache in his head, make Harden understand how bad it is now. Then he stops, hands gone all crazy. His own cruelty makes no sense to him, as if he’s altering cell by cell, mutating. He’s never had friends like this.
And they’re friends again, they get home to Oakland where the weather has been perfect for months and Harden bullies him into coming to the bar even though Street’s body is dense with overwork and praying for sleep. Harden buys him a few beers and then Cokes all night long, and Street lies awake, caffeine shattering in his veins, staring at the ceiling.
Crosby avoids him, mostly, and Street can’t figure out how Crosby really fits into all of this, so he’s thankful for that. He can imagine Crosby and Harden, talking in the dark, hands across each others’ bodies, Harden telling him that the kid is a little screwed up about it, and Crosby nodding, his chin on Harden’s chest. Crosby’s default response to distress is to quickly remove himself from the situation.
Crosby breaks his ankle, anyway, impossible to get away from, though he does his best, and he’s back on the field two and a half weeks later. Street watches Harden watching him, pinpoint anger. Harden didn’t want Crosby to go back so soon, Street had heard them arguing about it through the wall. Heard Harden’s voice crack, you want to fucking kill yourself, just stay down, and Crosby hadn’t responded, or at least not so Street could hear, just hopped in place for the coaches and his mouth a pencil line, pain shining brightly in his eyes.
So Crosby is back, and Harden’s hands are clenched on the rail, flinching at every hard slide into second, every falter in Crosby’s stride over first base. Street keeps repeating it to himself, half in disbelief, non-displaced fracture.
They’re coming fast upon the end of the season, and things are falling apart. Harden puts his arm around Street’s shoulders at the bar one night and doesn’t let him go for hours. Street can barely sleep, up all night on the internet reading Wikipedia and playing videogames.
Somewhere in there, Street’s girlfriend breaks up with him on his voicemail, crying and saying, “Maybe when you come home, baby, but I can’t keep this up all by myself.”
Street hasn’t talked to her in almost a month. Feels her absence like a keychain he liked a lot and lost in transit.
There’s a night, deep in September, after they’ve already lost the division and still have a week to play, when Street finds Harden sitting in the hallway with his head on his knees, his hands hooked on the back of his neck. Street pauses, hovering awkwardly above him. He doesn’t know if Harden is okay or if he’s even allowed to ask. He settles for a cough, and Harden promptly says, muffled:
“What.”
Street shrugs helplessly, though Harden can’t see him. Harden seems to get it, though, and after a moment Harden’s hoarse voice returns, “I don’t want to play anymore.”
It sticks like a burr. Doesn’t want to play for the week left in the season or forever? Harden shouldn’t say that kind of stuff to Street, shouldn’t expect Street to be smart enough to come up with a good answer. Street can do stuff like buy the right kind of soup to beat a cold and stitch patches into their jeans, because Street is the oldest of four and had to make sure the house didn’t burn down, but he doesn’t have a cure for this.
Street finds himself staring at where Harden’s hair is pushed up by his laced fingers, forming a soft hedge. His throat is dry and his head, his head is killing him.
“Stay for a minute, will you?” Harden asks roughly.
Street jerks a guilty look at the carpet, biting the inside of his lip. Crosby is somewhere. Light pours out from under Melhuse’s door. Street never wants to leave this house, never wants to go back to Texas, never wants to have to show up in Phoenix five months from now and face down a whole new season, see Rich Harden in the sunlight with their fragile shortstop foremost in his mind and Huston Street just the kid who sleeps down the hall.
Street sits down beside him, scared half to death, and for the rest of his life, looking for the end of his rookie year, Street will not remember the game the Angels clinched or the day they cleaned out their lockers. He’ll remember this, sitting next to Rich Harden in the unlit hallway of their hollow rented house, the carpet scuffing, the wall strict against his back, not saying a word as Harden leans over slowly until they are angled into each other and Harden is heavy-warm, and Street is not thinking about anything, not even drawing breath.
Off-season, terrible, flying down the hill on his bike and not seeing the curb, laws of physics because they are all still in motion and they will remain in motion even as the rest of the world comes to a stop around them. The wind has been knocked out of him and back home in Austin, Street doesn’t call his girlfriend.
His parents are very proud of him. They put his Rookie of the Year trophy on the mantle, arranging the family pictures carefully around it, and his dad keeps clapping him on the back, asking him if he wants to throw the football around in the front yard.
The team is scattered like loose change, and for a couple of weeks, as Street is trying to get used to being still, feeling caved in, he talks more to Danny Haren than anyone else.
It’s Haren who tells him that Harden is staying with Crosby in Long Beach. Danny’s rudely chewing gum on the phone and talking about how he met up with them last night at a California roadhouse twenty miles into the desert.
“And we went back to their place after, which, like, we need to seriously have an intervention or something,” Haren is saying.
Street is lying on his childhood bed, staring at the ceiling. “Intervention?”
“Bobby thinks he drives better when he’s drunk.”
“Um.” Tapping his fingers on his stomach, Street imagines ten-car pileups.
“Rich is good, though, steals his keys. Everybody gets through the winter alive, we’re gonna have to buy his drinks all year.”
That seems counterproductive, but Street’s mind is backtracking, catching up on something before Bobby Crosby’s bloody death. “Wait. Their place?”
Haren snaps his gum. “Yeah, this house down on the beach. Which, like, I don’t know why they wanna live down there, they hardly ever even go outside.”
Street can see it, skin paling out of the sun. But he’s trying to rearrange the words to be less implicit. He thought, without the team, they’d drift apart from each other, Rich Harden in Canada and Bobby Crosby two thousand miles down the coast. Street hadn’t realized it was a constant. He wonders if Haren knows, thinks probably not.
“I. I didn’t know Rich was staying with him.” Same exact cracks and water stains on the ceiling as when Street was sixteen years old, tiger in the corner, running man over the foot of the bed.
“Right? You’d think they woulda got sick of each other during the season.”
You’d think that, but Street knows better, because he once saw Harden and Crosby asleep in the same bed, saw how they shifted around each other unconsciously, and how long do you have to sleep with someone before you move when they move?
“You should come out, dude,” Haren tells him, and Street pictures it, gliding in the flat Los Angeles light, pulling up at intersections and seeing the ocean. But there are wide open spaces in Street’s mind and Texas is better at filling him up.
“Maybe.” Nicked wood dresser, photographs still in red and yellow envelopes, his collection of glass Coke bottles kaleidoscopic in the sunlight. Coming home, everything seems small.
Danny Haren, it turns out, is bored enough to fly out to get Street, calling him without warning from the airport and grinning when Street tells him he’s crazy. They spend three days careening around Austin at double the speed limit, and Street’s parents pretty much adopt Haren, who is well-mannered and helps clear the table and seems unnaturally tall in their little house. He sleeps in a sleeping bag on the floor of Street’s room, his face creased and hatch-marked by the carpet.
Then Haren essentially kidnaps him, ignoring Street’s low protests that he really needs to stay home, he’s got some stuff to do, and a bunch of people he still hasn’t seen, and there’s this concert he wants to go to, and UT is having some sort of thing for the baseball team that he was invited to, and, and, and.
And Haren is buying their plane tickets and reminding Street to take off his shoes as they go through security. Street’s socks don’t match, and the shuffle of his feet on the floor makes static electricity zing through his fingers when he reaches for Haren’s sleeve, when he says, “I really don’t want to go to California.”
“Sure you do,” Haren says smoothly, and somehow that shuts Street down, stymies him, thinking with his brow furrowed that it’s been a month and a half since he saw Harden and maybe his heart has grown fonder.
Sleeps on the plane, his cheek numb against the window. Can’t get his feet under him, stumbling through baggage claim and into the cab, almost falls walking up Haren’s front steps, and then Haren is showing him the spare bedroom and Street is sinking gratefully down, black-red spots on the backs of his eyelids and all the windows are open, bugs smashed on the screen.
He wakes up and finds Harden in Danny’s kitchen, eating Cheerios with a fork the way he always does.
“Oh, um.” Street stops in the doorway, weird state of mind, eyes working too hard to soak up the light that flies through the huge windows. Harden waves at him with his fork, grinning messily.
“Dude. Dan said he’d bring you, but I didn’t think you’d really come.”
Harden clatters his bowl onto the table and gives Street a tight hug, and Street feels the pull of the muscles in Harden’s forearms against his sides, doesn’t quite have time to hug him back before Harden is stepping away.
Street just stares at him, his mouth stupidly open. Haren comes into the room and puts Harden in a headlock for finishing off the milk, and Street is able to sorta fade into the white-painted walls and eat toast for breakfast and smile normally when they look to him expectantly after a joke.
It’s different and strange and Street keeps thinking that they’re missing something, running late, they were supposed to be at the ballpark an hour ago. Haren’s on his fourth beer and Street almost tells him to go easy because the coaches hate it when they come in hungover, and then he remembers.
Crosby turns up the second day, when the three of them are still hanging around in Haren’s living room with a soap opera on in the background. Cassandra is cheating on Luke with his twin brother Dallas, and it’s possible that she’s also their long-lost sister. Street is paying too much attention, because Crosby crashes down on the couch next to Harden and it’s important to ignore the fact that they’re pressed up against each other like shirts in a closet.
Which answers the question of whether or not Haren knows, because Haren is kicking at Crosby’s leg and saying, “Tell your fucking boyfriend to buy me some more milk.”
Cassandra slaps one of the brothers, Street can’t tell them apart, just the crack of her palm, startlingly loud, the side of Street’s face burning in sympathy and unable to stop hearing, boyfriend. your boyfriend.
They don’t care so much, in the off-season, about getting caught or offending someone, which Street guesses is fair, because he told Harden that he was cool with it and Street always lives up to his word. But it’s worse than he would have thought, to see the ease with which Harden hooks his arm around Crosby’s shoulders, the way Crosby’s hand is on Harden’s leg, rattling away, discontent to be still.
They go out to a bar and maybe this time it’s Street who has too much to drink, because Harden’s hand alights on the small of Crosby’s back, leaning in to shout something in his ear, and Street is reaching out, slapping it away.
Harden turns to look at him with surprise on his face. Street doesn’t know what he meant by that, just knows the slide of his fingers on Harden’s wrist, the prominent bones on the back of his hand like speedbumps.
“What?” Harden says, and Crosby glances back at them, then back to the bar where he’s finally got the bartender’s attention.
“Careful,” Street says, almost stuttering but not quite. Not quite. “You should. Be careful.”
Showing his teeth, Harden says, “I wasn’t gonna blow him on the dancefloor or anything, dude.”
Street hisses, his face warping at the image, which is alone in his mind for a minute, held up against the black, Harden on his knees and the crowd circled around them, Crosby’s hands clutching the back of Harden’s head and his jeans split, Harden’s fingers curled in the denim. Street wants to dig his nails into his eyes, but instead he says recklessly and without thought:
“Just don’t act like such a-”
And thank god he stops himself in time, but it doesn’t matter, because Harden’s eyes go wild, and he shoves Street hard, into a group of people and someone spills his beer, cold wet on Street’s back and Harden is yelling:
“Like what? Like a fucking faggot, Huston, you little bitch?”
Street spins, crashes into someone and feels the sweet rustle of silk on his face, run run, pushes through the crowd and into the night.
Haren finds him out there, confused worried expression and Street is sitting on the hood of the car, remembering a Mexican restaurant and the keys locked inside.
Haren puts his hands in his pockets and looks up at the sky. Street waits for him to say something, and waits, and waits, and eventually cracks his wrists and says, “I didn’t mean it. He knows I didn’t mean it.”
Glancing at him, Haren shrugs. Miserable, Street picks at the wet spot on his shirt, pulling it away from his skin.
“You just. You gotta think about what it’s like for them. Trusting people with something like this. You know what would happen if the wrong person found out.”
Street nods, not at all liking the man he has turned into, not at all sure how to fix it. Harden didn’t trust him with it, anyway, he found out by accident, and for the first time, Street wonders why Harden was keeping it a secret. They lived in the same house. Supposed to be brothers.
Haren continues, “And, like. You say something and it’s like he shouldn’t have trusted you, either. Like you’re no better than anybody who’d want. Want to fuck them over, ruin their lives. I mean, like,” and Haren widens his eyes, puts his hand on the hood of the car. “Ruin their lives. You get that, right?”
Street nods again. Tries to pinpoint this feeling, this shame and fear and despair, like his bones are dust and he’s collapsing inward. “I do. I’d never. I’d do anything to keep him safe.”
Haren’s eyebrows twitch up, and Street rewinds it in his mind, realizes he should have said ‘them,’ but of course it’s too late.
Haren lets it go, nods. “Okay then.” He rolls his neck. “You ready to head out?”
Running a hand through his hair, Street gestures at the bar. “What about them?”
Haren half-grins. “Bobby’s still trying to calm him down. They’ll find their own way home.”
They get in the car and Street watches Los Angeles float by through the window, calls Harden when he gets back in the guest room and leaves a bad message on his voicemail, just him saying, “I’m sorry, man, so sorry,” and that’s all he seems to be able to say to Rich Harden these days.
A week in California and Harden eventually comes by again, forgives Street implicitly by bringing a six of his favorite beer, though they don’t really talk. Whenever Haren leaves the room, they sit in terrible silence, picking at the damp labels on the bottles, scowling at their hands.
They drive east to Van Nuys one night to meet up with Zito, an unsettling off-season version of Zito who can’t follow a conversation and keeps scratching at the birthmark on his wrist. Crosby crawls all over him, trying to spur a reaction, but Zito only pushes Crosby towards Harden and says, bewildered, “What? What?” like he just woke up.
Street’s in the kitchen, waiting for the microwave and reading the postcards and movie tickets that Zito’s got magneted to his refrigerator. Crosby comes in, nudges him out of the way to get a fresh beer, bloodlessly washed by the chilled refrigerator light, and tells Street without looking at him, “Don’t ever say something like that to him again, do you fucking understand me?”
And then leaves.
Street is frozen, holding onto the counter with both hands. He didn’t even really say anything, Harden jumped to a conclusion and maybe it was the right one, but still. Still. The microwave’s high ping startles him, and he takes his hot chocolate out with shaking hands, swallowing thickly, trying to figure out why he thought hot chocolate would be a good idea.
Crosby doesn’t look at him when he comes back into the room and after an hour or so, Street’s heart stops beating so fast. There’s talk of going to Scottsdale to see Chavez and Mulder, but they can’t decide on a good weekend for it, which seems strange, because it’s not like any of them have pressing business or anything. Street never even met Mark Mulder, so he mainly just listens when the others tell old stories, and then it’s time to go.
Unlike his parents, Danny Haren lets him sleep as long as he wants, and Street loses most of his days, sunlight rich on his back when he finally stirs.
Harden’s there the morning Street leaves, rides along on the way to the airport, and he puts his hand on the back of Street’s neck at one point, just kinda brief and inconsequential, drawing Street’s attention to the joke he’s making, though really Street is impossibly distracted by the calluses on Harden’s fingers.
On the curb, Harden’s eyes are too blue to be read and he says, “Don’t be a stranger, man,” and Street says, “Tell Bobby I said see you later,” and it’s almost normal, except that Haren hugs him and Harden doesn’t, but whatever.
Back in Texas, he calls his ex-girlfriend and asks her to take him back. She sounds perfectly stunned, but agrees, and then for awhile Street is in high school again, hanging out with his same friends, shouting at his brother for using his razor.
His girlfriend tells him he’s different, one night in January, and Street puts his arms around her, doesn’t ask how she means.
He misses Rich Harden terribly in the flat weeks, no more than he misses Zito or Chavez or Mark Ellis or even Crosby, who’d actually handled the whole thing pretty well, all things considered. But Harden is a loose end right now, a very familiar guilt that Street can feel pushing at the roof of his mouth when he sits in confession every week. Street sits in the driveway waiting for songs to finish before he gets out of the car and goes inside. He never leaves a movie halfway through, and he can’t shake the feeling that Harden cut him off when he was trying to say something important. Life’s unfinished and Street can’t stand that.
Soon enough, though, it’s time to go back to Phoenix.
continues thisaway