seems like a lost cause
go back
Before the game that Friday, Zito falls asleep in the back of Eric Munson’s car after lunch, missing both his afternoon classes. Chavez comes to get him after the last bell, startling Zito awake by thomping on the car window, blurred like a ghost through the dusty air and the backlit sun, the film on Zito’s eyes.
But Chavez opens the car door and says, “Sorry.”
Unable to make out the expression on Chavez’s face with the sun directly behind his head, Zito is suspicious of everything, bracing his hands on the seat.
Chavez offers him a bottle of water. They don’t say much, Zito with his legs out the open door and Chavez leaning back on the side of the car, arms crossed. Zito’s bones feel made out of cotton.
They change and head for the field, and Munson catches up, pushing reflexively between the two of them. Zito is keeping up the conversation, keeping his eye on Beane, over by the fence with one of the other coaches. Zito’s playing first today and that’s an important thing to remember.
The other team’s bus pulls into the parking lot, and kids in blue-trimmed uniforms spill out. Munson and Zito and Chavez form a loose triangle in short left to play catch, warm up. Chavez and Munson argue idly about the location of the Graig Nettles bat of which they share custody.
“Hey.”
A kid at Zito’s back. Shaggy black hair and pretty tall, distantly familiar the way almost everyone is to Zito.
He smiles. “Hello.”
The kid sorta laughs. He’s wearing the other team’s uniform, his mouth curled up on one side. “Monterey Park, remember? Danny?”
Clicks in, and Zito thinks for a moment, oh right danny small fucking world, and then right on the heels of that, shit.
“Right, right,” Zito nods enthusiastically. “Danny. I remember.” He catches a toss from Chavez, seeing Chavez say something to Munson, unintelligible from behind his glove.” “How’s it going?”
“Good.” Danny’s smiling at him. It’s all terrifically awkward. “I didn’t know you played.”
Zito really needs to get out of this habit of screwing around with guys who know absolutely zero about him. He shrugs, looks away from Chavez’s irritating smirk, the afternoon sun in his eyes.
Danny seems to sense the tension and eases back, saying, “Luck,” and then, “Later,” something shuttered in his expression, and Zito should probably take that as an invitation, he’s taken less, but he’s busy now and he’ll be busy later, and nothing that happens in a garage should come back to haunt you.
They’re called in by Beane, who is without sunglasses and doesn’t appear to be hiding at all. Sitting in the dugout, Chavez leans over to whisper in Zito’s ear, “Fraternizing?”
Zito scowls and watches Beane’s shadow so that he won’t be staring at Beane himself. He ignores Chavez until after fielding warm-ups.
Zito plays first, and Danny plays third, and they pass each other on the field a couple of times, coming on and off. Chavez hits a homerun that clears the fence and the grass and makes the parking lot four hundred and seventy feet away. The whole universe freezes for the time it takes the ball to almost disappear into the colorless strip of sky just above the horizon.
They win. All they’ve done since the season started is win. Beane operates in a state of vengeful anger, but it works in context of the game, the packed stands. They are the best high school team in the country and sometimes little gold-haired kids with Texas accents ask them for autographs.
After the game, Munson says what about going down to the beach, and Chavez is nodding, four-for-five on the night and just fucking glowing with it. Zito puts his hand on the back of Chavez’s neck and begs off.
They shower and dress and leave, and Zito takes his time, waiting until all of his teammates are gone before slipping outside. The kid, Danny, the third baseman, is waiting for him.
Zito stops short, Danny in street clothes and suddenly achingly familiar, that night in the garage, Danny wearing a blue shirt with yellow rings around the sleeves and collar, Danny’s mouth slanting across his own and how Danny went to his knees like he was born for it. Danny is a sophomore, he likes girl singers and lime jello shots, he plays third base and is more afraid of darkness than heights.
But then Zito remembers that it was only one night and the of course impossible circumstance, and his eyebrows fall for a moment, remembers that Beane’s gonna be out in a second and Danny kinda needs to be gone.
“What’s up?” Zito asks tiredly.
Danny, his shoulder against the wall, gives the impression of shrugging. “You throw left-handed. I found that interesting, because I swear to god you used your right on me that night.”
Zito is shocked where he stands, but he plays it off by rolling his eyes and stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, I don’t really remember.”
Danny’s eyes narrow a bit. “Okay. You wanna go do something?”
“Can’t.”
“No?”
“Prior engagement.” Danny’s mouth pulls down at the corners, and Zito flips up his hood, tipping his chin to Danny. “I’ll see you around.”
Shaking his head, Danny turns away, walking all the way across the parking lot. Zito doesn’t know how he’s gonna get back to Monterey Park; he’s long missed the bus. Thinking about the many things he would like to do the stupid skinny kid if he did not have other priorities, watching Danny’s shoulders cast a wide shadow when he moves under the amber parking lot floodlights, Zito is caught remembering fifteen years old, a generation ago, brash and stubborn and overjoyed at the possibility of screwing around with someone, anyone.
It’s really not Danny’s fault.
“Well,” Beane says at his elbow, making Zito jump. Beane has changed, and washed his face but not his hair. He looks at Zito with a layered expression. “You know that kid?”
Zito sighs. One-night stands are suddenly so much fucking trouble. He didn’t used to live like this.
“Met up with him at a party once,” Zito answers, which is pretty close, all things considered.
Beane kinda hums, and they walk out to his car. Zito thinks that they’ve gotten sloppy, walking out together so visibly, but he thinks of the McDonalds’ parking lot, when Beane had lifted him up out of harm’s way and drove him off campus in broad daylight, with official approval.
Settled, moving, Beane says something about the game, tough hop in the sixth inning, but Zito just exhales. Beane goes a little faster and says, “You coulda gone with him.”
Zito shoots him a glare. “Didn’t want to.”
“Just saying. That ambidextrous thing is crazy as fuck, by the way. Constantly amazes.” Beane grins evilly, and Zito hates most of the world right now. He rolls his head back on the seat.
“Whatever. I fucked around with the Monterey Park third baseman. And he’s not exactly the only one in the league, so. This might happen a couple more times.”
Beane nods, keeping his eyes on the road. “I think it’s great that you’re so taking advantage of this high school baseball superstar moment of yours.”
“Sure. Sure. You know, Munson’s cousin was in the year behind you when you were here. She told us about when you. When you were like me. Except, you know. With girls.”
Fifty miles an hour now, down shaded stop-signed residential streets, blowing past dim houses.
“Yeah, so?” Beane is casting bad stares over at Zito, half gonna-fuck-you and half gonna-beat-you-bloody. “I’m not telling you not to sleep around. Sleeping around is one of the best parts of high school. I would kinda prefer you kept opposing players out of it, but then you’d probably just turn on your teammates, and that wouldn’t end well for anyone.”
Zito flinches hard. He considers telling Beane that he has already turned on his teammates, that a teammate was the very first one he’d turned on, but it’s hard to think of ways to describe what it was like between him and Chavez.
“Anyway,” Zito says. “I’m not. Anymore. I mean, not since the games started. I think maybe I’m done with that stuff. Grown out of it.”
“Ha.” Beane glances at him, his mouth bent slightly up instead of down.
Zito folds his hands together on his knee and counts the white fenceposts and the palm trees and thinks about the next few hours, once they get to Beane’s apartment.
*
They’re only supposed to be at six stories for a quick pick-me-up before the night’s parties, but they get off-track sometime between the fourth joint and the second time the thermos gets refilled. They stay up on top of the parking garage for hours.
Chavez is lying near to him, their jackets balled up under their heads. Munson has run down to the Circle K for candy, and there are nine hundred thousand stars above them, at least.
Chavez asks him where he went last night, and Zito winds a bit of Chavez’s shirt between his fingers, not answering. Tonight he is not thinking about Billy Beane.
Several weeks pass, everything skewed out of true. Zito falls into a routine, school with Munson and Chavez, nights with Beane, baseball occurring in flickers and sparks in between. Munson takes to affection and nostalgia when he’s drunk, the three of them painfully aware that they have four months, tops, and then on to whatever comes next.
Beane is less interpretable. He starts buying orange juice and vodka, lets Zito use his shower and his washing machine, tells scouts that Zito’s the best left-handed pitcher in Southern California, and talks in his sleep sometimes about fires. No time limit on this thing, this strange and petulant need to be with Beane all the time, his mind set and fixed and unforgiving.
Zito is beginning to get the sense that getting over this is going to take exponentially longer than the actual relationship. Or whatever. Scars in high school are as permanent as anything ever gets. Second name carved into him right next to Eric Chavez’s, and it’s only been two years; it seems too much for it to happen twice in such a short interval.
But he can see Billy Beane’s apartment in the back of his mind all the time, half-hour before dawn on a school day, when the air is warming outside but it’s still dark, the two of them in bed under a single sheet. Zito hardly ever sleeps at normal times. This is something he will remember at moments of stress and doubt, white sheet and the breaks of streetlight on Beane’s shoulders, his back. Calm right down.
He’s gaining touchstones, losing ground. Life is a great and beautiful thing, if only because it happens so briefly.
*
Chavez corners Zito back around the gym, where Zito is breaking promises and drinking from a plastic soda bottle with the label torn off. Thin watery sun, the fifteen minute break between second and third periods, ten o’clock in the morning. New graffiti on the side of the building, ribbons tied to the chainlink fence.
Taking the bottle out of Zito’s hand, Chavez asks, “So what are we doing on Friday?” He takes a drink before Zito can respond, turns an alarming shade. “Jesus, how much fucking rum is in there?”
He digs around in his backpack for his own bottle of water, glaring at Zito. Zito shrugs, throws some more down. Half-drunk already while moving on two hours of sleep, Zito is not well-equipped at the moment to debate the advisability of the situation.
“Anyway. You fucking drunk.” Chavez sounds affectionate, and it kinda hurts to hear. “Friday. Plans.”
“Yes. My birthday.” Zito’s been counting the days.
“Your eighteenth birthday. Finally, you’re legal.”
“You’ve only been legal for five months. And, hello, fake ID. When was the last time you wanted to go anywhere that I couldn’t get into?”
Chavez grins. “It’s gonna be epic. Mark the occasion.”
Zito leans back against the fence, passes Chavez the bottle when Chavez holds out his hand for it. Broken glass in the parking lot spears sunlight into his eyes. It’s nice to be out here in the morning with Eric Chavez, Chavez who finally seems to like him again.
“Munce wants to go up to L.A.,” Zito says, distractedly staring at Chavez’s arms and the smooth lines of his shoulders. Chavez doesn’t even notice, busy watching Zito’s mouth. “Timmy and some of those guys who went to USC, they’re having a party.”
“College party. I like it.”
Chavez leans his head back on the fence, his hands folded behind his back. Zito thinks about Beane saying that Chavez would go high first round, wonders what it’s like to know that as Chavez knows it, as everyone knows it, to have that kind of security. Chavez can do whatever he wants next year, but Zito has a pretty good feeling that if Eric Munson goes to college, Chavez will be in the bunk above him.
“So,” Chavez says after awhile, still looking up at the sky. “Billy excited that you’re not gonna be a minor anymore?”
Crushed, astonishingly injured, Zito pushes his elbows back against the stone wall and bites the inside of his cheek. He stares at the spots of rust on the fence next to Chavez.
“Could we, like, not do this today?” Zito manages. He can’t get into it with Chavez, all the stuff that will get pulled out if they fight about it for too long. Billy Beane is undeniably the dumbest thing that’s ever happened to him, and Chavez won’t let him get away with that.
Chavez narrows his eyes. “When would you prefer?”
“Dude. I can’t explain it. I can’t tell you what I’m doing or why or, or anything.”
Chavez nods and looks away. He’s really kinda perfect, leaning against the fence like this, in the sunlight and metal.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised, really,” Chavez says mildly. “You have terrible judgment with these things.”
Zito recognizes his cue, and he steps forward, presses the soda bottle into Chavez’s stomach. “Yeah, tell me about it.”
Chavez angles his face up, his hand falling on Zito’s wrist, two of Zito’s fingers curled under the bottle and tucked against the dent of Chavez’s hip. Zito remembers Chavez in the park, suddenly, after dark and before their parents gave up on curfews, sophomore year and meeting up cold sober to fool around up against a tree. Chavez in the streetlight, several inches shorter than Zito because he hadn’t really sprouted until the middle of his sixteenth year. Zito remembers holding Chavez’s shoulders down and sucking on his collarbone through his shirt.
Chavez watches him carefully for a minute, then licks his lips and sighs. “You give me ideas, man, you know that?” He takes the bottle and Zito’s arm drops. Long drink, and Zito has to step away, get his bearings again.
“I am sorry, though,” Zito hears himself saying. He blinks in surprise.
Chavez pauses. “What for?”
Zito shakes his head, confused and not making much sense inside his head. He knows too much about Chavez, and it’s blurring his best conclusions.
“It’s not like. I didn’t mean for it to happen. It wasn’t because you-”
“Hang on.” Chavez places his hand on Zito’s chest and Zito jerks. “Don’t say something you’ll regret.”
Zito scoffs. “What’s one more thing?”
Knuckles pushing down hard, Chavez scowls at him. “Listen, you don’t need to, like. Apologize to me.”
“Old habit.”
Chavez stops, gives him a sideways look. Zito smiles, finishes off what’s left in the bottle. Nicely buzzed now, able to appreciate all of this. He hasn’t had Chavez this civil in a month.
“I didn’t think you and him had anything to do with you and me, is what I’m saying,” Chavez tells him, his face angled down. “Because it was a long time ago, you know?”
Zito sorta laughs, rubbing his face with his hand, never anything but tired. He’s always halfway admired Chavez’s ability to keep what happened sophomore year completely separate from what’s been happening ever since. Zito has a tendency to mix things up, not as attached to a linear timeline.
“Everything I do for the rest of my life is gonna have something to do with you and me, dude. First for everything, remember?”
Chavez meets his eyes, smirking a little bit. “First for everything.”
Background, Zito thinks. His whole history right here, save the past three months. He wants to go back and change stuff, relive certain parts again, fix it so that he will be less fucked up in the present.
“Late,” Chavez says, tipping his head towards the school. They get their backpacks and wash out their mouths with Chavez’s water, and start walking back around the gym. “It’s weird, you know?”
“What?”
Chavez hooks his thumbs in his straps. “We’re having, like, real problems. This isn’t just kid’s stuff anymore.”
Zito nods, thinking that that’s about right, the years are like lifetimes now. He can remember being distinctly different only a few months ago.
*
On his eighteenth birthday, Munson ties a bow around a quarter-ounce and Chavez wraps a bottle of twenty year old scotch in the comics page. It’s entirely possible that they’ll kill both over the course of the weekend, because Zito is already ripped to shreds when they put him in the backseat and drive him to Los Angeles.
The party is louder than most of the ones they go to, and their friends, seniors when they were sophomores, are starkly more grown-up. Timmy, on whom Zito had a fairly big crush before his attention reverted irreparably to Chavez, tells them, “You guys have gotten much cooler.”
Munson and Chavez end up passed out in the upstairs bathroom, Chavez in the tub and Munson on the floor. Zito and some of the guys fuck around, drawing on their faces and balancing things on their heads and taking pictures, and then put blankets over them and turn off the light.
Zito needs to get back to San Diego, and after smoking some of Zito’s birthday present, Timmy agrees to drive him, red-rimmed eyes and his face dark, days unshaven because he is a college boy, and that’s allowed.
They listen to eighties music on the drive down and talk about baseball. When Zito directs him to Beane’s apartment, Timmy says something about, thought you lived over on Edgewood, and Zito cracks a fresh beer, says, yeah, I moved.
They slap-hug in the front seat and then Zito’s standing on the sidewalk, waving goodbye. Up the stairs, his balance is totally gone and the blown-out bulbs of the lamps are making his life overly difficult.
He doesn’t have to knock long before Beane appears. Zito grins big at him. “No longer a felony.”
Beane rolls his eyes, pulls Zito inside. Zito almost trips over the carpet. “Still irritating, though.”
Zito steadies himself with a hand on the wall. “Billy. We’re not breaking the law anymore. Be happy.”
He rolls his eyes again. Zito studies him in his sweats and thready T-shirt and wonders what time it is. It feels close to dawn.
“I’m thrilled, really,” Beane says, but he’s crossed his arms over his chest and is giving Zito a familiar hooded look. Zito straightens and pushes his hair back. He thinks joyfully that he has made it through another day, he has gotten to the point again.
“I’m supposed to be in L.A. I can stay all night.”
Beane’s eyes flash. He’s got Zito back against the wall before Zito can get his mind in order, a hand under his shirt and a hand working on his pants. Zito’s head skids and he closes his arms tight around Beane’s shoulders.
*
It’s four in the morning, a few weeks later, and neither of them can sleep. Zito’s circadian rhythms are all fucked up; he’s devolved to nocturnal, skipping whole days of school to sleep until three in the afternoon in order to be up till dawn. He’s already technically graduated, credits done, and there’s something every night. Bad ideas and just like he remembers, baseball the axis of the world, the thing all else rotated around.
They can’t sleep. Beane rolls out of bed and Zito shuffles after him. There’s orange juice in the refrigerator and vodka in the icebox. Beane will let this pass, once, because it’s just going to help Zito get some rest before he shows up for practice after school.
Sitting across from each other at the table, not bothering to turn the lights on, Zito’s feet curl around the legs of Beane’s chair, and they talk a little while about the course of the year, the almost-finished season that is the whole span of their common ground. Beane shakes his head and smiles and says, “Chavez is going top ten, but not as a shortstop.”
Sometimes, it seems like Beane can see the future.
Zito slumps and turns one ankle in so that it rests alongside Beane’s foot. Beane blinks slow, drinking and looking down at the table. Zito remembers Beane telling him about the five year skid, in slip-ups and under the influence, and he’s not sure how Beane is able to tell that it’s stopped.
Everything gains a slight haze. Light grows out the windows; the nights are so short. Zito wants to know where Beane woulda gone to college, if he’d’ve gone.
Beane smirks and rubs his thumb on the jelly glass. “Stanford.”
“Shit.” Zito is not quite drawling, not yet drunk. “That’s a smart person school.”
“Good baseball team, though.” Beane arranges his fingers on the glass in a vaguely familiar grip. “You’re still looking at, what, Santa Barbara?”
Zito props his hand under his head, yawning. “I don’t know, man. I don’t think I wanna be that far away.”
There’s a long pause, and then Beane says quietly, “Yeah.”
They finish two glasses each, and Zito falls against Beane in the hallway, his face against Beane’s shoulder, arm around Beane’s waist. Beane drops him onto the bed and then kneels, puts his hands on Zito’s pajama pants. Zito shivers, and watches the reflected headlights from the street wash across the ceiling, thinking that he’ll be skinned alive before he’ll let them take this away from him.
It’s just the way he gets near summer.
*
Three days before the end of the school year, two weeks before the draft, they spend all night in the park. At times, they can smell the ocean. With their eyesight adjusted, they play catch under the moon, and when Munson passes the joint off and announces his intent to climb the tree where Zito first met them, Zito and Chavez are nothing but encouraging.
Munson does well, considering that Zito is barely still standing. He reaches the top and punches through, his head emerging out of the leaves. Half in and half out, he grins whitely down at them and waves, sketched out against the sky like a photograph in a textbook, grayish and sharp.
“Jesus,” Chavez breathes out. “Would you look at him.”
Zito shakes his head and puts his arm around Chavez’s shoulders.
They lie around on the grass, worrying about the future. Zito can see it in the way Munce fiddles with a baseball, and Chavez combing his fingers through the grass. They’re neither of them twitchy by nature.
Earlier, they’d played their last game of the season, the Southern California Regional Championship, and had been severely upset by a fucking desert team, kids out of nowhere. Zito had pitched and nothing stayed down. Everybody made contact.
Zito can’t really tell, but it’s possible that by losing this game, he’s caused more damage than he suspects.
Munson and Chavez are talking softly, thinking that Zito has fallen asleep, and Zito catches swatches of it, something about San Diego with the ninth pick of the draft, and what if. Something about the way Munson is dropping his shoulder on stuff off the plate, and Chavez saying, “No matter what happens.”
Zito waits until he’s sure they’ve passed out, and then puts his shoes and socks back on, shoulders his backpack and walks five blocks down to the Circle K. He’s short a dime and has to make a collect call, resting his forehead on the dirty side of the pay phone.
Drunk enough that the few cars seem to melt, headlights and slick metal, Zito sits on the curb, turning over important facts in his mind. Beane arrives within ten minutes, and doesn’t even mutter about the hour.
“You’ve got grass in your hair.”
Zito brushes his hand across it, and bits fall into the seat and the floor. “Yeah, they mow it on Tuesday mornings.”
“Done this a time or two before, have we?” Beane says with a quick smirk.
“Hey. I grew up in that park. Some of the most important things ever in my life happened in that park.”
He wonders if Beane has any candy in this car, Jolly Ranchers or mints or something. Clean the taste out of his mouth, prepare him for other things.
Beane reaches for something in the cupholder and Zito realizes it’s an open beer. He suppresses a smirk of his own, scooting his shoulders down and propping his knee on the glove compartment. He thinks that Beane might not be the only bad influence in the car.
“What are those guys doing for the summer?” Beane asks. Zito shrugs.
“Chavvy’s gonna work at his uncle’s restaurant, and Munson’s gonna look for a job for two months and then just give up and hang around with one of us for the rest of it.”
Last summer, same thing, and sometimes after the restaurant closed, Chavez would let Zito and Munson in and they’d eat ice cream and good fresh bread and butter, sitting in the wooden booth by the door of the kitchen, drinking wine and laughing a lot.
Zito will be taking photographs for a local surf magazine, a fact that had made Beane’s face twist in a way that Zito’d never seen, just before breaking into laughter. Zito’s done it for the past three years, so he doesn’t really see what the big deal is.
“Billy?”
“Hmm.”
“What do you think it was on that triple in the fourth, I feel like I left it up but Munce said that I tipped it.”
Beane takes a drink and doesn’t even acknowledge Zito when Zito reaches his hand out imploringly in the direction of the beer. “You threw a fastball on a one-and-two count. It was a little bit high, too, but mostly just a stupid thing to throw.”
Zito’s about to retort that he didn’t call for the damn thing, because when Zito is pitching badly, he cedes Munson control of everything, but Beane glances in the rearview and tenses suddenly.
“Shit.” He looks over at Zito, hard and calculating. “Buckle up your seatbelt. We’re getting pulled over.”
Beane drains the beer and gives Zito the can to put under the seat. He asks for gum as he slows down, and Zito still going through his pockets when the cop comes to the window.
It doesn’t take much, really. Beane smells of beer and Zito of rum. Zito is the only one who’s actually drunk, Beane’s probably had two beers in the past three hours or something, but Zito’s also the one who’s underage, and fucking no doubt looks it, as Beane will say to him rather cruelly, in the police station when they’re getting arrested.
They take Beane out of the car first, and then Zito when Zito tries to explain out the window that they’re making a big mistake. Beane’s totally not drunk and glaring back at Zito, all white from the cruiser’s headlights. It doesn’t seem particularly fair, Beane was the one who was speeding, but Zito’s willing to concede that he’s the reason lawbreaking seems so instinctive to them.
They find out Zito’s eighteen and also that Beane’s thirty-four, although they don’t really care much about that, no more than to ask a few exceptionally rude questions about what they’re doing together. Zito can’t think of a good answer, anyway.
Beane, driving under the influence, barely over the legal limit. Zito, misdemeanor intoxication. Beane’s hands are clenched so tight his knuckles have paled. In the back of the squad car, Zito whispers to him, “Is this really fucking happening, dude?”
Beane’s got his fists pressed up against his temples, his elbows on his knees. He doesn’t say anything, eyes screwed shut. Zito sits back and watches the red and blue light spill across parked cars and front windows. Everything seems supernaturally sharp, angles and colors drawn as if by razors.
Zito gets put in a little room with a table and chairs while they wake up his parents. He’s very tired, and getting into this cataclysmic kind of trouble is helpful in that it will let him sleep.
Beane comes in, his fingers smudged with black ink, tucking his wallet into his back pocket.
“I’m going home now,” he says, staying across the room from Zito.
Lifting his eyebrows, Zito asks, “They’re letting you go?”
“It’s barely a citation, deuce. Suspended license for six months. I’m allowed to call a fucking cab.”
Zito sits up, feeling uncertain. Beane eyes him with distrust, keeping his hands back. “I, um. I’m sorry. I’m not sure if it was completely my fault. But, then, I’m pretty drunk.”
He attempts a smile, but Beane’s face hardens.
“You’re drunk twenty hours a day. Nobody fucking cares about you being drunk.”
Zito shows his own blackened fingers. “Cared enough to arrest me, didn’t they?”
Beane sinks into the chair across from Zito. “Fuck. They arrested you.” He rattles his fingers on the table like he’s going through cigarette withdrawal, though Beane is strictly a Copenhagen man.
“It’s okay. I know a bunch of kids who’ve been arrested. It blows over.”
Shaking his head, Beane scowls at the scuff marks on the table. “You’re not a minor anymore. You’ve got the, the fucking draft, or college, or whatever. Stuff that’s supposed to happen. This is going to follow you around for a real long time.”
“Yeah, well.” Zito moves his shoulders. “Lots of stuff does that.”
Beane looks at him, a fingerprint of ink on the edge of his jaw, a stray piece of grass in the fold of his shirt sleeve. Zito thinks that the worst part about all of this is that now he doesn’t get to go home with Beane.
Beane stands. “I’d stick around, but this isn’t exactly the best way for me to meet your folks.” He checks for his wallet and for his watch, and then pulls a couple of wrapped peppermints out of his pocket. “Here. The staff sergeant had a dish of them on his desk.”
He tosses them onto the table and Zito closes his hand around them, says good night, says I’ll see you tomorrow, and sees Beane rub at his eyes with the back of his wrist, his shoulders down, going home.
*
The next day, at school, it’s not until lunch that the gossip travels back to them, and Munson shows up in an air of bewildered disbelief, asking, “Somebody told me that Lauren Hayes’s dad arrested you and Billy Beane last night?”
Zito freezes in the backseat, staring at Chavez’s eyes in the rearview. Munson peers back at him. “What the fuck, dude?”
Chavez’s face twitches. “How the hell can they arrest you, you’re eighteen years old now. Age of fucking consent, man.”
Zito blinks at him, aghast. “It was for drinking, Chavvy, you incredible moron. But thank you.”
“Wait, what,” Munson fairly screeches. “You did what with our motherfucking coach?”
Zito puts his hands up over his eyes. It got so loud so fast. Reflexively, he snares a jay from the cigarette pack in his backpack, lights it up, anesthetize the situation before it gets out of hand.
There’s no way to go but to tell the truth. Why was he getting picked up by Beane at three in the morning, after abandoning his friends in the park? Why did he need a ride when his house was a two-minute walk away? Why were they both drunk? Where were they going? Too much that he’s not smart enough to have an explanation for.
“I’ve been sleeping with Beane since before the games started. He was driving me back to his place last night because I called him and asked him to, and we got pulled over for speeding and then we both got arrested for being drunk, even though Billy wasn’t really.”
Munson’s expression deserves to be cast in bronze. Dictionary definition of shocked, boggled eyes, open mouth. Zito sighs and passes him the joint, the smoke spiraling up and making Munson blink, at least. Chavez isn’t meeting his eyes in the rearview any more, turned towards the window, almost completely hidden behind the seat, only his elbow visible.
“Okay, um. That’s a lot to process, I guess.” Zito rubs his hands together, wishing kinda sadly that the entire goddamn school wasn’t talking about him and Beane today. Hard to shake, something like this. Thank god it’s finals week.
Breathing out, Munson says, “Jesus fucking Christ, Billy Beane?” He turns to Chavez. “You knew about this?”
Zito slumps back, rolling his eyes, once again relegated to an afterthought in the Munce and Chavvy Show.
Chavez puts his hand on the side of the seat and his voice is low and tight, “I don’t always have to tell you everything.”
“It wasn’t his to tell,” Zito cuts in, not liking the way Chavez’s hand is clenched on the seat, fingers dug into the vinyl. “If I wanted you to know, I’da told you myself.”
“And what makes him so special, you’ll tell him and not me?”
“Me and Ricky got more in common than you and me do, Munce.”
Chavez jerks and his eyes crash into Zito’s in the rearview mirror again. Zito’s face burns with the betrayal, though of course Munson has to know by now, he can’t have missed it. They’re too fucking close, family.
Everyone’s quiet. The jay circles once, then twice. Munson is darting looks at Chavez. Chavez is staring at Zito in the rearview, as if he’d like to climb back there and do the job right.
“I can’t believe you let me think it was just a regular year,” Munson says. He’s calmed, fuzzed, relaxed in the shotgun seat.
“It’s never a regular year,” Chavez answers. “But I’m sorry it took you by surprise.”
Munson waves his hand. He turns to look back at Zito. “And you, fucking man of mystery back there. Don’t really see the appeal of the middle-aged high school gym teacher, but hey.”
Zito laughs, his chest feeling broken. He kicks at Munson’s shoulder. “Age is just a number, motherfucker.”
Munson smiles and in the rearview, Chavez tips his head as if to say, nice one. The tension recedes, and they finish the joint companionably, talking about mundane things. The inside of the car is foggy; Zito’s high enough that he can pretend it’s steam.
“Billy fucking Beane,” Munson says thoughtfully at the ceiling. Zito rolls his shoulders.
“Yeah.”
“It’s a lot of trouble to go through, though, isn’t it?”
Munson would have no idea how to hide the fact that he was getting laid. Zito has walked in on him getting blown probably six times. He’s not sure if that’s the only thing that Munson’s talking about, though.
“It’s not so bad.” Stains on the ceiling, Cheerios crunching under his feet. Zito would hide for the rest of his life, fucking loves it, cloistered away, locked doors and fugitive alleys. Beane makes it better than a movie.
“You and him. It’s for real?” When Zito doesn’t answer, Munce turns to look between the seats. “Because it’s kinda crazy to be doing this without, like, reason.”
Zito hooks his fingers under the handle of the door. He’s remembering random old things, watching Robocop on mute with Chavvy’s dad, because it didn’t count as R-rated if you couldn’t hear it, playing Connect Four in the attic when the heat was like water, biking with Munson and Chavez to the Circle K, nothing else to do on a Saturday afternoon.
“There’s reason,” Zito tells Munson. “I know what I’m doing, so it’s gonna be fine.”
“His sense of judgment is all screwed up, Munce. You can’t ask him questions and expect real answers.” Chavez passes the jay back to Zito, grinning at him. Zito sneers.
“Oh, and you’re such a fucking expert.”
Chavez lifts one shoulder. “Goddamn innocent bystander. Happened to fucking observe.”
“You haven’t been a bystander since we were fifteen,” and then Zito bites the rest of that off, whatever he was going to say, whatever it is about Chavez that gets him riled up so fast, so carelessly. He shakes his head sharply, pressing his teeth into his lip and his thumbs against his eyes. “Forget it. I’m stuck like this, fine, I don’t care. You guys are supposed to, like, tell me it’s gonna be okay. Reassure me. I’ve had such a rough night.”
Chavez peeks around the side of the seat, finally. Zito thinks that the thing he knows best in the world is how Chavez’s eyes turn down at the corners when he’s tired or stoned.
“I hate lying to you,” Chavez tells him honestly, and Zito feels like he’s been thrown out of a moving car, his ribs punching into his lungs.
*
Zito stays away for almost a whole day, absently hoping that things will die down, but not really counting on it.
The whole school knows, looking at him out the corner of their eyes, talking behind their hands. Zito is surprised to find that he doesn’t really mind, thinking how much cooler he is with his grown-up scandal and his drinking problem. There are a half dozen versions of what exactly he and Beane were doing last night, repeated back to him like a dirty game of telephone.
But tomorrow is the last day of classes, and Zito is feeling groundless and free. He’s theoretically under house arrest, though his parents had stopped enforcing most rules by the time he was thirteen, exhausted after doing it for thirty years. They’re asleep and he’s crawling out his bedroom window, into the tree and then down to the yard. The bark has been worn away from the branches by his sneakers, over the years.
Zito runs from bus stop to bus stop, under the full trees, the soft summer air, salted and warm. He gets halfway to Beane’s place before the bus rolls up behind him, breathing raggedly in the last row.
Beane lets him in without hesitation, the television muttering from the other room, and takes Zito’s cap off his head.
“How’d I know I’d see you tonight?”
Zito pushes a hand through his hair to mess it up a little, and kinda smiles. “You’re a smart guy, Billy.”
Beane snorts, and turns away from Zito to go back into the living room, taking from off the side table a crystal-cut glass of something that looks expensive. Zito snickers inwardly. Lesson learned, apparently.
“Smart guy,” Beane echoes under his breath. “And yet. Fuckin’ let this happen.” He falls onto the couch, and Zito hovers near the edge of the rug, hands itching for his pockets.
“Are you okay?”
Beane grins, wide and false. He’s very drunk, Zito realizes. “Sure. Nothing left but time to kill.”
Zito sits down next to him, toeing off his sneakers and putting his feet on the coffee table. “Weird fucking day.”
“Yeah.”
“You know, that, like, when everybody’s looking at you and not even bothering to hide it?”
Beane coughs out a hard laugh. “I was one of the top prospects in the country. I know what that’s fucking like.”
Zito is not one of the top prospects in the country, but his best friend is, so he can appreciate the analogy. He places his fingers on Beane’s hip, not really thinking about it.
“Did anybody say anything to you? I mean, the school?” Zito asks.
Beane takes a drink, swallowing slowly. “Well. They fired me.”
Zito’s hand tightens on Beane’s hip. “What?”
“Driving under the influence. In the company of an eighteen year old boy. A student. Who was also drunk. At three in the morning. On a Tuesday.” Beane’s lips twist up. “They broke a fucking record, firing me.”
“Holy shit, Billy.” Zito sits up, his finger snagging in Beane’s belt loop. “Can they do that?”
Beane gives him a terrible look, and pulls away from Zito, back against the arm of the couch. It’s a dumb question, but to his credit, Zito knows that. Tapping his fingers on the glass, Beane says without much emotion:
“It was just a random thing, anyway. Come home and coach the team. It was this brilliant idea that I had when I hadn’t slept in four days. I wasn’t gonna be here for twenty years or something. I was passing through, that’s all.”
Zito folds his hands into fists on his knees. “I didn’t even think that anybody would find out.”
“Me neither. Which is really kinda remarkable, when you think of it. Like the worst thing that was gonna happen was gonna be you getting grounded.” Beane’s eyes get thin.
“You haven’t heard from any of the colleges, right?”
“Not yet,” Zito answers. “Gotta think that Santa Barbara’s gonna pull the scholarship. Northridge had me on a wait list anyway. Most of the schools backed off after I lost the game, you know. This is just. Insult to injury.”
He shrugs, not liking the look on Beane’s face. Zito’s understanding of what will happen at the end of the summer is vague, at best, and he’d like to keep it that way for as long as possible.
“So. Two lives ruined. Pretty good for one night.” Beane is smiling at the glass in his hand, but he looks stricken anyway, torn up.
“What. What are you gonna do?” Zito catches his breath in the back of his throat. Dangerous question, Beane quiet and altered, not in the right state of mind. But they’ve been drunk for months, quite literally. It’s taken something out of them.
Beane tips his head to the side, breathes out. “Get out of this fucking town.”
“And go where?”
“Don’t really care, at this point. Away.”
Zito swallows, reaches out and takes the glass from Beane’s hand, Beane’s wrist turning easily. He finishes what’s left, cold burn down his throat and his head spins immediately. Beane is leaving and what does that mean, why does that make him shake like this?
“You could get another job. You don’t have to leave.”
There are char marks under the windowsill. Zito presses the curved edge of the glass into his kneecap, somehow fearful when the fit is perfect. Beane shakes his head, the lines of his face strict, his eyes half-closed and almost pained.
“I don’t want another job. Not here. I don’t want to see anything that I can remember. Supposed to be, home, you’re supposed to be able to come home.” He presses his teeth into his lower lip, disgusted. “It’s bullshit. Broke my fucking legs. I’m gonna get as far away as I possibly can.”
Zito is fiercely confused for a moment, not sure how Beane can be thinking of this, saying it out loud like it’s a given. Beane refills the glass and takes it back from him, his face angled down, streetlit through the window.
“That is no kind of plan,” he says a little desperately. “You can’t just up and leave. You have obligations. Responsibilities.”
Beane lifts the glass, mouth twisting sardonically, “Five hundred dollars to break my lease, and I’m gone. See how long before the money runs out.”
“Quit it.” Zito punches him in the side. “Take this seriously.”
Settling, Beane looks over at him through slitted eyes, the back of his hand against Zito’s leg.
“I did take it seriously. Pros and fucking cons. Holes in the plan. Contingencies and loose ends. I’ve been home since ten a.m. I’ve fucking mapped it.”
Beane halves what’s in the glass and passes it off, rhythm between them and Beane’s face flushing, yellow light in his eyes.
“This is what I’m doing,” he concludes. “This is absolutely my best option.”
Zito bites his tongue to keep from saying anything. He punches Beane again, on the leg this time, but it’s a lost-argument blow, painless and soft. He considers the long season ahead, the odd hours he’ll keep with his summer job and the way he’d planned to lie around in Beane’s apartment until two in the afternoon, five in the morning. A sudden surgical removal of Billy Beane, his beat-up foreign car, his adjacent liquor store, the times when Zito falls asleep on Beane’s couch.
The idea, when it occurs to him, is inspired.
“I’m coming with you.”
Beane’s eyes snap to his. Zito tenses slowly, clenching his hand on the glass. He can count Beane’s pulse through his wrist, pressed easy against Zito’s leg, still enough to feel it through the denim.
“Right.” Beane glances away, then back.
“I am. We can go wherever you want. But you’re taking me.” Zito holds it like an article of faith, widening his eyes at Beane.
“Who says you’re invited?” Beane asks, trying to play it off.
“I’ll fucking hide in your trunk, Billy, don’t test me.” Zito exhales. “What, I got so much more to stick around for than you do?”
Beane nods quickly. “You do. Yeah. You got your friends, your folks. Whole life is here.”
“My parents and I pass in the kitchen sometimes. My friends. My friends can take care of each other.”
Zito swallows, thinking for the first time about Munson and Chavez, wondering if it will be like losing fingers to leave them. Wondering who will keep them from killing each other, or even something worse. They’ve got a puzzle to finish on the table in Chavez’s attic. Zito’s got to be there on draft day, they all promised.
Beane is studying him, shadows under his eyes. They really have to get more sleep, badly in need of a vacation.
“So, what, little post-graduation road trip? Follow me around until I find a good place to stop?”
Beane is sneering, but Zito’s throat catches. “That. That sounds okay.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“You told me that already.” Zito grins, his heart pounding hard, and shifts so that his knee is atop Beane’s. “Billy, it’s the summertime. I got nothing to do. Nowhere to be. I plan to spend at least eight hours a day as drunk as I can manage. And it’s. I could do that in your car.”
Pulling minutely under Zito’s knee, but not enough to disentangle them, Beane curves his hand and presses his knuckles down on Zito’s leg. “And then? Eventually I gotta drive you all the way back down here?”
Zito shakes his head, looking down. “Let’s just. Let’s not worry about what’s gonna happen after. I think things will be clearer once we’re somewhere different.”
Quiet for a moment, listening to the cars go by down on the street and the buckled crackling sound of laughter, kids at the liquor store. Zito hopes that Beane refills the glass soon, hopes that Beane tells him okay.
“This isn’t, like.” Beane stops, pushes his thumb against the seam of Zito’s jeans. “It’s not some adventure. I’ve kinda royally fucked up my life. Again. This is a terrible thing to have to do.”
Zito moves closer, picturing highways. “Maybe so. But I’m in. You fucked up your life for me. I’m goddamn well gonna pay you back for that.”
Beane puts his hand on his face, sighing. Zito touches Beane’s belt with his fingers, close enough to see the taut places at the corners of his mouth, the strung way he’s holding himself.
“Leaving in the morning,” Beane says eventually, under his breath. “Or. Now.”
Zito’s mind gets away from him for a moment, shocked to his core that Beane has said yes. Flight like potential in his bloodstream. His hands close on Beane’s shirt and Zito is grinning, sharp and bright, and Beane’s hand is on the side of his neck.
Zito can’t cope with it, burying his face into Beane’s throat for a moment before pulling back. Beane is warm as anything, scuffed and hard.
“Give me two hours,” Zito whispers, and then he’s up, forcing his hands away from Beane, taking the stairs four at a time.
*
They’re not in Munson’s backyard, so Zito drives over to Chavez’s house, streets that he knows perhaps better than anything. The clouds overhead are breaking up, tines of moonlight on the scrub grass of the sidewalk. Zito goes around back and reaches to get the key from on top of the doorframe, remembering when he used to have to climb onto the windowsill to get it.
Soft-footed on the linoleum of the kitchen floor, and Zito is practicing in his head. I’ve got to go. I know what I’m doing. It’s just gonna be for a little while.
They lie to each other a lot; Zito doesn’t think either of them will call him out on it.
The couch in the living room is folded out, sheets wrenched across it and Munson and Chavez asleep, the video game controllers still wrapped around their wrists. Zito walks silently through the debris and sits on the red-and-orange plaid arm of the couch, long slow pain in his chest, thinking about getting back to Billy Beane.
He wakes them up, saying their names softly, kicking at them. Chavez is shirtless and mumbling, knocking his elbow into Munce’s head when he sits up.
“The fuck are you doing here?” Chavez asks, yawning. Munson is peering at him from one eye, still lying down.
Zito laces his hands together. “I’m taking off for a while.”
“You haven’t been here, what do you mean you’re taking off?” Chavez is glaring, spoiling for a fight, black-wrecked hair, knotted fist on Munson’s hip.
“No, man. With Billy. He’s leaving town and I thought I’d. Thought I’d go with him.”
Chavez turns all eyes and mouth, digging his fist into Munson. Munson sits up in increments, blinking at him stickily.
“You’re kidding?” Munson asks.
Zito looks down at the sheets, the tangle of wires. Weeks he’s spent on the fold-out bed, when they were small enough to fit three, one sleeping at the foot of the bed perpendicular to the other two. Cold cereal without milk and VHS movies taped off basic cable, commercialed and cut up.
“For real. I’m just. It’s like the only thing I can think to do.”
Chavez shakes his head, disbelieving. “Well, you could think about fucking not. Running away from home? How old are you, eight?”
Zito almost laughs, coughs it away. “It’s, whatever. School’s out. There’s no reason not to go.”
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I, um. I’m not sure. Job? Maybe try out for an independent team or something.” Zito pushes a hand through his hair, his throat slick and his hands trembling. He can’t look at them, thinking of all the times Chavez had said, let’s just get the hell out of here, and they’d never done anything about it.
“This is fucked up,” Munson says suddenly, catching Zito off-guard. “This is our last summer. You’re not allowed to leave before our last summer.”
Ducking his head, Zito flinches. “Munce, you know I wouldn’t. It’s not like you guys aren’t, because I mean, obviously, you’re my best friends and I wouldn’t leave, not if it wasn’t, like, necessary. He’s. He’s become very important to me.”
He’s blushing bad, his shoulders up. Chavez is staring at him like when they used to throw rocks at each other’s heads. Munson’s eyes flicker, admirably quick for the hour.
“What about the draft?”
Zito shrugs. “I’m not gonna get drafted. Not high enough to matter. And anything happens, I can deal with it when I come back.”
“Which is gonna be when, exactly?”
There’s a sheet crease on Chavez’s face, making him look almost branded in the dim light. Zito is a little afraid of him, the power that Chavez has always had.
“I don’t know. We’re not, like. On a fucking timetable.”
But Zito’s thinking, so many roads in this country, so much asphalt and gravel on the shoulder. Weeks and months in the shotgun seat, in the thick heart of summer, and maybe they’ll get lost or sidetracked or something. Maybe they’ll find someplace that they won’t want to leave right away.
Munson leans into Chavez, shock and exhaustion too much for him. Zito checks himself before he can say he’s sorry.
“This is crazy,” Chavez whispers, shifting so that Munson’s shoulder tocks in place against his chest. “You recognize that this is totally insane, right?”
Zito nods, his mouth dry. “I’ve got to, Ricky. You have to remember what this is like.”
Chavez looks up at him sharply, possibly remembering the same thing as Zito, the night out by the reservoir when they were fifteen, swearing over the sound of the water that they would do anything, go anywhere. “We were just kids.”
Zito smiles tiredly. “And it’s different now. I know. But I wouldn’t be okay if he left without me. That’s not something I can get over twice.”
Chavez winces hard, his hand closing on Munson’s wrist. Munson looks between the two of them like he’s always known, resigned and sad, and Zito can see that Chavez is wrong about Munson not thinking about him like that, see the way Munson turns his hand and tests Chavez’s grip.
They don’t say anything for a while, birds starting up outside, the creeping sensation of the sun just under the curve of the horizon. Zito thinks about the place Munson and Chavez have inside him, the better part of his history, what he means when he says home.
Chavez fits his fingers across Munson’s pulse, says with his eyes down, “You can go as long as you promise to come back.” Munson draws in a breath and nods, whickered color in his eyes trained on Zito’s face.
Zito wipes his eyes with the side of his wrist, nodding without hesitation. “Of course. Of course I’m coming back. Come on.”
He reaches out for Chavez, and Chavez falls against his arm, easy to lean down and kiss the corner of Chavez’s mouth. Munson’s hand touches Zito’s shoulder, and Zito presses into it, resting his forehead on Chavez’s cheek.
*
It’s the work of twenty minutes to get his stuff packed. Zito exists in a constant state of emergency, clean shirts spilling out of the hamper, books and socks and his mitt, his camera. The sun is coming up and Zito is nervous as hell, wanting to get Beane in his sights again.
He leaves a brief note for his parents, vague even by his standards, and takes three apples and two bottles of orange juice from the refrigerator. The house settles around him, and he gets his sleeping bag out of the garage, finds a Polaroid of him and Munson and Chavez, last year after they won the league, white and red with arms around each other’s shoulders, a huge shiny sun filling the upper corner. Zito puts the photo in the shoebox with his baseball cards, packs it with the rest of his gear.
He leaves without looking back.
Driving over to Beane’s, Zito cannot see for the sun, his heartbeat off-rhythm and atonal. He can feel pieces break off the farther away he gets, broken open and new as he crosses his fingers and hopes that Beane hasn’t lied and left without him.
But Beane is there in the street when Zito pulls up, sitting in the open door of his car, his hands between his knees. Zito watches him, diagonal shadow of the door across his body, the baseball visible in his hand even through the dusty windshield.
Zito gets out, wind strong and tearing through his hair. It’s dawn and Beane stands as Zito approaches. Zito tries to think straight, tries to think that this is where his life starts, this is the thing that happens before everything else, but maybe that’s not right.
Maybe nothing will happen after this. Maybe this will go on forever.
*
It’s most of the summer, before Beane comes to terms with what’s happened to him.
He remembers it clearly, waking up one morning in a motel room somewhere in Idaho. Hot outside already, heavy air, crummy queen-sized bed, because they got over discreet in that roadhouse parking lot, before they were out of Nevada, when they figured out that between pissed-off eighteen year old boy and all the force in Beane’s body, they could take fucking anybody who had a problem with it.
Waking up and getting coffee, mid-morning, and they’re living on savings, the distant remains of Beane’s major league salaries. Zito is up when Beane gets back, his shirt back on, hair pushed down in some semblance of normality, watching Cartoon Network. Their one requirement in a place to sleep is cable television. They haven’t left the room in two days, ordering delivery, baseball games on TBS and WGN, playing cards and reading unorthodox books from the Midwest, talking about Bill James and what it could mean.
Beane hands Zito the coffee and muffin he got for him at the café down the street. Little nothing town in the middle of nowhere. Zito smiling at him and pulling his legs over so Beane can sit down.
Zito is there all the time, ten-minute calls to his parents twice a week, just, I’m okay, I don’t know when I’ll be back. Zito with his knees on the glove compartment and the window down, wearing sunglasses and telling Beane that what they need is a convertible. Zito deep into the night, the television on, Zito warm right up against him.
Zito keeps watch for cop cars, because Beane is driving without a license. Bizarre to travel at the speed limit, though the scenery hasn’t changed much since they got away from the coast. Zito switches places with him at truck stops, colorless sky and million-watt floodlights spreading out like a flattened sun. Zito finally develops a taste for black coffee and cracks his back with his hands on the roof of the car.
They get Zito’s diploma by mail, to a P.O. Box that they rented when they stopped for three weeks near the ocean outside Santa Cruz, and Zito makes a paper airplane out of it, but afterwards rubs it smooth and flat, folds it up and puts it into one of the spiral notebooks he’s still got.
On the day of the draft, Beane thinks there’s no chance Zito will stay until the sun goes down, and Chavez goes at ten and Munson goes at sixty-two. They hunch around the rented laptop, the illegal dial-up connection, counting the names as they roll by, and Zito sits back when Chavez is called, astonishment across his face like even this was more than he expected.
And Munson on the other end of the line, sighing, “I’m going surfing,” when Zito calls him in a panic. Munson, who is nowhere near a phone or a television or a radio when he gets drafted, is honestly the last to know.
Zito is taken in the fifty-ninth round, long after they’ve stopped paying attention.
It’s okay, because Beane hears them later, Zito in the single motel room chair, his feet on the windowsill, turned to look out at the parking lot. A three-way call, all this clever technology, and Zito’s voice breaking when he talks to Chavez, low and hoarse when he talks to Munson.
It looks really fucking difficult, restructuring a life the way Zito is. They’re all day in the car and Zito is drunk in the afternoon, but not so much in the morning anymore.
Beane is waiting, without pause, for the day when Zito decides that he’s had enough, back to pretty San Diego and no more of this army life. Not all the colleges stopped wanting Zito after the Night They Got Arrested, but the deadlines are a few days from passing, Zito’s last chance to salvage something that came before.
Beane can’t imagine that Zito will stick around. They are nowhere, talking only to each other for days on end. Zito is disastrously young, shaking and gleaming, so fucking happy to be out here and still in motion, but something like this never lasts.
The awareness of the fragility of Zito’s presence makes everything narrowed and golden. Beane spends all day talking about second chances, and by the end of it, he’s not talking about the team anymore. He puts his hands on Zito to be sure of his place in the world, Zito a keystone to the unanchored drift of the past two months, or not a keystone really, not an infielder, and occasionally they toss a baseball around in the room. They’re working their way up to playing catch in the daylight again, a week or two before they’ll be dreaming of grass.
The summer’s ending and that’s an important thing; if this crosses over into the school year, it will be something different. Everything can still be explained, temporary insanity, best defense because Zito is young and impressionable, and Beane is having an early midlife crisis.
But it’s like they’re not even really running away anymore. Beane doesn’t care where they go, and Zito drives them in ever-widening circles, carves their names into a rock wall with his penknife. It doesn’t feel temporary at all, motel pools and New Mexico in a windstorm, sitting on top of a Little League bandstand watching a game, Beane telling Zito about something that happened fifteen years ago. It’s like he can rewrite his whole life this way, watching Zito snicker and pull his hand across his mouth.
They’re heading in a semi-easterly direction. They travel at night when the sun seems to melt their windshield, and Zito is wired on caffeine pills and aspirin, his hand twisted in Beane’s shirt, fabric drawn tight against Beane’s side.
Beane tells him there’s a fifth in the glovebox, and Zito grins like Christmas, curls up around the bottle. By the time they stop for the night, Zito is badly turned around, half-drunk and his blood streaming hard. He topples Beane onto the bed and matchbooks from diners rain from his pockets.
An hour or two or three, no way to gauge time out here, Beane lifts his head from Zito’s back and tells him, “Tomorrow-”
Zito rolls, hot slick shoulder against Beane’s chest. He buries his face in the bed. “Yeah. I think we go much farther north we’re gonna hit snow.” He pauses. “But maybe snow would be okay.”
Red light on the sheets now, having landed somewhere with neon at last, and Beane lays his fingers down carefully on the edge of Zito’s ribs. He thinks about Wrigley Field, thinks that they can’t possibly have made Chicago this quick. They’re so far out, no one chasing them, the leaves changing color, and Beane can believe for a moment that the theft of baseball has been made bearable by the life he’s recovered here. It’s an easy sacrifice, too-simple redemption.
Beane falls asleep, his hand on Zito’s side. They stay like that for a very long time.
THE END