fic: Never Tell Anybody Anything (2/5)
go back
Spring break of his junior year, a bunch of Rick's teammates decided they were all going camping instead of the usual trip to Myrtle Beach or wherever. "Fuck sunshine and sand," said one of the graduating seniors, a real jackass from Staten Island named Mark. "Let's go get wasted in the woods."
The only part of the idea Rick was interested in was the woods. He liked the woods, liked camping and fishing and communing with nature. But once again, Jake vetoed taking the tackle box: "What if somebody gets shitfaced and thinks the lures are candy, and we're fifty miles from a hospital so he drowns in his own blood? Huh? Did you think of that?"
Rick had always been suspicious of the so-called baseball way of life, not liking being drunk nearly enough to tolerate trying to play hungover the next day. Some of his teammates seemed to think they were Babe Ruth or something, carousing like they weren't a bunch of dumb high school kids. They mostly thought Rick was weird for being quiet and more interested in sleep and food than girls and beer. They looked at him like they wanted to ask if his growth was stunted or something, You all there, Ricky?
Rick couldn't find his right hiking boot. He was on his hands and knees pawing through all the random shit that had collected at the bottom of his closet, and he kept finding half-empty bottles of Glovolium and dented aluminum bats and clothes that didn't belong to him, but no other boot.
"The team thinks you're an uppity prick," Jake said, sitting down on the bed next to Rick's pack. "You should, like, work on that."
"I am an uppity prick," Rick agreed, glancing over his shoulder. He was the reason there were pro scouts coming to Seton Hall games and everyone knew it, damn it. He wasn't going to apologize for having talent. "And don't fuck with my shit. I have it arranged just so."
Jake snorted. "Your whole life is arranged 'just so.' Anal-retentive much, you queer?"
Rick sat back on his heels and winged a softball over his shoulder, which hit Jake hard enough to make him squawk. "Your face is queer," he said. "Hey, have you seen my hiking boots?"
Jake pegged him in the back of the head with the ball, just hard enough to make him see stars for a second. "Nope. You know what's lame? I mean, besides you. But no, I can't say 'your mom is queer' to you. 'Cause, I mean, she's my mom, too."
"That the only reason?" Rick rolled his eyes, grabbing the ball and tossing it back into the pile on the floor. It landed in one of his dress shoes, flattening the tongue down and scuffing the buffed leather. That would have to be fixed. Dad had some pretty specific ideas about looking presentable at church, when they actually went.
"Dude, Mom could kick both our asses with one hand tied behind her back. Remember how she made that guy who looked like an extra on The Sopranos cry at that Little League game in East Rutherford that time? Beautiful," Jake paused, and Rick could hear him moving things around on the bed like the little bitch he was. "Anyway. I'm all packed and shit. Hurry the fuck up, would you?"
"Remind me again why we're letting you come."
"Because I am awesome and everyone loves me," Jake answered immediately. "And also because my name is Porcello and our school is, like, gay for Porcellos." He smiled winningly.
Eventually, Mom found Rick's boot in the laundry room and sent them on their way-"Have fun! Please don't get arrested! Look out for bears!"-to meet the rest of the team at the starting shortstop's house. Rick drove one car, two middle infielders, a catcher, and Jake crammed in, and Jake spent most of the ride to the campground pouting because he was on the backseat bitch bump and no one would turn the radio up to what he considered an acceptable volume.
They got there sometime in the dead part of the afternoon, set up over two contiguous campsites under a canopy of very old trees, and immediately started drinking. A couple of the outfielders filled the entire trunk of their car with beer, courtesy of good older brothers and bad parents. Two campsites down was a bunch of college kids with Rutgers window clings on their much crappier cars, every bit as drunk as the high school boys but ever so slightly more legal.
"Be good," Rick said to Jake before they got split up by the crowd.
"Always am, bro," Jake replied. "So tequila? Or tequila?"
Mark from Staten Island had all the charm of a badger, but he somehow managed to stumble down to the college kids and get them to agree to pooling the alcohol and joining forces to produce the biggest, most awesome possible party. Rick took charge of the fire, in no way trusting any of the rest of them not to kill somebody with the lighter fluid, and struck up a conversation with one of the college girls about going hiking the next day. Her name was Natalie and she was hot in a pretty typical Jersey girl way, bottle blonde and too tan, but at least she kept up with her roots and wasn't wearing dark lipliner.
Sometime after dark, everybody sat around Rick's epic fire to roast marshmallows. At some point somebody brought out a bag of weed, and Rick had never done that before, which scandalized the team. Mark from Staten Island was particularly offended, and took it upon himself to basically hold the bong to his mouth and ensure that he got the full effect.
(They were also confused by his lack of a dependence on one of the following: Adderall bought in the cafeteria for twenty bucks a pop, the little bright-colored pills Coach had in his office that took away the need to sleep for two or three days, or energy drinks. Even Jake drank Monster constantly, they pointed out, and most of them came from good homes and had the requisite drug dependencies to show for it).
The night took on a pleasant spinning sensation for Rick, though that was probably more due to the three or so cups of whatever that fruity shit in the cooler was than the weed. He lost Natalie at some point and just wandered around with a foggy smile on his face, making conversation with various people, teammates and Rutgers kids alike, about stupid things like TV shows he only got to watch in the winter, that hoagie shop in East Rutherford that had cheesesteak to rival anything in Philly, and Mom's creepy Hummel figurines. Mark from Staten Island didn't seem like such an asshole stoned.
He spent a long time talking to a college kid named Josh about the time he and the girl he'd been seeing drove into the city to see some awful indie band at some crappy little venue, which Josh thought was awesome. Josh had a pretty face, veiny forearms, and blue eyes that were incredibly distracting, and he played the guitar.
"I brought it with me," he said, leaning against the tree behind him and stretching his arms over his head.
It took a second for Rick's brain to click on, stuck on the way Josh's t-shirt rode up to show a pale slash of skin, golden in the firelight. Then he shook himself and nodded. "You should go get it and play campfire songs," he said. "But not Kumbaya. I hate that fucking song."
"You, my boy, are a genius," Josh agreed. Rick smiled affably, thinking that he'd have spent most of his life baked if he'd known it would take away any sucky parts of other people. He turned to go back to the fire to check that the team wasn't pouring vodka down Jake's throat or anything, but Josh grabbed his wrist. "Hey, you coming?" He jerked his head toward the college kids' group of tents.
Rick could guess where this was going. He glanced around, but nobody was paying them any attention, and then he smiled. "Hey, yeah. Okay."
Josh's face split into a big grin. "Awesome."
"I gotta tell somebody that I'm leaving for a minute, though," Rick said. "My little brother's here-gotta make sure somebody's watching him. He's kind of a handful."
He told Petruccelli, the catcher who rode down in his car, that he was going over to the college tents to get something with one of the college kids. Petruccelli, a big hairy kid who had a long and successful future ahead of him as a bouncer, gave him a suspicious look. "You doin' something stupid?" he asked.
"Just helping a guy get his guitar, Pets, that's all," Rick said, trying very hard to keep from glancing at Josh every couple of seconds.
"Well, shit," Petruccelli said, waving his hand. "If that's all. Yeah. I'll make sure Jake don't kill himself with a sparkler or something."
They took the long way to the Rutgers tents, walked the long loop and passed by plenty of other campsites full of drunk kids dancing around fires. Josh talked about college and Rick talked about baseball, and they both kept smiling and bumping the other's shoulder.
"So, here's the thing," Josh said, stopping and turning to face Rick when they got to his tent, which was at the back of the cluster, a low-slung Coleman model with a blue rain shield. It faced the cold fire pit in the middle, back to the Seton Hall campsites.
Rick nodded, put a hand on his cheek and kissed him immediately. "Yeah," he pulled back to say, grinning, then leaned back in. Josh snorted out a laugh, then hooked one arm around his neck and fisted his other hand in his belt.
It progressed nicely from there. Josh backed him into the tent and laid him out on an air mattress, stripped off his own shirt then crawled on top of him.
"I mean, I really do have a guitar in here," Josh said, but by then he had his hand in Rick's shorts and Rick really, really didn't care if he was brought there as part of a great ruse or whatever. Josh's fingers were guitar string-rough and his hand was hot, and that was pretty much enough for Rick.
"This is better," Rick said. Josh nodded, face in the crook of Rick's shoulder and body between Rick's legs, and then he made some awesome, clever movement with his wrist and Rick actually whimpered.
Some time passed. Rick rolled them over, spreading Josh out on his back with his pants down around his knees. "This okay?" Rick asked, but he didn't wait for an answer before fitting his shoulders between Josh's thighs and opening his mouth. Josh had one hand on the back of his head and the other clutched in the sleeping bag bunched up under them, murmuring nonsense and arching his back. Rick had only done this twice before, and he had to concentrate on keeping his lips over his teeth, breathing through his nose, hollowing his cheeks. Josh didn't seem to care if he got a bit sloppy, though. Rick figured a blowjob's still a blowjob.
"Ricky?" somebody called from outside the tent, maybe just on the other side of the fabric, and Rick choked and pulled back. Josh made a protesting sound, but then a twig snapped outside the open flap door. "Rick, Pets said you were getting a guitar. Are you still over… oh. Oh!"
Rick closed his eyes and counted to five, then turned his head. "Jake."
Jake blinked, looking rather bewildered (but not as much as he should have). "Uh, hi, there, um, naked dude," he said after a second. He nodded. "Ricky."
Glancing up at Josh, who was shoving him away and trying to cover himself, Rick sat up and sighed. He dragged the back of his hand over his mouth. "Uh, what?" he asked, wincing at how rough his voice sounded.
"Um," Jake said, then he shook his head and smiled awkwardly. "So basically you're, like, an omnivore. Eats vegetable matter and meat."
Rick figured that the high was fading, taking his sense of humor with it. "You're a funny kid," he growled. He punched the air mattress and stood up, although he had to scramble to pull his pants up as he went and he had to stoop over because the tent ceiling was about two feet shorter than he was. He glanced down at Josh, who looked completely mortified.
"Look, Jake-"
"I'm going to puke," said Jake, nodding and looking regretful. "I was trying to find you, 'cause you really need to know before I pass out and die, and now I found you. And I'm still gonna puke, but now I kind of want to talk about how you definitely just-anyway, that's more important than how much I'm about to spew. Which is a lot. So, let's talk, big brother."
"Jesus," Rick muttered. He grabbed his shirt and stumbled out of the tent, tugging his pants closed as he went. Jake swayed into him, groaning and wrapping an arm around his neck before he could get the shirt over his head.
Josh sat up and flopped a hand around in the air. "Um, sorry about-"
Rick shook his head. "I'm going to just. Tend to this." He waved his free hand at his brother, who was snuffling against his shoulder. Jake's forehead felt about four hundred degrees. "I'll be back, okay?"
He led Jake back to their tent and made him sit in the dirt outside. He eventually got his shirt back on, looking around to make sure everyone was still over by the fire.
"Are you going to throw up or pass out?" he asked, arms crossed over his chest.
"Sorry I cockblocked you," Jake said, ignoring him.
"Don't worry about it," said Rick, sitting next to him and fiddling with a piece of long grass sticking up in front of the door. "You totally cockblocked him, though."
Jake leaned against him. He could feel Jake's cheek pull into a smile even through his t-shirt. "'m not gonna be weird about it, Ricky," said Jake after a few minutes, sounding sleepy and soft. "Don't care what you're into. 'Cept maybe farm animals. Draw the line there."
"'m glad you have standards," said Rick.
"Yeah." Jake was definitely about to pass out. "So don't worry so much, okay?"
Rick gave him a weak smile. "What? Me worry? Come on."
"Bullshit. You worry about everything. No, you know what you do? You brood. With the dramatic wrinkled brow and the deep thoughts. Do you write poetry about how your life is hell? I bet you do." He paused, rubbing a hand through his hair and snuffling. "Dude, how did I not see this coming? You are really, really gay sometimes."
"So I think I need you to pass out right now, actually," Rick replied. Jake elbowed him hard in the ribs. "Lookin' forward to the part where you don't remember this tomorrow."
"I'm gonna remember it, Ricky," said Jake, soft and fading. "Never gonna let you forget it."
Rick nodded, something swooping and cold in his stomach. "Yeah, I know."
--
Porcello sleeps a few hours, and all that does is make him more tired and then late to the ballpark. He gets the stink-eye from Leyland and Knapp, but he attaches himself to a trainer claiming a headache and exhaustion, and they let it slide. The trainers aren't stupid, they can recognize somebody zonked out of his gourd on heavy meds, but they let him lie down on a couch in a cluttered back room and pretty soon everybody forgets he exists at all.
The nap doesn't take, though. He has a weird dream where he's in college at some barbeque, desperately worried about a test coming up, teammates he doesn't recognize running around him, and he can almost smell the acrid charcoal stink on the air. In fact, that's what wakes him up. He lies there trying to remember what day it is and maybe his own name, listening to a M.I.A. song blasting out in the clubhouse, which is the same song from last night. He waits until the song changes to some loud salsa then he peels himself up and goes and gets dressed.
"Did somebody go vampire on the back of your neck?" somebody asks, passing behind him while he's between shirts. Porcello looks over his shoulder to find Dusty Ryan standing there, head cocked to the side and a slightly confused look on his face. Not that he doesn't usually look a little perplexed, but he's smiling, too.
"Coulda been," Porcello says, noncommittal and as cool as he can. He pulls on a shirt and that's the end of that. Dusty's starting, doesn't have to time to wonder about marks on other guys' backs.
He walks out to the warning track in left, all the way to the very edge of the grass, and he lies down with his feet just brushing the edge of the track, arms spread out, home whites bright as bones on pitcher-friendly endless green. The sky is blue for once, not all Michigan-gray like earlier that morning, but it's not half as blue as other things he can think of. There are clouds moving in, anyway, and he closes his eyes.
Who knows how long he's out there by himself before somebody notices, but eventually Galarraga jogs out to him and pokes him in the shoulder with his spikes. Porcello cracks open one eye and glares at him. "No. Whatever it is, my answer's no."
Galarraga rolls his eyes, glove clutched to his chest. "I got a rubber match to pitch today, if you don't mind."
"Nope. Just tell Raburn to hop over me, anything comes this way," Porcello replies.
"I tell him to spike you," Galarraga says, but he plunks down on the grass next to him. They sit there in companionable silence for a while, watching the infielders run sprints in short left, and then Galarraga clucks his tongue. "You're losing your grip on your crazy," he says.
Porcello sits up and gives him a funny look. "I'm losing my what on my what?"
"Everybody got a crazy, just some guys keep it inside better," Galarraga explains, with an almost professorial air. He points at the bench, where Granderson is draining a green Gatorade cup. "Take Grandy. Sure, he look good in that suit, and maybe he have a job with ESPN forever and ever after he retire, but he got plenty of crazy. That is how he let it out."
"That makes sense, I guess," Porcello says, watching as Granderson crumples the cup and disappears into the clubhouse, because Granderson is the type of guy who will seek out a trashcan for his junk instead of just tossing it on the floor.
Galarraga nods, fiddling with the laces on his glove. "It's same as Zoom and JV getting drunk and playing catch up on hotel roofs, or Miggy and the baselines. I bake things, you know."
"Really."
"Chocolate is cure for everything," Galarraga says, grinning serenely. Everett trips in a pivot, nearly ends up flat on his face in the grass, and everybody stops to rib him. "Bad start? Have chocolate. In fact, you go have chocolate now. Inge has some M&Ms in his locker, I saw them." Porcello rolls his eyes and flops back own, taking off his cap and resting it over his face. Apparently sensing that he's losing his audience, Galarraga clears his throat. "I am not saying this right, I think."
"No, I get what you're saying. We're all crazy. Most of us just, um, sublimate it. That's what makes us good at baseball."
"I look at you lying out here and I think to myself, 'This is his crazy coming out. His crazy is quiet and still as he is. He don't hide as good as some.'" Galarraga takes the cap off his face and peers down at him, thin-eyed and a little concerned. "You are not so much with the okay, are you, Rick?"
Porcello tries to think of a way to explain it, and he realizes uncomfortably that he's probably more okay than he thinks. He squints at the sky and rubs at his collarbone. Finally, he settles on, "Sometimes, I just. Sometimes, I make bad decisions. And right now I am hungover as hell. Also, fuck Justin and Zoom and tequila and hot red-haired girls and Cubs pitchers."
Galarraga laughs. He doesn't look entirely convinced, but he laughs. "Fair enough," he says. He stands up, drops Porcello's hat on his chest and takes off his own. He swipes his inner arm over his forehead, because it's not even noon and it's already got to be ninety out, way too hot to do anything but laze around. Porcello can't imagine being a position player, days like this.
"You are in your zen place, then," Galarraga continues, tugging his cap back down, far enough so that Porcello can't see his eyebrows anymore. He wonders sometimes if Galarraga waxes them. "Zen places are important. Is this a good place? Maybe next time I have a bad start I will come out here and lay down in grass, too." He cracks a grin. "Maybe tomorrow I do it in Houston."
"You just gotta be better than the other guy is all," Porcello says. He levers himself up on his elbows and squints at Galarraga. "I had this coach at school who used to say that when we were being self-lacerating or depressed or whatever. 'He gives up ten runs, kid, then you make sure you only give up nine,'" he said, dropping his voice an octave or so and tucking his chin against his chest, thinking of high school and not being so much fucking younger than everybody else. "And then you hope to God Rodney doesn't decide to make shit interesting in the ninth."
They share a grin. "Okay, loco, I will leave you to your zen place," Galarraga says. He wipes at his forehead again and sighs. "Need to warm up. There's a baseball game today, you know."
"Always is," Porcello replies, watching him walk away, shrinking white blotch. He lets himself fall back and stares up at the sky again.
He spends about half the game down in the clubhouse, trying to sleep off some more of the drug haze, but it doesn't work. He has a dream about winning some award, a miserable press conference of some kind, and nobody would let him change into presentable clothes. He just knows that somewhere in New Jersey his mother is watching and upset that he looks like an unmade bed, his hair flat and greasy, all unshaven and glassy-eyed. There might be a visible bruise on his cheek, a hickey on his throat. The reporters are relentless, asking him these terrible, incisive things about how he feels that he can't even begin to answer, and all he wants to say is, 'I won it, okay, and now I'm going to Disneyworld. Okay? Okay.'
He wakes up when he rolls off the couch and lands on his pitching shoulder and somebody's shower shoes.
Laird and a couple other guys who aren't playing today have a card game going at the table a little ways away, quiet and respectful til they realize he's up, watching the game on a monitor. "You a'right?" Laird asks, catcher's concern.
"Fine, yeah," Porcello says. He shakes himself off and gets up, heads down the tunnel to the dugout. Verlander grabs him and drags him to the fence, which is where he watches the rest of the game, thinking about how the Cubs lineup is full of some seriously ridiculous names and sort of idly watching the first base dugout. Verlander tries to engage him in conversation about last night-"Don't think I didn't see that hickey when you were getting dressed. I know you got a story, so share with the class. Was she hot? Of course she was hot. It was that redhead, wasn't it?"-but Porcello is absolutely not going to respond to any of that, and eventually Verlander gives up and pouts on the bench next to Knapp for a while.
Galarraga pitches pretty well, and then Rodney does make it interesting in the ninth. The only time Porcello catches a glimpse of Harden over in the other dugout is when Hoffpauir (ridiculous name number six) comes back in from a long ball to lead off the inning, and only then because Zambrano moves his fat ass from where's he's been hanging on the fence all game. Harden's wearing a pullover and a scowl, which, incidentally, matches Porcello's own getup.
They complete the sweep of the Cubs, and then they go to Houston and mostly suck except for the Astros' closer blowing a save. Porcello's pretty sorry he won't get a start there, wishing for another chance to bat. He sits in his hotel room and calls Perry, tells his voicemail that he can feel a homerun humming in his shoulders, he would put money on it, no worthless sacrifice bunts for him. After that, he calls his neighbor to remind her to stop by and check on Wilbur.
Houston is hot as balls even at night, and damp, with humidity like a wet towel pressed up against his mouth and nose. He's glad when they leave for Oakland, even if it's an early-hours plane ride that nobody seems to want to sleep through. Porcello listens to his iPod and tries to avoid everyone without seeming like he's doing it, sulking in an aisle seat because he's sitting with Dusty and Dusty always sleeps with his face mashed against the window. Verlander and Zumaya are having what sounds like an epic PSP battle in the back row and wouldn't notice the outbreak of nuclear war, but Galarraga, sitting across the aisle and three rows up with Josh Anderson, keeps looking back and frowning concernedly. Porcello closes his eyes and pretends to be asleep.
The next day is Monday, and it's a beautiful day in California. He feels like he actually slept well for once, even though he wakes up at five o'clock, on the floor wrapped up like a taquito in the top sheet. Dusty's alarm goes off four times before either of them move, and even then it's just Dusty getting up to go work out in the hotel gym.
"You're starting today, right? Or am I mixed up?" he says on his way out.
"Yeah, I'm starting," Porcello says. "I should get up. I should stop wallowing."
Dusty raises one eyebrow at him, then shrugs and leaves, tangled up in headphone wires and murmuring to himself.
Later at the Coliseum, Porcello and Laird head out into right-center to toss the ball back and forth while the position players run sprints, not quite warming up but just a little loosening. Laird, cap backwards and his chest protector on but no other gear, is talking about some seafood restaurant his little brother likes in Tampa and how they need to hook up with his brother when they're in town; Porcello isn't really paying attention.
One of the A's players breaks off from the rest off them over by third and jogs over. Porcello ignores him for a while, figures he'll just turn and jog back, maybe this is a sprint or something. But then the guy doesn't go away, and Porcello gives him an annoyed look. It's Bobby Crosby, scruffy and frowning, arms crossed over his chest. He looks content to stand there and watch with this contemplative look on his face, so Porcello tries to ignore him. Laird takes a few steps back and calls for the ball, so this goes on for a few more tosses before Porcello can't take it anymore.
"Jesus, what?" he snaps, rolling his shoulders and frowning at Crosby.
"Okay, I can see it. Kind of," Crosby says, cocking his head. It's pretty irritating, and that must show on Porcello's face, because then Crosby barks out a laugh and says, "Okay, now that's just a pretty damn uncanny Street impression. This shit gets better and better, don't it?"
Porcello gives him a sideways look, and Crosby's expression makes him suddenly uneasy. "What? Street? You trying to say something?" he asks.
Laird throws the ball back, but it's pretty far offline, and Porcello has to shade toward Crosby to snag it. Crosby shrugs. "Oh, I got plenty to say," he says. "Probably best I keep it to myself, though." He grins, teeth bright in the Oakland sunlight.
"Great," Porcello mutters, lobbing the ball back.
"What is this shit?" Laird yells, standing up and taking off his cap, mopping his forehead on his shoulder. He seems to notice Crosby for the first time. "Hey, beat it, Bobby!"
Crosby looks fairly delighted. "Yeah? Eat me, Gerry," he calls back. He glances at Porcello and lowers his voice a few notches. "You 'n me got something we need to discuss," he adds.
"I honestly cannot think of anything I need to say to you," says Porcello. Crosby opens his mouth to say something then apparently thinks the better of it and settles for giving him a pitying look.
Laird comes closer, looking annoyed and sweaty even though it's actually kind of chilly. "How's things, Cros?" he asks. He flips the ball back to Porcello.
"Terrible, terrible," says Crosby, shaking his hand and one-armed hugging him, old friend-like. Porcello thinks for a second, remembers some story Laird always tells from high school that involves Crosby, a bunch of chickens, and never makes any fucking sense. Other people's drunk stories never do. "New baby at home, can't buy a hit here. Usual shit."
"Could always be worse," says Laird, which is pretty much his general philosophy on life. "Could be playing for, what, K.C.?"
"Might soon," Crosby points out, mouth small and grim. Porcello admires the honesty, but he'd really like him to go away. He traces his thumb over the stitches of the ball and wonders if they'll notice if he heads back for the clubhouse, how Crosby will try to get him to stay.
Laird grins. "So hey, you even batting your weight this year?"
"Are you?" Crosby asks, and they both laugh like it's the funniest fucking thing they've ever heard. "I guess you get a break, though. You weigh more'n me."
Laird slaps him on the shoulder again and nods. "Funny guy, here. Hey, Rick, I'm gonna go get a drink, okay? I'm sweating my balls off out here. What the fuck? It's not even warm." He headed for the dugout, still kind of laughing and muttering about motherfuckers and utilitymen.
When he's gone, Crosby cuts the shit immediately and gives Porcello that same concerned, almost brotherly look. "So how you holding up?" he wants to know.
Porcello raises an eyebrow. "Um. It's a grind."
"Yeah, sucks for everybody, rookie year," says Crosby, sounding kind of distracted. Porcello rolls his eyes again, thinking, oh fuck you, rookie of the year. But then again, it's not like Crosby's had the most stellar career since, string of stupid injuries and then this year losing his job to Orlando Cabrera, playing out the string in a city that mostly can't wait to see him go. Porcello hopes that if he should be so lucky as to win the award, he doesn't follow a similar trajectory.
Crosby looks around at the empty stands and shakes his head. "But no," he says after a second, blinking and snapping back from wherever he just went, "no, not what I was talking about. I meant everybody here's favorite Cub."
It doesn't click right away, what Crosby means, and Porcello shoots him a 'the fuck?' look. But then he realizes where he is, the colors on Crosby's uniform, and he feels like he's just been kicked in the teeth. "'Scuse me?" he squeaks. He starts thinking about cement shoes, blunt force trauma, that scene in Pulp Fiction where the squirrelly guy is tied to the chair and Samuel L. Jackson is a badass. He's about to say fuck you to this start and get on the first plane to wherever the Cubs are right now, because Rich Harden is a dead man. Dead.
Crosby spits to the side and puts a hand up. "Hey, calm down. I'm not going to go telling nobody else, and he had to tell somebody."
"Oh, the fuck he did," Porcello snaps. He casts a look around to make sure nobody is close enough to hear anything, feeling pretty persecuted, but no one is anywhere close, and definitely no one is paying them any attention.
"Look," says Crosby, looking regretful and agitated, "you don't know the history here. It doesn't have anything to do with you, or anything you did. Rich is, well. I promise you he is way more fucked up than you are. Fact. Um, don't be him when you grow up, word of advice."
Porcello's fingers tighten compulsively on the ball in his hand, and it takes an awful lot of effort not to haul back and peg Crosby in the face or something equally ridiculous. He takes a deep breath and drops the ball instead. He looks around again, hoping some kind of relief is coming. But Nomar's just picked up a bat, taking a few practice hacks, and nobody's looking anywhere else.
"I don't know what he told you but it wasn't. It wasn't like that," he says, narrowing his eyes. "Okay?"
"Wasn't like what?" says Crosby, blinking. Then he looks faintly horrified. "Oh. Oh, you don't even know, do you?"
"What? No." He gives Crosby a pleading look. "Can you just, I don't know, go away? Please?"
Crosby looks incredibly sad for a second, thinning his mouth out to nothing. Finally he shakes his head and his expression shifts to something like he wants to punch somebody. "Jesus Christ, Rich," he mutters. "Jesus Christ." He turns back to Porcello and nods. "Another word of advice, though? Get yourself sympathetic straight ear, somebody you can trust, and tell them everything, or you're gonna lose it."
"That work out so great for him?" he says snidely.
"You see me standing here, don't you?" Crosby snaps.
Somebody over by the plate yells Crosby's name and they both look over. Crosby makes a face, scratches at his scraggy beard. "Hey, so, I come in to pinch hit, you hit me if it makes you feel better," he says. He pats the meat of his upper arm. "Maybe here? Like, not by bone, if you can? But listen. I'm sorry that you got dragged into his big crazy moment, but maybe you can use it as a learning experience?" He glares somewhere toward the right field foul pole and picks up the ball Porcello dropped.
"Big crazy moment?" Porcello asks, but Crosby's already turning and walking away.
"Good luck today, Rick Porcello," Crosby says over his shoulder. "This is the best year of your life."
Porcello watches him go, not angry anymore, just tired.
--
Four days after the draft, Jake stole the keys and dragged Rick out of the house. "Come on," he said. "No, leave your phone. We're getting away from this crazy business and you're going to act like-I don't know, a real boy or something."
Rick, still mostly numb with shock and excitement, nodded and crawled into the passenger seat. He leaned his head against the glass and let his mind wander, thinking that mostly what he wanted was to play baseball, why did any of the rest of it matter?
"Dude, would you say something?" said Jake, flicking his cheek. "The silence is freaking me out."
"'Cause you don't talk enough for three of me or anything," Rick snarked, blinking and looking around. They were in the parking lot of a shady-looking Chinese buffet in the middle of a strip mall, tucked between a dollar store and a T-Mobile outlet.
Jake rolled his eyes and killed the engine. "Hey, you think there's this list of words that all Chinese restaurant owners get, and they have to pick two of them for the name of the restaurant? And the words are golden, panda, palace, China, garden, king, fortune, and dragon." He kept talking but Rick tuned him out. There was pepper steak and fried rice in his future.
They got a booth next to a woman with four little kids she wasn't controlling very well, and the little boy closest to them kept staring at Rick in a way he found vaguely creepy, focused and dark-eyed like a closer. But, on the other hand, it was a lot less annoying than the other three kids, who were all wailing, howling, or throwing noodles at the wall.
Jake gorged himself on dumplings and egg drop soup like usual, picked the corners off his crab rangoons and flicked them at Rick, and kept up a constant stream of chatter about taking calculus in the fall and how hot was that girl Rick had taken to her prom. Rick mostly thought about the things Boras-"Call me Scott, Rick, okay?" like that was an option-was saying, what he should expect from the Tigers. How they might balk and he might not sign anyway, end up at UNC and draft number one in a couple years.
"Hot as hell, right? I mean, you're not bad looking, but no way do you get a chick like that without the shine of 'yeah baby, I'm gonna be a big league ballplayer.'" Jake grinned. "Although I guess you got that whole wholesome, wouldn't-lay-a-finger-on-your-daughter-sir vibe going. Since daughters tend to be, you know, girls."
"What?" Rick asked, snapping back to earth.
"Seriously, bro," Jake said, "you need to relax. Here, watch how easy it is." And then he laid down in his seat, bent knobby knees the only part of him Rick could see over the table. "I'm relaxed. Look how much fun I'm having over here."
"I'm going to be a millionaire," Rick said, measuring out the words carefully as he sorted the peas out of the rest of his fried rice, sequestering them to one side of his plate where they weren't likely to end up in his mouth. "In, like, a couple of weeks, maybe. Think about that for a second."
"And I expect you to buy me a car," Jake said immediately, propping himself up on an elbow and snagging one of the dumplings on his plate. He bit off half of it and chewed with his mouth open, then he pointed the other half of the dumpling at Rick. "Don't let it fuck you up, Ricky," he said. "It's just money."
"Everything's gonna change as soon as I sign. My whole life," Rick said, looking down at his plate and considering the peas. Most of them were squashed, cratered like tiny airless moons, and only two or three were actually green.
Jake sat up and nodded, looking remarkably serious. "Yeah, but you already knew that. Arm like you got? Ain't like scouts haven't been sniffing around for years." Then he paused, something dawning flickering across his face. "Oh. You mean with the-well, okay. There's that."
Rick rubbed the callus on his thumb over his lips and closed his eyes. "Yeah."
"That's something you gotta consider, I guess," Jake allowed, "but I think me and you both know you pick baseball one hundred times outta a hundred, am I right? No contest. I mean, come on, Ricky. On one side you got fucking around with guys or whatever you do, that scene, and the other side you got baseball. And hey, baseball means lots of chicks, and you like them, too. Right?"
"I sign and everybody'll be looking at me, all the time," said Rick, sighing. He badly wanted to turn his head and make a face at the kid still staring at them. He started sorting bits of pork out of the rice instead, another pile to one side. He didn't like how it was stained pink like the long line on notebook paper, didn't like the idea of eating ink.
"Everybody's already looking at you all the time, bro," Jake pointed out, chewing loudly. "Get used to it, I guess. Now let's talk about how this car you're gonna buy me. I've been thinking and I'm pretty sure it's gotta be a big and shiny, something that says, 'Look at me, bitches!'"
Rick smiled wanly. "Good," he said, "then they can look at you and leave me alone." He put his fork down and leaned back in his seat. "All I want to do is play ball, Jake."
Jake nodded. "So play ball."
--
Later, Porcello is almost asleep, curled up in his Oakland hotel bed with a pillow over his head and the covers tugged clear of the rigid hospital corners so he can roll himself up into a blanket ball.
With Perry gone back to Triple-A, he's got a new roadtrip roommate in Dusty Ryan, who is dead unconscious in the other bed and snoring obnoxiously. Dusty falls asleep everywhere, even the dugout sometimes. They rib him about it-'Must be tough being a backup catcher, huh?'-but he just smiles good-naturedly, wide-eyed at the size of the crowd.
His neighbors are having some kind of loud party, naturally. He's not sure who's over there, didn't bother to check when the travel secretary was distributing key cards, and if he wasn't in such a foul mood he'd get up and tell them to shut the fuck up. He can't understand how they're not all asleep, crushed flat under the weight of the time difference and the terrible game they just played.
The door connecting the two rooms bangs open. A big, heavy body crashes down next to him on the bed and jabs a sharp finger right in his kidney.
"Fuck off," he growls.
"Aw, come on, Ricky," Verlander whines. "Zoom's got some cards going. And Anderson ain't even playing, so people might actually have a chance to win for a change." He doesn't look like it, but Josh Anderson is a fucking card sharp, all sincere smiles and bad jokes 'til you forget everything, and then bam! He takes you for four hundred bucks and says thank you very sweetly.
"Sleeping," Porcello says patiently, not moving.
Verlander scoffs. "More like sulking." He pokes again, harder this time. "Come on, it wasn't that bad."
"No, no. It was," Porcello snaps.
"Okay, so it wasn't your best."
"Five runs. The Athletics."
"S'what happens when they put up a lineup of practically all lefties and your ass can't get anything inside," Verlander adds helpfully.
Porcello sighs. "Good-bye, Justin."
"I think your bed is better than mine. What is this, givin' the rookies the good beds? We didn't get fluffy shit like this in my day. 'Course, we didn't have to share rooms, either, so maybe I still win," Verlander grumbles, ignoring him. He punches the second pillow into submission and leans back against the headboard, grabbing the remote from where it was tucked by Porcello's shoulder and turning on ESPN loud enough to wake up people across the Bay probably. Porcello gives up on pouting under his covers and sits up, blinking at the TV and wanting dearly to punch Verlander in the throat. He glances over at other bed hoping to get some backup in getting rid of Verlander, but Dusty has barely twitched, still splayed out on his stomach with nothing but the sheet draped over his ass.
They sit through an unnecessarily long segment gushing about Tim Lincecum's start, which was naturally a two-hit complete-game shutout that makes Porcello want to smother himself just listening about it, but then Baseball Tonight moves on to other National League performances and of course the next one on the list is Harden's seven innings of one-run ball.
Porcello groans and pulls the comforter over his head.
"It gets better," Verlander says.
"You pat me and I swear to God I will shank you," Porcello replies.
Verlander laughs. "All class, aren'tcha, Jersey?"
"Yes. Now fuck off."
Verlander pokes him in the shoulder, but goes, closing the door behind him. After he's gone, Porcello realizes the TV's still on and the remote just went next door. "Fucking-you asshole!"
Galarraga manages to go six-plus on Tuesday, just one run despite six walks, which is enough to squeak out the win over Gio Gonzalez, who at least looks as lost as Porcello feels. Oakland is one of those teams made up of nothing but old men and children, plus Matt Holliday, who still looks kind of baffled that he's even there. Galarraga's win turns out to be all the success they get to have in Oakland, because on Wednesday Verlander gives up four runs through six while Dallas Braden is Dallas Braden and the Tigers offense is, well, the Tigers offense.
Galarraga is smug on the plane to Minneapolis, sitting next to Porcello and chattering about his plans for their mid-roadtrip day off, as if there's something interesting to do in Minnesota. Porcello ignores him in favor of daydreaming about not leaving his hotel bed for the entire off-day, feeling bone-tired and fanciful enough to think the team might let him do it. Verlander's pouting, hunched in the row across the aisle, spread out across both seats watching a Kevin Costner baseball movie on his laptop and refusing to acknowledge anyone who looks at him. Zumaya is somewhere else for once, and now that Porcello thinks about it, he hasn't been around in a while.
"Hey, you talked to Zoom lately?" he asks, interrupting Galarraga mid-sentence.
"Uh, earlier? At the airport?" Galarraga blinks. "At the tienda, you know? He was trying to decide Maxim or Details. No lie, man. Details."
Porcello purses his lips and glares out the window, which offers a wonderful view of the silvery wing of the plane. "Huh."
"He was talking to Grandy about something earlier, I dunno what. I come back here to sit with you and he stay up there. And, oh, no, no, I know el maricón no cogió mi chocolate." Galarraga swears, rooting through his bag and apparently coming up empty on something. "Motherfucker!"
Not interested in another pointless argument, Porcello puts his earbuds in and turns his iPod volume all the way up. He used to like to watch airplane wings slice up clouds when he was little.
After they land and get settled into the hotel, Porcello pleads exhaustion and a headache to get out of dinner with a group of the guys, both of which are absolutely true, no matter how much Verlander and everybody else rags on him ("No stamina, huh, rookie?" Inge asks, flashing his gums). He's had this annoying throbbing behind his eyes since Houston at least, sometimes it goes away and sometimes it makes him want to curl up in a dark room and call home to whine about it. Not that Mom is ever very sympathetic, but sometimes Dad'll listen. Porcello feels like he should play the 'I'm just a kid' card while he can still get away with it.
He bought a book at the airport back in Detroit, skinny and bright pink and by the same guy who wrote Fight Club according to a sticker on the cover, but he doesn't feel like reading. He takes some Advil and flops on the bed in his underwear, feet in the air and his chin propped on his fists, watching TV absently. He flicks through the channels but nothing takes, the HBO movie something with explosions and noise and Colin Farrell, the news depressing. He looks over at Dusty's bed and considers ransacking his shit in case the catcher's got something interesting, but that involves moving and that's definitely out. He rolls on to his back and stares up at the ceiling, tapping his fingertips on his stomach. Eventually he falls asleep.
When he wakes up it's several hours later, the world outside gone dark. Dusty's been in and gone back out, his bag moved from the bed to the floor. If it had been Perry, Porcello thinks, there would be a note stuck to his forehead with some snide comment about his underwear. Dusty's a nice guy, though, happy to stick to the wallpaper, don't mind me guys. The TV is still on, volume lowered, ESPN talking about Michael Vick. His cellphone is ringing, which he ignores.
He gets up and takes a leak and brushes his teeth. He doesn't really like how he looks in the mirror, but at least the hickey on his collarbone has mostly faded away. He touches a fingertip to the place it had been and thinks, this is not how this year was supposed to go. Or, well, it kind of is, but with less sex with other ballplayers. He's just being maudlin and he knows it, because overall it's been a lot more good than bad, and compared to other people's rookie years, what other guys his age are doing, even the bad hasn't been anything like awful.
There's a loud knock at his door, then Verlander bellowing, "You answer your fuckin' phone when I call you, you hear?"
Porcello snorts and leaves the bathroom, flicking off the light as he goes, and opens the door. "What?"
Verlander, dressed in warm-up pants and an Old Dominion t-shirt that's hopelessly bleach-spotted and threadbare, grins in what he probably imagines is a charming manner. Porcello rolls his eyes and steps back to let him in.
"Put some clothes on," says Verlander. He's got a crazy gleam in his eyes. "Grab your glove. C'mon."
He notices Verlander has a glove of his own in hand, the definite shape of a baseball in his pocket. "Um, what?"
"We're going up to the roof."
"The fuck we are," says Porcello, but he's already grabbing whatever shirt he can find and yanking it over his head. He looks down and frowns when he realizes it's the one Jake bought that one time he came down to Lakeland last summer and then left behind (probably on purpose), eye-searing bright green with this weirdly effeminate font declaring I love Southern BBQ across the chest.
"Nice, uh, shirt you got there," Verlander comments, scrunching up his nose and trying very hard to keep a straight face.
"Fuck off," Porcello snaps, distracted by trying to find pants that aren't his nice roadtrip khakis.
Eventually he finds something to wear and follows Verlander out, grabbing his phone and shoving it in his pocket on the way out and closing the door behind him a second before he realizes that he did not grab his keycard. Dusty's responsible, he'll have one when he comes stumbling back, or Porcello will sleep on Verlander's floor or something. He mostly tunes out some story about how Verlander loves this hotel more than pretty much any other in all the American League cities they visit even though he mostly hates Minnesota, and how Zumaya discovered that the lock on the door to the roof is busted.
"I don't really want to play catch," he tells Verlander, who grins.
"Aw, you don't really think you have a choice, do you?"
"Well, no," he says. "I just figure I should lodge my complaints early and often. By the way, I don't really want to play catch."
"Man up," Verlander says.
Porcello whines, "Can't you play with Zoom?"
"Fucker wouldn't do it. Something about Skype with his wife, I don't know. Lame." He makes an obscene jerk-off gesture and laughs.
Verlander throws open the door to the roof, letting in a strong gust of wind that about knocks him back into Porcello's chest. He makes an elaborate 'after you' gesture, which earns him a thump on his right shoulder, but Porcello goes out first anyway. The wind makes his eyes water a little and he turns to face the building, blinking furiously.
"Okay, glove on, soldier. Let's do this." Verlander punches his fist into the pocket of his glove.
They toss the ball back and forth for a few minutes, just ragging on each other for sloppy catches or a lack of location-"How hard is it to aim for my glove from twenty feet away? Jesus. What do you do for a living again?"-and occasionally making ridiculous showboating plays just because. Porcello's arm aches a little, and he can't imagine what Verlander's must feel like, only a few hours after his own start.
"The trainers would frown on this, you know," he points out.
Verlander shrugs. "What? Ain't like I'm playing Guitar Hero," he says. Porcello laughs and misses a catch completely, the ball bouncing in the gravel two feet behind him. "Oh, now that was pathetic," Verlander protests. "Like, fuckin' Carlos Quentin coulda made that play. Helen Keller coulda. Come on." Porcello scoops up the ball with his glove and flips Verlander off with his free hand.
After a few minutes, though, Verlander has to stop, shoulder tightening up too much to ignore now. They lean on their elbows on the railing and look out at the city.
"Hey, can I ask a favor?" Porcello asks. He's trying to decide if he sees any constellations in the city lights, something he always does out plane windows. The hotel roof isn't high enough, though; all the lights just smear together.
"Oh, shit," Verlander says, grinning. "Yeah, I guess." He's leaning on his elbows on the railing, one leg bent at the knee. He holds the ball in his right hand and turns it over and over, trailing his thumb along the seams.
Porcello sighs and sits down with his back to the railing, looking up at Verlander. "I think Zoom's avoiding me and I want to know what I did. And I can tell he's trying to be subtle about it, but he's not a ninja. He's not even, like, Kung-Fu Panda. So if you could pass it on, maybe figure out what's wrong…"
"Ricky, you are solid fuckin' gold sometimes, you know that? Solid gold." Verlander laughs. He drops the ball, bobbles it for a second, and then it's just gone, falling through all the space between his hands and whatever is below. Porcello twists around to watch it fall, but it just hits an awning with a thwack they can hear, bounces once or twice and eventually rolls to a stop at the edge, anyone passing below safe from a head injury.
"E-1," Porcello says.
Verlander flicks his ear but he's still smiling. "Yeah, I'll do your recon. Know why, though? 'Cause I am a ninja."
Porcello sniffs, hand clapped over his ear and glaring. "A ninja wouldn't have dropped that ball."
keep on reading
Spring break of his junior year, a bunch of Rick's teammates decided they were all going camping instead of the usual trip to Myrtle Beach or wherever. "Fuck sunshine and sand," said one of the graduating seniors, a real jackass from Staten Island named Mark. "Let's go get wasted in the woods."
The only part of the idea Rick was interested in was the woods. He liked the woods, liked camping and fishing and communing with nature. But once again, Jake vetoed taking the tackle box: "What if somebody gets shitfaced and thinks the lures are candy, and we're fifty miles from a hospital so he drowns in his own blood? Huh? Did you think of that?"
Rick had always been suspicious of the so-called baseball way of life, not liking being drunk nearly enough to tolerate trying to play hungover the next day. Some of his teammates seemed to think they were Babe Ruth or something, carousing like they weren't a bunch of dumb high school kids. They mostly thought Rick was weird for being quiet and more interested in sleep and food than girls and beer. They looked at him like they wanted to ask if his growth was stunted or something, You all there, Ricky?
Rick couldn't find his right hiking boot. He was on his hands and knees pawing through all the random shit that had collected at the bottom of his closet, and he kept finding half-empty bottles of Glovolium and dented aluminum bats and clothes that didn't belong to him, but no other boot.
"The team thinks you're an uppity prick," Jake said, sitting down on the bed next to Rick's pack. "You should, like, work on that."
"I am an uppity prick," Rick agreed, glancing over his shoulder. He was the reason there were pro scouts coming to Seton Hall games and everyone knew it, damn it. He wasn't going to apologize for having talent. "And don't fuck with my shit. I have it arranged just so."
Jake snorted. "Your whole life is arranged 'just so.' Anal-retentive much, you queer?"
Rick sat back on his heels and winged a softball over his shoulder, which hit Jake hard enough to make him squawk. "Your face is queer," he said. "Hey, have you seen my hiking boots?"
Jake pegged him in the back of the head with the ball, just hard enough to make him see stars for a second. "Nope. You know what's lame? I mean, besides you. But no, I can't say 'your mom is queer' to you. 'Cause, I mean, she's my mom, too."
"That the only reason?" Rick rolled his eyes, grabbing the ball and tossing it back into the pile on the floor. It landed in one of his dress shoes, flattening the tongue down and scuffing the buffed leather. That would have to be fixed. Dad had some pretty specific ideas about looking presentable at church, when they actually went.
"Dude, Mom could kick both our asses with one hand tied behind her back. Remember how she made that guy who looked like an extra on The Sopranos cry at that Little League game in East Rutherford that time? Beautiful," Jake paused, and Rick could hear him moving things around on the bed like the little bitch he was. "Anyway. I'm all packed and shit. Hurry the fuck up, would you?"
"Remind me again why we're letting you come."
"Because I am awesome and everyone loves me," Jake answered immediately. "And also because my name is Porcello and our school is, like, gay for Porcellos." He smiled winningly.
Eventually, Mom found Rick's boot in the laundry room and sent them on their way-"Have fun! Please don't get arrested! Look out for bears!"-to meet the rest of the team at the starting shortstop's house. Rick drove one car, two middle infielders, a catcher, and Jake crammed in, and Jake spent most of the ride to the campground pouting because he was on the backseat bitch bump and no one would turn the radio up to what he considered an acceptable volume.
They got there sometime in the dead part of the afternoon, set up over two contiguous campsites under a canopy of very old trees, and immediately started drinking. A couple of the outfielders filled the entire trunk of their car with beer, courtesy of good older brothers and bad parents. Two campsites down was a bunch of college kids with Rutgers window clings on their much crappier cars, every bit as drunk as the high school boys but ever so slightly more legal.
"Be good," Rick said to Jake before they got split up by the crowd.
"Always am, bro," Jake replied. "So tequila? Or tequila?"
Mark from Staten Island had all the charm of a badger, but he somehow managed to stumble down to the college kids and get them to agree to pooling the alcohol and joining forces to produce the biggest, most awesome possible party. Rick took charge of the fire, in no way trusting any of the rest of them not to kill somebody with the lighter fluid, and struck up a conversation with one of the college girls about going hiking the next day. Her name was Natalie and she was hot in a pretty typical Jersey girl way, bottle blonde and too tan, but at least she kept up with her roots and wasn't wearing dark lipliner.
Sometime after dark, everybody sat around Rick's epic fire to roast marshmallows. At some point somebody brought out a bag of weed, and Rick had never done that before, which scandalized the team. Mark from Staten Island was particularly offended, and took it upon himself to basically hold the bong to his mouth and ensure that he got the full effect.
(They were also confused by his lack of a dependence on one of the following: Adderall bought in the cafeteria for twenty bucks a pop, the little bright-colored pills Coach had in his office that took away the need to sleep for two or three days, or energy drinks. Even Jake drank Monster constantly, they pointed out, and most of them came from good homes and had the requisite drug dependencies to show for it).
The night took on a pleasant spinning sensation for Rick, though that was probably more due to the three or so cups of whatever that fruity shit in the cooler was than the weed. He lost Natalie at some point and just wandered around with a foggy smile on his face, making conversation with various people, teammates and Rutgers kids alike, about stupid things like TV shows he only got to watch in the winter, that hoagie shop in East Rutherford that had cheesesteak to rival anything in Philly, and Mom's creepy Hummel figurines. Mark from Staten Island didn't seem like such an asshole stoned.
He spent a long time talking to a college kid named Josh about the time he and the girl he'd been seeing drove into the city to see some awful indie band at some crappy little venue, which Josh thought was awesome. Josh had a pretty face, veiny forearms, and blue eyes that were incredibly distracting, and he played the guitar.
"I brought it with me," he said, leaning against the tree behind him and stretching his arms over his head.
It took a second for Rick's brain to click on, stuck on the way Josh's t-shirt rode up to show a pale slash of skin, golden in the firelight. Then he shook himself and nodded. "You should go get it and play campfire songs," he said. "But not Kumbaya. I hate that fucking song."
"You, my boy, are a genius," Josh agreed. Rick smiled affably, thinking that he'd have spent most of his life baked if he'd known it would take away any sucky parts of other people. He turned to go back to the fire to check that the team wasn't pouring vodka down Jake's throat or anything, but Josh grabbed his wrist. "Hey, you coming?" He jerked his head toward the college kids' group of tents.
Rick could guess where this was going. He glanced around, but nobody was paying them any attention, and then he smiled. "Hey, yeah. Okay."
Josh's face split into a big grin. "Awesome."
"I gotta tell somebody that I'm leaving for a minute, though," Rick said. "My little brother's here-gotta make sure somebody's watching him. He's kind of a handful."
He told Petruccelli, the catcher who rode down in his car, that he was going over to the college tents to get something with one of the college kids. Petruccelli, a big hairy kid who had a long and successful future ahead of him as a bouncer, gave him a suspicious look. "You doin' something stupid?" he asked.
"Just helping a guy get his guitar, Pets, that's all," Rick said, trying very hard to keep from glancing at Josh every couple of seconds.
"Well, shit," Petruccelli said, waving his hand. "If that's all. Yeah. I'll make sure Jake don't kill himself with a sparkler or something."
They took the long way to the Rutgers tents, walked the long loop and passed by plenty of other campsites full of drunk kids dancing around fires. Josh talked about college and Rick talked about baseball, and they both kept smiling and bumping the other's shoulder.
"So, here's the thing," Josh said, stopping and turning to face Rick when they got to his tent, which was at the back of the cluster, a low-slung Coleman model with a blue rain shield. It faced the cold fire pit in the middle, back to the Seton Hall campsites.
Rick nodded, put a hand on his cheek and kissed him immediately. "Yeah," he pulled back to say, grinning, then leaned back in. Josh snorted out a laugh, then hooked one arm around his neck and fisted his other hand in his belt.
It progressed nicely from there. Josh backed him into the tent and laid him out on an air mattress, stripped off his own shirt then crawled on top of him.
"I mean, I really do have a guitar in here," Josh said, but by then he had his hand in Rick's shorts and Rick really, really didn't care if he was brought there as part of a great ruse or whatever. Josh's fingers were guitar string-rough and his hand was hot, and that was pretty much enough for Rick.
"This is better," Rick said. Josh nodded, face in the crook of Rick's shoulder and body between Rick's legs, and then he made some awesome, clever movement with his wrist and Rick actually whimpered.
Some time passed. Rick rolled them over, spreading Josh out on his back with his pants down around his knees. "This okay?" Rick asked, but he didn't wait for an answer before fitting his shoulders between Josh's thighs and opening his mouth. Josh had one hand on the back of his head and the other clutched in the sleeping bag bunched up under them, murmuring nonsense and arching his back. Rick had only done this twice before, and he had to concentrate on keeping his lips over his teeth, breathing through his nose, hollowing his cheeks. Josh didn't seem to care if he got a bit sloppy, though. Rick figured a blowjob's still a blowjob.
"Ricky?" somebody called from outside the tent, maybe just on the other side of the fabric, and Rick choked and pulled back. Josh made a protesting sound, but then a twig snapped outside the open flap door. "Rick, Pets said you were getting a guitar. Are you still over… oh. Oh!"
Rick closed his eyes and counted to five, then turned his head. "Jake."
Jake blinked, looking rather bewildered (but not as much as he should have). "Uh, hi, there, um, naked dude," he said after a second. He nodded. "Ricky."
Glancing up at Josh, who was shoving him away and trying to cover himself, Rick sat up and sighed. He dragged the back of his hand over his mouth. "Uh, what?" he asked, wincing at how rough his voice sounded.
"Um," Jake said, then he shook his head and smiled awkwardly. "So basically you're, like, an omnivore. Eats vegetable matter and meat."
Rick figured that the high was fading, taking his sense of humor with it. "You're a funny kid," he growled. He punched the air mattress and stood up, although he had to scramble to pull his pants up as he went and he had to stoop over because the tent ceiling was about two feet shorter than he was. He glanced down at Josh, who looked completely mortified.
"Look, Jake-"
"I'm going to puke," said Jake, nodding and looking regretful. "I was trying to find you, 'cause you really need to know before I pass out and die, and now I found you. And I'm still gonna puke, but now I kind of want to talk about how you definitely just-anyway, that's more important than how much I'm about to spew. Which is a lot. So, let's talk, big brother."
"Jesus," Rick muttered. He grabbed his shirt and stumbled out of the tent, tugging his pants closed as he went. Jake swayed into him, groaning and wrapping an arm around his neck before he could get the shirt over his head.
Josh sat up and flopped a hand around in the air. "Um, sorry about-"
Rick shook his head. "I'm going to just. Tend to this." He waved his free hand at his brother, who was snuffling against his shoulder. Jake's forehead felt about four hundred degrees. "I'll be back, okay?"
He led Jake back to their tent and made him sit in the dirt outside. He eventually got his shirt back on, looking around to make sure everyone was still over by the fire.
"Are you going to throw up or pass out?" he asked, arms crossed over his chest.
"Sorry I cockblocked you," Jake said, ignoring him.
"Don't worry about it," said Rick, sitting next to him and fiddling with a piece of long grass sticking up in front of the door. "You totally cockblocked him, though."
Jake leaned against him. He could feel Jake's cheek pull into a smile even through his t-shirt. "'m not gonna be weird about it, Ricky," said Jake after a few minutes, sounding sleepy and soft. "Don't care what you're into. 'Cept maybe farm animals. Draw the line there."
"'m glad you have standards," said Rick.
"Yeah." Jake was definitely about to pass out. "So don't worry so much, okay?"
Rick gave him a weak smile. "What? Me worry? Come on."
"Bullshit. You worry about everything. No, you know what you do? You brood. With the dramatic wrinkled brow and the deep thoughts. Do you write poetry about how your life is hell? I bet you do." He paused, rubbing a hand through his hair and snuffling. "Dude, how did I not see this coming? You are really, really gay sometimes."
"So I think I need you to pass out right now, actually," Rick replied. Jake elbowed him hard in the ribs. "Lookin' forward to the part where you don't remember this tomorrow."
"I'm gonna remember it, Ricky," said Jake, soft and fading. "Never gonna let you forget it."
Rick nodded, something swooping and cold in his stomach. "Yeah, I know."
--
Porcello sleeps a few hours, and all that does is make him more tired and then late to the ballpark. He gets the stink-eye from Leyland and Knapp, but he attaches himself to a trainer claiming a headache and exhaustion, and they let it slide. The trainers aren't stupid, they can recognize somebody zonked out of his gourd on heavy meds, but they let him lie down on a couch in a cluttered back room and pretty soon everybody forgets he exists at all.
The nap doesn't take, though. He has a weird dream where he's in college at some barbeque, desperately worried about a test coming up, teammates he doesn't recognize running around him, and he can almost smell the acrid charcoal stink on the air. In fact, that's what wakes him up. He lies there trying to remember what day it is and maybe his own name, listening to a M.I.A. song blasting out in the clubhouse, which is the same song from last night. He waits until the song changes to some loud salsa then he peels himself up and goes and gets dressed.
"Did somebody go vampire on the back of your neck?" somebody asks, passing behind him while he's between shirts. Porcello looks over his shoulder to find Dusty Ryan standing there, head cocked to the side and a slightly confused look on his face. Not that he doesn't usually look a little perplexed, but he's smiling, too.
"Coulda been," Porcello says, noncommittal and as cool as he can. He pulls on a shirt and that's the end of that. Dusty's starting, doesn't have to time to wonder about marks on other guys' backs.
He walks out to the warning track in left, all the way to the very edge of the grass, and he lies down with his feet just brushing the edge of the track, arms spread out, home whites bright as bones on pitcher-friendly endless green. The sky is blue for once, not all Michigan-gray like earlier that morning, but it's not half as blue as other things he can think of. There are clouds moving in, anyway, and he closes his eyes.
Who knows how long he's out there by himself before somebody notices, but eventually Galarraga jogs out to him and pokes him in the shoulder with his spikes. Porcello cracks open one eye and glares at him. "No. Whatever it is, my answer's no."
Galarraga rolls his eyes, glove clutched to his chest. "I got a rubber match to pitch today, if you don't mind."
"Nope. Just tell Raburn to hop over me, anything comes this way," Porcello replies.
"I tell him to spike you," Galarraga says, but he plunks down on the grass next to him. They sit there in companionable silence for a while, watching the infielders run sprints in short left, and then Galarraga clucks his tongue. "You're losing your grip on your crazy," he says.
Porcello sits up and gives him a funny look. "I'm losing my what on my what?"
"Everybody got a crazy, just some guys keep it inside better," Galarraga explains, with an almost professorial air. He points at the bench, where Granderson is draining a green Gatorade cup. "Take Grandy. Sure, he look good in that suit, and maybe he have a job with ESPN forever and ever after he retire, but he got plenty of crazy. That is how he let it out."
"That makes sense, I guess," Porcello says, watching as Granderson crumples the cup and disappears into the clubhouse, because Granderson is the type of guy who will seek out a trashcan for his junk instead of just tossing it on the floor.
Galarraga nods, fiddling with the laces on his glove. "It's same as Zoom and JV getting drunk and playing catch up on hotel roofs, or Miggy and the baselines. I bake things, you know."
"Really."
"Chocolate is cure for everything," Galarraga says, grinning serenely. Everett trips in a pivot, nearly ends up flat on his face in the grass, and everybody stops to rib him. "Bad start? Have chocolate. In fact, you go have chocolate now. Inge has some M&Ms in his locker, I saw them." Porcello rolls his eyes and flops back own, taking off his cap and resting it over his face. Apparently sensing that he's losing his audience, Galarraga clears his throat. "I am not saying this right, I think."
"No, I get what you're saying. We're all crazy. Most of us just, um, sublimate it. That's what makes us good at baseball."
"I look at you lying out here and I think to myself, 'This is his crazy coming out. His crazy is quiet and still as he is. He don't hide as good as some.'" Galarraga takes the cap off his face and peers down at him, thin-eyed and a little concerned. "You are not so much with the okay, are you, Rick?"
Porcello tries to think of a way to explain it, and he realizes uncomfortably that he's probably more okay than he thinks. He squints at the sky and rubs at his collarbone. Finally, he settles on, "Sometimes, I just. Sometimes, I make bad decisions. And right now I am hungover as hell. Also, fuck Justin and Zoom and tequila and hot red-haired girls and Cubs pitchers."
Galarraga laughs. He doesn't look entirely convinced, but he laughs. "Fair enough," he says. He stands up, drops Porcello's hat on his chest and takes off his own. He swipes his inner arm over his forehead, because it's not even noon and it's already got to be ninety out, way too hot to do anything but laze around. Porcello can't imagine being a position player, days like this.
"You are in your zen place, then," Galarraga continues, tugging his cap back down, far enough so that Porcello can't see his eyebrows anymore. He wonders sometimes if Galarraga waxes them. "Zen places are important. Is this a good place? Maybe next time I have a bad start I will come out here and lay down in grass, too." He cracks a grin. "Maybe tomorrow I do it in Houston."
"You just gotta be better than the other guy is all," Porcello says. He levers himself up on his elbows and squints at Galarraga. "I had this coach at school who used to say that when we were being self-lacerating or depressed or whatever. 'He gives up ten runs, kid, then you make sure you only give up nine,'" he said, dropping his voice an octave or so and tucking his chin against his chest, thinking of high school and not being so much fucking younger than everybody else. "And then you hope to God Rodney doesn't decide to make shit interesting in the ninth."
They share a grin. "Okay, loco, I will leave you to your zen place," Galarraga says. He wipes at his forehead again and sighs. "Need to warm up. There's a baseball game today, you know."
"Always is," Porcello replies, watching him walk away, shrinking white blotch. He lets himself fall back and stares up at the sky again.
He spends about half the game down in the clubhouse, trying to sleep off some more of the drug haze, but it doesn't work. He has a dream about winning some award, a miserable press conference of some kind, and nobody would let him change into presentable clothes. He just knows that somewhere in New Jersey his mother is watching and upset that he looks like an unmade bed, his hair flat and greasy, all unshaven and glassy-eyed. There might be a visible bruise on his cheek, a hickey on his throat. The reporters are relentless, asking him these terrible, incisive things about how he feels that he can't even begin to answer, and all he wants to say is, 'I won it, okay, and now I'm going to Disneyworld. Okay? Okay.'
He wakes up when he rolls off the couch and lands on his pitching shoulder and somebody's shower shoes.
Laird and a couple other guys who aren't playing today have a card game going at the table a little ways away, quiet and respectful til they realize he's up, watching the game on a monitor. "You a'right?" Laird asks, catcher's concern.
"Fine, yeah," Porcello says. He shakes himself off and gets up, heads down the tunnel to the dugout. Verlander grabs him and drags him to the fence, which is where he watches the rest of the game, thinking about how the Cubs lineup is full of some seriously ridiculous names and sort of idly watching the first base dugout. Verlander tries to engage him in conversation about last night-"Don't think I didn't see that hickey when you were getting dressed. I know you got a story, so share with the class. Was she hot? Of course she was hot. It was that redhead, wasn't it?"-but Porcello is absolutely not going to respond to any of that, and eventually Verlander gives up and pouts on the bench next to Knapp for a while.
Galarraga pitches pretty well, and then Rodney does make it interesting in the ninth. The only time Porcello catches a glimpse of Harden over in the other dugout is when Hoffpauir (ridiculous name number six) comes back in from a long ball to lead off the inning, and only then because Zambrano moves his fat ass from where's he's been hanging on the fence all game. Harden's wearing a pullover and a scowl, which, incidentally, matches Porcello's own getup.
They complete the sweep of the Cubs, and then they go to Houston and mostly suck except for the Astros' closer blowing a save. Porcello's pretty sorry he won't get a start there, wishing for another chance to bat. He sits in his hotel room and calls Perry, tells his voicemail that he can feel a homerun humming in his shoulders, he would put money on it, no worthless sacrifice bunts for him. After that, he calls his neighbor to remind her to stop by and check on Wilbur.
Houston is hot as balls even at night, and damp, with humidity like a wet towel pressed up against his mouth and nose. He's glad when they leave for Oakland, even if it's an early-hours plane ride that nobody seems to want to sleep through. Porcello listens to his iPod and tries to avoid everyone without seeming like he's doing it, sulking in an aisle seat because he's sitting with Dusty and Dusty always sleeps with his face mashed against the window. Verlander and Zumaya are having what sounds like an epic PSP battle in the back row and wouldn't notice the outbreak of nuclear war, but Galarraga, sitting across the aisle and three rows up with Josh Anderson, keeps looking back and frowning concernedly. Porcello closes his eyes and pretends to be asleep.
The next day is Monday, and it's a beautiful day in California. He feels like he actually slept well for once, even though he wakes up at five o'clock, on the floor wrapped up like a taquito in the top sheet. Dusty's alarm goes off four times before either of them move, and even then it's just Dusty getting up to go work out in the hotel gym.
"You're starting today, right? Or am I mixed up?" he says on his way out.
"Yeah, I'm starting," Porcello says. "I should get up. I should stop wallowing."
Dusty raises one eyebrow at him, then shrugs and leaves, tangled up in headphone wires and murmuring to himself.
Later at the Coliseum, Porcello and Laird head out into right-center to toss the ball back and forth while the position players run sprints, not quite warming up but just a little loosening. Laird, cap backwards and his chest protector on but no other gear, is talking about some seafood restaurant his little brother likes in Tampa and how they need to hook up with his brother when they're in town; Porcello isn't really paying attention.
One of the A's players breaks off from the rest off them over by third and jogs over. Porcello ignores him for a while, figures he'll just turn and jog back, maybe this is a sprint or something. But then the guy doesn't go away, and Porcello gives him an annoyed look. It's Bobby Crosby, scruffy and frowning, arms crossed over his chest. He looks content to stand there and watch with this contemplative look on his face, so Porcello tries to ignore him. Laird takes a few steps back and calls for the ball, so this goes on for a few more tosses before Porcello can't take it anymore.
"Jesus, what?" he snaps, rolling his shoulders and frowning at Crosby.
"Okay, I can see it. Kind of," Crosby says, cocking his head. It's pretty irritating, and that must show on Porcello's face, because then Crosby barks out a laugh and says, "Okay, now that's just a pretty damn uncanny Street impression. This shit gets better and better, don't it?"
Porcello gives him a sideways look, and Crosby's expression makes him suddenly uneasy. "What? Street? You trying to say something?" he asks.
Laird throws the ball back, but it's pretty far offline, and Porcello has to shade toward Crosby to snag it. Crosby shrugs. "Oh, I got plenty to say," he says. "Probably best I keep it to myself, though." He grins, teeth bright in the Oakland sunlight.
"Great," Porcello mutters, lobbing the ball back.
"What is this shit?" Laird yells, standing up and taking off his cap, mopping his forehead on his shoulder. He seems to notice Crosby for the first time. "Hey, beat it, Bobby!"
Crosby looks fairly delighted. "Yeah? Eat me, Gerry," he calls back. He glances at Porcello and lowers his voice a few notches. "You 'n me got something we need to discuss," he adds.
"I honestly cannot think of anything I need to say to you," says Porcello. Crosby opens his mouth to say something then apparently thinks the better of it and settles for giving him a pitying look.
Laird comes closer, looking annoyed and sweaty even though it's actually kind of chilly. "How's things, Cros?" he asks. He flips the ball back to Porcello.
"Terrible, terrible," says Crosby, shaking his hand and one-armed hugging him, old friend-like. Porcello thinks for a second, remembers some story Laird always tells from high school that involves Crosby, a bunch of chickens, and never makes any fucking sense. Other people's drunk stories never do. "New baby at home, can't buy a hit here. Usual shit."
"Could always be worse," says Laird, which is pretty much his general philosophy on life. "Could be playing for, what, K.C.?"
"Might soon," Crosby points out, mouth small and grim. Porcello admires the honesty, but he'd really like him to go away. He traces his thumb over the stitches of the ball and wonders if they'll notice if he heads back for the clubhouse, how Crosby will try to get him to stay.
Laird grins. "So hey, you even batting your weight this year?"
"Are you?" Crosby asks, and they both laugh like it's the funniest fucking thing they've ever heard. "I guess you get a break, though. You weigh more'n me."
Laird slaps him on the shoulder again and nods. "Funny guy, here. Hey, Rick, I'm gonna go get a drink, okay? I'm sweating my balls off out here. What the fuck? It's not even warm." He headed for the dugout, still kind of laughing and muttering about motherfuckers and utilitymen.
When he's gone, Crosby cuts the shit immediately and gives Porcello that same concerned, almost brotherly look. "So how you holding up?" he wants to know.
Porcello raises an eyebrow. "Um. It's a grind."
"Yeah, sucks for everybody, rookie year," says Crosby, sounding kind of distracted. Porcello rolls his eyes again, thinking, oh fuck you, rookie of the year. But then again, it's not like Crosby's had the most stellar career since, string of stupid injuries and then this year losing his job to Orlando Cabrera, playing out the string in a city that mostly can't wait to see him go. Porcello hopes that if he should be so lucky as to win the award, he doesn't follow a similar trajectory.
Crosby looks around at the empty stands and shakes his head. "But no," he says after a second, blinking and snapping back from wherever he just went, "no, not what I was talking about. I meant everybody here's favorite Cub."
It doesn't click right away, what Crosby means, and Porcello shoots him a 'the fuck?' look. But then he realizes where he is, the colors on Crosby's uniform, and he feels like he's just been kicked in the teeth. "'Scuse me?" he squeaks. He starts thinking about cement shoes, blunt force trauma, that scene in Pulp Fiction where the squirrelly guy is tied to the chair and Samuel L. Jackson is a badass. He's about to say fuck you to this start and get on the first plane to wherever the Cubs are right now, because Rich Harden is a dead man. Dead.
Crosby spits to the side and puts a hand up. "Hey, calm down. I'm not going to go telling nobody else, and he had to tell somebody."
"Oh, the fuck he did," Porcello snaps. He casts a look around to make sure nobody is close enough to hear anything, feeling pretty persecuted, but no one is anywhere close, and definitely no one is paying them any attention.
"Look," says Crosby, looking regretful and agitated, "you don't know the history here. It doesn't have anything to do with you, or anything you did. Rich is, well. I promise you he is way more fucked up than you are. Fact. Um, don't be him when you grow up, word of advice."
Porcello's fingers tighten compulsively on the ball in his hand, and it takes an awful lot of effort not to haul back and peg Crosby in the face or something equally ridiculous. He takes a deep breath and drops the ball instead. He looks around again, hoping some kind of relief is coming. But Nomar's just picked up a bat, taking a few practice hacks, and nobody's looking anywhere else.
"I don't know what he told you but it wasn't. It wasn't like that," he says, narrowing his eyes. "Okay?"
"Wasn't like what?" says Crosby, blinking. Then he looks faintly horrified. "Oh. Oh, you don't even know, do you?"
"What? No." He gives Crosby a pleading look. "Can you just, I don't know, go away? Please?"
Crosby looks incredibly sad for a second, thinning his mouth out to nothing. Finally he shakes his head and his expression shifts to something like he wants to punch somebody. "Jesus Christ, Rich," he mutters. "Jesus Christ." He turns back to Porcello and nods. "Another word of advice, though? Get yourself sympathetic straight ear, somebody you can trust, and tell them everything, or you're gonna lose it."
"That work out so great for him?" he says snidely.
"You see me standing here, don't you?" Crosby snaps.
Somebody over by the plate yells Crosby's name and they both look over. Crosby makes a face, scratches at his scraggy beard. "Hey, so, I come in to pinch hit, you hit me if it makes you feel better," he says. He pats the meat of his upper arm. "Maybe here? Like, not by bone, if you can? But listen. I'm sorry that you got dragged into his big crazy moment, but maybe you can use it as a learning experience?" He glares somewhere toward the right field foul pole and picks up the ball Porcello dropped.
"Big crazy moment?" Porcello asks, but Crosby's already turning and walking away.
"Good luck today, Rick Porcello," Crosby says over his shoulder. "This is the best year of your life."
Porcello watches him go, not angry anymore, just tired.
--
Four days after the draft, Jake stole the keys and dragged Rick out of the house. "Come on," he said. "No, leave your phone. We're getting away from this crazy business and you're going to act like-I don't know, a real boy or something."
Rick, still mostly numb with shock and excitement, nodded and crawled into the passenger seat. He leaned his head against the glass and let his mind wander, thinking that mostly what he wanted was to play baseball, why did any of the rest of it matter?
"Dude, would you say something?" said Jake, flicking his cheek. "The silence is freaking me out."
"'Cause you don't talk enough for three of me or anything," Rick snarked, blinking and looking around. They were in the parking lot of a shady-looking Chinese buffet in the middle of a strip mall, tucked between a dollar store and a T-Mobile outlet.
Jake rolled his eyes and killed the engine. "Hey, you think there's this list of words that all Chinese restaurant owners get, and they have to pick two of them for the name of the restaurant? And the words are golden, panda, palace, China, garden, king, fortune, and dragon." He kept talking but Rick tuned him out. There was pepper steak and fried rice in his future.
They got a booth next to a woman with four little kids she wasn't controlling very well, and the little boy closest to them kept staring at Rick in a way he found vaguely creepy, focused and dark-eyed like a closer. But, on the other hand, it was a lot less annoying than the other three kids, who were all wailing, howling, or throwing noodles at the wall.
Jake gorged himself on dumplings and egg drop soup like usual, picked the corners off his crab rangoons and flicked them at Rick, and kept up a constant stream of chatter about taking calculus in the fall and how hot was that girl Rick had taken to her prom. Rick mostly thought about the things Boras-"Call me Scott, Rick, okay?" like that was an option-was saying, what he should expect from the Tigers. How they might balk and he might not sign anyway, end up at UNC and draft number one in a couple years.
"Hot as hell, right? I mean, you're not bad looking, but no way do you get a chick like that without the shine of 'yeah baby, I'm gonna be a big league ballplayer.'" Jake grinned. "Although I guess you got that whole wholesome, wouldn't-lay-a-finger-on-your-daughter-sir vibe going. Since daughters tend to be, you know, girls."
"What?" Rick asked, snapping back to earth.
"Seriously, bro," Jake said, "you need to relax. Here, watch how easy it is." And then he laid down in his seat, bent knobby knees the only part of him Rick could see over the table. "I'm relaxed. Look how much fun I'm having over here."
"I'm going to be a millionaire," Rick said, measuring out the words carefully as he sorted the peas out of the rest of his fried rice, sequestering them to one side of his plate where they weren't likely to end up in his mouth. "In, like, a couple of weeks, maybe. Think about that for a second."
"And I expect you to buy me a car," Jake said immediately, propping himself up on an elbow and snagging one of the dumplings on his plate. He bit off half of it and chewed with his mouth open, then he pointed the other half of the dumpling at Rick. "Don't let it fuck you up, Ricky," he said. "It's just money."
"Everything's gonna change as soon as I sign. My whole life," Rick said, looking down at his plate and considering the peas. Most of them were squashed, cratered like tiny airless moons, and only two or three were actually green.
Jake sat up and nodded, looking remarkably serious. "Yeah, but you already knew that. Arm like you got? Ain't like scouts haven't been sniffing around for years." Then he paused, something dawning flickering across his face. "Oh. You mean with the-well, okay. There's that."
Rick rubbed the callus on his thumb over his lips and closed his eyes. "Yeah."
"That's something you gotta consider, I guess," Jake allowed, "but I think me and you both know you pick baseball one hundred times outta a hundred, am I right? No contest. I mean, come on, Ricky. On one side you got fucking around with guys or whatever you do, that scene, and the other side you got baseball. And hey, baseball means lots of chicks, and you like them, too. Right?"
"I sign and everybody'll be looking at me, all the time," said Rick, sighing. He badly wanted to turn his head and make a face at the kid still staring at them. He started sorting bits of pork out of the rice instead, another pile to one side. He didn't like how it was stained pink like the long line on notebook paper, didn't like the idea of eating ink.
"Everybody's already looking at you all the time, bro," Jake pointed out, chewing loudly. "Get used to it, I guess. Now let's talk about how this car you're gonna buy me. I've been thinking and I'm pretty sure it's gotta be a big and shiny, something that says, 'Look at me, bitches!'"
Rick smiled wanly. "Good," he said, "then they can look at you and leave me alone." He put his fork down and leaned back in his seat. "All I want to do is play ball, Jake."
Jake nodded. "So play ball."
--
Later, Porcello is almost asleep, curled up in his Oakland hotel bed with a pillow over his head and the covers tugged clear of the rigid hospital corners so he can roll himself up into a blanket ball.
With Perry gone back to Triple-A, he's got a new roadtrip roommate in Dusty Ryan, who is dead unconscious in the other bed and snoring obnoxiously. Dusty falls asleep everywhere, even the dugout sometimes. They rib him about it-'Must be tough being a backup catcher, huh?'-but he just smiles good-naturedly, wide-eyed at the size of the crowd.
His neighbors are having some kind of loud party, naturally. He's not sure who's over there, didn't bother to check when the travel secretary was distributing key cards, and if he wasn't in such a foul mood he'd get up and tell them to shut the fuck up. He can't understand how they're not all asleep, crushed flat under the weight of the time difference and the terrible game they just played.
The door connecting the two rooms bangs open. A big, heavy body crashes down next to him on the bed and jabs a sharp finger right in his kidney.
"Fuck off," he growls.
"Aw, come on, Ricky," Verlander whines. "Zoom's got some cards going. And Anderson ain't even playing, so people might actually have a chance to win for a change." He doesn't look like it, but Josh Anderson is a fucking card sharp, all sincere smiles and bad jokes 'til you forget everything, and then bam! He takes you for four hundred bucks and says thank you very sweetly.
"Sleeping," Porcello says patiently, not moving.
Verlander scoffs. "More like sulking." He pokes again, harder this time. "Come on, it wasn't that bad."
"No, no. It was," Porcello snaps.
"Okay, so it wasn't your best."
"Five runs. The Athletics."
"S'what happens when they put up a lineup of practically all lefties and your ass can't get anything inside," Verlander adds helpfully.
Porcello sighs. "Good-bye, Justin."
"I think your bed is better than mine. What is this, givin' the rookies the good beds? We didn't get fluffy shit like this in my day. 'Course, we didn't have to share rooms, either, so maybe I still win," Verlander grumbles, ignoring him. He punches the second pillow into submission and leans back against the headboard, grabbing the remote from where it was tucked by Porcello's shoulder and turning on ESPN loud enough to wake up people across the Bay probably. Porcello gives up on pouting under his covers and sits up, blinking at the TV and wanting dearly to punch Verlander in the throat. He glances over at other bed hoping to get some backup in getting rid of Verlander, but Dusty has barely twitched, still splayed out on his stomach with nothing but the sheet draped over his ass.
They sit through an unnecessarily long segment gushing about Tim Lincecum's start, which was naturally a two-hit complete-game shutout that makes Porcello want to smother himself just listening about it, but then Baseball Tonight moves on to other National League performances and of course the next one on the list is Harden's seven innings of one-run ball.
Porcello groans and pulls the comforter over his head.
"It gets better," Verlander says.
"You pat me and I swear to God I will shank you," Porcello replies.
Verlander laughs. "All class, aren'tcha, Jersey?"
"Yes. Now fuck off."
Verlander pokes him in the shoulder, but goes, closing the door behind him. After he's gone, Porcello realizes the TV's still on and the remote just went next door. "Fucking-you asshole!"
Galarraga manages to go six-plus on Tuesday, just one run despite six walks, which is enough to squeak out the win over Gio Gonzalez, who at least looks as lost as Porcello feels. Oakland is one of those teams made up of nothing but old men and children, plus Matt Holliday, who still looks kind of baffled that he's even there. Galarraga's win turns out to be all the success they get to have in Oakland, because on Wednesday Verlander gives up four runs through six while Dallas Braden is Dallas Braden and the Tigers offense is, well, the Tigers offense.
Galarraga is smug on the plane to Minneapolis, sitting next to Porcello and chattering about his plans for their mid-roadtrip day off, as if there's something interesting to do in Minnesota. Porcello ignores him in favor of daydreaming about not leaving his hotel bed for the entire off-day, feeling bone-tired and fanciful enough to think the team might let him do it. Verlander's pouting, hunched in the row across the aisle, spread out across both seats watching a Kevin Costner baseball movie on his laptop and refusing to acknowledge anyone who looks at him. Zumaya is somewhere else for once, and now that Porcello thinks about it, he hasn't been around in a while.
"Hey, you talked to Zoom lately?" he asks, interrupting Galarraga mid-sentence.
"Uh, earlier? At the airport?" Galarraga blinks. "At the tienda, you know? He was trying to decide Maxim or Details. No lie, man. Details."
Porcello purses his lips and glares out the window, which offers a wonderful view of the silvery wing of the plane. "Huh."
"He was talking to Grandy about something earlier, I dunno what. I come back here to sit with you and he stay up there. And, oh, no, no, I know el maricón no cogió mi chocolate." Galarraga swears, rooting through his bag and apparently coming up empty on something. "Motherfucker!"
Not interested in another pointless argument, Porcello puts his earbuds in and turns his iPod volume all the way up. He used to like to watch airplane wings slice up clouds when he was little.
After they land and get settled into the hotel, Porcello pleads exhaustion and a headache to get out of dinner with a group of the guys, both of which are absolutely true, no matter how much Verlander and everybody else rags on him ("No stamina, huh, rookie?" Inge asks, flashing his gums). He's had this annoying throbbing behind his eyes since Houston at least, sometimes it goes away and sometimes it makes him want to curl up in a dark room and call home to whine about it. Not that Mom is ever very sympathetic, but sometimes Dad'll listen. Porcello feels like he should play the 'I'm just a kid' card while he can still get away with it.
He bought a book at the airport back in Detroit, skinny and bright pink and by the same guy who wrote Fight Club according to a sticker on the cover, but he doesn't feel like reading. He takes some Advil and flops on the bed in his underwear, feet in the air and his chin propped on his fists, watching TV absently. He flicks through the channels but nothing takes, the HBO movie something with explosions and noise and Colin Farrell, the news depressing. He looks over at Dusty's bed and considers ransacking his shit in case the catcher's got something interesting, but that involves moving and that's definitely out. He rolls on to his back and stares up at the ceiling, tapping his fingertips on his stomach. Eventually he falls asleep.
When he wakes up it's several hours later, the world outside gone dark. Dusty's been in and gone back out, his bag moved from the bed to the floor. If it had been Perry, Porcello thinks, there would be a note stuck to his forehead with some snide comment about his underwear. Dusty's a nice guy, though, happy to stick to the wallpaper, don't mind me guys. The TV is still on, volume lowered, ESPN talking about Michael Vick. His cellphone is ringing, which he ignores.
He gets up and takes a leak and brushes his teeth. He doesn't really like how he looks in the mirror, but at least the hickey on his collarbone has mostly faded away. He touches a fingertip to the place it had been and thinks, this is not how this year was supposed to go. Or, well, it kind of is, but with less sex with other ballplayers. He's just being maudlin and he knows it, because overall it's been a lot more good than bad, and compared to other people's rookie years, what other guys his age are doing, even the bad hasn't been anything like awful.
There's a loud knock at his door, then Verlander bellowing, "You answer your fuckin' phone when I call you, you hear?"
Porcello snorts and leaves the bathroom, flicking off the light as he goes, and opens the door. "What?"
Verlander, dressed in warm-up pants and an Old Dominion t-shirt that's hopelessly bleach-spotted and threadbare, grins in what he probably imagines is a charming manner. Porcello rolls his eyes and steps back to let him in.
"Put some clothes on," says Verlander. He's got a crazy gleam in his eyes. "Grab your glove. C'mon."
He notices Verlander has a glove of his own in hand, the definite shape of a baseball in his pocket. "Um, what?"
"We're going up to the roof."
"The fuck we are," says Porcello, but he's already grabbing whatever shirt he can find and yanking it over his head. He looks down and frowns when he realizes it's the one Jake bought that one time he came down to Lakeland last summer and then left behind (probably on purpose), eye-searing bright green with this weirdly effeminate font declaring I love Southern BBQ across the chest.
"Nice, uh, shirt you got there," Verlander comments, scrunching up his nose and trying very hard to keep a straight face.
"Fuck off," Porcello snaps, distracted by trying to find pants that aren't his nice roadtrip khakis.
Eventually he finds something to wear and follows Verlander out, grabbing his phone and shoving it in his pocket on the way out and closing the door behind him a second before he realizes that he did not grab his keycard. Dusty's responsible, he'll have one when he comes stumbling back, or Porcello will sleep on Verlander's floor or something. He mostly tunes out some story about how Verlander loves this hotel more than pretty much any other in all the American League cities they visit even though he mostly hates Minnesota, and how Zumaya discovered that the lock on the door to the roof is busted.
"I don't really want to play catch," he tells Verlander, who grins.
"Aw, you don't really think you have a choice, do you?"
"Well, no," he says. "I just figure I should lodge my complaints early and often. By the way, I don't really want to play catch."
"Man up," Verlander says.
Porcello whines, "Can't you play with Zoom?"
"Fucker wouldn't do it. Something about Skype with his wife, I don't know. Lame." He makes an obscene jerk-off gesture and laughs.
Verlander throws open the door to the roof, letting in a strong gust of wind that about knocks him back into Porcello's chest. He makes an elaborate 'after you' gesture, which earns him a thump on his right shoulder, but Porcello goes out first anyway. The wind makes his eyes water a little and he turns to face the building, blinking furiously.
"Okay, glove on, soldier. Let's do this." Verlander punches his fist into the pocket of his glove.
They toss the ball back and forth for a few minutes, just ragging on each other for sloppy catches or a lack of location-"How hard is it to aim for my glove from twenty feet away? Jesus. What do you do for a living again?"-and occasionally making ridiculous showboating plays just because. Porcello's arm aches a little, and he can't imagine what Verlander's must feel like, only a few hours after his own start.
"The trainers would frown on this, you know," he points out.
Verlander shrugs. "What? Ain't like I'm playing Guitar Hero," he says. Porcello laughs and misses a catch completely, the ball bouncing in the gravel two feet behind him. "Oh, now that was pathetic," Verlander protests. "Like, fuckin' Carlos Quentin coulda made that play. Helen Keller coulda. Come on." Porcello scoops up the ball with his glove and flips Verlander off with his free hand.
After a few minutes, though, Verlander has to stop, shoulder tightening up too much to ignore now. They lean on their elbows on the railing and look out at the city.
"Hey, can I ask a favor?" Porcello asks. He's trying to decide if he sees any constellations in the city lights, something he always does out plane windows. The hotel roof isn't high enough, though; all the lights just smear together.
"Oh, shit," Verlander says, grinning. "Yeah, I guess." He's leaning on his elbows on the railing, one leg bent at the knee. He holds the ball in his right hand and turns it over and over, trailing his thumb along the seams.
Porcello sighs and sits down with his back to the railing, looking up at Verlander. "I think Zoom's avoiding me and I want to know what I did. And I can tell he's trying to be subtle about it, but he's not a ninja. He's not even, like, Kung-Fu Panda. So if you could pass it on, maybe figure out what's wrong…"
"Ricky, you are solid fuckin' gold sometimes, you know that? Solid gold." Verlander laughs. He drops the ball, bobbles it for a second, and then it's just gone, falling through all the space between his hands and whatever is below. Porcello twists around to watch it fall, but it just hits an awning with a thwack they can hear, bounces once or twice and eventually rolls to a stop at the edge, anyone passing below safe from a head injury.
"E-1," Porcello says.
Verlander flicks his ear but he's still smiling. "Yeah, I'll do your recon. Know why, though? 'Cause I am a ninja."
Porcello sniffs, hand clapped over his ear and glaring. "A ninja wouldn't have dropped that ball."
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