fic: Never Tell Anybody Anything (3/5)
hop backward
Ryan Perry was a secret slob in the most Catcher in the Rye possible way. Rick hadn't lived with him a week in Lakeland before he came to the conclusion that he had never met anyone with fouler personal habits-and that included a little brother who would cheerfully wear the same underwear for a week and popped zits in the rearview mirror while waiting at red lights.
"Seriously. How do you not get gangrene and die?" he asked, holding up the razor he found in the shower, clutching a towel around his hips and looking horrified. "I'm guessing you use this on your balls, too, which is. I don't even know. But fucking sick. And brave."
Perry shrugged, crunching his way through a bowl of Kix and reading webcomics on his laptop. "Dude, it's just a razor."
Rick gave him an exasperated look. "That I think you've had since you started shaving. There is more rust than blade here, Ryan. How are you not getting tetanus? I'm doing your immune system a favor and throwing it away. I'll even buy you a new one."
They got along well except for the Perry-being-disgusting thing. Rick even got along with Wilbur, the massive, fluffy calico Perry doted on like a child. The cat was largely indifferent to Rick unless he was lying on the couch, in which case her mission in life was to curl up on his chest and crush the life out of him while twitching her bushy tail right under his nose. Apparently this meant she liked him, which Perry said was pretty rare.
"This is Wilbur. She's a Maine coon and she will rule the house," had been Perry's first words when he moved in, holding up the cat and stroking her head. Rick had a box in his hands at the time.
"That's not a cat, that's a German shepherd. Also, Wilbur is not a girl's name," said Rick.
"It's a long story," Perry said, grinning at the cat, which was purring loud enough that Rick could hear it from across the room. "I rescued her at a party in, like, freshman year. Almost got my ass beat by some drunk frat assholes who were practically torturing this kitten they found in the backyard, but I saved her. A million karma points to me, by the way, I'm going to be fucking lights-out when I get to Detroit. Almost got kicked out of my dorm, like, a million times for having a cat. And you know, my mascot at Arizona's name’s Wilbur."
Rick shook his head. "I think you need a girlfriend, man."
Perry made kissy faces at the cat, which purred contentedly. "Wilbur's all the girl I need. Aren't you, baby?"
Rick rolled his eyes and headed to Perry's new bedroom to dump the box. "Yeah, no, I know you need a girlfriend," he called over his shoulder. "Creepy."
Pretty quick, though, Perry was the best friend Rick had ever had, because Perry was insane and that seemed to complement the fact Rick was a humorless old coot sometimes. Sometimes they did ridiculous things when it was four o'clock in the morning and they both pitched well their last time out. Usually this meant going to the twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart down the street and seeing if they could buy everything according to some random theme. Once, after a particularly brutal game, they bought only things that were "tangentially related to ice" (as Perry put it), concentrated juice and hockey pucks and rock salt and seven frozen pizzas that didn't last the weekend. Another time, they tried to find only things that were covered in flowery Jesus propaganda, which being a Wal-Mart in Florida was too easy (not to mention creepy) and therefore quickly abandoned for trying to find things that were bright yellow and not food.
Perry usually wanted to get really loaded before they made the Wal-Mart trips, citing the extreme uptick in the hilarity of the middle-of-the-night Wal-Mart clientele that occurs when one is fucked up, but Rick usually succeeded in vetoing that. He argued that better decisions (and therefore funnier results) happened with a clear, sober mind, although occasionally he would slam back the Mad Dog before they went, too. Sometimes it was necessary to brave the lack of teeth and horrifying genetic anomalies that patronized Wal-Mart at four in the morning, and sometimes Rick remembered that he was actually nineteen years old and not, like, forty.
Jake came down to Florida in August, bearing cookies from Mom and Mrs. Tucci and a massive Tupperware container of Dad's marinara sauce. He stayed almost two weeks. He and Perry immediately got along like fire on the Cuyahoga River, trading dead baby jokes and stories about how lame Rick was (which reached near-Chuck Norris joke levels of mythical-ness), sitting up all night getting wasted and watching Shrek marathons sometimes, and bitching about the heat and bugs.
They went to see a movie the next week, but Rick didn't get much out of it, too happy right then sitting between his best friend and his brother. They were all drunk, vodka and Bud Light chugged in the parking lot where they parked far away from the lights.
That night, he went to his room to get his prom picture to prove to Perry he'd gone with the hottest girl in his hometown, because Perry was dubious and Jake couldn't shut the fuck up about how Rick was home by eleven o'clock that night. He grabbed the picture out of a shoebox under his bed, thumbing past a shot of him on Petruccelli's shoulders after winning some big game and another of Jake toasting the sky with a Corona bottle choked with a lime wedge.
When he got back, guiding himself down the hall with a bracing hand on the wall, he could hear them talking.
"He's a fucker," Perry was saying. "A good kid, but he's still a fucker. Like, I don't know. We should hang ourselves in his room. That'll get him."
"I'm not spotting your shit," Jake laughed. "I think you're a cool dude, but I don't really know you that well. But, like, no. Here's what you do. This one's going to require some ninja skills on your part, but the payoff'll be primo."
Rick stopped in the living room doorway and listened. Jake was sprawled on the floor with his back against the couch, Perry on the easy chair with his feet on the footstool. Wilbur came up and purred Rick's legs and disappeared into the kitchen.
"I'm game," Perry said. "Let's hear it."
"Okay, so listen. Every day, you go in his room and you move something. Like, that desk under the window. Every day, you go in there and you move that desk like an inch away from the wall. Maybe not even an inch. Move it a centimeter. And you do that everyday for a homestand, every day you go and move his desk a little bit."
"How is this fucking with him?" Perry wanted to know.
"Patience isn't one of your virtues, I see," Jake observed. "That's concerning. That may throw a wrench into things if you can't carry through with a long game."
Perry snorted, took a drink from a can he'd had on the lamp table next to him. "Fine, get on with it, Little Porcello."
Jake nodded. "Yes, I'm trying, if you'd quit it with the interruptus stupidus. So you go in his room everyday and you move his desk, right? And after a week it's probably noticeable, but don't worry about it, because my brother won't notice shit 'cause he's too busy turning coal into diamonds with his ass and all. Has to be perfect all the time, our Ricky. But anyway. Move that desk, centimeter a day. And then, on the tenth day…" he paused dramatically.
Perry leaned over the arm of the chair, eager. "On the tenth day…" he prompted.
"On the tenth day, you cut your throat in front of him!" Jake said, all good cheer and cackle.
There was a second while it processed, Perry silent and staring at him, before all three of them started laughing. Rick plopped on the couch behind Jake and shook his head.
"I'm not cleaning up after it, though," he warned, tossing the photograph Perry's way. "Or calling 911. You bleed out, that's all on you."
Perry nodded seriously. "Understood," he said. He picked up the picture and whistled high and sharp. "Hot damn, this girl is stacked. How did you-this is photoshopped, isn't it? You just stole the picture from somebody and stuck your own face over the poor kid who took this fine lady out."
"It's actually me in that picture," said Jake, knee-shuffling over to Perry's chair and taking the picture from him. "See, you can tell because I'm much better looking than my brother, and this is clearly one good looking dude in this picture. Look at those cheekbones, man. Look over at the sad lump on the couch. Do you see such cheekbones over there? I think not."
"Man, the things I could do to this girl," said Perry, sounding impressed.
They stayed up most of the night, laughing about old team stories. Rick fell asleep before the other two, warm and happy and completely sure of the world.
"What do vegetarian ogres eat?" Jake asked in the morning when Rick came into the kitchen for coffee, Perry slumped over at the table and snoring, Jake with both hands wrapped around a can of Monster and a slightly wild look in his eyes.
"Oh, god," Rick muttered.
"Cabbage Patch kids," Jake said, actually giggling.
Rick pressed his knuckles into his temples and groaned. "I don't know you," he said. He kicked Perry, who coughed to life, jumping and flailing for a second. "You. Fucker. Quit corrupting my brother."
Perry yawned wide enough that his jaw cracked, while Jake cackled. "Your brother's corrupting me, fuck you. Your parents must be so proud," he said. He ran his tongue over his teeth and grimaced. "Did I chew on a dead baby last night? Jesus."
"Okay, wow," said Rick, shaking his head. He rinsed his coffee mug out in the sink and set it back in the cupboard. "So… I'm going to go be somewhere that isn't here. Like the shower. Please be normal when I come back, okay?"
"Think of me when you spank it!" Perry yelled after him. Jake fell out of his seat, laughing, screech of chair feet on the linoleum and a heavy thump of body hitting the floor. Rick kept walking, because fuck him, Perry was not his type.
He chose to blame it on Jake a few days later when Perry's face did come to mind halfway through jerking off, which was nice and all but incredibly awkward later. Especially when it kept happening.
A week after Jake flew back to New Jersey, Perry managed to con some townie girl into dating him, disgusting habits and all. Rick had a pretty local college kid he'd been hooking up with since before Perry moved in, and the Perry girlfriend situation meant that he had their condo to himself more often than not, which in turn meant he could bring his boy over. That was all well and good until Perry came home early one night and found Rick on his back on the couch with his boy on top of him.
"Oh, Jesus! What the fuck?" Perry shrieked, immediately turning toward the door and banging his forehead against it repeatedly.
"Um, Vince, meet my roommate, Ryan," Rick said, wincing as Vince withdrew roughly and clambered off of him, and then cringing more as Vince overbalanced and toppled to the floor and very narrowly missed braining himself on the coffee table.
Perry gave up on trying to beat himself with the door and came and sat on the easy chair, covering his eyes and saying over and over, "Are you decent yet? Please put clothes on. I need to bleach my eyeballs now, thank you."
Vince gave Rick one last freaked out look, pulled up his pants, and was out of there, not even pausing to find his shirt or underwear. Rick found his own shorts on the floor under the coffee table and put them back on.
"We're probably going to have to talk about this, huh?" he said, sweeping the pieces of the condom wrapper into his hand and crumpling them in a fist.
Perry cracked one eye open and sort of smirked. "I knew you had to be into some kind of deviant shit, man," he said. "You were, like, creepy-perfect, you know."
Rick stared at him warily. "I can be out by, um, tomorrow afternoon, I guess," he said, already running through a list of local motels in his head and finding that he was really going to miss the cat and even the way Perry could not hit toilet even if he was pissing sitting down. "If you could keep this quiet, I'd really appreciate it."
"What?" Perry blinked, looking confused for a second. "Oh, dude. I don't give a shit who you fuck. I mean, I coulda sworn you hooked up with that crazy Katie chick a bunch of times back when I first moved in, so this is kinda… wow. You did hook up with that Katie girl, didn't you?"
"Uh, yeah. Crazy Katie," Rick said distractedly. "Wanted me to gag her. Freaky shit."
"Um, hel-lo," Perry said, flapping his hands and looking a little beyond words. "So, wait. You're, like, kinda gay? That I did not expect. I mean, I don't look at you and think, 'Oh, faggot.' 'Cause you can just tell with some guys, you know?" He shook his head. "But, like, you don't have to move or anything."
"I. What?"
"I mean, the lease is in your name," Perry pointed out. "Also, I don't care."
Wilbur sauntered into the room, giving them baleful looks that probably meant her food dish was empty, and hopped up on the couch next to Rick. She thumped her forehead against his elbow and he patted her across her shoulder blades.
"Oh, baby, no," said Perry, popping to his feet and scooping her up. "You don't want to be on that sofa 'til I have it, like, fumigated or boiled in lye or something."
Rick sprinkled the bits of foil on the coffee table, glaring at his roommate. "Way to be cool, Ryan."
"Dude, gay sex or girl sex, it was still Fredrick Alfred sex going down on that couch-which, no offense, but ew-and my cat doesn't need to sully her paws on that shit," Perry said regally, perching on the edge of the easy chair and scratching Wilbur under her chin. "Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you could keep your gay hookups to your designated space in the future."
"I'm glad we had this talk," Rick said, standing up and cracking his spine. "I'm going to go drown myself now, I think. Um. Tell my parents I love them if they call. Jake can have my Wii, I guess. You get nothing."
"Get the fuck out of this house," Perry replied, smiling.
"Too late now, man," Rick said, shrugging and gingerly making his way toward the hallway.
"Oh, god, I cannot watch you limp back to your room," Perry said, burying his face in Wilbur's fur. Rick laughed so hard he had to hold onto the wall.
The next day, Rick got home from the game and sat down to watch TV, except when he turned it on he was greeted with a 52-inch, high-definition close-up of the ugliest vagina in the world, halfway through the most grotesque lesbian porn ever made. He spat out the mouthful of Pepsi he had just taken and started to laugh.
Perry came in from the kitchen with a canary-eating grin on his face. "What?" he asked. Then he produced the remote and unpaused the DVD. The living room filled with disturbing theatrical moans, and Rick found that despite the offensiveness of the film he couldn't seem to look away. This was the body under a sheet on the side of the highway, surrounded by little blue diamonds of shatterproof auto glass.
"Wow," he said after a few minutes, both of them side by side on the couch and staring at the screen with the same morbid interest they gave Hostel. "Just wow. I got nothing."
Perry frowned. "Oh, sorry, I guess there's nothing in this for you, huh?"
"There's nothing in this for anyone with eyes. It's appalling," Rick pointed out, cocking his head to the side and staring in train-wreck fascination as the blonde with the c-section scar rubbed oil all over the red-head's huge fake tits. "Where did you even find this?" he asked.
"Your brother," Perry said with a rather feral smile.
Rick grimaced and nodded. "I probably should have seen that coming."
--
His start in Minnesota is bad enough that Leyland comes to talk to him, chasing the trainers out of their own room after the game with a glower, shutting the door behind. He looks like he needs something to spit into, and Porcello holds his Gatorade cup a little tighter, closer to his chest.
"It's okay to run into the wall," Leyland says.
Pretty much mortified, Porcello shakes his head. "No, no-"
"I got socks older than you, Rick," Leyland says, crossing his arms in front of him, sharp swish of his windbreaker, frowning not unkindly. "I dealt with plenty of kids in my time, so trust me. Nobody expects you to be perfect every time out. We're asking something of you I don't know we got half a right to, this kind of pressure at your age."
"Sir-"
Leyland holds up a hand. Porcello closes his mouth. "You're handling yourself like a ten-year vet. Fuck, there's ten-year vets wishing they had your poise. Never been impressed with a kid like I am with you, God's honest truth." He smiles, crooked on one side. It looks a little uncomfortable. "Sometimes I think you're a little too serious. It's still a game. It's s'posed to be fun."
"It is fun," Porcello protests. "Lots of fun. Having it, sir."
"I don't mean dicking around with those two chuckleheads before a game," says Leyland. He spits into the trashcan by the door, hawking deep and slimy-sounding, clearing jellyfish out of his lungs. "So maybe we want to talk about giving you a breather. Don't want to Prior you."
Porcello expects to feel a big rush of protests, defensiveness crawling up his spine from his gut to his brain, but all he has is a pleasantly cool relief pooling in his belly. He sags against the wall behind him and stretches his legs out across the cot, nods at Leyland. "Okay," he says.
Leyland nods, gives him a narrow look. "Oh, and I want you to talk to Bonderman, see what you can learn from him about pitching up here so young. I know you talk to Verlander plenty, and that's all fine, but get some other perspective."
He mentions something about it to Verlander, who perks up and decides he's going to have them both over when they get back to Detroit. Porcello thinks it's pretty despotic, the way he just makes the decision; dammit, this is Porcello's mental breakdown or whatever. But Verlander's already got his cell phone out and it's dialing "Bondo," and that's that.
The plane ride back to Detroit is short and Porcello snags a window seat, asleep before anyone sits next to him. He doesn't dream and he doesn't wake up until one of the flight attendants shakes him; if anyone sat with him at all, he's already gone. He's the last one off the plane, moving slowly and feeling like his head's been stuffed with some kind of gummy candy.
He drives like an old lady, almost nods off a couple of times but catches it just in time. He gets home and nearly collapses once he's inside. Wilbur's pretty frantic for attention after not seeing anybody but old Mrs. Kadhim for ten days, but that's not really a new development. He sleeps on the couch with the cat curled up on his chest and wakes up at three in the morning to a pair of big yellow eyes staring at him from two inches away.
"You're not hungry," he tells her. She purrs, rubbing her muzzle against his chin. "No, seriously, cat. You're not hungry. Remember that huge Christmas dinner you had? It was five minutes ago, I swear."
He gets up and feeds her anyway, then goes to his room and listens to music until that isn't fun anymore, feeling jittery and tired but not sleepy. He thinks about calling Perry to bitch aimlessly on his voicemail for a while, since Perry never answers his phone ever, always calling people back a minute later like a drug dealer. But he's worried about seeming pathetic or obvious or something, so instead he watches YouTube videos until it's light out and he can go to the ballpark.
He takes a nap on a couch in the clubhouse. It's nice to know that he can sleep at the ballpark no problem, and he doesn't even have weird dreams this time. He wakes up when somebody drops something heavy on his stomach, spooking him pretty badly and stealing all the breath in him.
"What the fuck?" he gasps, flailing all over the place.
Verlander laughs so hard he has to hold on to the edge of the couch. "Man, I gotta do shit like that more often," he wheezes.
Porcello tries to tug all the details that will make all of this make sense toward himself, but they're stealthy. He blinks up at Verlander, slack-jawed, and picks up the DVD boxed set Verlander used to wake him up. "Was that necessary?" he snaps. He doesn't even like Family Guy.
"Yes," Verlander says, sitting down on the couch with his back up against Porcello's legs. "So, Bonderman's coming over tonight, I already talked to his wife about it. She's the one you talk to when you want plans with him, by the way. Which means you come over, too."
That night, Galarraga pitches very well and Zumaya doesn't, and Rodney has a pretty typical inning in that he gives up a run. They lose. To the Royals, no Zach Greinke involved.
"This is just… undignified," Everett mutters as they diffuse across the clubhouse, everybody too disheartened to do more than pick at the spread, some guys leaving without even showering. Porcello takes his time changing into his street clothes, still kind of second-day stoned and not really excited about going home to his empty apartment and the cat, or later, the Bonderman thing.
As far as he can tell, Bonderman is kind of odd. The baseball-acceptable, oh-he's-a-pitcher kind of odd, but peculiar all the same. He doesn't get the impression that Bonderman has particularly interesting thoughts on things, or many opinions at all. In Spring Training he sat around drinking Gatorade and grimacing a lot, tight-lipped and shaking his head when the trainers got too close, not really talking to anybody and glaring balefully any time somebody tried.
Porcello gets to Verlander's house late, lost in the development where all the houses look the same and the roads all loop back on themselves in curves and cul-de-sacs. There are several cars parked in the driveway, some he recognizes and some he doesn't, and he parks his own sensible, boring car under a pretty maple tree at the far side of the garage. The garage door is open, showing off an incredibly cluttered space, shelves and shelves crammed with boxes. He isn't sure how Verlander can have so much fucking stuff. It's kind of amazing, actually.
The door is locked and has a crumpled note that says 'Don't knock, won't hear it' taped to the doorknob. He texts Verlander to let him know he's there, and then he pokes around. There are a bunch massive rolls of bubble wrap leaning against the one wall, several different sizes of bubbles and varying colors. One of the boxes appears to be filled with nothing but Hot Wheels cars. There are no fewer than four garden hoses.
"Rookie!" Verlander crows, appearing in the doorway, a dim room behind him. "You made it okay?"
"Every house up here looks exactly alike," Porcello grumbles, letting the lid to a Rubbermaid tote fall closed. He brushes his hands off on his jeans. "And nobody seems to believe in house numbers, either."
"You just gotta know what you're goin' for," says Verlander. "Well, come on."
"What's with all the bubble wrap?" Porcello asks, following him through a small mudroom and into the foyer.
"Oh, Emily buys it," says Verlander, waving a hand, unconcerned. "She says it makes her feel less crazy, or something. I don't know."
Porcello smiles, pretty completely charmed. He likes that there's somebody out there who does that.
The foyer of Verlander's house is big and empty, light wood floor and one small, nonthreatening print on the one wall. There's a low console table covered in crumpled receipts, baseballs, and energy drink cans shoved in a nook by the door, and a sea of discarded shoes.
"Got a pizza in," says Verlander, disappearing through a door on the other side of the room, skidding in socked feet. "D'Giorno. Bondo's picky. And take off your shoes. Um, house rules." So Porcello obliges, toeing off his Nikes next to a sadly deflated gym bag.
"Pepperoni?" Porcello asks, following him down a short hallway to a small, ugly kitchen with no cabinet doors and a refrigerator absolutely plastered with photographs and ticket stubs and post-it notes. The fridge is the only part of the room that looks like anyone has touched it in years. The effect is kind of spooky, long empty laminate countertops and an oddly spotless stainless steel sink, dishes stacked precisely on display.
"Um, maybe?" Verlander shrugs. "Bondo brought it, and he's not so much with the specifics. It could be barbeque chicken for all I know."
Porcello raises an eyebrow. "Did it not come in a box?" he asks, even though he knows this is a conversation he'd be better off letting die.
"No," says Verlander. He gestures at an open door that leads to stairs going down. "Bondo's parked himself in front of the big screen down in the family room, if you wanna head down. I'm gonna grab some beer, be down in a sec."
The stairs are treacherous with too-plush carpeting and clutter lining the wall without a banister, because this is a space where someone actually lives. The stairs dump out into a small kitchenette that looks well-used, messy sink piled with dirty dishes and a trashcan that probably needed emptying before the roadtrip. Then there's a T-shaped hallway that leads to a damp-smelling laundry room with a bare concrete floor to one side and a large, well-appointed boy room to the other.
Bonderman, flaked out on one of the big manly sofas with his feet crossed at the ankle and one arm slung behind his head, looks up when Porcello comes around the corner. Porcello takes in the room, the huge TV and the wall of entertainment center goods, electronics that could feed a family for months if somebody broke in and stole them and was handy with an eBay account. He hovers awkwardly, glancing around and feeling way too low-rent to be anywhere near a TV like that. The La-Z-Boy closest to him is hopelessly stained, and the upholstery has a greasy sheen to it that makes him reluctant to touch it.
"Hey, kid," says Bonderman, half-smiling, twinged with a not-quite-pain discomfort.
"Hi," he replies, then immediately feels dumb. Bonderman mutes the blaring car commercial on the TV, every area's got an obnoxious car dealership ad guy and Detroit's no different than back home or down in Florida or any of the places they go on the road. Porcello finds that kind of comforting, one of the great American constants.
"You maybe want to sit?" Bonderman asks, giving him a look.
"Uh, sure." So he sits.
All he can think when he looks at Bonderman is, 'he's only got 205 bones now,' because last summer in Lakeland, Perry was obsessed with that TV show Bones and they had to watch it about fourteen times a day because Perry was older and played dirtier and it was his TV. Not that Porcello was complaining, because he was a morbid little shit on his best days and the show was funny. Perry had a big hard-on for Emily Deschanel, even after he found out she was a vegan.
Mostly what Porcello took from it was what he considered an unhealthy tendency to wonder about the other guys' skeletons. He catches himself thinking about their injury histories sometimes, or how their bones will look when they're dead, how his right shoulder is going to be a gruesome mess if he manages to have a long, full career. He wonders what Barry Bonds's bones will look like when he dies, or Sandy Koufax's, or Derek Jeter's.
He looks at Bonderman, however long removed from thoracic outlet syndrome and down a rib, and he thinks, that's amazing.
"So welcome to being twenty years old and practically anchoring a rotation," says Bonderman.
"I don't know about that," says Porcello, startled. "I mean, JV and Eddie and-"
"And you and then what? Scorched earth. Just 'cause it ain't a ghost town at the ballpark and you don't have thirteen losses on you already, don't mean dick." Bonderman doesn't sound bitter, doesn't really sound like anything at all. His voice is slow and careful, maybe already a little drunk. He's got a little line of beer cans going on the floor in front of the couch, three down and another on the side table beside him.
Porcello shifts in his seat and shakes his head. "I don't think they compare so much," he says.
Bonderman nods. "Right about that," he says with a flash of his teeth. "This year we're in first. No history here unless we go down like the Mets."
"Look alive, motherfuckers!" Verlander yells, coming down the stairs like rocks falling. It smells strongly of pizza, and then he's coming around the corner with the pie and a little cooler. He flops down on the other couch and takes control of the remote. "We bonding yet?" he asks.
"History," says Bonderman. He points at Verlander and nods, giving Porcello a thoughtful look. "Probably better you follow his example of how to have a rookie season."
Verlander swallows a big bite and smiles. "Aw," he says. "Didn't know you cared."
Bonderman raises his hand and looks unconcerned. "Just saying."
"I don't really know what I'm doing," Porcello admits, glancing down at his own hands and exhaling through his nose with a woosh. He's not hungry, mostly just tired, and the pizza has vegetables on it.
"Does anybody?" Bonderman asks, zen-like. He leans forward and snags a pizza slice from the coffee table and considers it before continuing, like there are answers written on the mushrooms. "Anyway, s'why you're here, isn't it?"
They watch part of a movie on TNT, something with Brad Pitt and a complicated plot Porcello isn't following. Verlander and Bonderman talk about something from a few years back, reminiscing and mostly forgetting Porcello is there except to rag on him for sitting with his spine straight and his hands clutched around his kneecaps.
"You can relax, you know," says Verlander, rolling his eyes.
"This chair is disgusting. I'm pretty sure I might catch something if I touch it too much."
Verlander grins. "Yeah, I found it on the side of the road back in school, had it ever since. Don't really know its history like I do with some things."
The movie ends, or maybe Bonderman gets bored and changes the channel, something. Verlander takes the last unwanted couple of slices of pizza away to a fridge somewhere, then decides he's going to do dishes in the kitchenette to let the bonding time continue. Bonderman puts on ESPN and Porcello zones out and thinks about what he's got to do tomorrow, which is mostly just sleeping late and eventually going to the bank and store to buy cat food.
A while later, Baseball Tonight on TV, and the guys are creaming themselves over the Rockies-Nats game, a tense, out of character 1-0 affair. Porcello fiddles with his phone, deleting old text messages from his brothers and not paying much attention. Bonderman makes a funny sound, looking over at Porcello and narrowing his eyes, glancing back at the TV, then back to Porcello.
"That's kinda freaky," he says after a moment. "Turn your head." Porcello does, confused but trusting that he'll find out soon enough. "You're, like, a clone of Huston Street, man. Weird."
Porcello makes a face. "What? I am not." But something about this conversation is familiar, he can't quite put his finger on it. He remembers when the Rockies were in town back in May, but he doesn't think anybody brought it up then, no 'hey, rook, you related to the Colorado closer by chance?' And Porcello doesn't think it's so true, anyway. Street's a little guy, with eerie-white teeth in a face that got old quick; Porcello is at least half a foot taller and still has baby fat in his cheeks.
"You know, somebody else just said that to me," he tells Bonderman, who raises his eyebrows. "Let me think."
Bonderman rolls his eyes and rewinds, idly mentioning how he would be willing to go gay for the man who invented the DVR. "Rewinding live TV, man. Genius." He pauses on a good shot of Street in profile, fucking with his cap and scowling at something, and okay, maybe Porcello can kind of see what they're talking about.
"It's kinda uncanny," says Bonderman.
It's that word that reminds him. "Oh," Porcello replies, knuckling his forehead and thinking about how cold it was in Oakland. "It was Bobby Crosby."
Bonderman doesn't say anything for a second, giving Porcello a narrow-eyed look that makes this nickel-sized spot between his shoulder blades tingle uncomfortably. "Normally, I'd tell you to ignore anything that motherfucker says-spent most of my time in that organization with him, you know. I roomed with Rich Harden, you know, the pitcher? Well, Crosby was Harden's fucking sidekick that spring training, and then I was stuck with him when we were at Modesto and Rich ended up at Visalia." Bonderman shakes his head, smiling nostalgically, definitely drunk at this point. He leans back against the couch, stretches his legs out. "Most of my life, spent making sure one of 'em didn't get killed being too dumb to live. And Crosby was the only one who could drink legally. What the fuck, right? We were all such dumb shits back then."
"Minor leagues," says Porcello awkwardly. "Everybody's s'posed to be dumb shits, right?"
"Yeah, yeah. But man, Bobby was one thing, 'specially when him and Rich got to winding each other up, but Rich was dumber'n most. Not, like, 'oh, he's a stupid fucker,' in general, but he did the dumbest stuff. And usually it was me who got to deal with it, 'cause he's such a pussy. He's still a pussy, by the way. He wanted to go out when the Cubs were in town for Interleague, right? Calls me all through the week before it, makes plans to go out the last night of the series after his start. But then he calls me the morning of, all freaked out about something and says no, sorry, Bondo, can't come out."
Porcello stares at him, slack-jawed with shock and uncomfortably aware of being exactly what Harden had been freaked out about, certain places twinging where bruises have faded.
Bonderman points at the TV, looking pretty amused. "Oh, and word of advice, since I'm thinking about it. You still got roommates, right? Don't make them dispose of your hookups for you, okay? Be a man about it, even if you room with big, burly dudes who look like they can beat the piss out of anybody. It got real old real fast getting rid of, um." He pauses and glances at Porcello for a moment. "Er, getting rid of people Harden didn't want anymore, I mean."
Porcello blinks, nonplussed and feeling like his skin's been shrunk down half a size, sure he's never heard Bonderman say that many words in a whole day, let alone in one rush (because that is absolutely the most important thing here). He can hear Verlander running water in the kitchenette down the hall.
Bonderman glances at the TV again, expression gone discomfited and oddly understanding, then he shakes his head and un-pauses the show. "Anyway," he says. "You look like Huston Street when you scowl. Don't scowl so much and fucks like Bobby Crosby won't go telling you the resemblance is uncanny."
"I. What?"
"Nothing," Bonderman says. "Trust me. I didn't say nothing." He sits up and stretches his arms over his head. "The fuck time is it, anyway? Justin, don't you got a clock?"
Verlander comes back around the corner, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his hands and forearms still soap-bubbly. He smells like lemon Joy. He has his mouth open like he's going to give some shit back, but then he notices the funny look Porcello's got on his face. He scratches the back of his neck and gets pissed when it occurs to him that he just streaked water all over what looks like a good shirt.
"Time for you to get home," he says instead. "I got it from here."
Bonderman smiles. "Ain't sure I'm good to drive, maybe I'll just stay down here." He flops back and closes his eyes. "This's a good couch. Good couch."
"Okay, then. You call Amber, though." Bonderman makes a noncommittal noise, then starts snoring. It sounds kind of fake, but Porcello figures mixing pain meds and cheap beer might effectively euthanize anybody.
"You need help with the dishes?" he asks, standing up quickly and cracking his knuckles. "I could help."
"Shit, you can do 'em, rookie. Fuckin' hate doing dishes," says Verlander, making a follow-me gesture and heading back around the corner. "I got something I want to ask you, anyway."
So Porcello washes the rest of the dishes and Verlander sits on the counter, crunching his way through an apple with his legs dangling free. Several of the plates in the sink appear to have bonded together permanently, and there's a cereal bowl filled with some kind of sentient-looking greenish goo, which is enough for Porcello to turn the hot water up as far as it'll go and sigh deeply.
"This is giving me PTSD memories of living with Perry," he says, pointing at the bowl. "How do you sleep at night with this in the house? This is a genetic experiment gone wrong. This is a lab accident. I bet it's waiting for its chance to slither upstairs and crawl in all your orifices when you're not expecting it."
Verlander waves him off. "Yeah, yeah," he says. "I'm disgusting. Heard it all before. Emily says the same thing. She don't come down here much."
"Yeah, because she doesn't want this shit to attack her," says Porcello, squirting a healthy amount of dish soap into the bowl and then blasting the fuck out of the thing with the spray nozzle. The green blob slides down the drain with a mournful burble. "Why am I afraid for you that it's going to ooze back up through the pipes and kill you when you're on the toilet later?"
"Okay, enough with the horror movie bullshit. I talked to Zoom. We're gonna have this conversation."
There is something about how Verlander's voice is short and kind of strained that makes the old headache come back, the hollows behind his ears and the place where Bones taught him is a seam running down the top of his skull, some place deep behind his eyes. Nothing good ever comes from that tone of voice. He turns the water down a little and grabs the blue scratch pad. "I'm going to need a little more detail about what we're talking about if you want me to participate," he says.
Verlander looks uncomfortable. He wings his apple core into the trash and wipes his sticky fingers on his jeans. "I want to remind you that you asked me to seek out this information, so you're not allowed to. To, um, freak out."
"I promise not to freak out," Porcello deadpans. "Jesus, what?"
"So before we left for Houston. The, the club, remember? You were dancing with that redhead in that skirt?" Verlander rubs his beard and Porcello drops a glass, smashing it and just missing cutting his palm open on a jagged piece. He turns the water off and swallows, feeing like somebody just stopped his throat up with clay.
"What about the redhead?" he asks slowly, still looking down at the broken glass because at least it's not saying terrible things to him.
Verlander shoots him a pleading look. "You're gonna make me ask it out loud, aren't you?"
Porcello snorts. "I need you to be as specific-"
"You didn’t leave with that girl that night, did you?" Verlander interrupts, winded and panicked like he's scared somebody's going to come down the steps with a gun.
"I don't even know what happened to her," Porcello admits, rolling his shoulders uncomfortably. "We lost her back by the bathrooms, I don't know. I was kind of really, really drunk."
"And the other part of this 'we' was a dude. 'Cause that's what Zoom says he saw."
Porcello hisses like he just fouled a pitch off his instep, but he can't walk it off. This is not the kind of thing you can walk off; this is the kind of thing that nags forever. He wonders how many times he's going to have to have this conversation before it doesn't feel like getting his wisdom teeth taken out again.
He chances a look up at Verlander, and he's surprised to find that Verlander looks kind of worried but not grossed out or threatening violence or anything, so he figures, fuck it, you asked. "Yeah," he says. He dries his hands off on his pants.
Verlander nods once or twice, drums two fingers on his bottom lip like he's thinking deep thoughts. Maybe he is; it just doesn't look right, face like his. "Well, okay, then," he says after a long deliberation. "I mean, weird. But okay."
And apparently that's just about all Porcello can take, rounding on Verlander with his face hot. "What the fuck? Why is everyone just okay with this? What the hell happened to 'it's not okay' and why are you all like, 'don't worry so much,' because I would really like to know. This is baseball. No faggotry allowed. I've seen you naked. Freak out."
"D'you think I'm hot?" Verlander asks, raising an eyebrow.
"No," Porcello snaps, trying very hard not to roll his eyes. "I mean, objectively, maybe. But not in practice. And no offense, but ew."
"Makin' me feel like a million bucks, here," Verlander laughs. "Never gonna get over this, I don't think."
"Laugh now, motherfucker," Porcello mutters, and there must be something in his tone that strikes Verlander, because the smile slides off his face like a blown save, giving way to something sad and curious.
"What then?" Verlander asks seriously.
"Look, you didn't have to sit down when you were thirteen or so and think about why the other guys' stories about jerking off didn't quite align with yours. Locker room? I'm betting that wasn't some kind of hell to you," he laughs, harsh and painful like there are rocks packed around his lungs. "You don't have to be stealthy when you hook up with somebody. You didn't hear the stories about guys who got fag rumors attached to them whose careers got wrecked and actually have to get scared that could happen to you."
Verlander looks kind of shocked, like part of his world is curling at the edges. "So, what, then? It sucks so much being like this in baseball, get out. Go fuck your way through every frat on some college campus, if that's what you want."
Porcello smacks his hand down on the counter next to the lip of the sink. "I decided when I was sixteen that baseball is something I want more. Baseball is what I'm supposed to do. I won't have sex for twenty years if it comes to that, but I won't give up baseball. It wasn't even a choice."
"Boys or baseball?" Verlander smirks. "It's real noble and shit, picking baseball over what you fuckin' are, man. Five, ten years from now, you're gonna be fucked up."
Porcello gapes at him, as maybe some things slide into place. He feels better about the thing with Harden, but mostly out of pity for the other guy. He swallows and looks away. "No, I just. I don't know. I don't have it figured out except that it's not something I want, and that thing a few weeks ago, with the Cubs, and." He flutters one of his hands like an injured bird, jaggy and awkward and in pain. "I don't know."
"Kinda got that," says Verlander, eyebrows all pulled down. "Loud 'n clear, actually. End of the day, though, you are what you are. I'm confused why you're not okay with it."
"Um, hi, Justin, remember what we're talking about?" says Porcello, but he feels like all the fight's been tugged out of him by a string down his throat, like he's been scraped raw behind his tonsils. He slumps against the counter and rubs his forehead. "I don't even. It's not even a big thing. I like girls. I do. They're small and soft and."
Verlander nods. "Sometimes you need more, though." He grins, showing molars. It's an unsettling smile, the kind that precedes something terrible about to follow. And, indeed, Verlander continues: "Like a big, hard cock?"
Porcello covers his face with his hand. "So, okay. I'm leaving."
The rest of the half passes pretty fast, All-Star Break looming bright and shiny up ahead. Verlander and Jackson make the team, and then Inge does, too. They go to Cleveland to close out the half, where they beat Cliff Lee and get owned by Carl Pavano (again). Porcello gets to rest and watch everything with wide eyes and his hand over his mouth, and he finds that the break is actually really welcome once he gets started.
In the clubhouse after the last game, packing up to head to the bus, Verlander stops by his locker, strap of his bag digging into his shoulder. "It's gonna be better when we get back," he says.
Porcello squints up at him. "Yeah?"
"Definitely."
"It just feels like it's too hard sometimes. Like, I'm pretty sure rookie year is not supposed to suck like this."
Verlander rolls his eyes. "Everybody's rookie years suck. Ask around."
"Yours didn't." Porcello protests, gearing up to maybe punch him for false modesty.
But Verlander just dismisses that with a wave of his hand. "Nah, weak year for it, that's all. But my point is don't get all fucked up about, you know, all of it. The baseball stuff and the not-baseball stuff, too. What you do is make adjustments."
"I'm twenty years old, you know?" says Porcello, sitting down and wrecking his hands through his hair and rubbing his chin. He needs to shave. He'll get to that eventually, maybe back home. "Too young for all this."
"We're all too young for it, probably," Verlander agrees. He adjusts the strap of his bag and nods. "So, hey, I'll see you in New York, okay?"
"I'll see you on TV," says Porcello, smiling. Verlander laughs and ruffles his hair, and then he's gone.
--
It actually snowed on Christmas, and then on Rick's twentieth birthday (his first birthday snow in a few years, which mostly meant waking up to Jake dumping snow on his face and then running away like a little bitch), and then on New Year's Eve. A few inches accumulated, and the snow covered even the tips of the grass at Petruccelli's house, where Rick's former catcher was having a New Year's party for old teammates and new. Rick had his first professional season under his belt, time on his hands, and a pretty girl he met at Wawa for his date. She didn't know he played baseball, and he kept forgetting her first name in favor of calling her by her last name, which was Perry.
Yes, he was aware of how that sounded. He blamed it on the cheesy decorations the Petruccellis still had up all over the house, making him lose his head a little.
"Let me get you another drink," he told her, eleven-thirty coming and going. Mark from Staten Island, who was now "Mark who goes to San Diego," and a kid from Jake's class were telling stories, and she nodded distractedly, patting his arm.
He went into the kitchen and got himself another beer, which he drank half of before finding Pets and the bottle of rum he'd been carrying around.
"Some party, man," he said.
Pets grinned at him, looking even more like a bouncer than the last time Rick had seen him. His upper arms were Canseco-sized, at least as big around as Rick's head. "Ain't it? This is what I get, being a popular motherfucker like I am. My milkshake, man, it even gets anointed, star-quality fuckers like you coming to my yard."
"What? Who told you that? I'm only here for the alcohol."
"What, you can't get Natty Light for yourself? I'm sorry for your life if that's true," Pets told him, baring his teeth.
"I always was a dull boy," Rick agreed.
Pets looked serious for a second. "Hey, your brother was looking for you a little bit ago. He find you?" Rick shook his head. "Huh. Musta got distracted when Taylor Giancarlo took off her shirt. Hell, even you woulda got distracted by that shit, and you're practically the ice man."
"I've seen Taylor Giancarlo naked before," Rick pointed out. "I went to her prom with her. She got drunk and molested me in the bathroom. We got kicked out." He smirked awkwardly. "Speaking of getting girls drunk so they can take advantage of me, I came in here to get my date another drink. What did you do with that bottle of Captain Morgan you had earlier?"
"Pretty sure it's inside of most of the party by now," said Pets, sounding regretful. "Your brother took it when he went to go find you, and you know how he likes to play liquor fairy."
"Jake kills all my fun," said Rick. "Thanks."
The starting third baseman Rick's sophomore year, his name something with a D, came up and grabbed Pets's arm, claiming that some kid from Central Catholic was trying to crash. This was apparently unacceptable on several different levels, and Pets went into full bouncer mode, all 'hell naw' and practically leaving rubber behind on the linoleum making tracks for the front door. Rick got himself another drink and raided the lineup of mostly-empty liquor bottles clustered next to the sink. The Stoli was still half full, and he took that with him.
Some guys in the dining room were drunkenly harmonizing Carol of the Bells, with someone angrily trying to play choir director, shouting instructions for "more bari!" and "I swear to God, I will castrate you myself it means you hit that note, Pietro!" Rick didn't stop to watch, figuring it would probably end in somebody getting punched, but when he got back to the living room he found his date straddling Mark with her tongue down his throat.
"Huh," he said, looking from that down at his bottle of Stoli. He shrugged, took a drink, and headed back to the kitchen. He wished he were more upset about the whole thing, but whatever, it meant he didn't have to share his vodka. People named Perry always hogged the alcohol anyway.
It was pretty hot in the kitchen, too many bodies in Pets's small house and the heat on because of the whole snow thing. He slipped out the back door and enjoyed the fact he could still shiver, even though the back porch was actually enclosed. There was a golden retriever lying on a mat. It raised its head to give him a disinterested look then went back to dozing and dreaming whatever dogs dream. It had a bright green bandana around its neck and a jingle bell on its collar.
He took his phone out and checked his two new text messages, one of which was Jake demanding, where the fuk did u go? ur not allowd to hook up at this party. dont be grossssss, which at least made him laugh. The other was, bizarrely, from Taylor Giancarlo, letting him know she'd seen him at the party and was available for a New Year's kiss.
"What do you think, Dog? Should I be pathetic and obvious?" he said, looking over at the dog. "Or I could just stand here and keep drinking until I'm not cold anymore and her offer sounds good."
The dog huffed and scratched itself, which kind of reminded Rick of Perry when he was sleepy. "This was your idea," he told the dog, and then he called Ryan Perry a couple minutes before midnight.
Perry didn't answer, of course. He probably didn't even have his phone on him, leaving it in a diner or some girl's house. Rick expected a confused call on January fourth wanting to know if Rick needed something on New Year's Eve, even if they had four actual conversations in between.
"Uh, hey," said Rick, after Perry's voicemail clicked on. "It's me. I'm drunk and my date ditched me and that means you get to listen to me being drunk because nobody else will, and." He took a drink and leaned back against the house. "Hope your night is better than mine. I mean, mine might improve. Somebody might have brought a hot cousin who doesn't know who I am. I should go find out. And stop hiding from the party. And make sure Jake's okay. He doesn't have any survival instincts, and I'm worried he might go for the Jungle Juice. So. Uh." Inside, he could hear them starting the countdown, ten-nine-eight. "Well, it's almost 2009. Huh. Three, two-happy New Year, I guess. Wonder what'll happen this year. Uh, well, bye."
Shaking his head, he shoved his phone back in his pocket and drained the rest of the bottle. "Don't judge me," he told the dog. The dog sat up and yawned, whine drowned out as somebody in the neighborhood set off fireworks. Rick didn't like firecrackers, didn’t like the sound they made or the mess. He always cringed when he heard them. Inside, the party was all "Auld Lang Syne" and cheering. He missed baseball so much his hands shook.
He sat down and stretched his legs out in front of him, his boots just hitting the snow line. The dog came ambling over, jingling and jangling, and stuck its face in his. "Happy 2009, dog." The dog slurped him, a big savoring lick from his chin to his eyebrows. "Yes, thank you. Of course you end up being my New Year's kiss."
"You would be macking on the dogs, you degenerate." Jake was standing in the doorway with his fingers hooked over the top of the frame. "Next you'll be trying to make out with me or something."
"Once you've done bestiality, incest isn't much of a step down." Rick shrugged. "You can bottom, though."
Jake laughed and came and sat on the other side of the dog, scratching behind its ears. "I am not like you," he said.
"This is true," Rick agreed. "So it's a new year. New beginnings, yadda yadda."
"Yep. Please be less lame this year, okay?"
"Hey, what did I get you for Christmas again? Oh, that's right, a car."
"You didn't buy me a car, you cheap prick, you bought me a Prius. You bought me a crumpled Pepsi can that somebody got drunk and outfitted with a lawn mower engine and some seats."
Rick laughed. The dog huffed. "I'm implying that you need to love the earth. It's the only one we get," he sing-songed.
Jake grinned, premolars showing. "I'll show you my love for the earth, cocksucker. How are you this lame? How does nobody notice?"
"I'm really good at baseball, apparently."
but wait! there's more!
Ryan Perry was a secret slob in the most Catcher in the Rye possible way. Rick hadn't lived with him a week in Lakeland before he came to the conclusion that he had never met anyone with fouler personal habits-and that included a little brother who would cheerfully wear the same underwear for a week and popped zits in the rearview mirror while waiting at red lights.
"Seriously. How do you not get gangrene and die?" he asked, holding up the razor he found in the shower, clutching a towel around his hips and looking horrified. "I'm guessing you use this on your balls, too, which is. I don't even know. But fucking sick. And brave."
Perry shrugged, crunching his way through a bowl of Kix and reading webcomics on his laptop. "Dude, it's just a razor."
Rick gave him an exasperated look. "That I think you've had since you started shaving. There is more rust than blade here, Ryan. How are you not getting tetanus? I'm doing your immune system a favor and throwing it away. I'll even buy you a new one."
They got along well except for the Perry-being-disgusting thing. Rick even got along with Wilbur, the massive, fluffy calico Perry doted on like a child. The cat was largely indifferent to Rick unless he was lying on the couch, in which case her mission in life was to curl up on his chest and crush the life out of him while twitching her bushy tail right under his nose. Apparently this meant she liked him, which Perry said was pretty rare.
"This is Wilbur. She's a Maine coon and she will rule the house," had been Perry's first words when he moved in, holding up the cat and stroking her head. Rick had a box in his hands at the time.
"That's not a cat, that's a German shepherd. Also, Wilbur is not a girl's name," said Rick.
"It's a long story," Perry said, grinning at the cat, which was purring loud enough that Rick could hear it from across the room. "I rescued her at a party in, like, freshman year. Almost got my ass beat by some drunk frat assholes who were practically torturing this kitten they found in the backyard, but I saved her. A million karma points to me, by the way, I'm going to be fucking lights-out when I get to Detroit. Almost got kicked out of my dorm, like, a million times for having a cat. And you know, my mascot at Arizona's name’s Wilbur."
Rick shook his head. "I think you need a girlfriend, man."
Perry made kissy faces at the cat, which purred contentedly. "Wilbur's all the girl I need. Aren't you, baby?"
Rick rolled his eyes and headed to Perry's new bedroom to dump the box. "Yeah, no, I know you need a girlfriend," he called over his shoulder. "Creepy."
Pretty quick, though, Perry was the best friend Rick had ever had, because Perry was insane and that seemed to complement the fact Rick was a humorless old coot sometimes. Sometimes they did ridiculous things when it was four o'clock in the morning and they both pitched well their last time out. Usually this meant going to the twenty-four-hour Wal-Mart down the street and seeing if they could buy everything according to some random theme. Once, after a particularly brutal game, they bought only things that were "tangentially related to ice" (as Perry put it), concentrated juice and hockey pucks and rock salt and seven frozen pizzas that didn't last the weekend. Another time, they tried to find only things that were covered in flowery Jesus propaganda, which being a Wal-Mart in Florida was too easy (not to mention creepy) and therefore quickly abandoned for trying to find things that were bright yellow and not food.
Perry usually wanted to get really loaded before they made the Wal-Mart trips, citing the extreme uptick in the hilarity of the middle-of-the-night Wal-Mart clientele that occurs when one is fucked up, but Rick usually succeeded in vetoing that. He argued that better decisions (and therefore funnier results) happened with a clear, sober mind, although occasionally he would slam back the Mad Dog before they went, too. Sometimes it was necessary to brave the lack of teeth and horrifying genetic anomalies that patronized Wal-Mart at four in the morning, and sometimes Rick remembered that he was actually nineteen years old and not, like, forty.
Jake came down to Florida in August, bearing cookies from Mom and Mrs. Tucci and a massive Tupperware container of Dad's marinara sauce. He stayed almost two weeks. He and Perry immediately got along like fire on the Cuyahoga River, trading dead baby jokes and stories about how lame Rick was (which reached near-Chuck Norris joke levels of mythical-ness), sitting up all night getting wasted and watching Shrek marathons sometimes, and bitching about the heat and bugs.
They went to see a movie the next week, but Rick didn't get much out of it, too happy right then sitting between his best friend and his brother. They were all drunk, vodka and Bud Light chugged in the parking lot where they parked far away from the lights.
That night, he went to his room to get his prom picture to prove to Perry he'd gone with the hottest girl in his hometown, because Perry was dubious and Jake couldn't shut the fuck up about how Rick was home by eleven o'clock that night. He grabbed the picture out of a shoebox under his bed, thumbing past a shot of him on Petruccelli's shoulders after winning some big game and another of Jake toasting the sky with a Corona bottle choked with a lime wedge.
When he got back, guiding himself down the hall with a bracing hand on the wall, he could hear them talking.
"He's a fucker," Perry was saying. "A good kid, but he's still a fucker. Like, I don't know. We should hang ourselves in his room. That'll get him."
"I'm not spotting your shit," Jake laughed. "I think you're a cool dude, but I don't really know you that well. But, like, no. Here's what you do. This one's going to require some ninja skills on your part, but the payoff'll be primo."
Rick stopped in the living room doorway and listened. Jake was sprawled on the floor with his back against the couch, Perry on the easy chair with his feet on the footstool. Wilbur came up and purred Rick's legs and disappeared into the kitchen.
"I'm game," Perry said. "Let's hear it."
"Okay, so listen. Every day, you go in his room and you move something. Like, that desk under the window. Every day, you go in there and you move that desk like an inch away from the wall. Maybe not even an inch. Move it a centimeter. And you do that everyday for a homestand, every day you go and move his desk a little bit."
"How is this fucking with him?" Perry wanted to know.
"Patience isn't one of your virtues, I see," Jake observed. "That's concerning. That may throw a wrench into things if you can't carry through with a long game."
Perry snorted, took a drink from a can he'd had on the lamp table next to him. "Fine, get on with it, Little Porcello."
Jake nodded. "Yes, I'm trying, if you'd quit it with the interruptus stupidus. So you go in his room everyday and you move his desk, right? And after a week it's probably noticeable, but don't worry about it, because my brother won't notice shit 'cause he's too busy turning coal into diamonds with his ass and all. Has to be perfect all the time, our Ricky. But anyway. Move that desk, centimeter a day. And then, on the tenth day…" he paused dramatically.
Perry leaned over the arm of the chair, eager. "On the tenth day…" he prompted.
"On the tenth day, you cut your throat in front of him!" Jake said, all good cheer and cackle.
There was a second while it processed, Perry silent and staring at him, before all three of them started laughing. Rick plopped on the couch behind Jake and shook his head.
"I'm not cleaning up after it, though," he warned, tossing the photograph Perry's way. "Or calling 911. You bleed out, that's all on you."
Perry nodded seriously. "Understood," he said. He picked up the picture and whistled high and sharp. "Hot damn, this girl is stacked. How did you-this is photoshopped, isn't it? You just stole the picture from somebody and stuck your own face over the poor kid who took this fine lady out."
"It's actually me in that picture," said Jake, knee-shuffling over to Perry's chair and taking the picture from him. "See, you can tell because I'm much better looking than my brother, and this is clearly one good looking dude in this picture. Look at those cheekbones, man. Look over at the sad lump on the couch. Do you see such cheekbones over there? I think not."
"Man, the things I could do to this girl," said Perry, sounding impressed.
They stayed up most of the night, laughing about old team stories. Rick fell asleep before the other two, warm and happy and completely sure of the world.
"What do vegetarian ogres eat?" Jake asked in the morning when Rick came into the kitchen for coffee, Perry slumped over at the table and snoring, Jake with both hands wrapped around a can of Monster and a slightly wild look in his eyes.
"Oh, god," Rick muttered.
"Cabbage Patch kids," Jake said, actually giggling.
Rick pressed his knuckles into his temples and groaned. "I don't know you," he said. He kicked Perry, who coughed to life, jumping and flailing for a second. "You. Fucker. Quit corrupting my brother."
Perry yawned wide enough that his jaw cracked, while Jake cackled. "Your brother's corrupting me, fuck you. Your parents must be so proud," he said. He ran his tongue over his teeth and grimaced. "Did I chew on a dead baby last night? Jesus."
"Okay, wow," said Rick, shaking his head. He rinsed his coffee mug out in the sink and set it back in the cupboard. "So… I'm going to go be somewhere that isn't here. Like the shower. Please be normal when I come back, okay?"
"Think of me when you spank it!" Perry yelled after him. Jake fell out of his seat, laughing, screech of chair feet on the linoleum and a heavy thump of body hitting the floor. Rick kept walking, because fuck him, Perry was not his type.
He chose to blame it on Jake a few days later when Perry's face did come to mind halfway through jerking off, which was nice and all but incredibly awkward later. Especially when it kept happening.
A week after Jake flew back to New Jersey, Perry managed to con some townie girl into dating him, disgusting habits and all. Rick had a pretty local college kid he'd been hooking up with since before Perry moved in, and the Perry girlfriend situation meant that he had their condo to himself more often than not, which in turn meant he could bring his boy over. That was all well and good until Perry came home early one night and found Rick on his back on the couch with his boy on top of him.
"Oh, Jesus! What the fuck?" Perry shrieked, immediately turning toward the door and banging his forehead against it repeatedly.
"Um, Vince, meet my roommate, Ryan," Rick said, wincing as Vince withdrew roughly and clambered off of him, and then cringing more as Vince overbalanced and toppled to the floor and very narrowly missed braining himself on the coffee table.
Perry gave up on trying to beat himself with the door and came and sat on the easy chair, covering his eyes and saying over and over, "Are you decent yet? Please put clothes on. I need to bleach my eyeballs now, thank you."
Vince gave Rick one last freaked out look, pulled up his pants, and was out of there, not even pausing to find his shirt or underwear. Rick found his own shorts on the floor under the coffee table and put them back on.
"We're probably going to have to talk about this, huh?" he said, sweeping the pieces of the condom wrapper into his hand and crumpling them in a fist.
Perry cracked one eye open and sort of smirked. "I knew you had to be into some kind of deviant shit, man," he said. "You were, like, creepy-perfect, you know."
Rick stared at him warily. "I can be out by, um, tomorrow afternoon, I guess," he said, already running through a list of local motels in his head and finding that he was really going to miss the cat and even the way Perry could not hit toilet even if he was pissing sitting down. "If you could keep this quiet, I'd really appreciate it."
"What?" Perry blinked, looking confused for a second. "Oh, dude. I don't give a shit who you fuck. I mean, I coulda sworn you hooked up with that crazy Katie chick a bunch of times back when I first moved in, so this is kinda… wow. You did hook up with that Katie girl, didn't you?"
"Uh, yeah. Crazy Katie," Rick said distractedly. "Wanted me to gag her. Freaky shit."
"Um, hel-lo," Perry said, flapping his hands and looking a little beyond words. "So, wait. You're, like, kinda gay? That I did not expect. I mean, I don't look at you and think, 'Oh, faggot.' 'Cause you can just tell with some guys, you know?" He shook his head. "But, like, you don't have to move or anything."
"I. What?"
"I mean, the lease is in your name," Perry pointed out. "Also, I don't care."
Wilbur sauntered into the room, giving them baleful looks that probably meant her food dish was empty, and hopped up on the couch next to Rick. She thumped her forehead against his elbow and he patted her across her shoulder blades.
"Oh, baby, no," said Perry, popping to his feet and scooping her up. "You don't want to be on that sofa 'til I have it, like, fumigated or boiled in lye or something."
Rick sprinkled the bits of foil on the coffee table, glaring at his roommate. "Way to be cool, Ryan."
"Dude, gay sex or girl sex, it was still Fredrick Alfred sex going down on that couch-which, no offense, but ew-and my cat doesn't need to sully her paws on that shit," Perry said regally, perching on the edge of the easy chair and scratching Wilbur under her chin. "Anyway, I'd appreciate it if you could keep your gay hookups to your designated space in the future."
"I'm glad we had this talk," Rick said, standing up and cracking his spine. "I'm going to go drown myself now, I think. Um. Tell my parents I love them if they call. Jake can have my Wii, I guess. You get nothing."
"Get the fuck out of this house," Perry replied, smiling.
"Too late now, man," Rick said, shrugging and gingerly making his way toward the hallway.
"Oh, god, I cannot watch you limp back to your room," Perry said, burying his face in Wilbur's fur. Rick laughed so hard he had to hold onto the wall.
The next day, Rick got home from the game and sat down to watch TV, except when he turned it on he was greeted with a 52-inch, high-definition close-up of the ugliest vagina in the world, halfway through the most grotesque lesbian porn ever made. He spat out the mouthful of Pepsi he had just taken and started to laugh.
Perry came in from the kitchen with a canary-eating grin on his face. "What?" he asked. Then he produced the remote and unpaused the DVD. The living room filled with disturbing theatrical moans, and Rick found that despite the offensiveness of the film he couldn't seem to look away. This was the body under a sheet on the side of the highway, surrounded by little blue diamonds of shatterproof auto glass.
"Wow," he said after a few minutes, both of them side by side on the couch and staring at the screen with the same morbid interest they gave Hostel. "Just wow. I got nothing."
Perry frowned. "Oh, sorry, I guess there's nothing in this for you, huh?"
"There's nothing in this for anyone with eyes. It's appalling," Rick pointed out, cocking his head to the side and staring in train-wreck fascination as the blonde with the c-section scar rubbed oil all over the red-head's huge fake tits. "Where did you even find this?" he asked.
"Your brother," Perry said with a rather feral smile.
Rick grimaced and nodded. "I probably should have seen that coming."
--
His start in Minnesota is bad enough that Leyland comes to talk to him, chasing the trainers out of their own room after the game with a glower, shutting the door behind. He looks like he needs something to spit into, and Porcello holds his Gatorade cup a little tighter, closer to his chest.
"It's okay to run into the wall," Leyland says.
Pretty much mortified, Porcello shakes his head. "No, no-"
"I got socks older than you, Rick," Leyland says, crossing his arms in front of him, sharp swish of his windbreaker, frowning not unkindly. "I dealt with plenty of kids in my time, so trust me. Nobody expects you to be perfect every time out. We're asking something of you I don't know we got half a right to, this kind of pressure at your age."
"Sir-"
Leyland holds up a hand. Porcello closes his mouth. "You're handling yourself like a ten-year vet. Fuck, there's ten-year vets wishing they had your poise. Never been impressed with a kid like I am with you, God's honest truth." He smiles, crooked on one side. It looks a little uncomfortable. "Sometimes I think you're a little too serious. It's still a game. It's s'posed to be fun."
"It is fun," Porcello protests. "Lots of fun. Having it, sir."
"I don't mean dicking around with those two chuckleheads before a game," says Leyland. He spits into the trashcan by the door, hawking deep and slimy-sounding, clearing jellyfish out of his lungs. "So maybe we want to talk about giving you a breather. Don't want to Prior you."
Porcello expects to feel a big rush of protests, defensiveness crawling up his spine from his gut to his brain, but all he has is a pleasantly cool relief pooling in his belly. He sags against the wall behind him and stretches his legs out across the cot, nods at Leyland. "Okay," he says.
Leyland nods, gives him a narrow look. "Oh, and I want you to talk to Bonderman, see what you can learn from him about pitching up here so young. I know you talk to Verlander plenty, and that's all fine, but get some other perspective."
He mentions something about it to Verlander, who perks up and decides he's going to have them both over when they get back to Detroit. Porcello thinks it's pretty despotic, the way he just makes the decision; dammit, this is Porcello's mental breakdown or whatever. But Verlander's already got his cell phone out and it's dialing "Bondo," and that's that.
The plane ride back to Detroit is short and Porcello snags a window seat, asleep before anyone sits next to him. He doesn't dream and he doesn't wake up until one of the flight attendants shakes him; if anyone sat with him at all, he's already gone. He's the last one off the plane, moving slowly and feeling like his head's been stuffed with some kind of gummy candy.
He drives like an old lady, almost nods off a couple of times but catches it just in time. He gets home and nearly collapses once he's inside. Wilbur's pretty frantic for attention after not seeing anybody but old Mrs. Kadhim for ten days, but that's not really a new development. He sleeps on the couch with the cat curled up on his chest and wakes up at three in the morning to a pair of big yellow eyes staring at him from two inches away.
"You're not hungry," he tells her. She purrs, rubbing her muzzle against his chin. "No, seriously, cat. You're not hungry. Remember that huge Christmas dinner you had? It was five minutes ago, I swear."
He gets up and feeds her anyway, then goes to his room and listens to music until that isn't fun anymore, feeling jittery and tired but not sleepy. He thinks about calling Perry to bitch aimlessly on his voicemail for a while, since Perry never answers his phone ever, always calling people back a minute later like a drug dealer. But he's worried about seeming pathetic or obvious or something, so instead he watches YouTube videos until it's light out and he can go to the ballpark.
He takes a nap on a couch in the clubhouse. It's nice to know that he can sleep at the ballpark no problem, and he doesn't even have weird dreams this time. He wakes up when somebody drops something heavy on his stomach, spooking him pretty badly and stealing all the breath in him.
"What the fuck?" he gasps, flailing all over the place.
Verlander laughs so hard he has to hold on to the edge of the couch. "Man, I gotta do shit like that more often," he wheezes.
Porcello tries to tug all the details that will make all of this make sense toward himself, but they're stealthy. He blinks up at Verlander, slack-jawed, and picks up the DVD boxed set Verlander used to wake him up. "Was that necessary?" he snaps. He doesn't even like Family Guy.
"Yes," Verlander says, sitting down on the couch with his back up against Porcello's legs. "So, Bonderman's coming over tonight, I already talked to his wife about it. She's the one you talk to when you want plans with him, by the way. Which means you come over, too."
That night, Galarraga pitches very well and Zumaya doesn't, and Rodney has a pretty typical inning in that he gives up a run. They lose. To the Royals, no Zach Greinke involved.
"This is just… undignified," Everett mutters as they diffuse across the clubhouse, everybody too disheartened to do more than pick at the spread, some guys leaving without even showering. Porcello takes his time changing into his street clothes, still kind of second-day stoned and not really excited about going home to his empty apartment and the cat, or later, the Bonderman thing.
As far as he can tell, Bonderman is kind of odd. The baseball-acceptable, oh-he's-a-pitcher kind of odd, but peculiar all the same. He doesn't get the impression that Bonderman has particularly interesting thoughts on things, or many opinions at all. In Spring Training he sat around drinking Gatorade and grimacing a lot, tight-lipped and shaking his head when the trainers got too close, not really talking to anybody and glaring balefully any time somebody tried.
Porcello gets to Verlander's house late, lost in the development where all the houses look the same and the roads all loop back on themselves in curves and cul-de-sacs. There are several cars parked in the driveway, some he recognizes and some he doesn't, and he parks his own sensible, boring car under a pretty maple tree at the far side of the garage. The garage door is open, showing off an incredibly cluttered space, shelves and shelves crammed with boxes. He isn't sure how Verlander can have so much fucking stuff. It's kind of amazing, actually.
The door is locked and has a crumpled note that says 'Don't knock, won't hear it' taped to the doorknob. He texts Verlander to let him know he's there, and then he pokes around. There are a bunch massive rolls of bubble wrap leaning against the one wall, several different sizes of bubbles and varying colors. One of the boxes appears to be filled with nothing but Hot Wheels cars. There are no fewer than four garden hoses.
"Rookie!" Verlander crows, appearing in the doorway, a dim room behind him. "You made it okay?"
"Every house up here looks exactly alike," Porcello grumbles, letting the lid to a Rubbermaid tote fall closed. He brushes his hands off on his jeans. "And nobody seems to believe in house numbers, either."
"You just gotta know what you're goin' for," says Verlander. "Well, come on."
"What's with all the bubble wrap?" Porcello asks, following him through a small mudroom and into the foyer.
"Oh, Emily buys it," says Verlander, waving a hand, unconcerned. "She says it makes her feel less crazy, or something. I don't know."
Porcello smiles, pretty completely charmed. He likes that there's somebody out there who does that.
The foyer of Verlander's house is big and empty, light wood floor and one small, nonthreatening print on the one wall. There's a low console table covered in crumpled receipts, baseballs, and energy drink cans shoved in a nook by the door, and a sea of discarded shoes.
"Got a pizza in," says Verlander, disappearing through a door on the other side of the room, skidding in socked feet. "D'Giorno. Bondo's picky. And take off your shoes. Um, house rules." So Porcello obliges, toeing off his Nikes next to a sadly deflated gym bag.
"Pepperoni?" Porcello asks, following him down a short hallway to a small, ugly kitchen with no cabinet doors and a refrigerator absolutely plastered with photographs and ticket stubs and post-it notes. The fridge is the only part of the room that looks like anyone has touched it in years. The effect is kind of spooky, long empty laminate countertops and an oddly spotless stainless steel sink, dishes stacked precisely on display.
"Um, maybe?" Verlander shrugs. "Bondo brought it, and he's not so much with the specifics. It could be barbeque chicken for all I know."
Porcello raises an eyebrow. "Did it not come in a box?" he asks, even though he knows this is a conversation he'd be better off letting die.
"No," says Verlander. He gestures at an open door that leads to stairs going down. "Bondo's parked himself in front of the big screen down in the family room, if you wanna head down. I'm gonna grab some beer, be down in a sec."
The stairs are treacherous with too-plush carpeting and clutter lining the wall without a banister, because this is a space where someone actually lives. The stairs dump out into a small kitchenette that looks well-used, messy sink piled with dirty dishes and a trashcan that probably needed emptying before the roadtrip. Then there's a T-shaped hallway that leads to a damp-smelling laundry room with a bare concrete floor to one side and a large, well-appointed boy room to the other.
Bonderman, flaked out on one of the big manly sofas with his feet crossed at the ankle and one arm slung behind his head, looks up when Porcello comes around the corner. Porcello takes in the room, the huge TV and the wall of entertainment center goods, electronics that could feed a family for months if somebody broke in and stole them and was handy with an eBay account. He hovers awkwardly, glancing around and feeling way too low-rent to be anywhere near a TV like that. The La-Z-Boy closest to him is hopelessly stained, and the upholstery has a greasy sheen to it that makes him reluctant to touch it.
"Hey, kid," says Bonderman, half-smiling, twinged with a not-quite-pain discomfort.
"Hi," he replies, then immediately feels dumb. Bonderman mutes the blaring car commercial on the TV, every area's got an obnoxious car dealership ad guy and Detroit's no different than back home or down in Florida or any of the places they go on the road. Porcello finds that kind of comforting, one of the great American constants.
"You maybe want to sit?" Bonderman asks, giving him a look.
"Uh, sure." So he sits.
All he can think when he looks at Bonderman is, 'he's only got 205 bones now,' because last summer in Lakeland, Perry was obsessed with that TV show Bones and they had to watch it about fourteen times a day because Perry was older and played dirtier and it was his TV. Not that Porcello was complaining, because he was a morbid little shit on his best days and the show was funny. Perry had a big hard-on for Emily Deschanel, even after he found out she was a vegan.
Mostly what Porcello took from it was what he considered an unhealthy tendency to wonder about the other guys' skeletons. He catches himself thinking about their injury histories sometimes, or how their bones will look when they're dead, how his right shoulder is going to be a gruesome mess if he manages to have a long, full career. He wonders what Barry Bonds's bones will look like when he dies, or Sandy Koufax's, or Derek Jeter's.
He looks at Bonderman, however long removed from thoracic outlet syndrome and down a rib, and he thinks, that's amazing.
"So welcome to being twenty years old and practically anchoring a rotation," says Bonderman.
"I don't know about that," says Porcello, startled. "I mean, JV and Eddie and-"
"And you and then what? Scorched earth. Just 'cause it ain't a ghost town at the ballpark and you don't have thirteen losses on you already, don't mean dick." Bonderman doesn't sound bitter, doesn't really sound like anything at all. His voice is slow and careful, maybe already a little drunk. He's got a little line of beer cans going on the floor in front of the couch, three down and another on the side table beside him.
Porcello shifts in his seat and shakes his head. "I don't think they compare so much," he says.
Bonderman nods. "Right about that," he says with a flash of his teeth. "This year we're in first. No history here unless we go down like the Mets."
"Look alive, motherfuckers!" Verlander yells, coming down the stairs like rocks falling. It smells strongly of pizza, and then he's coming around the corner with the pie and a little cooler. He flops down on the other couch and takes control of the remote. "We bonding yet?" he asks.
"History," says Bonderman. He points at Verlander and nods, giving Porcello a thoughtful look. "Probably better you follow his example of how to have a rookie season."
Verlander swallows a big bite and smiles. "Aw," he says. "Didn't know you cared."
Bonderman raises his hand and looks unconcerned. "Just saying."
"I don't really know what I'm doing," Porcello admits, glancing down at his own hands and exhaling through his nose with a woosh. He's not hungry, mostly just tired, and the pizza has vegetables on it.
"Does anybody?" Bonderman asks, zen-like. He leans forward and snags a pizza slice from the coffee table and considers it before continuing, like there are answers written on the mushrooms. "Anyway, s'why you're here, isn't it?"
They watch part of a movie on TNT, something with Brad Pitt and a complicated plot Porcello isn't following. Verlander and Bonderman talk about something from a few years back, reminiscing and mostly forgetting Porcello is there except to rag on him for sitting with his spine straight and his hands clutched around his kneecaps.
"You can relax, you know," says Verlander, rolling his eyes.
"This chair is disgusting. I'm pretty sure I might catch something if I touch it too much."
Verlander grins. "Yeah, I found it on the side of the road back in school, had it ever since. Don't really know its history like I do with some things."
The movie ends, or maybe Bonderman gets bored and changes the channel, something. Verlander takes the last unwanted couple of slices of pizza away to a fridge somewhere, then decides he's going to do dishes in the kitchenette to let the bonding time continue. Bonderman puts on ESPN and Porcello zones out and thinks about what he's got to do tomorrow, which is mostly just sleeping late and eventually going to the bank and store to buy cat food.
A while later, Baseball Tonight on TV, and the guys are creaming themselves over the Rockies-Nats game, a tense, out of character 1-0 affair. Porcello fiddles with his phone, deleting old text messages from his brothers and not paying much attention. Bonderman makes a funny sound, looking over at Porcello and narrowing his eyes, glancing back at the TV, then back to Porcello.
"That's kinda freaky," he says after a moment. "Turn your head." Porcello does, confused but trusting that he'll find out soon enough. "You're, like, a clone of Huston Street, man. Weird."
Porcello makes a face. "What? I am not." But something about this conversation is familiar, he can't quite put his finger on it. He remembers when the Rockies were in town back in May, but he doesn't think anybody brought it up then, no 'hey, rook, you related to the Colorado closer by chance?' And Porcello doesn't think it's so true, anyway. Street's a little guy, with eerie-white teeth in a face that got old quick; Porcello is at least half a foot taller and still has baby fat in his cheeks.
"You know, somebody else just said that to me," he tells Bonderman, who raises his eyebrows. "Let me think."
Bonderman rolls his eyes and rewinds, idly mentioning how he would be willing to go gay for the man who invented the DVR. "Rewinding live TV, man. Genius." He pauses on a good shot of Street in profile, fucking with his cap and scowling at something, and okay, maybe Porcello can kind of see what they're talking about.
"It's kinda uncanny," says Bonderman.
It's that word that reminds him. "Oh," Porcello replies, knuckling his forehead and thinking about how cold it was in Oakland. "It was Bobby Crosby."
Bonderman doesn't say anything for a second, giving Porcello a narrow-eyed look that makes this nickel-sized spot between his shoulder blades tingle uncomfortably. "Normally, I'd tell you to ignore anything that motherfucker says-spent most of my time in that organization with him, you know. I roomed with Rich Harden, you know, the pitcher? Well, Crosby was Harden's fucking sidekick that spring training, and then I was stuck with him when we were at Modesto and Rich ended up at Visalia." Bonderman shakes his head, smiling nostalgically, definitely drunk at this point. He leans back against the couch, stretches his legs out. "Most of my life, spent making sure one of 'em didn't get killed being too dumb to live. And Crosby was the only one who could drink legally. What the fuck, right? We were all such dumb shits back then."
"Minor leagues," says Porcello awkwardly. "Everybody's s'posed to be dumb shits, right?"
"Yeah, yeah. But man, Bobby was one thing, 'specially when him and Rich got to winding each other up, but Rich was dumber'n most. Not, like, 'oh, he's a stupid fucker,' in general, but he did the dumbest stuff. And usually it was me who got to deal with it, 'cause he's such a pussy. He's still a pussy, by the way. He wanted to go out when the Cubs were in town for Interleague, right? Calls me all through the week before it, makes plans to go out the last night of the series after his start. But then he calls me the morning of, all freaked out about something and says no, sorry, Bondo, can't come out."
Porcello stares at him, slack-jawed with shock and uncomfortably aware of being exactly what Harden had been freaked out about, certain places twinging where bruises have faded.
Bonderman points at the TV, looking pretty amused. "Oh, and word of advice, since I'm thinking about it. You still got roommates, right? Don't make them dispose of your hookups for you, okay? Be a man about it, even if you room with big, burly dudes who look like they can beat the piss out of anybody. It got real old real fast getting rid of, um." He pauses and glances at Porcello for a moment. "Er, getting rid of people Harden didn't want anymore, I mean."
Porcello blinks, nonplussed and feeling like his skin's been shrunk down half a size, sure he's never heard Bonderman say that many words in a whole day, let alone in one rush (because that is absolutely the most important thing here). He can hear Verlander running water in the kitchenette down the hall.
Bonderman glances at the TV again, expression gone discomfited and oddly understanding, then he shakes his head and un-pauses the show. "Anyway," he says. "You look like Huston Street when you scowl. Don't scowl so much and fucks like Bobby Crosby won't go telling you the resemblance is uncanny."
"I. What?"
"Nothing," Bonderman says. "Trust me. I didn't say nothing." He sits up and stretches his arms over his head. "The fuck time is it, anyway? Justin, don't you got a clock?"
Verlander comes back around the corner, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his hands and forearms still soap-bubbly. He smells like lemon Joy. He has his mouth open like he's going to give some shit back, but then he notices the funny look Porcello's got on his face. He scratches the back of his neck and gets pissed when it occurs to him that he just streaked water all over what looks like a good shirt.
"Time for you to get home," he says instead. "I got it from here."
Bonderman smiles. "Ain't sure I'm good to drive, maybe I'll just stay down here." He flops back and closes his eyes. "This's a good couch. Good couch."
"Okay, then. You call Amber, though." Bonderman makes a noncommittal noise, then starts snoring. It sounds kind of fake, but Porcello figures mixing pain meds and cheap beer might effectively euthanize anybody.
"You need help with the dishes?" he asks, standing up quickly and cracking his knuckles. "I could help."
"Shit, you can do 'em, rookie. Fuckin' hate doing dishes," says Verlander, making a follow-me gesture and heading back around the corner. "I got something I want to ask you, anyway."
So Porcello washes the rest of the dishes and Verlander sits on the counter, crunching his way through an apple with his legs dangling free. Several of the plates in the sink appear to have bonded together permanently, and there's a cereal bowl filled with some kind of sentient-looking greenish goo, which is enough for Porcello to turn the hot water up as far as it'll go and sigh deeply.
"This is giving me PTSD memories of living with Perry," he says, pointing at the bowl. "How do you sleep at night with this in the house? This is a genetic experiment gone wrong. This is a lab accident. I bet it's waiting for its chance to slither upstairs and crawl in all your orifices when you're not expecting it."
Verlander waves him off. "Yeah, yeah," he says. "I'm disgusting. Heard it all before. Emily says the same thing. She don't come down here much."
"Yeah, because she doesn't want this shit to attack her," says Porcello, squirting a healthy amount of dish soap into the bowl and then blasting the fuck out of the thing with the spray nozzle. The green blob slides down the drain with a mournful burble. "Why am I afraid for you that it's going to ooze back up through the pipes and kill you when you're on the toilet later?"
"Okay, enough with the horror movie bullshit. I talked to Zoom. We're gonna have this conversation."
There is something about how Verlander's voice is short and kind of strained that makes the old headache come back, the hollows behind his ears and the place where Bones taught him is a seam running down the top of his skull, some place deep behind his eyes. Nothing good ever comes from that tone of voice. He turns the water down a little and grabs the blue scratch pad. "I'm going to need a little more detail about what we're talking about if you want me to participate," he says.
Verlander looks uncomfortable. He wings his apple core into the trash and wipes his sticky fingers on his jeans. "I want to remind you that you asked me to seek out this information, so you're not allowed to. To, um, freak out."
"I promise not to freak out," Porcello deadpans. "Jesus, what?"
"So before we left for Houston. The, the club, remember? You were dancing with that redhead in that skirt?" Verlander rubs his beard and Porcello drops a glass, smashing it and just missing cutting his palm open on a jagged piece. He turns the water off and swallows, feeing like somebody just stopped his throat up with clay.
"What about the redhead?" he asks slowly, still looking down at the broken glass because at least it's not saying terrible things to him.
Verlander shoots him a pleading look. "You're gonna make me ask it out loud, aren't you?"
Porcello snorts. "I need you to be as specific-"
"You didn’t leave with that girl that night, did you?" Verlander interrupts, winded and panicked like he's scared somebody's going to come down the steps with a gun.
"I don't even know what happened to her," Porcello admits, rolling his shoulders uncomfortably. "We lost her back by the bathrooms, I don't know. I was kind of really, really drunk."
"And the other part of this 'we' was a dude. 'Cause that's what Zoom says he saw."
Porcello hisses like he just fouled a pitch off his instep, but he can't walk it off. This is not the kind of thing you can walk off; this is the kind of thing that nags forever. He wonders how many times he's going to have to have this conversation before it doesn't feel like getting his wisdom teeth taken out again.
He chances a look up at Verlander, and he's surprised to find that Verlander looks kind of worried but not grossed out or threatening violence or anything, so he figures, fuck it, you asked. "Yeah," he says. He dries his hands off on his pants.
Verlander nods once or twice, drums two fingers on his bottom lip like he's thinking deep thoughts. Maybe he is; it just doesn't look right, face like his. "Well, okay, then," he says after a long deliberation. "I mean, weird. But okay."
And apparently that's just about all Porcello can take, rounding on Verlander with his face hot. "What the fuck? Why is everyone just okay with this? What the hell happened to 'it's not okay' and why are you all like, 'don't worry so much,' because I would really like to know. This is baseball. No faggotry allowed. I've seen you naked. Freak out."
"D'you think I'm hot?" Verlander asks, raising an eyebrow.
"No," Porcello snaps, trying very hard not to roll his eyes. "I mean, objectively, maybe. But not in practice. And no offense, but ew."
"Makin' me feel like a million bucks, here," Verlander laughs. "Never gonna get over this, I don't think."
"Laugh now, motherfucker," Porcello mutters, and there must be something in his tone that strikes Verlander, because the smile slides off his face like a blown save, giving way to something sad and curious.
"What then?" Verlander asks seriously.
"Look, you didn't have to sit down when you were thirteen or so and think about why the other guys' stories about jerking off didn't quite align with yours. Locker room? I'm betting that wasn't some kind of hell to you," he laughs, harsh and painful like there are rocks packed around his lungs. "You don't have to be stealthy when you hook up with somebody. You didn't hear the stories about guys who got fag rumors attached to them whose careers got wrecked and actually have to get scared that could happen to you."
Verlander looks kind of shocked, like part of his world is curling at the edges. "So, what, then? It sucks so much being like this in baseball, get out. Go fuck your way through every frat on some college campus, if that's what you want."
Porcello smacks his hand down on the counter next to the lip of the sink. "I decided when I was sixteen that baseball is something I want more. Baseball is what I'm supposed to do. I won't have sex for twenty years if it comes to that, but I won't give up baseball. It wasn't even a choice."
"Boys or baseball?" Verlander smirks. "It's real noble and shit, picking baseball over what you fuckin' are, man. Five, ten years from now, you're gonna be fucked up."
Porcello gapes at him, as maybe some things slide into place. He feels better about the thing with Harden, but mostly out of pity for the other guy. He swallows and looks away. "No, I just. I don't know. I don't have it figured out except that it's not something I want, and that thing a few weeks ago, with the Cubs, and." He flutters one of his hands like an injured bird, jaggy and awkward and in pain. "I don't know."
"Kinda got that," says Verlander, eyebrows all pulled down. "Loud 'n clear, actually. End of the day, though, you are what you are. I'm confused why you're not okay with it."
"Um, hi, Justin, remember what we're talking about?" says Porcello, but he feels like all the fight's been tugged out of him by a string down his throat, like he's been scraped raw behind his tonsils. He slumps against the counter and rubs his forehead. "I don't even. It's not even a big thing. I like girls. I do. They're small and soft and."
Verlander nods. "Sometimes you need more, though." He grins, showing molars. It's an unsettling smile, the kind that precedes something terrible about to follow. And, indeed, Verlander continues: "Like a big, hard cock?"
Porcello covers his face with his hand. "So, okay. I'm leaving."
The rest of the half passes pretty fast, All-Star Break looming bright and shiny up ahead. Verlander and Jackson make the team, and then Inge does, too. They go to Cleveland to close out the half, where they beat Cliff Lee and get owned by Carl Pavano (again). Porcello gets to rest and watch everything with wide eyes and his hand over his mouth, and he finds that the break is actually really welcome once he gets started.
In the clubhouse after the last game, packing up to head to the bus, Verlander stops by his locker, strap of his bag digging into his shoulder. "It's gonna be better when we get back," he says.
Porcello squints up at him. "Yeah?"
"Definitely."
"It just feels like it's too hard sometimes. Like, I'm pretty sure rookie year is not supposed to suck like this."
Verlander rolls his eyes. "Everybody's rookie years suck. Ask around."
"Yours didn't." Porcello protests, gearing up to maybe punch him for false modesty.
But Verlander just dismisses that with a wave of his hand. "Nah, weak year for it, that's all. But my point is don't get all fucked up about, you know, all of it. The baseball stuff and the not-baseball stuff, too. What you do is make adjustments."
"I'm twenty years old, you know?" says Porcello, sitting down and wrecking his hands through his hair and rubbing his chin. He needs to shave. He'll get to that eventually, maybe back home. "Too young for all this."
"We're all too young for it, probably," Verlander agrees. He adjusts the strap of his bag and nods. "So, hey, I'll see you in New York, okay?"
"I'll see you on TV," says Porcello, smiling. Verlander laughs and ruffles his hair, and then he's gone.
--
It actually snowed on Christmas, and then on Rick's twentieth birthday (his first birthday snow in a few years, which mostly meant waking up to Jake dumping snow on his face and then running away like a little bitch), and then on New Year's Eve. A few inches accumulated, and the snow covered even the tips of the grass at Petruccelli's house, where Rick's former catcher was having a New Year's party for old teammates and new. Rick had his first professional season under his belt, time on his hands, and a pretty girl he met at Wawa for his date. She didn't know he played baseball, and he kept forgetting her first name in favor of calling her by her last name, which was Perry.
Yes, he was aware of how that sounded. He blamed it on the cheesy decorations the Petruccellis still had up all over the house, making him lose his head a little.
"Let me get you another drink," he told her, eleven-thirty coming and going. Mark from Staten Island, who was now "Mark who goes to San Diego," and a kid from Jake's class were telling stories, and she nodded distractedly, patting his arm.
He went into the kitchen and got himself another beer, which he drank half of before finding Pets and the bottle of rum he'd been carrying around.
"Some party, man," he said.
Pets grinned at him, looking even more like a bouncer than the last time Rick had seen him. His upper arms were Canseco-sized, at least as big around as Rick's head. "Ain't it? This is what I get, being a popular motherfucker like I am. My milkshake, man, it even gets anointed, star-quality fuckers like you coming to my yard."
"What? Who told you that? I'm only here for the alcohol."
"What, you can't get Natty Light for yourself? I'm sorry for your life if that's true," Pets told him, baring his teeth.
"I always was a dull boy," Rick agreed.
Pets looked serious for a second. "Hey, your brother was looking for you a little bit ago. He find you?" Rick shook his head. "Huh. Musta got distracted when Taylor Giancarlo took off her shirt. Hell, even you woulda got distracted by that shit, and you're practically the ice man."
"I've seen Taylor Giancarlo naked before," Rick pointed out. "I went to her prom with her. She got drunk and molested me in the bathroom. We got kicked out." He smirked awkwardly. "Speaking of getting girls drunk so they can take advantage of me, I came in here to get my date another drink. What did you do with that bottle of Captain Morgan you had earlier?"
"Pretty sure it's inside of most of the party by now," said Pets, sounding regretful. "Your brother took it when he went to go find you, and you know how he likes to play liquor fairy."
"Jake kills all my fun," said Rick. "Thanks."
The starting third baseman Rick's sophomore year, his name something with a D, came up and grabbed Pets's arm, claiming that some kid from Central Catholic was trying to crash. This was apparently unacceptable on several different levels, and Pets went into full bouncer mode, all 'hell naw' and practically leaving rubber behind on the linoleum making tracks for the front door. Rick got himself another drink and raided the lineup of mostly-empty liquor bottles clustered next to the sink. The Stoli was still half full, and he took that with him.
Some guys in the dining room were drunkenly harmonizing Carol of the Bells, with someone angrily trying to play choir director, shouting instructions for "more bari!" and "I swear to God, I will castrate you myself it means you hit that note, Pietro!" Rick didn't stop to watch, figuring it would probably end in somebody getting punched, but when he got back to the living room he found his date straddling Mark with her tongue down his throat.
"Huh," he said, looking from that down at his bottle of Stoli. He shrugged, took a drink, and headed back to the kitchen. He wished he were more upset about the whole thing, but whatever, it meant he didn't have to share his vodka. People named Perry always hogged the alcohol anyway.
It was pretty hot in the kitchen, too many bodies in Pets's small house and the heat on because of the whole snow thing. He slipped out the back door and enjoyed the fact he could still shiver, even though the back porch was actually enclosed. There was a golden retriever lying on a mat. It raised its head to give him a disinterested look then went back to dozing and dreaming whatever dogs dream. It had a bright green bandana around its neck and a jingle bell on its collar.
He took his phone out and checked his two new text messages, one of which was Jake demanding, where the fuk did u go? ur not allowd to hook up at this party. dont be grossssss, which at least made him laugh. The other was, bizarrely, from Taylor Giancarlo, letting him know she'd seen him at the party and was available for a New Year's kiss.
"What do you think, Dog? Should I be pathetic and obvious?" he said, looking over at the dog. "Or I could just stand here and keep drinking until I'm not cold anymore and her offer sounds good."
The dog huffed and scratched itself, which kind of reminded Rick of Perry when he was sleepy. "This was your idea," he told the dog, and then he called Ryan Perry a couple minutes before midnight.
Perry didn't answer, of course. He probably didn't even have his phone on him, leaving it in a diner or some girl's house. Rick expected a confused call on January fourth wanting to know if Rick needed something on New Year's Eve, even if they had four actual conversations in between.
"Uh, hey," said Rick, after Perry's voicemail clicked on. "It's me. I'm drunk and my date ditched me and that means you get to listen to me being drunk because nobody else will, and." He took a drink and leaned back against the house. "Hope your night is better than mine. I mean, mine might improve. Somebody might have brought a hot cousin who doesn't know who I am. I should go find out. And stop hiding from the party. And make sure Jake's okay. He doesn't have any survival instincts, and I'm worried he might go for the Jungle Juice. So. Uh." Inside, he could hear them starting the countdown, ten-nine-eight. "Well, it's almost 2009. Huh. Three, two-happy New Year, I guess. Wonder what'll happen this year. Uh, well, bye."
Shaking his head, he shoved his phone back in his pocket and drained the rest of the bottle. "Don't judge me," he told the dog. The dog sat up and yawned, whine drowned out as somebody in the neighborhood set off fireworks. Rick didn't like firecrackers, didn’t like the sound they made or the mess. He always cringed when he heard them. Inside, the party was all "Auld Lang Syne" and cheering. He missed baseball so much his hands shook.
He sat down and stretched his legs out in front of him, his boots just hitting the snow line. The dog came ambling over, jingling and jangling, and stuck its face in his. "Happy 2009, dog." The dog slurped him, a big savoring lick from his chin to his eyebrows. "Yes, thank you. Of course you end up being my New Year's kiss."
"You would be macking on the dogs, you degenerate." Jake was standing in the doorway with his fingers hooked over the top of the frame. "Next you'll be trying to make out with me or something."
"Once you've done bestiality, incest isn't much of a step down." Rick shrugged. "You can bottom, though."
Jake laughed and came and sat on the other side of the dog, scratching behind its ears. "I am not like you," he said.
"This is true," Rick agreed. "So it's a new year. New beginnings, yadda yadda."
"Yep. Please be less lame this year, okay?"
"Hey, what did I get you for Christmas again? Oh, that's right, a car."
"You didn't buy me a car, you cheap prick, you bought me a Prius. You bought me a crumpled Pepsi can that somebody got drunk and outfitted with a lawn mower engine and some seats."
Rick laughed. The dog huffed. "I'm implying that you need to love the earth. It's the only one we get," he sing-songed.
Jake grinned, premolars showing. "I'll show you my love for the earth, cocksucker. How are you this lame? How does nobody notice?"
"I'm really good at baseball, apparently."
but wait! there's more!