by Emily Nemens
He tosses a third, but it bounces off the top of the lamppost. He shakes his head, disappointed in himself. “I can make that.” It would sound boastful, but she knows the man can throw a strike from the warning track to home plate. She feeds him another stone and this time the light goes dark with a crack. His whole posture changes, his chest rising like he’s the tallest man on earth. And Tami, too: that shaky feeling she had when he asked her about Scottsdale is gone. Now there’s a giddiness under her breastbone. Is this the thrill Jason was talking about?
“Can you hit that?” She points at the red glow of a camera mounted above the entrance to the gift shop. She’s made a point of avoiding its scope on their tour.
It sounds like a gun going off, the way the camera snaps off its mooring.
“Wow, okay,” she says. That’s the only camera monitoring the store. Her heartbeat picks up, remembering the keys she still has, buried deep in her bag. “Hang on a sec. I have to—” But he’s already launching another stone at a nearby overhead light. No matter Frank’s plan, they added flood lighting in the 1980s. Had to—disability compliance, safety regulations or something. This willful destruction probably would’ve tickled the old guy. Back to the land, to nature’s intention. To his.
Jason sidearms a stone and takes out a knee-height walkway light. “Not those,” she says, shaking her head. “Those are originals. Or from the fifties, at least.”
“Oh, okay.” He nods like he understands, like he’s not glassy-eyed and swaying. He’s rooting for another rock when she touches his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”
* * *
She lets herself into the shop, wraps her hand in one of those geometric silk scarves all the docents wear around their necks, and starts pecking at the register. They haven’t changed the code, and while it has only $200 in twenties and fives and tens, she finds the jewelry case key is still under the cash drawer. She clears out the bracelets, takes a handful of cufflinks and Wright-inspired watches and the silver letter openers. As she grabs a fistful of rings she hears another hit, but it sounds different from the quick snap of plastic and metal and glass, the extinguishing of filaments. It comes from somewhere behind her, toward Wright’s studio and the parked car. This one is loud, a boom thick enough to echo up the hills. Then everything goes dark: the green numbers on the register, the balustrade lights, the remaining overhead floods. Even the lamp glowing in Wright’s studio—the one the tour guides insist they keep on all night, like some sort of beacon—stutters off.
“Jason?” she calls into the dark. “Are you all right?” She hears nothing, sees nothing. Then she catches a movement in the window. She starts, but realizes it is only her own reflection, a dark shadow against the creeping glow of the city. She watches herself for a moment, until the horizon goes bright with red and blue.
THIRD
Let me remind you of our timeline. We’re a few games into the season, a few billion years into Arizona’s geological history. At this point, like a determined left-hander learning to switch-hit, the ocean floor rose. At first, the batter’s success is sporadic and slow, but then—the crotchety old hitting coach barking instructions, yelling at the batter about his feet, his grip, his eye, his goddamn eye—the player gets the hang of it, and the net of the batting cage’s far boundary starts to push out in a steady pulse. Contact, contact, contact, says the crack of the bat, says the creak of rising land. What the fuck did you do, Herb Allison yells into the phone when Jason calls from the precinct at 2:00 a.m. What the hell, Woody Botter hollers when Jason walks into the clubhouse the next morning, looking as rough as a rosin bag after a rainstorm. He did what? Liana asks when a reporter, waiting at the edge of her property, shouts out a question about her husband’s trespassing charge. No comment, she corrects herself, hustling into her car and off to school. That’s their promise, hers and Jason’s. That wasn’t just Twitter gossip Deidre heard: the picture-perfect marriage to the elementary school teacher? A source, and not just a wined-up left fielder, confirmed they’re split. She gets the house with the brand-new batting cage in the backyard. She gets every penny promised in the generous prenup, so long as she keeps saying: No comment.
Up, the seabed climbed, until the Arizona landscape looked more like East Africa, a loose and grassy savannah, dust-brown and baked. Up, the seabed climbed, until the last corals were gone, the fish scratched from the order. They were replaced by mastodons, by giant ground sloths, by bullpen-size beavers. And dinosaurs: a duck-billed hadrosaur darts between the bases as a long-necked sauropod ambles the concourse like a lazy peanut vendor. But no lions yet—the MGM lion, the team’s inspiration, would need more time to cook. And no humans. A few million years would have to pass before the giant footsteps of the titanothere could be shrunk down to a man’s size twelve, to say nothing of Jason Goodyear’s forthcoming signature line. I’d tell Jason to think about that the next time he sinks a boot in the warning track after a downpour. Look at the tiny impression your cleat makes, Goody. Think of those ancient footsteps, and remember: you are a speck.
Not that he needs any more lectures right about now, especially not from a sportswriter whom he only ever addressed in press conferences as “the older fellow with the ’stache.” How quick does a face like mine fade? Does a guy like him notice when a guy like me goes missing, when half the press corps is wiped out in eighteen months, replaced by tweet-happy rooks whose only experience is bumbling through the scores on college radio? Theirs make my early dispatches seem like Chekhov; the new form makes this story, the long route, feel that much more necessary.
But I digress. As the land rose, the Pacific plate pulled west and northwest, taking the taffy-soft plateau of Arizona’s continental shelf with it. Stretching, stretching, stretching, until the crust was so thin that a mountain range was able to push up through it like an arc of pimples on a teenage rookie’s oily skin. That thrust of rock was followed by a flow of basaltic lava down the slope as smooth as motor oil, lava that laid a new floor across the plateau.
I know what you’re thinking: Why the history lesson, chief? What does a new mountain have to do with a major league club? Rocks for jocks? Think about this: If the earth’s skin is so thin, imagine that of a man. If the planet’s minute shifting can thrust a whole continent off kilter, imagine the skin of a person, even a strong one. Thin as a gum wrapper, as tissue.
That “no crying in baseball” line is nice but a load of bull: plenty of us walk around on the verge of tears. Goodyear, strong man that he is. On the verge before, after, and during that encounter with Tamara, as he stood by the sparking transformer, as he talked to the cops. Still on the edge when his agent chewed him out at the station that night, and the next morning, when his GM did, too. He’s on the brink of it every damn morning this spring actually, every time he wakes up and finds himself alone.
COOPERSTOWN
“So, back in September, I was watching a client on the Red Sox and I fell down a flight of stairs at Fenway Park. I blame the merlot. Very nice vintage.” Herb Allison pauses. Dr. Timothy Jewell, proprietor of Diamond Physical Therapy, and Sara Jones, Dr. Jewell’s assistant, take the cue to nod politely. It’s clear Herb has told this story before; he knows where to put in the breaks, where to raise his eyebrows, where to smile. He makes a chopping motion with his hand, which stirs the small white dog sitting in his lap; the animal looks around with impassive eyes. “Snapped my left femur, clean in two. Had to have emergency surgery in Boston then two more at Mayo—the Scottsdale one, no way I’d go to Bumblefuck, Minnesota. You guys aren’t from up there, are you?”
The two shake their heads no.
“Good. A few screws and a titanium rod later, this is what we’ve got.” He pats his leg. “They told me to take eight weeks before starting ‘vigorous physical therapy.’” Herb curls his fingers into scare quotes. “I hope you know what the fuck that means, because I sure don’t.” He smiles so wide his eyes scrunch up.
Sara takes notes as fast as she can.
“I meant to start before the holidays,” Herb continues, “but Marlene said you couldn’t see me until after the New Year. It’s okay, things got busy for me and Kirby.” He indicates the dog. “End-of-year paperwork, MLB winter meetings. Shit like that.”
“Marlene?” It’s the first time Sara has spoken since Herb rolled in to Diamond. Dr. Jewell glares at her.
“His wife,” Dr. Jewell says sharply.
“Ex-wife,” Herb corrects.
Dr. Jewell starts to stammer an apology, but Herb holds up a hand. “Don’t worry about it. Trust the universe, et cetera. Anyway, Marlene found your practice and suggested it might be a good fit. Said you were very client-focused, very discreet.”
“We are, Mr. Allison.”
“So here I am.”
“And we’re very glad for that, Mr. Allison. Aren’t we, Sara?”
“What?” The question interrupts her writing, and her pen skids off the notepad. “Yes, sir. Very—glad.”
Dr. Jewell hardly leans in as he says, “Don’t mind her, Mr. Allison. Sometimes Sara’s head’s in the clouds, but she’s our longest-serving PTA.” The doctor smiles, drops his voice. “And the prettiest, too.”
“PTA? That got something to do with school?” Herb frowns.
“Physical therapy assistant.” The doctor sits straight, speaks louder. “Sara’s got real commitment. She’s been working with us, what, seven years?” Sara smiles. It’s common knowledge that Dr. Jewell hires the attractive applicants, rather than the brightest ones. That’s why she got the job all those years ago. It was not her grades at ASU, surely. Not her references, spotty at best. And not her work ethic, which has landed her on probation with Dr. Jewell more times than she can count. It’s not that she doesn’t like the job; she does. But things come up. Things are always coming up.
“Eight.”
“Ah.” Herb looks her up and down, taking in her blond hair, blue eyes, full lips. Her nice long neck. Also noticing her foundation, thick enough to cover up the circles under her eyes, the eyeliner trying to make her look younger than she is. And even through the boxy pastel scrubs it’s clear she possesses a lithe, athletic body. He nods. “Sounds like a winner.”
* * *
Herb Allison is assigned to Sara for his three-a-week appointments, and he quickly establishes himself as difficult. His leg has healed enough that he can walk, shakily and with the aid of a cane, but he tires easily and prefers to come and go from Diamond in an elaborate motorized wheelchair. It’s a customized contraption, expensive enough to suggest he isn’t planning to quit it anytime soon. (It does stairs! he proudly boasted after his first appointment, when Sara and Dr. Jewell walked him out. He jumped the curb to prove the point.)
Herb spends half of any given session yelling into his cell—his curses can make even Sara’s ears burn—and the rest of it tapping away at the phone’s screen, muttering to himself. Every so often his tone shifts to obsequiousness, “Hey, baby,” and, “Hiya, champ.” He’s so engrossed that she often has to ask twice, sometimes three times, for him to lift his leg or move from one machine to the next. All the while, his yippy bichon frise, Kirby Puckett, weaves between his owner’s wheels and amid the weight equipment like the animal wants to get its tail flattened.
His third week, as she is angling his mended leg, trying for ninety degrees at the knee, she hits a tough spot. Herb, in momentary anguish, drops his phone. It clatters to the floor. “Jesus, that hurts.”
Sara can hear the tinny voice of someone on the other end: Herb? Herb! You there? Can you hear me?
She passes the phone back and starts the stretch again, more carefully. The leg is so narrow under the shiny fabric of his track suit—half the size of its right twin. “You said you just broke your leg?” While she’d expect muscle atrophy with an injury like this, his seems extreme.
Herb, already back on the phone, holds up his palm. “I’m here, Jason. What were you saying? Right. And I’m telling you, divorce is the best thing that could happen to your career at this point. Advertisers will love that you’re back on the market—maybe we’ll even do one of those shirts-off campaigns … I know, you won’t ever show your ass. But your abs, that’s another … Liana, she seems reasonable. Just make sure she signs that NDA, then give her whatever the fuck she wants … Cash flow issues? You’re having cash flow issues?” He snorts. “Fuck you.”
Dr. Jewell is across the room, gingerly extracting an augmentation patient from the seated fly machine. Sara catches him frowning her way and drops her gaze. First tenet of Diamond Physical Therapy: discretion. Dr. Jewell’s built a very successful practice by offering a range of services to clients recovering from procedures they would rather not discuss. Vain wives, prideful husbands, public figures recuperating from private injuries: Diamond is a place where no one gawks at elaborate braces or bright incisions. Dr. Jewell wants his patients to be comfortable, to be put at ease by a firm touch and a pleasing countenance. Not to be given the third degree, especially not by the help. Sara just needs to know what has to get fixed—in Herb’s case, strength and range of motion in that broken left leg. The muscle weakness, the atrophy, the slightly slurred speech and uncontrollable outbursts—those symptoms are none of her business.
“How are we doing over here?” Dr. Jewell says, striding toward them.
“Mr. Allison is doing very well,” Sara says. “Good progress.”
“Glad to hear it.” The doctor watches the pair suspiciously.
Sara’s eyes go wide at something happening over Dr. Jewell’s shoulder. “No! Bad dog!” The doctor turns just in time to see the white scrap of a dog taking a leak against the recumbent bike.
“Ha! Ha ha!” Herb’s nearly heaving, he’s laughing so hard. He exhales into the phone. “Jason, let me call you back,” he says and hangs up. The dog trots over, tongue lolling. “Kirby, you little shit.”
Sara sets down her client’s leg. “I’ll get the Lysol.”
* * *
During his next session, his cell phone conversation is even more heated than usual. From what Sara can gather—and it would be hard not to hear the names and numbers, he’s talking so loud—he is about to finalize an endorsement contract for somebody named Moyers. Something about vitamins, men of a certain age.
“Fuck me,” he says as he ends a call and starts tapping on the screen. “Those geezer-pill pushers are playing hardball.”
“Is he a baseball player, your client?” she asks him. They’re working on range of motion again today, Herb’s heel cupped in her palm.
Herb looks up from the tiny screen, brows knit together. “Is he a what?”
“You said something about ‘left hander.’ That’s baseball, right?”
“Yes, that’s baseball.”
“Is that your favorite sport?”
“Dear, it doesn’t matter if it’s my favorite sport or if it feels like oral surgery—or like what you’re doing to my foot right now, for that matter. An agent’s commission is capped at three percent in football. Basketball, too. Why the fuck would I get involved for three percent?”
She stares at him blankly.
“Exactly.” He looks down, pecks at the phone’s screen for another minute, and slides the puck into his shirt pocket with a smug smile. “Now Hal and this Centrum deal, for instance. My cut’s two hundred.”
“Mm-hmm.” Sara flexes his foot then points his toe. Flex and point.
“Thousand.”
“Oh.” His foot is suddenly very heavy in her hand. The number, two hundred thousand, is impossible to her, and she tries to click through what such an amount could mean: Her long-ago student loans, gone in a flash. Rent for twenty-five years. Her mom’s surgery, paid five times over. A mound of coke, as big as Camelback Mountain, Davis sliding down it, his gleeful, little-boy grin. No, she shakes the image from her head. Not that.
* * *
Sara is drinking coffee in her apartment when her phone rings, a Southern California number she doesn’t recognize. She cons
iders whether she should pick it up. It could be Davis, but she can’t figure why he’d be calling from California. After three rings, she answers.
“This is Sara,” she says.
“Sara, Herb Allison here.”
Her mind clicks through faces and names until it lands on the right combination: Broken leg, little dog. The giant wheelchair. It does stairs! Two hundred thousand. Handsome, in an old-guy way. “Good morning, Mr. Allison.”
“Bad news, kid.” No one’s called her “kid” in years. She’s nearly thirty, and if she’s being honest with herself, her lifestyle since moving to Phoenix hasn’t done her any favors. Most mornings, like today, she feels old. “Marlene is leaving me.”
“Oh … I’m sorry.” The line is quiet. “But I thought you were already, uh, divorced?”
“We were. I mean, we are. But she’s going back to L.A. You understand?”
“Sure,” Sara says, though she doesn’t.
“I don’t blame her. Spread her wings, all that bullshit. I gave her a doozy of a settlement, too. Fuck, I’m letting her live in my house, just to have someone keep an eye on the place. You couldn’t imagine the burden of having a Richard Neutra. I’ve got wackos climbing in the windows just to get a look at the built-ins.”
“I had no idea,” Sara says. She doesn’t know what a Richard Neutra is, but hopes he can’t tell.
“He’s an architect, dear.”
“I knew that.”
“You didn’t. But don’t worry about it. Listen, Sara, I didn’t call to talk midcentury design. I need help.”
The offer: Sara would live in the guest suite—a large bedroom, private bath, separate entrance if she felt so inclined. She would be responsible for transporting him to and from appointments in his vehicle—she’s noticed the Escalade, with its customized lift, coming and going from Diamond. She’d shop for groceries and prepare meals, all expenses covered. She’d generally maintain the household. “I can do bills from the chair,” he says. “And running the business is no problem, or all the usual problems. But someone’s got to make sure me and Kirby get fed.” As if on cue, the dog yips in the background. “And once spring baseball gets going, you’d come with me to games. I splurged on a suite at the new Lions complex.”