by Emily Nemens
Muttering to himself, he pulls forward, parks, and gets out to inspect the damage. The car’s an ugly thing, a rusty Cutlass Supreme in a taupe that might’ve once been white. And it’s angled fifteen degrees off parallel, not really between the lines at all. It’s a wonder it didn’t hit his Porsche on its way in, he thinks. William glances inside the dusty window: the back seat’s covered with sheet music and unopened mail, a few days’ worth of Arizona Republics, and, tucked underneath some papers, the plastic top of a cheap bottle of booze.
He crouches down next to the Olds’s long back flank to inspect the damage. A fleck of gold paint from his bumper is pressed onto the metal, and the point of contact on each car is slightly indented. He tries to rub the metallic stamp off with his thumb, then licks the finger and tries again.
He looks around the lot to see if anyone has noticed him. His stomach churns. Could he just go?
“Where’d ya get me?” The man who asks is lean to the point of skinny, tan and creased like worn leather. His hair, a fluffy white rim that rounds a sizable bald spot, is a little long and very mussed, and his eyes are wide and watery behind large, out-of-date frames.
William stammers. “I—I—I just—”
The old man stoops to study the mark. He’s so close William can smell him—vodka, plus an aftershave that reminds him of his grandfather. His scalp is dotted with sunspots.
“I am so sorry, sir. If there’s anything I can do, I mean, repairs or whatever.”
The old man beams a mouthful of graying teeth. “To this car? I reckon it’s older than you!”
“Well, still. I feel awful.”
“Right.” The old man squints. “You’re that Willy Goslin kid, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.” He feels his face flush.
“Having a go of it, huh? First time out is always sorta—”
A modified golf cart zips around the corner, a wobbly stack of sod flapping on its flatbed. “Hey!” the driver calls. “Hey, hey!” The machine whirs over a curb cut, totters momentarily, and then speeds toward the men, swerving and stopping just behind William’s rear bumper. The driver, a tan man in a polo and too-short shorts, purses his lips and flares his nose.
“Mr. Goslin, is Lester bothering you?” The monogram on his chest has the Salt River Fields logo and under it an embroidered title: DIRECTOR OF STADIUM OPS.
“No, I just was—” William wonders how best to explain the situation. Would they call the cops for something like this? He thinks of the overdue tickets in his glove compartment. That’s the last thing he needs. Sheila would have a conniption.
Before he can come up with a plan, Templeton says, “He’s not supposed to be here. Staff parking’s past third base.” He’s glaring at the old man as he indicates a farther lot.
“It says ‘players.’ I play.” The old man wiggles his fingers in the air and flashes a crooked grin.
“Keyboards don’t count!” Templeton barks and points more vigorously. “Over there, Lester.”
“Okay, okay.” The old man shows his palms in surrender. “I’ll get going.”
“And you won’t do it again.” The short man turns his gaze and makes a concerned face. “Mr. Goslin, I’m very sorry for the inconvenience.”
“It’s—it’s okay?” William’s confused more than anything else, but before he can ask what just happened, the golf cart has zoomed off, leaving with a poof of exhaust.
“We all get our knocks, huh, kid?” With that, the old man raps the trunk of his car twice, gets in, and drives away. On his way out of the lot he honks, sticks a hand out the car window, and waves. “Good game, Goody!”
William hadn’t noticed, but Jason Goodyear is standing at the edge of the lot. Did he see the whole debacle? William raises a hand, hello, and the left fielder nods before walking away.
* * *
It’s said that desert air is good for preserving pianos, and Lester’s Hamburg Steinway, a 1927 model taking up a quarter of his apartment, is just getting better as the years tick by. That hot, dry air is supposed to be good for bones, too, though in Lester’s experience it doesn’t make things better—it just keeps them from getting too much worse.
That’s why all the blue hairs come to Arizona, to keep the slide from happening too quick. Lester also moved here because he was trying to slow a slide, but not into old age. What happened, or at least where it started, was that Scott LaFaro crashed himself into a tree in upstate New York. Lester and Scott, a mean double bassist, had been buddies in Manhattan. Lester was just eighteen, scrawny as a scarecrow, and pie-in-the-sky about jazz piano. Scott had been about the same but with a bass, and they started a nice little trio with a drummer named Kimball Morton. Played a club in the Village every Friday night of 1958, right up until Scott started gigging with Bill Evans. Lester didn’t blame Scott for saying yes to a good opportunity, but the trio losing its low end meant things slowed down for Lester and Kimbo. And then, on that one awful night, they just flat stopped.
July 1961, Lester and Scott were driving back from Newport (where Scott played, Lester listened) by way of Scott’s hometown. They were late getting started but Scott was eager to get home, as he had a big-eyed girl from New Bedford with him. Lester offered the girl the front seat so she and Scotty could talk. She died, too, when they wrapped around that tree.
Lester was the lucky one; he walked away from the crash with a lump on his head and a smashed-up hand. Nearly every bone in his southpaw was cracked or crunched. A string of operations got him to the point where all the fingers went up and down, in and out. After another six months of therapy he could make a fist and play a major triad. Adding the seventh, flatting the third: those things made him wince. And hitting the ninth, getting his mangled thumb to stretch that far? Forget about it.
He also forgot about making it in New York. He’d bought Scott and Bill’s Village Vanguard album—the one they recorded just before Newport and the crash—as soon as it came out. Sort of spooky, listening to a dead guy play, but Lester was glad to hear his old friend again. On the record Lester also heard what he already knew: he wouldn’t be able to touch Evans with a ten-foot pole, not before, but especially not now. A legit piano player with one bum paw? Might as well put a golden retriever at second and expect him to start turning double plays.
Without jazz there was nothing much left for him in New York—a couple of ex-girlfriends he’d rather not see and a cramped apartment that started costing too much. And besides, he wasn’t sure his southpaw could handle the cold of another New York winter—the snow felt like a vise clamping across his palm, a vise that would then fill with tiny stilletoed dancers doing the cha-cha until Lester found a bottle of something. So he decided to try the desert. He had an uncle, Artie, dealing Oldsmobiles in Phoenix.
Lester started playing at a church and then with the Firebirds. His left hand came back slowly, until he was hitting ninths more often than not. And in 1971 he found the Steinway almost by accident—he was chasing an out-of-town skirt he’d met while working her cousin’s wedding. The date didn’t go well—she left him at the hotel bar with the bill and a friendly pat on the arm—but on his way out Lester spotted the Steinway under a big Indian blanket, boxed up and dusty and not doing anyone any good. He gave the hotel every dollar he had and promised every penny he made from the Firebirds that season and half of the next. It was worth it, even if it meant he ate toast and beans for most of a year.
* * *
William could walk back to the hotel—the parking lot for the casino starts just past the end of the stadium’s east lot, a dried-out drainage canal with a footbridge in between—but he drives the long way around, gunning his car up to sixty for the short, clear straightaway. Of course he drives: he’s muscle-sore from the morning’s lifting and dehydrated from the afternoon sun. Besides, he’s got to blow off his steam somehow, and he’s not doing it by running the base paths. He revs the engine and enjoys the satisfying hum climbing up his leg. He got on base twice today, a walk and a sad
excuse for a single, but never got closer to second than a lead-off. He hasn’t been on second since last Thursday, hasn’t visited third for a week and a half.
When William refused his mother’s offer to chaperone his spring season, she suggested the extended-stay option at the Talking Stick Resort and Casino. It was convenient to the stadium, it was safe (twenty-four-hour concierge and security), there was laundry service and a buffet. Her son had to keep up with his six thousand calories a day—they were going to get him to break 175, hook, crook, or cream pie. And while they didn’t want him to be spendthrift with his signing bonus—his parents had a three-track financial plan for him, minor major leaguer, middle major leaguer, All-Star—he could afford a few weeks of comfort, particularly as this was his first extended excursion from New Jersey.
Sheila’s hovering has some legitimacy. William graduated last May and is still technically a teenager through September. Up until Arizona, his mother did his laundry and cooked his meals, William capable of only frozen pizza, tuna salad, macaroni and cheese. And while he’s had sex—his high school girlfriend finally put out last summer (convenient how their coupling coincided with her hearing, like everyone else across ESPN’s viewing area, that he was a sudden millionaire)—he performed the task with the sloppy, desperate determination of a hungry boy uncertain of where he’d find his next meal. He had found several with her, but then she left for UVA. He could have gone to college, too, had signed a commitment letter to Louisiana State, but he’d been so surprised and flattered by the first-round pick (never mind the scores of scouts who’d showed up for his games that senior-year spring, the clump of stopwatches and radar guns that came out every time he stepped up to the plate), of course he signed. He stayed in New Jersey as his classmates packed off for college. The girlfriend, now ex, was home for Christmas break, but they did not rekindle their relationship. William heard she was dating a Virginia lacrosse player who had eighty pounds on him.
Once back in his room, William orders room service, a triple-stacked club sandwich and a plate of sweet potato fries. He gets one of Jimmy’s beers out of the minifridge. The catcher is one of a very few guys who have been nice, forgiving him his stumbles, telling him to keep his chin up. That man can handle anything, William thinks—a wild pitch to the groin, a foul tip to the face—and keep smiling.
He’s missed a call from his mother—she rang right about when he was getting popped by Monterrey in the clubhouse. With Monterrey, it doesn’t feel like hazing—it feels like hatred. It’s not his fault expectations are inflated. Sure, he put up fifty home runs and a .400 batting average last year, was the best player in the state. Of course there was hype. But that was against high schoolers. In New Jersey. It’s not like he could say, You really shouldn’t pick me until the third round, or, Sorry, guys, my reputation is overblown. We can’t all be A-Rod. How did they expect him to jump up to major league pitching? William’d tried to get himself into one of those fall developmental leagues, so he could get a running start, but his agent told him not to hazard the injury. You’ll be fine, he’d said. Enjoy your signing bonus. William hadn’t pressed the point, but now he’s wondering if he should’ve insisted on some D-league action.
William returns Sheila’s call. First, as always, he reports on the game: runs and hits, walks and strikeouts. Not like she needed the rundown: the Goslins watch first pitch to final out on some three-digit cable sports network.
“Your father says that really was a bad hop,” she says of his error. “Anyone’d have played it the same.” It was his dad’s father’s father’s brother who made the family name a household one. Uncle Goose never had any kids of his own, just distributed among the members of his extended family his bats and gloves and knickknacks, whatever Cooperstown didn’t want. A young Howard came home from Thanksgiving one year with a disintegrating glove and an autographed 1928 ball. That mythology, the signed baseball sitting on the mantel, the glove boxed in glass like it was some sort of rare specimen, planted the seed in young William’s mind. He started T-ball at four and never looked back.
For most of William’s childhood, Howard Goslin, a locally known architect, didn’t care two sniffs about the sport—he was too busy building his reputation and acting like he made a lot more money than he actually did. He couldn’t be bothered to attend games, and saw no more than half a dozen throughout William’s amateur career—and that included the three-game playoff for the state championship. But after the draft, with its $2 million signing bonus, Howard suddenly took a pointed interest in his son’s sporting life. William couldn’t believe the about-face; Howard was delusional if he believed he’d be any help. Did he think they’d play fucking catch in the backyard? More than once this winter, William wanted to drop a dumbbell on the guy’s foot.
“Should we come out this weekend? Your father would like to see you play. He thought we could take you to Taliesin while we’re at it.”
“What? No.”
“It’s one of the wonders of modern architecture, William. I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss—”
William interrupts. “I mean, sorry, no, not this weekend. Tomorrow’s cut day and I don’t even fucking know if I’ll be playing again. Ever.”
“Please don’t swear,” his mother says, and then the line is quiet. He knows she is worrying on the other end. “Are you sleeping okay?” she says. “I’m concerned you’re staying up too late with those video games.” He’d become all but nocturnal this fall, with his friends away at college. Wake at noon, work out until dinner, Xbox until three or four. The console offered a much-needed outlet for his competitive streak. Offers it still—he’d carried the gaming system in the back seat of his car and hooked it up in his hotel room. Most nights, he spends an hour or two shooting enemies, slam-dunking on the opposition. If he loses here, he just presses Restart.
“I’m not, Mom.”
“Have you talked to Herb lately? He’s in Arizona this month and would be happy to—”
“Of course I have.” In truth, William has been avoiding his agent’s calls. Once, Herb and his too-pretty assistant took him out for dinner; William spent the whole meal staring at the woman’s breasts and wondering how Herb had found her. “I’m fine. Eating good and everything.” As if on cue, there’s a rap at the door, a muffled Room service. “That’s dinner, Ma. I gotta go.”
Once he collects his sandwich, he checks his e-mail. OkCupid pings three new messages. According to his profile he’s a graduating senior at ASU, studying architecture. YoungFLW is his handle. He lies about his age so he can suggest drinks; he lies about baseball to cut down on the gold diggers. And because, well, “professional athlete” doesn’t quite feel true, not yet. Architecture seemed a viable route; he’d absorbed enough jargon from his dad to be convincing for a few drinks.
The first potential paramour, a stern-looking Slavic chick, seems like she’s fishing for a green card. The second candidate is too old, a divorcée with kids; William can see the wrinkles even in her thumbnail-size profile picture. The third, a brunette calling herself Emillionaire, seems intriguing. Midtwenties, writer/artsy type, nice smile. Up for fun. He pings her back: How was ur day?
He chomps into his sandwich, waiting for a reply. This has worked once so far, in the form of a sloppy hookup with a bottle-blond sorority girl from Tempe. Drinks at the hotel bar, lots of laughing and whiskey, then back up to his room. She seemed to buy the architecture bit, and chose to believe his uncle was an investor in the casino and so he could stay over whenever it got “too late to drive.” She didn’t ask about, or didn’t notice, the bats in the corner, the duffel bag spilling with gold-and-black gear. She had noticed the circuitry of video game consoles he’d jury-rigged around the flat screen. You play a lot? she’d asked, inspecting his thin frame and farmer’s tan in a way that made him want to hide under the covers. She’d slipped out during the night. It sent a quick pang through his chest when he discovered she was gone—not that he’d seriously liked her or expected to see her again.
But he’d liked it, touching another body, the motion of sex feeling as natural as scooping up a ball and stepping on the bag—the dip, pressure, and release of a well-executed play. He fell back asleep and when he awoke again, hours later, he called down to the kitchen for pancakes.
Halfway through his sandwich, his computer chirps. A new message from Emillionaire. Dinner with the rents. 2 late after?
He types: No, l8r is perf. Drinks at the casino? I like the balcony lounge. William’s fake ID is laughable, the kind of bad Greenwich Village counterfeit that Jersey teens have been getting for decades. It and his baby face wouldn’t get him within twenty feet of most bars, but Eric, the bartender of the casino’s upstairs cocktail lounge, is a Lions fan. William can drink whatever he wants—everything shows up on his room’s tab as a hamburger or a milkshake, just in case Sheila asks for a spot check—and if either guy sees anything suspicious, William makes a quick move for the elevator.
William opens another beer and turns on SportsCenter, watching the ticker tape for the Nets score. They lost to the Bulls, 97–84. “Shit,” he says under his breath.
A text comes in from his mother: Heading to bed. We love you. XO. —Your biggest fans.
* * *
Lester pulls into the casino lot, takes an appetizer hit from the bottle in the glove compartment, and shimmies out of his car. His ride’s nothing to look at, a ’91 he bought new (the dealer’s discount price, may his uncle rest in peace), but he loves it for its longevity and relative reliability, and because it reminds him of Uncle Artie. He inspects the scratch again, a divot of gold. Stupid kid, he thinks and shakes his head, but worse could’ve happened. It’s drivable; no need for the insurance folks to go counting DUIs over a ding.
He steps inside the casino and shuffles onto the gaming floor. Waitresses in metallic vests carry trays through the rows of perms, serving watered-down drinks to ladies mesmerized by the digital chime of the slots. He passes a grid of green felt tables and their black-coated dealers. A mix of sunburned tourists and deeply tanned old-timers crowd around the five-dollar tables; the twenty-dollar bettors are scant. The high-stakes room, tucked behind a frosted-glass wall but with enough of a view to be alluring, holds a few Japanese businessmen and Jason Goodyear. The left fielder, or someone who looks a hell of a lot like him, always in a blank red ball cap, has been in there just about every time Lester’s passed by this spring. Everyone’s got their vices, Lester figures; at least Goodyear can afford his. He cranes his neck once more—they’re playing Texas Hold’em—before grabbing an escalator up to the cocktail lounge.