by Tim Green
“Mr. Starr? Here?”
“Yes. Go in.”
There were men in black-and-gold livery uniforms at the desk just inside the brass-framed glass doors.
“Esther Newberg.” Mr. Starr spoke with authority.
The man’s eyes widened at the sight of Mr. Starr, but he looked away and said, “ICM, third floor.”
“I know it’s ICM, you twit.”
Ryder gave the man an apologetic look and wheeled Mr. Starr to the elevators. When the doors closed, Ryder whispered, “Who’s Esther Newberg? What’s ICM?”
“She’s a literary agent. It’s a talent agency, although with some of the clients they represent I find the word to have very little meaning.”
“Mr. Starr, why are we here? I really just want to go back to the hospital to see my mom.”
“You’ll know why.” The doors opened and Ryder wheeled him off.
They passed through the wide opening in a smoky glass wall that enclosed a waiting area, reception desk, and a chrome set of stairs leading up to the next floor.
“Esther Newberg,” Mr. Starr barked at the receptionist.
She didn’t flinch. “Are you Mr. Starr?”
“No, I’m the other twisted wreck of a man on her schedule this morning.”
The woman smiled, and it was genuine. “I’ll tell her you’re here.”
An assistant named Zoe came down the stairs and took them up the elevator, using a card to access the fourth floor. It was quiet and uncomfortable in the elevator. Ryder wasn’t excited, only confused and annoyed.
“Esther says you used to write for the Post.” Zoe wore a short purple dress and had her long hair pulled back.
“And, considering her love affair with the Times, I suppose I should be grateful for the audience.” Mr. Starr just couldn’t help being a grouch.
“She says you’re very talented, that’s all.” Zoe smiled.
“We were just talking about the dubious use of that word,” Mr. Starr said.
The doors opened and Zoe led them to a large corner office. Behind a massive desk that faced out from two walls of windows looking out onto the park as well as the Hudson River sat a tiny woman with short reddish hair and dark blazing eyes that seemed like they could mean life or death, depending on her mood. She was made up with a bit of lipstick and mascara and wore a single strand of pearls against an elegant black dress.
“Well,” Esther said, not affected in the least by Mr. Starr’s appearance, or the presence of a twelve-year-old boy. “You’ve grown older, Stephen.”
Mr. Starr snorted. “And crooked.”
Esther huffed impatiently and puckered her lips. “You were never straight, Stephen; it’s what I liked about you.”
Esther’s mouth curled into a small smile. Her eyes glimmered with mischief and shifted to Ryder. “And this is him?”
“It is. Show her the ball, Ryder.”
Ryder was totally confused. He’d forgotten about the ball, but as he reached into his coat pocket, he realized that besides having shelves and counters covered with books he guessed had been written by her clients, Esther Newberg had signed baseballs and photos of players and managers all over the place. Most of them looked like they had something to do with the Red Sox.
He handed her the ball across the wide desk.
She took it and turned it in her hand, frowning at the torn seams, but examining the signatures before setting it down in front of her. “Very good, Stephen.”
Another ball on the desk had caught Ryder’s attention and Esther saw him looking at it.
“You know what that one is?” she asked. “Go ahead, pick it up.”
Ryder lifted the ball off its stand. It was fresh and new and it had a World Series logo on it. “What?”
“Game six. Green Monster. Foul ball. Know how I got it?”
Ryder shook his head and replaced the ball in its stand.
“Fell right into my lap.” She glanced at Mr. Starr. “Seriously. Bounced twice. I didn’t even move. That’s fate, right? That’s life, isn’t it?”
“So . . .” Esther picked up a thin stack of paper and let it drop beside the ball, her voice changing to signal that this was business. “People are interested. . . . These days no one’s buying outlines with a few sample chapters, but in your case, with your background, I think we might be able to do something. Probably not what you want, but something.”
“Not what I want?” Mr. Starr sounded like he was trying to contain some anger.
Esther shook her head. “To really cash in on this, I need to have the whole thing, Stephen. People will be able to sink their teeth into it then, and I can get you some real money.”
“They can’t have the whole thing!” Mr. Starr startled Ryder, but Esther Newberg didn’t even blink.
“Why not, Stephen?” Esther delivered the question as a challenge.
“It’ll take me six months, a year if I take the time I should. I can’t wait six months. I can’t wait one. I need this today, Esther!” Mr. Starr was breathing hard and Ryder remembered Ashleigh Love’s warning about his health. “I’m . . . I don’t mean to be so abrupt.”
“Abrupt works with me.” Esther was unfazed. “I think I can get you a couple hundred thousand for this . . . but you’ve got to finish it.”
“Esther,” Mr. Starr sounded tired and sad, “I need the money now. Today.”
Esther touched the thin stack of paper on her desk. “That part’s all true? The mother? The operation?”
“It’s why I’m doing this.” Mr. Starr stared and a single tear rolled down his face. “I can save her. I have to . . . I need two hundred thousand, but I need it now.”
Esther took a breath and held it before letting it out. She gave a curt nod, held up a finger, and picked up her phone.
“Zoe, get me Lindsey Frost.” Esther turned her chair toward the window, looking out over the budding trees of Central Park and the row of skyscrapers it seemed to hold at bay. “Lindsey? Good. I can give it to you, but not for fifty. I’ve got seventy-five on the table from someone else, but I need two hundred and I need it right now. . . . Well, you’re the one who said it’s a bestseller, not me, and Tearsten Casanova thinks the same thing and I’m calling her next unless you give me two hundred. . . . I don’t care how business is done these days, Lindsey. I have a deal and I will sell it today because I have to sell it today and I’ve got enough buyers that I’m not worried. It’s just that I thought of you before anyone and you can see why. If it’s beyond you, then let me go. . . . No, eighty is not two hundred, Lindsey. . . . You’re way off. . . . No, that’s fine.”
Esther hung up the phone. “That didn’t go very well.”
Mr. Starr’s tongue crept out of his mouth and worked the edges of his lips. “Can you get two hundred from the other person?”
Esther looked at him hard. “If I can’t get two hundred from Lindsey, I can’t get it from anyone, Stephen. She wants this, but it’s a tough market right now. You don’t even have a finished book.”
Mr. Starr made a gurgling noise. The phone buzzed. Esther hit the speaker.
“Esther?” It was Zoe’s voice. “I’ve got Lindsey Frost on line two.”
Esther’s eyes twinkled. She pursed her lips and picked up the phone. “Lindsey? Talk to me.”
The agent listened, her face giving nothing away.
Ryder held his breath.
He couldn’t believe this was happening. He’d given up hope, but now it was alive. Mr. Starr was right, they were so close, but they’d been close before with Thomas Trent, and Ryder wondered what this book was and what it would mean for the Trents. He doubted it could be anything good.
Finally, Esther took a breath and said, “I told you, two hundred, Lindsey. Why are we wasting each other’s time? Tearsten Casanova already offered me seventy-five and that was before she knew you wanted it too. . . .”
Esther winked at them. “Well, I don’t care about your board. Your board won’t complain when this thing becomes
a bestseller. There aren’t a lot of stories like this out there. You know that. . . .”
Esther listened and then she bit her lip and scowled. “Hang on, Lindsey.”
Esther covered the phone and her eyes bored into Mr. Starr. “I’ve got her up to a hundred, Stephen. Do you want me to take it or not?”
“It’s not what we need, Esther. Keep going. Get more.”
Esther’s look got even darker. “I’m telling you that without the whole book this is the absolute best you’re going to get, Stephen. Tearsten Casanova wants it, but she hates unfinished manuscripts and she said seventy-five was her final and when she says ‘final,’ she means it. This is the best we are going to get, so, take it or leave it.”
“You’re sure, Esther?” Her name barely escaped Mr. Starr’s twisted lips.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“Then tell her no.”
“No?”
“No. Come on, Ryder. Let’s get out of here.” Mr. Starr jammed his hand against the controller and the chair jerked awkwardly toward the door.
“Stephen . . .” Esther stood up.
“No,” Mr. Starr said, “it’s not your fault. I know you did your best. We have to go.”
Ryder followed, glancing back at the agent.
Zoe stuck her head in the doorway. “Esther, I’ve got Caroline Kennedy on line two.”
Esther Newberg shook her head sadly, sighed, and picked up the phone. “Caroline?”
Mr. Starr navigated his chair through the desks to the elevator. Ryder got on with him, dazed and unable to even think.
“Why didn’t you take the money?” he asked as the car dropped toward the ground.
“I promised myself that if I ever wrote a book, it’d have a happy ending, not like this. Not like me. The world doesn’t need another tragedy.” Mr. Starr stared hard at him. “I’m not writing that book.”
Ryder started to cry.
“I’m sorry, Ryder.” Mr. Starr’s voice was tattered with pain.
Ryder sniffed and tried not to sob. “I never had a father, and now it’s like I’ve got two. You and Doyle, but now it’s too late.”
The elevator stopped. The bell rang as the doors opened. Mr. Starr buzzed out into the lobby without a word. Ryder held the door open and they were out on the street, people streaming by in the kaleidoscope of his tears. They had no idea how sick he was with grief.
“What now?” Ryder whispered.
“Now?” Mr. Starr let out a ragged sigh, his voice cracking. “We go say good-bye.”
Ryder didn’t think the machines hooked up to his mother could sound any slower, any weaker.
Doyle sat tucked into the corner, just looking at Ryder’s mom. Ryder knew it was her, but if someone had showed him a picture like this three weeks ago he would never have believed it was his mom. His mom glowed with life. She bubbled with it.
Now her parted lips were dry and motionless beneath the oxygen tubes snaked into her nose. Her hair lay matted, greasy, and lifeless; gone was its luster and bounce. He felt so tired he wanted to just lie down beside her, go to sleep, and never wake up.
Mr. Starr bumped into the backs of his legs with the wheelchair and softly apologized. Ryder made room for him. He didn’t know what else he could do but stand there and look. Doyle cleared his throat, stood, and gripped Ryder’s shoulder.
Ryder looked up at him, tears streaming silently down his cheeks. “Can’t we do anything? There has to be something.”
Doyle’s mustache drooped to his chin. He swallowed and looked over at Mr. Starr with red and weary eyes. Mr. Starr ignored them both. He navigated his chair alongside the bed, awkwardly leaned forward and sideways, raised an arm, and let his mangled hand drag its fingers across her cheek.
He whispered something. It was more than a good-bye, or a long good-bye; then he settled back into the chair and reversed it toward the foot of the bed.
Ryder suddenly knew what he had to do.
He slipped free from Doyle’s grip and moved a chair next to her bed. He sat down and took her hand in both of his, twining their fingers. Then he rested his head on the bed so that he could watch the rise and fall of her chest. He would stay there and hold her hand and watch, until the very end. He knew no one could take him away from this spot. No one could separate them . . . until she was gone.
Time crawled. Nurses and doctors came and went, talking in low voices that floated behind him, ghostlike in the sterile room.
Ryder drifted in and out of sleep, the slow steady sound of the heart monitor lulling him, and the exhaustion of it all coaxing him under for five or ten minutes at a time. When he wasn’t sleeping, he was praying. He couldn’t help that. He thought it was what she’d want.
When the voices rose to a sudden high pitch, he jerked awake. His heart sprinted in panic. The beeping? Was it gone? The noise. The hurry. The commotion.
Doyle lifted him up and away and he struggled, kicking and screaming and crying. “No! No! No!”
They picked her up and laid her onto a white gurney. There were five of them, rushing, frantic, shouting.
Ryder shrieked, but his shrill cry was lost in the noise, and then she was gone.
“No! No! No!”
Doyle held him tight, so tight he grew faint from want of air. “Ryder, no. Stop. Please.”
“They took her! She’s gone!” The agony tore him in half, his eyes desperately searching the empty space she’d disappeared through.
The doorway grew suddenly dark with the tall figure of a man. Ryder choked at the sight of him.
Thomas Trent wore a dark leather jacket and a somber face. He looked like he needed some sleep and a shave. His green eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. “They’re going to try and save her, Ryder.”
Thomas Trent let his words sink in before he continued. “I’m sorry you had to wait.”
“What?” Ryder knew it was a dream.
It was like the shark dream, so real, so horribly real.
But Thomas Trent crossed the threshold, stepped into the room, and placed a strong hand alongside Ryder’s face. Trent’s fingers curled around the cord of muscle in the back of Ryder’s neck.
“I said, ‘I’m sorry you had to wait.’ It wasn’t right. I . . . it’s hard to explain. I won’t even try. But you were right. I lied. I did love her. Part of me still does. . . .”
Ryder was afraid to even ask, but he had to. “Can they save her?”
“I think they can.” Thomas Trent smiled weakly. “I wanted to tell you, in person. I had to do this, but now I have to go. I won’t ask you to understand that either, but this is the last time you’ll see me, Ryder. There won’t be any more money, and I can’t be a father to you.”
“I . . .” Ryder’s eyes blurred with tears. “I don’t care.”
Ryder laughed and cried and he hugged Thomas Trent tightly before letting him go. The big league player looked like he might cry too, but he bit his lip and nodded at Mr. Starr and Doyle, then turned and walked out the door.
Darkness filled the window of his mother’s hospital room by the time the doctor came in later that night.
Ryder jumped up. So did Doyle. Mr. Starr jerked awake and straightened in his chair.
“She’s very strong,” the doctor said. “I feel pretty safe saying she’s going to make it.”
They whooped and hugged the doctor. Mr. Starr beamed up at them from his chair and they hugged him too. Then Doyle picked Ryder up and spun him around. The doctor laughed and excused himself and said Ryder’s mom would be in recovery for another hour or so.
They talked and laughed and Ryder glowed with a joy whose warmth and depth he could never explain. Finally, each of them settled quietly into his own thoughts. Ryder studied his hands, thinking of all he’d seen and done—Yankee Stadium, Atlanta, the batting contest, the Braves’ locker room, the lawyers’ offices, and then the literary agent. He looked up to see Mr. Starr staring warmly at him with that odd smile of his.
“Wh
at?” Ryder asked.
“I was thinking . . . about happy endings.” Mr. Starr’s eyes twinkled.
“Are you going to write it now?” Ryder asked.
Mr. Starr only chuckled.
In Central Park, birds chattered and sang in the trees behind the bleachers. Ryder turned his face up to the sun, soaking up its warmth and marshaling his concentration. He opened his eyes and blinked at the batter. His team had two outs. It was the bottom of the final inning, but the winning run stood bouncing atop the third base bag. When the batter stepped into the box, the runner stretched his legs, leaning toward home, then taking a four-foot lead.
Ryder punched his glove and coiled his muscles, ready for anything.
The pitcher wound up and sent one low toward the inside corner of the plate. The batter swung and a crack exploded into the sunshine and the breeze. Ryder sprang from his spot, leaping into the air without the shred of a thought. The ball sounded off against the pocket of his glove like a rifle shot. The stands erupted. His team jumped into the air, hooting and hollering and swarming toward him. He stood and let them swamp him with hugs and backslaps and cheers.
Ryder laughed and his eyes grew misty when he looked into the stands and saw his mother and father on their feet, cheering with the rest of the parents and random spectators just out to enjoy the glory of a perfect spring day. His coach barked them into line. The teams shook hands.
The team huddled up and Coach awarded Ryder the game ball. He’d made several spectacular plays on defense and hit three for four with two home runs. He accepted the smooth round ball, so perfect, and stuffed his gear into the bat bag his father had bought him for his birthday.
He shouldered the bag and turned the ball in his hand as he marched toward the stands, thinking of another baseball from a time that seemed so very long ago. His life was so different now. So wonderful.
His mother hugged him and his father too. Doyle’s mustache chaffed his neck and Ryder laughed and pushed him away like he always did. It was a running joke between them, father and son. Ryder took his mother’s hand and his eyes focused on the gold band around her finger. He liked to just see it there, as if he were afraid the whole thing hadn’t really happened.