by Bill Branger
“It’s the garbage trucks,” I said, making a logical connection.
“Ryan. You stay put and so will 1.1 want to go back to sleep. I want to see you, but I don’t want to see you in the state you’re in.”
“I’m carrying on a perfectly rational conversation,” I said.
“You talk like a drunk.”
“I never drink anything but beer.”
“Then you must have drunk a barrel tonight.”
“Drank. Drunk is what I are, drank is what I did,” I said. I was so incredibly witty by this point that it was all I could do to stop from laughing.
“I’ll call you in the morning,” she said.
There was a final note in that and I didn’t fight it. If a lady says enough, it’s good enough for me. “Sorry about Jack Wade,” I said to her.
“Mmm,” she said. “I’m glad you’re not in trouble.”
“So am I,” I said.
“Are you sure you’re not?”
“I’m sure,” I said. I didn’t want to think too much about that IRS guy asking Jack about dealing with me. I figured that handling these Cuban players and all, I was working with the government.
“Good night, Ryan,” she said then.
“I love you,” I said then.
And then, of all things, I thought about that sad look of pity in Raul’s eyes. Shit,
Just like that, I figured I would have a hard time getting to sleep. Women can do that to you.
25
The doorman in the lobby called me around nine in the morning and told me Charlene wanted to come up. That gave me about two minutes to run into the bathroom, stand in the shower, wipe myself off with a clean towel, and present my hungover presence at the front door.
Charlene had two coffees in paper cups in a bag and a large muffin of the kind that roughage is made out of and is totally inedible. She also had her green dress on, which is more than a heart can bear at nine in the morning. If I had to work with Charlene every day, I’d have my ass hauled in on sexual harassment charges inside of a week.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Just took a shower,” I said.
“I didn’t say you smelled terrible, I said you looked terrible,” she said.
I scratched my chest just to have something to do when Charlene pushed by me after I tried to kiss her. “Whiskey breath,” she said.
I went back into the bathroom and closed the door and put a half-pound of Crest on my teeth and then rinsed the whole lot of them in Listerine. I even brushed my hair. There wasn’t much I could do with my eyes, though.
I put on my robe and went back into the rest of the apartment, which is just one big room off a Pullman kitchen.
“Ryan, you ever get tired of living in one room?”
“Sure I do. But I don’t see the need for a bedroom when all I’m gonna do is sleep in it.”
She had sat down at the kitchen counter and opened her coffee. I did the same with mine.
“Brought you a muffin. Banana-apple.”
“I’ll drink some coffee first to get lubricated,” I said.
“You look like you were good and lubricated last night. I didn’t know you had a drinking problem.”
“Charlene, I just went out with one of my players and we were over-served, is all.” I took a sip and scalded the tip of my tongue.
“Charlene, why’d you come up here? To tell me about Jack Wade?”
She opened her purse then and threw it on the counter. I picked it up. It was an envelope addressed to Ms. Charlene Cleaver of Houston, Texas. I opened the unsealed envelope and took out the sheet of paper.
It said:
Ms. Cleaver:
That awful man has been pestering me again and it is more than I can stand, knowing that he is two-timing you at the same time he is sweet talking me…
It went on in this vein but I skipped through it to the signature.
Roxanne Devon.
I stared at the signature for a good ten seconds. It was a loopy handwriting, the kind that sophomore girls practice. She didn’t draw smiley faces instead of dotting her i’s, but it was in the same category as that.
I put the letter on the counter and took another slug of coffee.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Tell me what you want to tell me,” she said.
“I do not know nor have I ever known anyone anywhere named Roxanne Devon.”
“Tell me another one.”
“Charlene, we don’t play until eight tonight so why don’t you and I go over to Brunswick, New Jersey, and go through the phone book and try to see if we can run down this Roxanne Devon.”
“You probably know she probably doesn’t even live in Brunswick, New Jersey. She just mails her letters from there,” Charlene said.
“Why would she do that, Charlene? If she don’t live someplace, why would she go there to mail poison letters to some woman she don’t even know in Houston, Texas? Tell me that.”
“Jack got arrested day before yesterday and yesterday I get this letter in the mail and I ain’t heard from you for a week.”
“We been on the road. In Cleveland and Chicago and then Kansas City. I don’t think of nothing on the road except the baseball games I still got to play”
“So you don’t think of me, is that it?”
“I think of you all the time, Charlene.”
“I don’t want you to think you got to lie to me,” she said.
“Why would I think that?”
“It’s not like we’re married,” she said.
“I know that.”
“‘Course you do. Got this bachelor apartment in this fancy building with a doorman. I bet I ain’t the first girl that doorman announced to you. He didn’t seem surprised by me or nothing.”
“Lewis ain’t been surprised since he got a draft notice to report to Vietnam in 1965,” I said.
“You think you can talk your way out of anything.”
Now she was making me pissed and I had a headache to boot. I got up and went to the icebox and took out a carton of Tropicana and poured some into a glass and drank it down. Orange juice makes me feel better every time I drink it. I poured another glass and then looked at Charlene. “You want some orange juice?”
“Stop stalling around,” she said.
“Charlene, you are making me crazy. I don’t know who’s sending you these letters, but I think we ought to go to the police about them.”
“And air our dirty linen in public?”
“We don’t have no dirty linen, Charlene, because these letters are fake and the work of that madman I work for, George Bremenhaven.”
“So you said once.”
“And so I say again. You just sit there while I put on my duds. We’re gonna go see George right now and have this out. You want me to quit, I’ll quit. Today. On the spot. I told George to stop messing around with my personal life and this is going too far. I’m gonna pop him one.”
Charlene just sat there, her mouth hanging open.
I went to the closet and grabbed a handful of clothes. Normally, I’d dress right there but I was doing a modest turn, so I went into the bathroom and closed the door. Shaved first and then brushed my teeth again with another half-pound of Crest and then slipped on my clothes. When I came out, Charlene hadn’t moved, even to closing her mouth, hanging open.
“Come on,” I said, grabbing my keys.
“Where we going?”
“George’s office.”
“Where’s that?”
“In the city. That big place across the river.”
“You mean, New York?”
“Only city I know of around here.”
We grabbed a Fort Lee cab with Lewis’s help and the next thing, we were tooling across the GW Bridge. It was a nice morning and there was a warm breeze blowing up the Jersey coastline right into the middle of Manhattan. I was hot, hot at Charlene and hot at George for causing me problems when there were enough problems trying to learn
managing in Spanish.
Traffic was heavy and it took us a half-hour to get to the big sandy-colored building on Park Avenue. I thought Charlene was a little intimidated by everything about the city and that pleased me. When she’s in her own domain, which is Houston, she pretty well takes charge, but this was a different kettle of fish altogether.
We took the elevator up and the doors popped open and we were standing in front of the glass doors that said: BREMENHAVEN PROPERTIES, That described George’s day job. We marched right through, with me holding the door for Charlene. We were in the presence of sweet Miss Viola Foster, whom I have described before.
“Oh, Mr. Shawn, how nice to see you,” Miss Foster said. She looked at Charlene so I made the introduction and asked if George was in.
“I’ll see,” she said. This meant he was in, but since secretaries are told never to give anyone a straight answer I didn’t blame her any for lying to me.
She went to George’s door and opened it after a timid knock and went inside.
“Come on, Charlene,” I said to her and grabbed her by the arm. We went to the same door and I opened it.
George was at his desk and a man I didn’t know was sitting in an armchair to the side of the desk. Everyone looked at us, startled.
“I gotta talk to you, George.”
“I’m busy, Ryan —”
“I don’t give a shit because I’m quitting as of now.”
“You can’t do that,” George said in his imitation of a reasonable voice. It makes him sound like Adolph Menjou. “Mr. Sills, I apologize —”
“Hey, no problem, Mr. Bremenhaven. I never did get a chance to meet a real ball player before. You must be Ryan Shawn, I’ve seen you pitch many times.” Sills got up to shake my hand and gaze admiringly at Charlene.
“Sorry to bust in on you but George has a habit of slipping out side doors when he don’t wanna see someone and I know he doesn’t wanna see me,” I said, milking Mr. Sills’s pinkies. “George, I’ll make this short and sweet. You have gone one trick over your limit and that’s the last straw. I’m quitting as of now and you can get some other chump to babysit those kids.”
“Where would I get someone who speaks Spanish?” George said in that reasonable tone of his. He was just sitting there at the center of the room but everyone else was standing.
“There’s plenty of people in baseball speak Spanish." I said.
“But you’re an Anglo,” he said. “I trust you “
“You are a racist arrogant asshole,” I said. “I told you not to play your tricks on my girl but you just don’t know when to say no, do you, George. You just keep nudging, don’t you.”
“Miss Foster, you can leave the room. And take Mr. Sills with you. I’ll call you this afternoon, Sills.”
Sills didn’t seem to notice his reduction in rank from Mr. Sills to Sills the Hired Help. I figured he was a government man then. Like Baxter earlier. But he was looking at me funny, just standing there. “That’s it, Sills,” George said.
“Mr. Shawn,” — Sills had changed from the fan to a government agent in that moment — “I hope you reconsider … everything. And I hope you don’t quit.” Then he beamed at me, beamed at Charlene, and beamed his way out of the office. Miss Foster closed the door behind her.
“Now, what’s on your tiny mind, Ryan? And who’s the broad?”
“You keep a civil tongue, you son of a bitch. This is Miss Charlene Cleaver is who and you sent her another one of your nasty little letters allegedly from a Miss Roxanne Devon.”
George rose from behind his desk and came around and took Charlene’s hand in his and gave a little bow to go with it. “I am charmed, Miss Cleaver, really charmed to meet the woman Ryan here has gone on and on about for more than a year.”
Charlene lowered her gray eyes at that and let George hold her pinkies a moment too long. She said “Thank you, Mr. Bremenhaven” the way Scarlett O’Hara would have.
“I don’t think any description of you would have been adequate. That’s a lovely outfit you’re wearing, Miss Cleaver.”
What was he going to do next, sniff her? I got between them and said, “George, you snake, I got a good mind to punch your lights out —”
“Why, Ryan? Why? What have I done to deserve this?”
“You sent Charlene another poison letter from your alleged Roxanne Devon of Brunswick, New Jersey, who does not exist anyway.”
“I had an Aunt Roxanne once. She was my favorite aunt, favorite person in the family. She’s gone now,” George said. He wasn’t even talking to me, he was aiming all the charm at Charlene. Imagine a charming frog and you can vaguely imagine George. It was sickening.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Charlene said.
“Charlene, he’s the son of a bitch who was behind sending you those letters so that you’d get jealous and give me up so I could go on playing baseball for this son of a bitch for peanuts.”
“We don’t know that for certain, Ryan,” Charlene said.
“Ah, the benefit of a doubt. I am honored,” George said, oiling across the floor toward her.
“Well, I’m quitting, George. You get someone else for the game tonight. I’ll be halfway to Texas before the ninth inning,” I said.
“And leave everything I’ve been trying to build?” George said. “Where’s the gratitude, Ryan? Where’s your sense of patriotism? Do you think Norman Schwarzkopf would have quit?”
“We ain’t in war, George. It’s baseball. You ripped off a bunch of green kids from a foreign country and you make it a noble cause. You’re pathetic, you’re so low.”
“I’m paying you over a million dollars. If I can’t appeal to your sense of duty, let me appeal to your wallet.”
George usually had me there, but not this morning. I had a hangover, and Charlene showing up on my doorstep with that phony letter did not improve things. Imagine me saying a million dollars wasn’t that important. I was on the verge of doing just that when Charlene spoke up.
“How do you know that Mr. Bremenhaven had that letter sent to me?”
“Because it’s exactly the kind of rotten scheming trick George does all the time. You can’t trust him, Charlene. Don’t look him directly in the eye, either, or he’ll try to steal your soul on you.”
“You took all the players on a tour of New York and you said I authorized it,” George said in his reasonable voice. “You think I’m going to pay for all that?”
“Yesterday I was working for you, but that was yesterday,” I said.
“Ryan, you took them to the Statue of Liberty, for Christ’s sake. You trying to get them to defect to make me look bad?”
“I was trying to get them to be a little less homesick”
“What’s the Statue of Liberty got to do with anything?”
“You might have been owed an explanation if I still worked for you.”
“I’ve got a contract.”
“It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. I don’t have to pet up with this shit, George. Charlene is starting to believe there really is a Roxanne Devon, which I know and you know there is not.”
“Probably just a fan. Lots of girls go to baseball games and want to sleep with the players. Groupies. I hate to say that so boldly, Miss Cleaver, but it’s a sordid fact of the life in sports. What with this age of disease, with AIDS and all that, we try to tell the players to be careful, but you know, they’re really like children.”
“I ain’t no child, George, and I don’t fool around with groupies.”
“I wouldn’t either if I could have the company of a woman as beautiful and charming as Miss Charlene Cleaver. Why haven’t I met her before this, Ryan?”
“Because I try to keep the sordid side of my life separate from her. Like knowing you, for instance.”
“You see what I put up with?” he said to Charlene.
I waved a hand between them to get their attention. “Yo, George. Me. Ryan. I quit”
“Don’t let him quit on me, not a
t this crucial juncture, Miss Cleaver. This is more than about baseball. This is about trade and freeing the Cuban people from their yoke of tyranny. This is about America reaching out its hand in friendship to a poor, backward nation that yearns to breathe free —”
“You stole that from the Statue of Liberty,” I said.
“I didn’t steal, it’s in the public domain,” he snarled. Then he turned back to Charlene and gave her what he thought was a dazzling smile. The problem was that Charlene was getting herself dazzled despite my best intentions. I would have thought just being in the same room with that Gila would have sent her straight into a faint, but it was having the opposite effect.
I said, “Show him the letter, Charlene.”
She said, “Oh, I don’t want to show him.”
“Show him the fucking letter that got you upset enough to come two thousand miles to bug me about it at nine in the morning,” I shouted.
“Don’t shout,” Charlene said. “I won’t be shouted at by any man.”
“Charlene, you want me to quit and I’m quitting —”
“Miss Cleaver, Miss Cleaver, is that what you want? You want Ryan to walk away from his duties as a player and as a manager of the most revolutionary concept in baseball since the new playoff system?”
“We had talked about it, Mr. Bremenhaven,” Charlene said.
George looked at her sadly. I know his sad look, although it is a very subtle shift away from his cold-blooded let’s-screw-someone look. But I have studied the man for years up close.
“Then I surrender,” he said, lifting his hands. “No man ever stood in a woman’s way. If you think it’s the best thing for Ryan to turn his back on the game at the peak of his career when golden opportunities are waiting for him, then I can’t argue with you. I would never argue with anyone who obviously has Ryan’s best interest at heart.”
“Mr. Bremenhaven —”
“George. Please make it George.”
“George. I just don’t know what to think. Ryan came to Houston this past winter and he said you were poisoning things against him, first with Jack Wade who was gonna give him a job selling cars and then by sending me these notes from Miss Roxanne Devon of Brunswick, New Jersey. But now poor Jack has been arrested for income tax evasion and I was afraid that Ryan was involved in it, too, because he said you sent the IRS man in the first place to see Jack Wade and spook him about hiring Ryan.”