The Heart Of The Game

by Pamela Aares

  Parker pocketed his phone. “I heard those things can be hacked.”

  “Anything can be hacked,” Vico said.

  Was Cody imagining it, or did Vico’s smile hold a hint of pride?

  Maybe his rising jealousy was getting the better of him. He didn’t like the idea of Zoe spending the next morning with the guy touring around and drinking wine. Especially after spending time with him today. Hell, he didn’t want her doing anything with the guy. But he had no right to interfere.

  “You work a lot with computers?” Parker asked Vico as the three of them walked to the front drive.

  “Not really. Just the basics.”

  But Cody could see from the dude’s eyes that he was lying. A red warning flag shot up, and Cody did nothing to push it back down.

  When Cody returned to his condo, he couldn’t get the scene with Vico out of his mind.

  Sometimes, after a tough loss, he’d lay awake in bed and replay the whole game in his mind. Images would layer, one after the other, and though he didn’t know how it happened, eventually some sort of master scene would show him precisely the pitch he should have signaled or the adjustment he needed to make in his hitting. People casually called moments like that epiphanies, but to him the realizations were more a function of pattern recognition than mind-blowing insight.

  Zoe’s description of her moment on the hill when the light had shifted and danced and she’d seen the world differently than before—when she’d sworn she’d heard his voice—now that sounded like an epiphany. He smiled, remembering the sound of her voice as she’d told him. He might not believe in destiny, but he was damned sure glad the forces of life had brought them together.

  Still... his misgivings about Vico Gualdieri turned over and over in his mind. How was it that he’d shown up in the same region as the Tavonesis? And what was with his focus on the mechanical and computerized systems of their household? A pattern began to form, and images and thoughts began to hang from it. But he still couldn’t reconcile the man’s behaviors with his motivations.

  Not wanting to lie to himself, Cody again considered whether his suspicions were the product of base jealousy. Maybe they were—they could very well be. But maybe they weren’t.

  He knew someone who could help him find out.

  He dialed his dad’s number. He answered on the third ring.

  “It’s Cody.”

  “Cody.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause.

  “How are you, son?”

  Four words. Four. And with them Cody felt a dam break loose.

  How had he let pride and fear keep him from confronting his dad for all those long years—from finding a way to relate to him? But back then, his dad hadn’t been the man he was now, now that he’d done the work of cleaning up his life. It didn’t take a trained observer to see the radical change. Since his visit with his dad he’d done some soul searching. And had owned up to his suspicion that his anger had been a crutch for keeping not only his dad but anything he didn’t like about the world at arm’s length.

  He filled his dad in on what had transpired at the Tavonesis, about his impossible to ignore impressions of Vico Gualdieri.

  His dad asked for names, for specifics, and Cody repeated the conversations and events as well as he remembered them.

  “That’s a lot of detail. You might be in the wrong business, Cody.”

  “I’d make a terrible spy.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I’m pretty lame with gadgets and gizmos. If I could tackle the bad guys, then maybe.”

  His dad laughed. The sound slipped through a curtain of reserve Cody hadn’t known he’d kept drawn.

  “Like I said before, she must be some woman for you to worry like this,” his dad said.

  “I just don’t want to see her in danger.”

  Cody didn’t offer details about his relationship with Zoe. What the hell would he have said, anyway? That they’d rocked each other’s world a couple of times? That being around the Tavonesis and their affection-filled family gatherings had made him think about life and family differently? About maybe even considering having a family of his own? Nope. He wasn’t ready to cop to that change. Maybe not even to himself.

  “I’ll check it out,” his dad said. After a pause he added, “I know what it’s like when instinct starts to see beyond the obvious, when there’s a voice poking at you that you can’t shake. But all of this could be coincidence. Or things may be what they seem. Sometimes they are, and then again, sometimes they aren’t. But either way, it’d be best to keep your suspicions to yourself until I get back to you.”

  Cody heard him take in a breath.

  “You hear anything from the Giants?”

  Cody smiled into his phone. His dad knew nothing had happened in the few weeks since they’d last talked. Baseball talk was his way of easing into another subject.

  “I won’t know much more until spring training unless this winter the Red Sox make good on their threat to offer Aderro a pile more money than the Giants offered.”

  “Thornton’s bat was cold all season.”

  “Yeah, well, the brass may make us all wait until they see what we bring in March.”

  “They’d be lucky to have you.”

  High praise from his old man.

  Cody was still sorting through his jumbled thoughts as he pulled a pitcher of water from the fridge. He hadn’t known until his father had complimented him that he cared what his dad thought of his career. That it mattered.

  He caught himself pacing his small living room. He stopped and stared out the window at the lights on the Golden Gate Bridge. And then he grabbed his phone off the windowsill and typed a text to Zoe.

  Want to come with me on Sunday to see the new exhibit at the Legion of Honor? He read the words, then deleted them. Typed them again and pressed Send.

  He stared at the screen, waiting.

  She could be anywhere. Out. Busy . He pocketed his phone and paced some more.

  The text tone sounded, and he pulled the phone from his pocket.

  I’m not going to be doing much walking for a couple of days.

  So sorry to hear that, he typed. I can push you around in a wheelchair.

  I don’t like being pushed around.

  He smiled. Even in a text message her personality came across.

  Got that. But necessity might dictate.

  A few moments went by.

  He was an adult. With a life. And at that moment he was acting like a kid with a new gadget because all his attention was focused on waiting for words to appear like magic on a screen the size of his palm.

  Didn’t know you liked art.

  What did he say to that? He liked lots of things. One of which was her.

  Pick me up at the ferry at noon, she texted before he could come up with a brief comeback.

  I’ll be there.

  Good, she messaged back, punctuating the word with a happy face.

  He clicked off his phone, not trusting himself to keep typing and make sense.

  Plus, after a few more exchanges, he’d be in his car driving to Sonoma and blowing off dinner with Kat.

  He pivoted and headed to the shower.

  He was doing one helluva job botching his plan to keep things light and simple with Zoe. There was nothing simple about the way she had turned his life onto a path that wasn’t on any of his carefully drawn maps.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Cody clicked on the hall light in his condo and stepped aside to allow Zoe to enter. The line at the museum café had stretched past the entrance and through the halls. When he’d suggested abandoning the café and eating Chinese takeout at his place, she’d agreed.

  He plopped the two bags of food on his living room table. It was the only nice piece of furniture in his place.

  She ran her hands along the polished burled ash. “This is beautiful.”

  “One of the guys I played with in the minors made it. He earned some extra mone
y to send home by crafting furniture. I wanted to help him out.”

  “Is he on the team now?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  The truth would sound boastful since only one out of a million hopeful boys who dreamed of being pro players ever made it to the majors, but he said it anyway. “He was better at making tables than he was at getting hits.”

  Her hand stilled, and she peered up at him. “I see.”

  Having a woman—hell, having anyone—read his thoughts felt strange. He was usually the one doing that. That and calling the shots.

  “Stretch out on the couch, and I’ll grab some plates.” He turned for the kitchen. “Sorry about the boxes,” he called out as an afterthought. “Do you want to ice?”

  “You and Parker and Alex and your icing. You three could keep the entire industry alive.”

  “I take it that’s a no.”

  “So perceptive,” she said with a laugh.

  He grabbed two sodas from his fridge and balanced them against the plates.

  She took the plate he handed her. “Didn’t want to mar your table,” she said, indicating her scarf spread out across the wood. She shook her head at the fork he offered but accepted the lemon soda.

  He unpacked the ten boxes of food, and she opened them one by one, setting them in a half circle on the scarf.

  “What is it about museums that makes me so ravenous?” She handed him a box of still-steaming vegetables.

  He took it. He was hungry, but not for just the food.

  “I liked the Veronese,” she said as she used chopsticks to scoop food from one of the containers onto her plate. “I haven’t seen one of those for a while, not since I was last in Venice. All those reds spilling across the canvas. And the way he caught the light...” She took a big mouthful, closing her eyes as she chewed and swallowed. “Yum.”

  Seeing the paintings through her eyes had been like entering a new world. He’d studied art in college, been forced to by the core curriculum, but he’d never thought about how artists in the sixteenth century procured their pigments or what they had to do to make their art.

  She shoveled more food in, this time watching him as he watched her. He knew he was smiling. She brandished her chopsticks. “Are you going to eat or just watch?”

  He forked food onto his plate and began eating.

  “That’s better,” she said. “I hate it when people watch me eat.”

  He could watch her do anything. And found himself wanting to.

  “How long have you been painting?” he asked in an attempt to keep himself from dropping into the fantasies that called to him like mythic sirens.

  “Umm...” She wiped at her lips with a paper napkin. It was all he could do not to lean over and kiss her. “I was maybe five. No, six.” Her eyes clouded and she put down her chopsticks. “I used to paint with my mother, lining up my easel next to hers. Those are some of my best memories.”

  He wanted to say something comforting, but he couldn’t imagine what could comfort a daughter who had lost a beloved mother to a painful death.

  “Hey,” she said, taking up her chopsticks once again, “at least I’m having happy memories. That’s a change.” She twirled the chopsticks beside her head. “Not all darkness and cobwebs anymore.” She nailed him with one of her brilliant smiles. “Thanks to you.”

  She handled the chopsticks with the dexterity of a surgeon.

  “I told Vico about the exhibit. His family has a lovely Bordone. Imagine.”

  Cody stopped eating. He managed not to growl.

  “You don’t like him, do you?” Zoe asked.

  “He’s not my type.”

  She laughed.

  Cody felt like a heel for keeping information from her. He was floored by how much he wanted to tell her everything—details, thoughts, dreams. Though two people couldn’t have been pulled from more different life circumstances, there was a resonance between them he’d never experienced with anyone. And he didn’t like the idea of Vico getting any closer, whether the guy was a danger or not.

  “Don’t worry about Vico,” she said with a chuckle that only made Cody feel worse. “He’s just like me, trying to find his way in the face of family pressure. I feel sorry for him, actually. But he is a bit of a...” She looked down at her plate as if the word would materialize on it. “A bit of a bee.”

  “A bee?”

  She smacked him with her napkin. “A bother. What do you call such people?”

  He’d call Vico a lot of choice names, but right then wasn’t the time to share those with her.

  “A pest,” he said, settling on the word he thought she was seeking.

  “Yes, a pest. Una zanzara. But he’s very sweet. He’s going to help me set up Coco’s studio tomorrow.”

  Cody felt the muscle in his jaw twitch. Vico was getting a little too close. Cody made a mental note to bug his dad and see what he’d turned up.

  Zoe hobbled over to a box in front of his window. “You have so many books. Dostoyevsky, Virginia Woolf, Hawthorne...” She knelt and picked a book out of the box. “Thomas Berry. That’s an author I don’t know.”

  “I was a literature major in college. I figure if I don’t make it in the majors, I can make a living writing fortunes for the cookies they stuff in with Chinese takeout.”

  She let out a hearty laugh. “That is the best idea I’ve heard in a long time! Imagine opening one and reading a bit of true wisdom instead of the silly things they have now.”

  “Hey, someone’s writing these,” he said as he dumped a pile of plastic-wrapped cookies on the table. “Could be one of my ex-teammates.”

  She laughed again as she made her way back to the couch. She handed him a cookie. “Open yours.”

  “Only if you open yours.”

  She selected one from the pile. Evidently the restaurant had figured they’d ordered food for a crowd and so sent along cookies to match their estimate.

  The plastic crinkled as she tore open the package.

  “You will meet a honey-haired Major League Baseball catcher,” she said, holding out the slip of paper and beaming a grin.

  He snatched the paper from her hand.

  “Things are not what they seem.”

  “I like my version better,” she said with a smile more sweet than saucy.

  His bedroom was a mere thirty feet away. But as much as he wanted to carry her to his bed, he didn’t want to press her. She’d agreed to come to his place, but he’d sensed her reluctance. Pushing anyone to do something they weren’t on board for wasn’t his style. Especially when it came to women and sex.

  “Read yours,” she said.

  He cracked open the crunchy crescent and pulled out the paper. “Help! I’m being held prisoner by a Chinese bakery.”

  She giggled at his deadpan delivery and snatched the paper from his hands.

  “Your true love will show herself to you under... under the moonlight.” Her smile wavered as she raised her gaze to his.

  Even the word love in a cookie made him feel self-conscious. He busied himself opening another cookie. “This is more like it,” he said, handing over the fortune.

  “Don’t fry bacon in the nude.” Her accent made the ridiculous fortune sound even funnier. Their laughter broke the tension without banishing it entirely.

  She cracked open another cookie, read the fortune and then handed it to him. “I don’t understand.”

  “Confucius say baseball is wrong—man with four balls cannot walk.” He couldn’t help but laugh. He handed the paper back to Zoe; she wasn’t laughing. And it struck him that though she was fluent in English and well-traveled, there were probably many things about the U.S. that made no sense.

  “If a pitcher throws four pitches and misses the strike zone,” he explained, “the hitter is allowed to go to first base; that’s called a walk. And the pitches that miss the zone are called balls.” He could see from her face that she didn’t get the joke. “Let’s try another.” He ripped
open a package, crushing the cookie inside. He read the fortune. And then crumpled it in his hand and tossed it onto the table.

  “I’ll be right back. All that soda... You need anything while I’m up?”

  He left the room before she could ask about the fortune.

  Zoe noticed the sudden change in Cody—who wouldn’t? One minute he was easy mannered and joking around and the next he was serious, clammed up and unreadable. Whatever defensive forces ran behind his careful guard, they were strong.

  She picked up the fortune.

  Love will knock but you will not answer.

  It was a random fortune from the inside of a cookie. A slip of paper shouldn’t make her heart drop to her toes.

  She opened the last packet on the table.

  Before trying to please others do what makes you happy.

  Maybe there was a genie in the Chinese bakery. A genie with a malevolent sense of timing and a worse sense of humor.

  She heard the flush of the toilet. And then Cody’s answering machine clicked on. He must have the ringer turned off. The thought made her smile. As did his message.

  Americans took their answering machine messages seriously. They often sounded as if the individuals had practiced the wording and inflection for hours before settling on a final version. Cody’s voice on the machine was sexy, even though she was pretty sure he hadn’t made it so intentionally. The deep rich sound made her want another taste of him. And why deny herself such pleasure? Or him? Lovers did such things all the time. She’d had several brief affairs before her mother fell ill.

  “Hello, you hunky, crazy dude,” a woman’s sultry voice said from the machine. “I had a great time. Really great. We should do more of that, just you and me, maybe find a place to go dancing.”

  As Zoe listened, a fist clenched hard in her stomach and lightning-fast images of the woman that matched the voice swirled through her like a comet with an icy tail, trailing disappointment in their wake. “I’ve thought a lot about what you said,” the woman continued in a way too familiar, intimate tone. “Can’t wait to see you again. There are so many things I’d like to do with you now that you’re back in circulation.”