The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop

by Robert Coover

  "I hope you won't be disappointed, Mr. Waugh," the owner said politely, discreetly nodding them into their places. He bestowed menus upon them with his right hand, his left discharging a practiced and imperial command kitchenward. Henry saw no one there to receive it, yet a moment later a waitress was headed their way with table linen and silverware. Mitch Porter knew he was good. Poise: no really great star was ever without it.

  "Lou's kidding you, Mr. Porter," Henry assured him. "He's what they call in baseball a real swinger at the plate, and I have complete faith." The waitress, bellied over the table, spreading the fresh white linen as though preparing a marriage couch, smiled at that. The worm stirred... yes, balance, let the dark forces rise. Plop! plop! the napkins, and long silver instruments—the better to fork you with, my dear, as Willie O'Leary would say, but she was gone.

  Henry picked up the menu to read it, but Lou had already pushed his aside, was leaning sideways in a bulky list to confer with Mitch Porter. "I was thinking about. .. the steaks," he said softly, as though making confession.

  Mitch Porter gazed thoughtfully toward the kitchen, then around to be sure there were no spies, bowed slightly forward. "I'm just not entirely pleased with them this evening, Mr. Engel. They look good, but they're—I wouldn't tell anyone but you, Mr. Engel—but they seem cut a little too green from the tree, if you know what I mean." Lou, knowing well, inched forward, ears cocked for the word. "But the duck," Mr. Porter whispered, puckering his lips and touching them with the tips of two fingers and a thumb: a soft insinuating kiss blessed them and the hand opened like a blossom.

  "Duck!" announced Lou firmly, leaning back.

  "Me, too," said Henry.

  "And before?"

  "He makes a wonderful seafood cocktail, Henry."

  "Okay by me."

  "Two cocktails," beamed Mitch Porter. "And to drink?"

  "Right now, I'd like an Old Fashioned," said Henry, having seen that the menu plugged them, and Mr. Porter smiled, raised his brows to Lou. Lou nodded. Mr. Porter slipped away then, passing unheard instructions to barman and waitresses: whump! gaped the kitchen doors, and swallowed him up.

  Lou, following Henry's gaze, turned back and whispered: "He makes the duck himself!" The kitchen, having inhaled Mr. Mitch Porter, now exhaled a waitress, exiling in a handsome breech delivery, bearing aloft a tray heaped high with silver-canopied dishes. "Henry, your eyes look all bloodshot! What have you been doing?"

  "Working." And though hard, not hard enough. He'd wanted to start Monday clean and fresh, his decision made, but he doubted now he could finish the season tomorrow.

  "Are you still taking that extra work home, Henry?" Lou shook his head. "Just what I thought. You come dragging into the office at noon—you're gonna end up losing your steady job at DZ&Z just for the sake of a few extra dollars, it's not worth it, Henry. What do you wanna be a millionaire for? Who're you gonna leave it to?" Lou clucked disapprovingly as the drinks came. Who was he going to leave it to? The dark bird flapped in his breast again and beaked bis throat. At another table, under a storm at sea, the youngsters blew kisses at each other over their plates, and across the way, a navy officer leaned over a young woman's bosom . . . "No, really, Henry—"

  "What I do, I do because I want to," Henry said, and lifted his glass in a toast, then drank. In one corner, two old men played chess beside an aquarium of goldfish, and somehow neither they nor the fish seemed out of place. Maybe he could move his Association over here. Might rescue it. He smiled.

  Lou twisted around to see what he was smiling at, saw the chinless cod-faced woman who slouched dumpily back of the cash register, under a pair of lovebirds, reading a movie magazine. "Mrs. Porter," he explained. "You wouldn't believe it, would you?"

  "Of course, I would!" Henry laughed. "Couldn't be anyone else!" Lou laughed blankly, not getting it. An old hand came down and touched a crown, veered past it to elect a seahorse, white as death: it leaped forward, but currents carried it slantwise. To be good, a chess player, too, had to convert his field to the entire universe, himself the ruler of that private enclosure—though from a pawn's-eye view, of course, it wasn't an enclosure at all, but, infinitely, all there was. Henry enjoyed chess, but found it finally too Euclidian, too militant, ultimately irrational, and in spite of its precision, formless really—nameless motion.

  Lou asked about the interview with Zifferblatt and Henry told him, all the while watching the chess players, the excited youngsters, all the paintings and dour Mrs. Porter, the people at the bar, the waitresses, that girl with die navy officer— who was he? seen him before . . . young Brock Rutherford Jr. maybe ... "So when I told Ziff that the Greek god of commerce was a thief and led the dead to hell, Ziff said: 'Yeah? well, look what it got the Greeks, all they got's a few restaurants!' "

  Lou wheezed with giggling, his round face pink with the thought of a foolish Zifferblatt. "Did he really say that, Henry?"

  "No, I'm just kidding, Lou. To tell the truth, I don't know what either of us said, because I fell asleep."

  Still giggling, but shaking his head at the same time, sipping the Old Fashioned, Lou seemed to find that harder to believe than the dialogue. "I couldn't fall asleep in front of Mr. Zifferblatt," he confessed, "if they gave me ether!"

  Pink sea monsters, washed up on a shore of lettuce leaves and parsley, arrived, iced, their pungent sauce piercing through the present aroma of the Old Fashioneds' bitters like an arrow: zingo! right to the nose! and to the palate! terrific!

  While the waitress was still at hand, Henry, munching a cherry, asked for another round of drinks, then with a wink at the lady, forked the earthly remains of a once-proud crustacean. The whiskey was having a wonderfully balsamic effect; he was glad he'd come. Lou, like any artist in confrontation with the raw stuff of his vocation, fell silent, but for barely audible mumbles of judgment or bliss. The waitress, under-belly apron white, floated by, deposited fresh drinks like a lay of eggs, then flipping her rosy tail, drifted on, starched apron strings waggling in her wake. Others watching her, too. That officer, even while sounding other knees and thighs below the table. One's not enough for him. Never is. What was the mechanism? Maybe those little buggers had eyes, after all: we got that one already, dad—move on! Long Lew apologizing to Fanny McCaffree: I'd like to get married, Fanny, it's a wonderful idea, but what am I gonna do with this? Holding up that old sea serpent that dragged him under every time.

  Impotent? not really. But sometimes total power was worse. Message of the Legalists: without law, power lost its shape. That was what kept Casey proud: born into a going system, he judged himself by it, failed to look beyond, look back: who said three strikes made an out? Supposing he just shipped Casey to the minors and to hell with the rules? He could at that. If he wanted to. Could explain it in the Book. It wasn't impotence. Still, it might cause trouble. What trouble? The players... What players? Some kind of limit there, all right, now that he thought about it. He might smash their resistance, but he couldn't help feeling that resistance all the same. Their? mine; it was all the same.

  Brock Rutherford II, who had failed in the UBA, was making it in the back booth of Mitch's, having gotten his pitching fist well under a sea-blue skirt. The mystic ship of life, sail on, sail on! Elsewhere, a black queen flew south, answered by a coalition of bishops. On a far wall, red-coated horsemen leaped hedges in pursuit of ... of something, a fox maybe, just a dark blur on the canvas there; maybe it was poor Sycamore Flynn. The youngsters beneath the raging sea had themselves grown suddenly still, eyes locked, oblivious |o everything, hands chastely gripping napkins, lips meeting—Mr. Mitch Porter materialized: with his left, he ordered the youngsters out, while his right hand summoned the waitress with the bill. Down the aisle plowed her proud white breast, then back up again, outstrutting the young cock, who left doubled over his arrowing desire, face lit with shame and anticipation. Mr. Porter apparently didn't notice the navy officer who, while chatting amiably above table, had bared everything beneath. Matter o
f interpretation, no doubt. And why haven't you ever married, Henry? Who asked that? Lou? Henry glanced up, but Lou was ingesting neat brown slabs of duck, a jewel of orange rind glistening on his plump chin. It was really good, all right, had a wild original taste all its own, a genuine creation: Mitch Porter could play on anybody's team. Hall of Fame.

  Now he passed with a bottle of rose on ice. With a whirling flourish of wrist and fingers, he conjured out the cork, poured a finger into each of their glasses. They tasted: "Mmm, good!" said Lou. "But— ?"

  "My pleasure," said Mr. Porter with a slight bow, and filled their glasses, then disappeared before they could really thank him.

  "Gee, that was nice, wasn't it, Henry?"

  "Mmm. Great duck, too."

  "I told you."

  The waitress pecked disparagingly in the gravel of small coins left her by the banished teen-agers, then click-click-clicked back up the aisle with dirty dishes, swishing her ample tail; the officer, still fishing, watched benignly. The gaze of his young prey, however, fell on Henry; she started, flushed, pushed the officer's hand out, then, feathers ruffled, pranced off to the ladies' room, the door of which, Henry noticed, was upholstered in the same cheap leatherette as the booths. Leftover piece. The officer, grinning, said something to the waitress. Jauntily, she arched her hips, peeked back over her shoulder at her apron strings, flicked one hand loose-wristed at the officer—he laughed aloud—and switched on back to the kitchen, marvelously pleased with herself.

  Why? Maybe it was Hettie who asked. Or Mitch Porter, dropping by on the quarter hour to receive, solemnly, their homage. Or Mrs. Mitch, yawning cavernously over her movie magazine. Yes, young Brock was handsome, elegant in his way, but it was easy to see that in a real ball game he just didn't have it. Something vital missing. How would his son—Henry assumed it would be a boy—turn out? Grandpa's genes dominating probably, and that was okay, he'd need some of that raw power, hopefully a touch of his uncle's grace—and on the mother's side? Henry watched her emerge from the ladies' room, handbag clutched front and center. She fired one angry glance Henry's way, then homed for the officer; too much temper and a little baggy in the britches. Have to wait and see. Might be worth twenty more seasons just to find out. A man like Brock Jr., with nothing else to do, could marry; Henry couldn't. That was all. A family, beautiful wife tender and loving, children with their special hurts and happinesses: great comfort, great pleasure. But Henry had chosen the loner's life, the general pain, because ... because ... he couldn't help himself.

  Aw, shee-it now! cracked old Pappy Rooney, bachelor himself but suitor of no pain, except that which served to prove to him he lived still. Some like it, some don't. Rooney pinched the lady's bottom for luck, drew a dark ace in the hole: That's it! he chortled, that's what they're for!

  "Henry, if you don't mind my saying so, I, well, I've noticed you've been talking to yourself sort of lately sometimes ..."

  Henry gazed up at the plump perspiring face of his friend, now anointed with orange sauce. "I've been talking to myself all my life," he said, and crossed his knife and fork on the plate.

  The waitress, clearing, stretched out over their table, hips outthrust, full breasts aquiver—wonderful how she did that, excessive but communicative, style all her own. Willie O'Leary tucked a toothpick in his teeth, and lifting his right hand in a benediction upon that bosom, said: "When he stretched forth his hand, the mountains trembled." And, reflexively, they did.

  "Oh, you!" the waitress said, cuffing him gently with a damp hand, and O'Leary tweaked a rib. Abdomen muscles flexed, bouncing her back off the table; she grinned, flicked her tail to his view—there was an instant, just time for a pinch, but this was Mitch's, after all, not Jake's, and O'Leary's hand in motion abruptly stopped and its fingers snapped—the waitress flinched, good as the real thing, then giggling to herself, swished kitchenward with dishes.

  "Why haven't you never got married, Henry?" Lou asked, cheeks brightly flushed from such proximity to license. Maybe it had been Lou asking all the time.

  "I don't know, never thought about it much," Henry lied. "Probably the same reasons you didn't want to."

  "Didn't want to!" After big meals, Lou's squeaky voice mellowed. A kind of coo. You could hardly hear it. Lou scrubbed his face with a napkin, pressed forward. "Henry, I'd get married tomorrow, if I knew where to start. You always know how to say the right thing, but me—Henry, I've never even gone, you know, on a, out with a .. ." Yes, it was Holly Tibbett, all right, in the flushed and floundering flesh. Up from the ashes, a magical event.

  "Shall we start then with the waitress?" O'Leary suggested. Willie was modestly but marvelously drunk, while back of the pillar, Gabe and Frosty and the boys were egging him on. They took Holly up to Molly... He signaled.

  "No!" gasped Holly, looking for some place to run, but too full to squeeze out.

  O'Leary saw the others splitting their sides, but with effort kept a straight face, which seeing, the approaching waitress grinned at broadly. In on it. In on everything. They took Holly up to Molly/And she said she'd like, by golly/To eat a hot tamale in the shower . . . Willie O'Leary lit up one of Holly's cigars, and admiring a navel-high splotch of shrimp sauce on the white face of the moon, said: "Molly, my girl, what can we do, you and I, to relieve a poor lad in direst distress?"

  "A lad ... ?" A little slow; she was.

  "Yes, our friend here, the vice-president in charge of talent-testing for All-American Symphonies Consolidated; he's on the quest of a respectable and compassionate—and of course talented—lady companion to go, uh, round die world with him on an unlimited expense account, and who do you think we can find for him?" The brogue was a little rusty, but he saw she liked the music of it.

  "Who, ya mean Mr. Engel here?" Molly said. "Ya must be kiddin'!" Slow as they come.

  Henry grinned. "Sure, I'm kiddin'," he said. They all knew Holly wherever he went, too—the backside of shyness. O'Leary winked. "He's really the president."

  She smiled, rubbing her nose with one hand, stroking her big round butt with the other, looked down on poor Lou, near to tears with shame and desire. Well, that tamale was a folly /For melancholy Holly/Cause that dolly stole his jolly little flower . . . "Get me back in time for work Monday?" she asked.

  Holly, the crimson flush congealing suddenly into brilliant splotches, giggled hopelessly. The boys, concealed, whooped it up.

  "So, what'll it be, boss?" O'Leary asked, and blew smoke on the excited birds that fluttered around them. "Round the world or two lemon sherbets?"

  "Same for me!" Holly squeaked, and that made them all laugh.

  And coffee," said Henry, shifting to make room in his pant leg for the old rahab who rose and hungered in his lap.

  Molly winked gaily at O'Leary and left them. Slow, but a heart of gold, sure as sin.

  "Henry! you must be drunk!" Lou gasped, reduced to a hoarse squawk.

  "I am feeling pretty good," Henry admitted. Felt light, head swimming a little, shedding his duties like an old skin, rising up... "Glad I came."

  Mitch Porter, spying a favored customer in discomfort, bobbed up once more to inquire into their well being and was reassured, but Henry was chastised with a brief suspicious squint, and Molly, too, received ample admonitions. No funny business when she brought the sherbets, but Lou went scarlet again just the same. Henry, watching, realized: why, he loves that girl. Simple as that. How many did Holly love in truth, and which did he, going out with that mushroom that bulged in his brain, dream of? Just one, maybe. It was often like that. The naval officer, Henry observed, had gone, the lady as well. Over their empty booth, ducks rose from a lake in alarm—shot rang out, feathers flew, and that pretty one, head reared: ahh! always glorious. Second-rate ballplayer, slaek-waisted backstop: still glorious. "Let's go to Jake's."

  "Where?"

  "Bar I know."

  The bill appeared, and then Mr. Mitch Porter, kindly assisting with coats. Henry found coins approximating a seventh of the bill, w
hich he lay beside the saucer, but Lou, impulsively, plunged an extra dollar to the pot. The waitress, arriving too late to catch more than a glimpse of the great red-necked seal, fleeing cashierward, her penguin boss in stubby-legged pursuit, still trying to help with die coat, like a mating pair, surprised, trying to run away still hooked up, gathered up the offering with bemused care. "He's a nice man," Henry said.

  "He is," said she.

  At the cash register, Lou hesitated, dropping bills all over the floor, but Gus Maloney, stoked up, paid. Party's money and none a my own. "More where that came from." Old Gus, one of the great old-timers, and a classic case of the single inscrutable ego rising up to have his own way at all costs. Henry never liked him but he couldn't stop him. He'd even finally grown fond of the corrupt old bastard. Big Daddy Boggier.

  They went out, huddled around cigars—Good evening, Mr. Waugh! Good evening, Mr. Engel! Night now! Thanks again! Come again soon! We shall! We shall!—and found the night had chilled a bit. Hot-stove league weather.

  "Winter's coming on," Lou remarked.

  "Seems like it." Would there be a winter? Probably. He'd want to tie up all loose ends. But why? once it was over, it was over, wasn't it? Well, curiosity. See if Thornton Shad-well made it into the big leagues or not. What Stars and Aces fell and who came up to take their places. Whether or not Swanee Law set those records he was aiming at: ho ho! what a surprise for that big arrogant fart to have history end as soon as he made it! He saw old Swanee's jaw set into the storm: "Ah ain't quittin'!"

  "Quitting what, Henry?"

  "Nothing, it's a line from a song," Henry alibied. "I was trying to think of it, just remembered it."

  "Henry, you listen now, you have to stop that extra work, it's—"