by KD Casey
“They only play on weekends,” Zach says. Because he spent his first meal there trying to hear himself think before asking to move to one of the tables on the patio outdoors, even though it meant facing Florida wildlife after dark.
Eugenio orders a drink and a beer for Zach, when the owner, Vladimir, spots them, ushering them to a tucked-away corner, a tiny table with uneven chairs that complain under Zach’s weight.
There’s baseball memorabilia on the walls, pictures of the Dominican greats: Felipe Alou, Juan Marichal and his famous high-leg kick, Big Papi, Juan Soto, stance wide as he takes a ball on a two-strike count. And players Zach doesn’t recognize, though he’s spent time pointing to one and then the next, Vladimir telling him stories about each, slowing when Zach said, “Más despacio, más despacio.”
Vladimir comes back, an order pad in his hand, though he never writes down what Zach orders. “This is Eugenio,” Zach says, after Vladimir introduces himself, handing Eugenio the pad.
“For the wall,” he clarifies, and Eugenio signs it, a big sweeping signature, before handing it to Zach.
“Did you want me to sign it too?” Zach asks in Spanish. Vladimir looks at him like he’s being silly, saying something in rapid Spanish to Eugenio before nodding.
“What’d he say to you?” Zach says once Vladimir left with their signatures on the pad and their orders memorized.
“That you should go play in the Dominican league this winter. Then you’ll actually be famous.”
They’re left alone after that, save the waitstaff bringing their meals, food filling the table, Eugenio ordering oxtail, a side of mofongo, another of pigeon peas and rice. “This is really good.”
“You thought it wouldn’t be?” Zach teases.
They talk about what ballplayers talk about when they get together: their respective seasons, the upcoming games between their teams, other restaurants Eugenio’s eaten at in Miami and how this one compares. Safe topics, like they’re nothing more than former teammates, close friends, reunited by an accident of scheduling.
Except Eugenio keeps looking at him like he expects something else from Zach, something more than Zach’s opinions about a strike he stole in the sixth inning. A restlessness that builds over the course of their meal, Zach getting up and going to the restroom, his heart pounding when he gets to their table and sees that Eugenio is gone—only for him to come back a few minutes later saying he was asking for another drink at the bar.
And it’s probably after midnight, though Zach hasn’t looked at his phone since he turned off alerts and tucked it into his pocket. There are only a handful of diners left, a couple in a far corner facing away from them, a family with a baby asleep in a highchair, a few other kids running around the dance floor in a mostly quiet game of tag.
It’s late enough that Zach is half-tempted to just request the check and retreat to his apartment to contemplate the ceiling, forfeiting whatever chances he has and trying to move on. To remain here, safe in his isolation.
Except for the way Eugenio is looking at him. Except that Zach once drove through the unguarded desert twilight to kiss him. Except for all the times Zach wanted to tell him about his day, about the indignities of being an aging catcher in a humid city, to hear Eugenio’s complaints about bad umpiring or the Gothams’ mercurial bullpen, to sleep in the same bed and wake up with his fingers curved around Eugenio’s ribs, as indelible as a tattoo.
“I really don’t want to fuck this up,” Zach says.
Eugenio doesn’t say anything. The waiters have cleared off their dishes. Only Eugenio’s drink, mostly emptied, and the last sips of Zach’s beer remain, the table itself scarred by years of un-coastered drinks, ring marks overlapping. Zach has been resting his elbows on it, Eugenio his hands.
And Zach moves his arm, forearm against the damp tabletop, fingers extended. He pauses, thumb hovering over the rough surface of Eugenio’s knuckles. Inhales, holds it in his chest, blowing out lightly through his mouth, before lowering his thumb, an inch, a fraction of an inch, eclipsing the space between possibility and deniability and action, his hand reaching to cover Eugenio’s.
He can feel Eugenio’s pulse, the callus ridging his palm when Zach wraps his fingers around his, the weight of his stare as he looks down at their hands, and then up at Zach.
“Is this, um, okay?” Zach asks.
Eugenio nods, swallowing once, visibly. He smiles, a smile that starts as a twitch in his bottom lip before expanding. “Yes, this is okay.”
“I found this guy. He’s a therapist or a counselor, I guess. He helps people come out. I haven’t called him yet, but I put his number in my phone. I wanted to have it there, just to have.”
Eugenio looks like he’s going to say something, eyebrows shooting up, before deciding not to, especially when Zach holds up his other hand, asking for a second.
“I don’t think I’m going to tell everyone. But I need to tell someone. My family. Maybe the players here or on my next team. And I need some help doing that.”
“Zach.” Eugenio says it softly, like he’s holding the word in his mouth.
“I missed that. The way you say my name. I just, I miss it so much. I feel like I’ve missed out on so much. And I feel like it’s choking me. That it’s so close I could reach out and grab it, if only I could bring myself to. Do you ever feel like that?”
“Only,” Eugenio says, “only all the time.”
They sit like that for a while. The restaurant is quiet around them, the family hugging their goodbyes by the door. Music drifts in from the kitchen. Staff come around, clearing dishes into plastic tubs, wiping down tables, righting chairs. Two more come out with a mop and bucket, swiping figure-eights on the floor with economical motions, dousing and wringing the mop.
“We should maybe head out,” Zach says, though he hasn’t yet paid.
Which is when Vladimir comes back, rounding a corner with a tray holding three drinks. Eugenio squeezes their fingers where they’re interlocked before withdrawing his hand. “I hear you tell baseball stories,” he says in Spanish.
They end up drinking bourbon and listening to tales of the greatest Dominican hitters and how they would fare against the greatest Venezuelan pitchers—a conversation that starts congenial and ends in a re-litigation of the recent World Baseball Classic game between the two countries. One that apparently Eugenio is still sore about, mostly because the Venezuelan team struck out fourteen times while the Dominican team was K’d only five.
“Dominicans don’t strike out,” Vladimir says. “It’s simple. When you play vitilla, you don’t strike out.”
“What’s vitilla?” Zach asks.
A few minutes later, he finds himself holding the cut end of a broomstick in the courtyard behind the restaurant, Eugenio standing thirty or so feet away, flinging bottle caps at him.
The courtyard itself is a rectangular patch of grass lined by flower planters, with an unwatered fountain and shrubbery that Zach doesn’t care to investigate. A few trees stand watch, birds whistling from their branches. Vladimir turned the floodlights on, and with them a bug zapper, which is busy in its futile attempts to rid South Florida of anything that can sting or pester.
“Keep your eye on it.” Eugenio sails one of the caps—the top of a large water jug—at Zach. The cap doesn’t stay level, doesn’t have the normal trajectory of a baseball pitch. Zach hasn’t ever faced a knuckleballer before, but this must be what it’s like: to see the ball dance and swerve and dip unpredictably.
“Fuck.” Zach swings through it, missing and Eugenio, having appointed himself both pitcher and umpire, calls a loud strike one. “How am I supposed to hit that thing?”
“Use the stick, Zach,” Eugenio says, and then sends him another. This one makes glancing contact, swerving off the end of the broomstick and into the shrubbery, though Eugenio reminds him it’s strike two.
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�How’d you learn how to do this, anyway?”
Eugenio flings another cap at him, one that takes a funny turn in its trajectory, disappearing into the darkness at the edge of the courtyard. “We play it in Venezuela too. It’s called chapita, but it’s more or less the same thing. My cousins and I would sometimes play whenever we’d go back there for the summers.”
“If that’s the case, then how come you struck out tonight?”
Eugenio laughs, and it fills the courtyard, laughs even harder when Zach swings and misses on a bottlecap that dips so low it bounces off the grass, skidding to a stop near him. “That makes two of us, I guess,” Eugenio says.
“You want to switch?”
“Sure.”
“Okay but show me how I’m supposed to throw this first.”
“It’s just a side-arm motion.” But Eugenio comes up next to him, where Zach is holding one of the bottle caps from a pile, hand wrapped around Zach’s, the other at his waist, like Zach didn’t throw a baseball more than a hundred times tonight returning them back to the mound. “See, like this.” And he presses two fingers down, between the bottle cap in Zach’s hand and the dip of his palm.
“You’re wearing your old cologne,” Zach says.
“Yeah, I quit smoking. I don’t know if that’s a dealbreaker.”
“I was gonna kiss you. If that’s okay.”
The courtyard lights reflect off Eugenio’s glasses, and his mouth is soft against Zach’s, lips parting, hands coming up on Zach’s sides, fervent, gripping, like he might not let go. “You know,” Eugenio says, pulling back, adjusting his glasses where they went a little crooked, “you’re not getting out of pitching to me.”
“It’s almost two in the morning.”
“Well, if you’re afraid of being embarrassed.”
“Oh, it’s like that, Morales?” Zach flings a bottle cap at where he abandoned the broomstick in the grass. “Let’s do this. Get in the box.”
Eugenio reaches for the stick, shaking it to dislodge whatever Florida critters have attached themselves. He assumes a parody of his normal batting stance, stick resting on his shoulder, adjusting his hips in anticipation. “It’s the bottom of the ninth inning, game seven of the World Series, and, folks, it all comes down to this,” he says, in a fake announcer voice. “The New York City Gothams against their bitter rivals, the Miami Swordfish.”
“We can’t both be in the series. Because of that thing where we play in the same league.”
“Look, who’s the commentator here? Two-time all-star, three-time Silver Slugger finalist, and the player most likely to work for Food Network, Eugenio Morales comes to the plate. On the mound, his archnemesis—his old flame...throwing teammate, Zach Glasser.”
“I don’t get an intro?” Zach asks. “It only works if it’s a fair matchup.”
“One-time all-star, two-time Gold Glove consideration, and the catcher with the best game-calling skills in affiliated ball, the Pitcher Whisperer himself, Zach Glasser.”
“See, that’s better.” Zach picks up a bottle cap and tosses it to Eugenio, an easy flick of his wrist.
“Here’s the windup and the pitch. It’s a changeup from the look of it, and—” Eugenio swings, hitting the edge of the bottle cap, which ricochets off the stick and right into the dirt “—strike one.”
Zach tosses him another, and Eugenio swings again, missing entirely, twisting around and going to his knees. “Strike two,” Zach supplies.
“Don’t get cocky on me now, Glasser.” He resumes his batting stance, staring Zach down in an exaggerated version of the look he uses to intimidate opposing pitchers, though it’s tempered by a grin. “And it’s all down to this, the game on the line. One strike away from Miami’s improbable postseason run, from the depths of a—what’s Miami’s record?”
“Forty-four and sixty-one. We are forty-four and sixty-one.”
“Shit, that’s really bad. From the depths of a forty-four-win, sixty-one-loss season, they might ascend to baseball’s highest peaks, Morales’s bat the only thing standing in their way.”
“Can I throw now? Or do you want to keep talking?”
Eugenio laughs. “Let’s see it.”
Zach winds up, then fires the bottle cap. It flutters through the air, and Eugenio swings, swings and makes solid contact, with all the strength of a big-league hitter, the cap flying up up up and out of the courtyard, far enough that Zach can’t see where it lands or if it even comes down at all.
“He’s done it,” Eugenio says. “Tie game, tie game.”
He runs, arms up in victory, tagging a set of flower planters, then the concrete edge of the fountain, then toeing the shrubs, before returning to where he was standing at “home plate,” Zach there and waiting for him. Eugenio throws his hands to the sky, and when he brings them down, they’re around Zach.
“You haven’t won yet,” Zach says.
“Yeah, Zach, we’ve won.” And he tugs the front of Zach’s shirt, until Zach leans down, pressing their lips together, Eugenio’s tongue an encouragement in his mouth, his hands an insistence at Zach’s sides.
It rained earlier; the courtyard smells like grass and water. Eugenio kisses the way he had in Cincinnati, in Oakland, that first night in Arizona when he brought Zach into the safety of his apartment and the shelter of his bed. Now, standing here under the shine of the halogen yellow lights, the night-flying birds are their only witnesses, crying out to the city beyond the courtyard walls as if bearing news.
“That was a good piece of hitting.” Zach says, a few minutes later, reluctantly pulling back.
“Well, you did throw me one right up the middle.” Eugenio is smiling, bright as the courtyard lights behind him, Zach feeling equally lit from within.
“There’s a reason I’m not a pitcher.” Sounds begin to intrude, the city around them reasserting itself. Zach pulls his phone from his pocket, checking the time. “It’s probably late. I don’t know if they’re gonna care you were out.”
“It’s fine as long as I show up to play,” Eugenio says. “But I should probably get back. I wouldn’t want you all to go forty-five and sixty-one. Then we might really have something to worry about.”
“Um, do you mind if—” Zach pulls out his phone. “I just don’t have a lot of pictures of us.” They squeeze together, Zach extending an arm to aim the camera, their faces reflected in its screen. He hands the phone to Eugenio to review after he’s taken a burst of them. “Any of these look okay?”
“This one.” Eugenio holds up the phone and snaps a picture of them, kissing Zach’s cheek, glasses against his cheekbone. A glancing playful kiss, both their faces fully visible. “I mean, if you’re okay with it.”
“Do you want me to text it to you?” Zach asks, and he does when Eugenio nods.
They go back into the restaurant, where Vladimir is sitting at one of the tables, smoking a cigarette and looking over a pile of receipts. “I haven’t paid,” Zach says.
Eugenio looks a little guilty. “I gave him my card when you got up earlier.”
There’s a brown grocery bag next to Vladimir. In it, two clear plastic takeout containers, slices of cake sitting on white paper doilies. Vladimir says something to Eugenio in Spanish and then waves his hand, shooing them out.
“What’d he say?” Zach says as they’re getting into his truck.
“That I should let him know the next time the Gothams play here, that he’ll come and make us better food than we can get in New York.”
“I thought he might have seen us, when we were—you know.”
“He also said for you to work on your vitilla skills for when you play in the winter league. And that you can’t strike out so much.”
“I’m really trying not to,” Zach says.
Eugenio laughs as Zach navigates his truck into the road. It’s late enough that there isn’t much traf
fic. Zach doesn’t bother to pull up directions, one hand on the wheel, the other on his center console. He wraps his fingers around Eugenio’s, not knowing how to bear being even a cup holder’s distance apart. Won’t know how to bear it when Eugenio leaves, flying to wherever the game takes him next.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” Zach says, when he drops Eugenio off at the team hotel.
Eugenio doesn’t remind him that they’re playing against each other in less than eighteen hours. “See you tomorrow.” He kisses Zach goodbye, once, then again, before getting out.
Zach drives back to his apartment, rolling down the back window, admitting the warm night breeze. And even though he’s a few miles from the beach, he still can smell the ocean.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They play the next night, and it’s a blowout game, the kind that goes to shit quickly and never recovers, Miami’s starter pulled after three innings, a succession of progressively worse relievers there to clean up the mess. The Gothams hit and hit and hit, eighteen hits in total, and Zach counts them from where he’s sitting on the bench, having been rested for the night and not volunteering to go in when it’s clear the game isn’t worth the effort.
Eugenio’s behind the plate for the Gothams. He calls a good game—not that it matters against Miami’s limp bats—and Zach waves off the beat reporters’ attempts to cajole an answer out of him other than that you win some and lose some and that’s baseball.
There’s a text waiting on his phone when he gets done showering, one that just says, Ready? and another that says, Hungry? and Zach replies that he’s both.
“You’re in a hurry,” Womack says as he’s leaving. Zach shrugs and doubles his pace. The entrance to the players’ parking lot has one of those curved mirrors for seeing around corners. When Zach looks up at his reflection, he’s smiling.
Eugenio’s already there, less dressed up than he was the night before, jeans and a T-shirt that shows off his body, one that’d be obscene in Indiana and that’s conservative in Miami.
Zach hugs him, a longer hug than the day before, long enough that Eugenio says, “Some of us actually played today and are missing the postgame spread.”