Unwritten Rules

by KD Casey

  “Some of that happened when I told the Gothams. But less than I thought it would from the other players. Some of the older coaches were assholes, but it turns out, when your star player doesn’t want to work with you, you have to figure your shit out.”

  “I’m not exactly a star.”

  “You were an all-star this year. It was fairly memorable.”

  “Being a good player on a bad team isn’t the same,” Zach says. “Besides, there’s not a huge market out there for aging catchers.”

  “It’s more a question of what you want.”

  “I want this,” Zach says, quickly, easily, gesturing between them. “I’ve seen what the other side of it looks like. I know what’s important to me now. I don’t want to break any more promises to you. Or to myself.”

  “Promise me you’ll think about it.” Eugenio says it with unexpected ferocity. “That you’re not just going to let them win.”

  “Let who win?”

  “The Union. The league. New York sports media. Any of them.”

  “It’s not really my choice.” But that feels wrong too, the same kind of powerlessness he felt in Oakland, overmatched by the team and the league and his own fears. “But if it’s a problem, I won’t be quiet about it either. If not to the public, at least with other players. Guys should know about the kinds of teams they’re signing with.”

  Eugenio kisses him then, a lingering kiss. His mouth tastes like the tea they drank. He wraps his hands around Zach’s forearms, and he squeezes once, again, before releasing them. “You know, I think we waited a couple years to have this conversation.”

  “We did,” Zach says. “I wish I could have figured this all out sooner.”

  Eugenio leans in, kissing him again, this time with more intention. “Come to bed.”

  “The dishes—” Because Eugenio has opinions about going to sleep with plates and glasses still in the sink.

  “They’ll wait. I’m done waiting.”

  “Yeah,” Zach says, “me too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “Before we, uh, get started,” Zach says, “I wanted to mention something.”

  It’s midafternoon, in mid-September, and he’s in a conference room high up in Union Stadium with Maritza, Stephanie’s video-call displayed on the large monitor.

  “Okay,” Maritza says, though her eyes are narrowed. On screen, Stephanie’s making the same face at him.

  “Hypothetically speaking,” Zach says, “if the team found out that a player was, uh, not exactly straight, what would happen?”

  “Zach,” Stephanie says, “if you don’t want to have this conversation here—”

  Maritza interrupts. “Hypothetically? Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” he says.

  “I mean, our job is promoting the team. If a member of the team didn’t want that promoted, then we wouldn’t. If, however, someone else made that decision for that player—through a leak to the media, for example—we would work to make sure that was resolved as painlessly as possible. For the player.”

  “Oh,” Zach says.

  “There’s a template nondisclosure agreement I can forward you.” Maritza taps on her laptop. “Just in case you need to pass it along to someone.”

  “No, um, that’s okay.”

  On screen, Stephanie’s eyebrows are lost in her bangs, which are purple. “As your publicist, I can mostly say ditto. And add that it takes a shitty fucking person to out someone, so if that’s happening to you or someone on the team, we should know about it.”

  “It’s not,” Zach says. “I’m really all right. I was just wondering.”

  “Broadly speaking, the issue does come up with players sometimes,” Stephanie says. “Maybe not frequently, but more than you might think.”

  “Thanks for that, um, information,” he says. “I guess we can talk about the article now if you want.”

  Maritza closes her laptop and gets up. “Apologies. I need to step out for a second. Stephanie, if you want to get started.”

  And he doesn’t think she’ll go and alert the rest of the PR team, but maybe he’s misread her and she’s about to shout it from the stadium’s upper decks.

  She seems to sense his apprehension. “I’m going to get a cup of coffee from the clubhouse.” And the clubhouse is a good ten-minute walk from the conference room they’re sitting in, with a state-of-the-art coffeemaker that confuses everyone but Brito. Unlike the coffeemaker sitting on a little table by the window, next to a stack of single-serving pods. “Let me know if you want anything.”

  “Zach,” Stephanie says, when Maritza has left.

  “Bad timing?” He has a paper coffee cup in front of him, a half an inch of now-cold coffee left in it, and he unrolls the rim.

  “The job of a publicist, generally, is to—” Stephanie says, before interrupting herself. “You know what, no bullshit. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Actually, I’m good. Better than I have been in a long time.”

  “I was gonna say, you looked like you were enjoying yourself in New York. Given all the pictures you’ve been in with... Oh.”

  “Yeah, um, about that.”

  “It’s not my business,” she says. “Literally, as Morales is not my client. But like this article, whatever narrative you decide you want, that’s what we’ll go with.”

  “Thanks. I really mean that.”

  “Someday, I’ll tell you the story of how I got together with my girlfriend. That said, don’t tell the Union anything you don’t want the world to know. Maritza’s good, but the rest of the place leaks like a fucking sieve.”

  “Including my teammates?”

  “That’s your call, but you might want to start with someone you trust. Not some big announcement.”

  “Yeah, there’s a counselor who’s been helping me, and he said the same thing.”

  “Even if it’s in their best corporate interest not to out you, it doesn’t mean they won’t do something to get publicity, if they feel like it’ll outweigh keeping anything confidential. Just don’t confuse a good outcome with a good process, is what I’m saying.”

  Maritza shut the door on her way out. He glances at it, wondering if it’s locked, if their conversation is audible in the hallway. “I’ve been thinking, if things aren’t good here, um, I have an opt out.”

  “Let me know what you decide before you tell anyone here. Including Maritza. Between us, I was going to see if she wanted to come work with me.”

  “Did she say something?” He tries to remember if he’s seen other players being assholes or handsy or blowing her off.

  “No, just trying to save her the headaches I went through. Places like that can be unkind.”

  Because he remembers her in Oakland, wary that players were going to disappoint her, which some inevitably did. “When did you know that it was the right moment to just say fuck ’em and leave?”

  “Huh, that’s quite a question.” Which isn’t an answer, but she’s studying the top corner of the screen like she’s assembling her thoughts. “I don’t think it was any one thing. Just a collection of little things that all built into a big thing.”

  She has one of those static images as a background, a picture of the rolling California hills, brown Mediterranean scrubland punctuated by the occasional audacious green. Something flickers—someone else coming into the room, a tall woman who looks vaguely familiar to Zach, though he can’t place her—and Stephanie turns back to look at her, muting her mic and shaking her head, before continuing.

  “I expected to have some big burn-it-all-down moment,” she says, finally. “That there would be music playing as I walked out, or an explosion, and it just wasn’t like that. Because I knew that if I left, things would be even less likely to change—that they don’t change without people changing them.”

  “I’ve been thinkin
g about retiring,” Zach says. “Maybe doing some coaching.”

  “It’d be a shitty way to go out. Do you still want to play?” She asks it not like a publicist or an interviewer, but someone who’s known him for a long time.

  She has frown lines around her mouth—perhaps deepened by however how many times she’s planned PR strategies for players who say and do awful things and rely on other people to clean up their messes. The kind he should have for all the times he stood and watched while stuff like that happened to Johnson, to Womack, to Morgan. To Eugenio.

  “Hypothetically,” he says, “what does it take to have a burn-it-all-down moment?”

  Stephanie smiles; her teeth look like a shark’s unwavering grin. “They don’t happen by accident. Usually, something that combines a public statement, community outreach, and enough dirt on enough guys who might make your life hell to repay the favor.”

  “Wow. Just like that?”

  “That’s public relations, baby.” And she laughs when he laughs. “You just gotta know—there are guys who’ll have your back in private but, point a camera at them, and they won’t say two words. And some who’ll do the opposite. Talk a big game but not do shit when cameras aren’t rolling. It helps to know who’s who ahead of time. Start small, like you said, with someone you trust and then we’ll work up to it.”

  And Zach thinks about all the guys he’s caught, changed next to, exchanged slaps with in the dugout. The handful of ones who were quick to shout slurs and the vastly greater number who didn’t say anything when they heard them. “I don’t think I’m ready for that yet. But I want to be at some point.”

  “You’re in a better position than a lot of guys,” Stephanie says, and she ticks off a list on her fingers. “Older but not decrepit.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Passably handsome. Don’t have a reputation as a hothead or a showboat. And most importantly enough fuck-you money if this doesn’t work out.”

  “What do I do if it doesn’t?”

  “Do what people like us usually do in these circumstances—if they won’t make space for you, you make your own space.”

  There’s a knock on the door, Maritza poking her head in, holding two cups, one of which she hands to Zach, which contains not coffee but a few fingers of amber liquid.

  “I may have liberated some whiskey,” she says.

  “Well, if you’re both drinking,” Stephanie says, and there’s a motion on screen, her moving to get up and then returning with a glass though it’s barely noon on the West Coast.

  Maritza raises her cup and Zach knocks his against it gently, then they both aim theirs toward the screen.

  “What’re we drinking to?” Stephanie asks.

  “To starting small,” Zach says, “but not staying there.”

  * * *

  They play down the last games of the season. Zach doesn’t look at the erasable whiteboard hanging in the Union clubhouse, their magic number falling into the single digits. He doesn’t listen to New York sports radio for many, many reasons while he’s driving. Instead, he rolls down the back windows enough to feel the increasingly cool September air, and thinks about October and what comes after.

  He texts Morgan one day, an hour before he has to go to the park, asking for details about the tournament and if she has any interest in him running a catching clinic. If she’d be open to having Eugenio there as well, or if they’d both be distractions.

  Less than a minute later, he gets a series of exclamation points so long it fills the screen of his phone.

  I take it that’s a yes

  Yes that’s a yes. It’s a YES. She sends a few links—who will be there, what she’s doing to get big-league coverage for the women’s teams, what their outreach plan is.

  I’m excited too

  Convince Johnson to come.

  Let me see how his wrist is. Mostly, he complained to Zach in a series of garbled voice-to-text messages about having to use his nondominant hand to brush his teeth. Which probably meant he was feeling better if he was up to whining.

  Have you told him yet? Morgan asks. He sent her a list of who he was intending to tell and a promise to text her with how each conversation went.

  Not yet. When you did how’d he take it?

  I just asked him to come to Colombia. So pretty good. There’s a pause, Morgan typing. You know he’d probably give you like a kidney if you needed one?

  Yeah that’s kind of the problem. Things’ll be different.

  Different doesn’t always mean worse. And three dots appear, disappearing again, and then reappearing. You told me I was supposed to yell at you if you’re being avoidant about this.

  And that was with the list he sent her, an ask for accountability.

  He’s never asked me about it, Zach says. maybe he figured it out and doesn’t want to know.

  Or maybe he’s waiting for you to tell him because he thinks of you like a brother. Only one way to find out.

  Yeah ok

  LMK how it goes. I’m so happy about Colombia you have no idea

  He gets off the phone with her and opens up the text thread he has with Johnson, typing before he can second-guess himself. Still ok to bring someone to your grad party? Like a date?

  An almost instant reply. Of course.

  And Zach’s hands are shaking when he types the next part. I think you’ll like him.

  A pause, longer this time, and Zach should have waited. Talked it over with Eugenio, who knew, vaguely, that Johnson was on the list of people he was intending to tell, but not how or when. With Aviva or, hell, his mother, who already started emailing Eugenio thoughts about conversion classes, which he ignores, and recipes, which he doesn’t.

  It’s been long enough that Zach checks the message to make sure it went through, the read receipt and the timestamp staring up at him. He goes over to the window, looking out at the street below, the pulse of cars moving and stopping with cycles of the traffic lights. It surprised him, his first time in the city, how narrow the streets were, the jam-packed tolerance that comes from so many people in so small a place. He looks down at his phone, silent in his hands, waiting. Pricks of sweat start to form at his temples.

  A voice text comes through a minute later. Zach fumbles it open, pressing the phone to his hearing ear. “I didn’t want to do this over text,” Johnson says. “’Cause I still can’t really type. Whoever you want to bring is good. I can’t guarantee my relatives won’t be jerks, but I can guarantee I’ll throw ’em out if they are.”

  And while Zach’s listening, there’s an alert for another message. “I wouldn’t be in the league if it wasn’t for you. You always tell me not to say that. But you always had time for me even when I was being a pain-in-the-butt rookie.”

  Zach leans his face on the window, sticky with late morning humidity. Something in his back releases, a knot of tension easing.

  I wish I had had your guts back then, Zach writes, to stand up when the team was being shitty about money. About everything.

  I was dumb. And didn’t know how the world worked. Or I thought I did. But you kept me from running my mouth and getting stuck in the minors my whole career.

  Nah, not dumb. Right.

  Probably both. I hear two things can be simultaneously true. At least that’s what my LSAT prep book says.

  And Zach shakes his head, opening up his bank app, where Johnson’s attempts to pay him for his tuition back have been sitting, unaccepted. He declines each. For the next big thing, he writes. You’re gonna be great.

  * * *

  When Zach gets to the clubhouse the following day, there are rolls of plastic sheeting hanging above the stalls. In his, a set of goggles he didn’t request, injury prevention for if and when they celebrate, aimed at keeping players with some of the best visual acuity in the world from spraying each other in the face with champagne.


  He snaps a picture and sends it to Eugenio, who sends him back a similar picture from the Gothams clubhouse, the plastic sheeting blue, the goggles bright orange. He painted his nails the week before to match.

  The Union don’t clinch that night, but the Gothams do, and Zach is waiting on his couch for Eugenio to text that he’s back when the door to Zach’s loft opens.

  Eugenio’s a little unsteady, reeking of champagne, an unopened bottle of it in his hand, along with the spare set of Zach’s keys, goggles leaving indentations on his forehead. “Guess who just won the division pennant!”

  “The Federals?” Zach says.

  “You’re not funny.” Eugenio grips him by the front of his shirt, wobbly, pulling him in. Up close, he’s smiling, radiant, color in his cheeks, tongue exploring Zach’s mouth. “I don’t recommend taking a town car without showering off first.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Come help me rinse off.” Eugenio strips, kicking each of his slides off in a different direction, leaving his shorts in a pile on Zach’s living room floor; his shirt makes a wet slap as it hits the table. He walks down the hallway, naked except for his goggles, his tattoos a dark curl on his back and ribs.

  Zach picks up the bottle and follows.

  “Tomorrow,” Eugenio says, standing in his bathroom, running the water for the shower, fogging the mirror. “When we do this for you tomorrow, I’m going to make sure we have better champagne than that.”

  “What’s wrong with this?” Zach asks, mostly to watch him roll his eyes, and he climbs into Zach’s shower, groaning loudly as the water hits his back.

  Zach removes his hearing aid from his ear, putting it in its case. Removes the foil from the champagne, untwisting the wire cap off it and working the cork out before taking a drink of it, and then another. He pretends to hand it to Eugenio when he emerges, dripping, from the shower.

  “Whoops.” He sprays a little on Eugenio’s stomach, on his chest, bubbles clustering on his skin. Another splash, this one larger, more deliberate. “Guess you’re gonna need to rinse off again.”