For Love of the Game

C
HAPEL CHECKED INTO
the usual hotel just after dark. He was deeply in the mood for an elegant supper in that elegant town with that elegant girl, but she didn’t come. He put some music on the cassette player he always carried with him in the suitcase and lay down to rest and dream and wait, listening to Brahms. She was often late. She sometimes took time to make herself look spectacular and he didn’t mind that at all, no hurry, he could always stand hunger. Music ended. No phone call. He turned on the TV. Nothing much. He thought: hell, let’s have dinner here. Comfy dinner. Cozy dessert. Warm warm warm. You pitch tomorrow anyway. So … so what? Chapel finally looked at his watch. More than half an hour. Unusual. Give her a buzz? No. Not Carol. Don’t prod Carol. Not yet. Not that girl. Patience, lad, patience. He lay back on the bed and shifted to an old cassette of Neil Diamond—“I am, I said,
to no one there, and no one heard at all, not even a chair.…” Carol did not come.

By nine o’clock he knew something had gone wrong. Never this late. She would have called. In four years—it was that long! Amazing!—she was sometimes more than a half hour late and then always apologized and damn near went down on her knees—oh, yes, how well do I remember. She got down on her knees once and kissed me from that position, and we laughed, and loved, and laughed all that night. Where the hell? Something wrong. Must call. No. Don’t call office. Chapel called her home phone number. Let it ring. No answer. Well. She got sent off somewhere. She’ll try to call, I know. He called the desk.

“Yessir, Mr. Chapel, how you doin’?”

“I’m doin’ fine. Listen, I’m waiting for a call from a woman named Grey, Carol Grey. If it comes, make sure you put that one through. Carol Grey. Got it?”

It was standard down there for them to keep people away from him, especially as the hours got late, and the phone in his room rarely rang, so he wanted there to be no mistake about Carol.

“Gotcha. Carol Grey. Will do. Hey, Mr. Chapel, you pitchin’ tomorra?”

“Yep. Far as I know.”

“Hey, man, you put ’em
down
. Okay? I ain’t no fan of them guys. They snotnoses, and thassafack. Good luck to ya. Well, sir, good night now, sir. I got
your lady’s name. Carol Grey. Will put her right on through, soon as she calls. Luck, Mr. Chapel.”

Chapel hung up and lay down and watched television.

Christ.

Think she got hurt?

In this damn town they get mugged. But … she’s been here long enough to take care of herself. Knows what she’s doin’. Girl takes care of herself. Great faith in—not girl.
Woman
. She’s aware of
that
. She is … thirty-four. Birthday? Yes. Remember? Last month, August—she’s a Leo, her regal royal highness—boy, did we celebrate. But—she got very drunk. Unusual now for that girl. Always could hold the stuff. He saw the image clearly in his mind for one long moment: that long tall blond lovely girl kneeling on the bed in a half slip, hair wildly flowing across her face, tangled, eyes glazed, one arm waving vaguely, giving the queen’s speech, and then she fell forward in such a way as to hurt herself if he hadn’t caught her. She passed out that night. Yep. She did. He remembered tenderly fondly drunkenly tucking her in and the way she reached out for him with both arms and hugged him for one long silent moment, so tightly he had to gasp, and then she faded away, and he sat there for a long time in the dark, with the music, hoping she’d be okay and wouldn’t get sick, she never had before, and watching the light flow in from the window across that splendid
face—but there was sadness on that face, and she dreamed a bad dream—what the hell about?—groaned, tossed. That night he thought it was only too much drinking. That was birthday number … thirty-four. So. Some birthdays are special. Maybe to her that night there was something … she couldn’t talk about. She doesn’t talk about sad things. But sad birthdays? Chapel was thirty-seven. He sat there sinking into a chair, watching a TV series of lovely girls:
Charlie’s Angels
.… What was the birthday that mattered to
you
? From … twenty-nine to thirty. Oh, well. From boy to man. In one whole day.

Where the hell is she?

She didn’t get hurt in a car. Hell, doesn’t even drive in this town. But could some dumb bastard have hit her cab, some drunken bastard? Possible. In this town they drive like … blink. Let that go. Chapel’s parents had died in a car wreck years ago. Memories of some things … get in the way. Erase that. Clear the mechanism … go on waiting. No phone call. Back to Brahms. Academic Festival Overture. Didn’t fit. He cut to silence. Food? Room service? No. Don’t just sit here. He called the desk, told them he’d be down in the restaurant if Carol called. He put on a jacket, knotted a rare tie, went down and had something. They knew where to seat him and he was off by himself, but the waiter knew him, a man he called Soho, with an English accent which was not fake,
and the waiter wanted to know if he was going to pitch tomorrow.

He went back up to his room and waited, but Carol didn’t come. He was pitching the next day; there were only two days left in the season and two games left and it was his last outing and then he was free. Last time out so … rest. But do you rest … when she doesn’t come. Why didn’t she come? She’ll tell you tomorrow. Very good sensible decent kind of honest patient gentle reason. So let it go and think of something sober and industrious and the end of the season and going to ski in New Zealand in the winter and … rest. Have often stayed up all night before a game. Pride yourself on that. So did the Babe. Right? Right-ho. So. He listened to music but felt wounded doing that, alone, and laughed at himself and went back to TV, and what came in on the late show was
Arsenic and Old Lace
. That was a very funny movie coming back from his childhood and he really began to watch, began to laugh. Cary Grant was, ah, magnificent, and then that deathless line: “Insanity runs in the family. It practically
gallops
.” He loved that all over again—wish she was here to share the funny moments of this one, this was special, one of the great ones, but—nobody there. She would have really enjoyed this … wouldn’t she? Ole Carol? Now
that
girl has a sense of humor. She’s first of all a doll, a natural-born doll, she has a marvelous figure, and she … 
is as funny a girl as I’ve ever known. Right. That time, oh my God, the time she showed up wearing that wig to the hotel, speaking with a magnificent French accent:
Je voudrais
something something.
Mais oui?
May we?
Enchanté
, mess you, you mess you.
Enchanté
, the moment he entered her. First time he ever broke up laughing while trying to make love to a lovely girl. That night … was a spectacular night. She certainly never cried. Never have seen her cry. Could she be crying tonight? Christ, is she all right? Call hospitals?

Dope.

Too many hospitals in this town.

She could have called.

If she could.

Couldn’t.

Run off with another … chap.

Possible.

Definitely possible.

Carol?

Would she do that?

Not without … telling you.

Well, then. What do you think?

She’s hurt.

Christ.

Nothing to do now.

Pitch tomorrow.

He turned off the TV and the music and lay for a long while in the dark. Season ends. We go back to New Zealand, like we did last year. He lay
remembering skiing in the white New Zealand snow with Carol, down a glacier once, and the blue lake at Queenstown, and the mountains to the west on the South Island, over where they mined jade rock, and the lakes, the hills, as beautiful a place as there was on this earth. He went back to music, something very soft, and fell asleep. It was at that time past five in the morning.

Phone rang. Chapel groped, gathered.

“Hey there, Mr. Chapel. Wake-up call. Nine-thirty, sir.”

“Um. Right. Thanks.”

“One thing, Mr. Chapel. You remember that little bucket of baseballs you said you’d autograph? How ’bout that? They done? I can have Louie pick ’em up when he brings the coffee.”

“Oh. Oh, fine. Okay.”

“Right. Then he’ll be up in a few minutes.”

“Check.”

“Hey, Mr. Chapel, you pitchin’ today?”

“Ah. Think so.”

“Shucks. Now, please don’t be hard on those boys, Mr. Chapel. They
need
this one. You know. Listen, today, why don’t you just take a good rest. You sure deserve it.”

“Well.”

“Sorry. But I’m behind my boys. Well, sir, have a good day.”

Chapel hung up, stared across the nightstand at
the small bucket of fresh new white baseballs. She never called. Got to sign those. Gee. I don’t sign well. Never can read the blinkin’ name. Why didn’t she call? He reached out for the baseballs, saw underneath the bucket a layer of pictures he’d taken in New Zealand last year and had blown up, Carol on skis—they were together for Gus to see. Gus wants to go to New Zealand. We had plans. Boy oh boy. Calmly. “ ’Tis the early morning,” as Mom used to put it. Coffee and calm. But why in hell … clear the mechanism.

Chapel stood, searched round for a pen, drank a glass of cold water, then sat down on the big chair and started signing the baseballs, about twenty of them, for a club of injured kids.

His name was William Edward Chapel, but he signed as he was known: Billy Chapel. He been pitching in the major leagues for one team only, had never changed teams in seventeen years. That was very unusual in the major leagues now, but it had not been when he first came up to make his debut at the age of twenty, and he had never wanted to go anywhere else. He was considered by most experts to have been one of the great pitchers in baseball history; his records were already ranked with those of Koufax and Feller and Spahn and Christy Mathewson, and though he was now thirty-seven years old and pitching these days with a last-place team which had gone far downhill in the past few years and so had not at all helped his
numbers in the record books, he had begun to be regarded, at the age of thirty-seven, as one of the grand old men of baseball and he knew that well. He loved the game. He had loved it naturally all his life, since his first game as a small boy. He was a tall man, slim, long-armed, dark-haired, with gray hair at the temples, and his face had become widely known across the country because of a series of commercials he’d done on television and wished he hadn’t done, and he had dark eyes, a sharp, pointed nose, and the thing about his face that always seemed to radiate when he was out on the mound was that he had the eyes of a winner. He looked at you and smiled. And won. He did not do much talking to anybody. He liked all kinds of music and all sorts of reading and travel, and he didn’t argue with umpires or get into fights. He was a wandering man who had loved airplanes along with baseball and who had never married, although the next thing he had always loved, after the game, and flying, had always been women. He had known many beautiful girls. He had never been in love with one and had never even used the word. He was in many ways still very young in the mind and he was aware of that. Billy Boy, Billy Boy, you’ll have to grow up someday. He would. He had been … attached to that one woman, Carol Grey, the delightful blonde, for four years, and it was a long time now that he had taken no other woman but her anywhere. She had been married
once—badly; the scars there were still rather obvious and she did not want any more of
that
. She did not want children. If she ever married again it would be to a rich and older man who tired easily and rested a lot and left her alone in a lovely house. She worked in this town for a publisher—now a full-scale editor with a growing reputation—but she traveled often to see him during the season and he came to be with or near her when the season was done, although his home base was the high country out in Colorado, and they had had four very good years, years which admittedly confusingly got better and better. Very well educated, well read, lovely girl with great social grace, spending most of her spare time with a big kid baseball player. They smiled when they saw each other. Had from the beginning. Never anything complex or serious. She came to him to relax and laugh and giggle and play games, and ski and fly airplanes and never fight. Never once. Over anything at all. Disagree: yes. Tactfully, quietly. Over in a moment. Knew little of the mountains, and he’d taken her … many places. Taught her to ski. In two weeks they were scheduled to be heading for New Zealand. And … she didn’t show.