The Art of Fielding: A Novel (44 page)

It took Schwartz a few beats to remember what she was talking about.

“I really need to talk to you. Will you be back soon?”

“I have to go to team dinner. I’ll be back around ten.”

“Could I come meet you? I’m sorry, Mike. I know you’ve had a rough day. I just really need your advice. It’s about my dad.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll be home by ten.”

Pella sighed. “Okay. Is it okay if I wait here?”

Sophie had wandered a few yards away and was sitting on the bottom step, staring at the tapping toes of her laceless sneakers. Schwartz couldn’t send her back to her parents, couldn’t take her with him, couldn’t leave her here. He was about to hang up the phone when an idea struck him.

“You want me to what?” Pella said plaintively.

“You heard me.”

“You’re kidding. Mike, it’s been a really weird day.”

Schwartz wasn’t kidding. “Go get dressed,” he told Sophie as he hung up the phone. “Pella’s going to meet you here in half an hour.” He pressed two of Coach Cox’s C-notes into her palm. “Tell her you want to go to Maison Robert.”

53

A
fter dinner Schwartz and Owen searched the library and the union—nothing else was open on Saturday night—and found no sign of Henry. Nor was he in the room, nor with his parents; Henry’s mom had called Owen’s cell in search of him, and Owen told her that Henry had gone for a walk.

They went to the VAC and scoured the building from the bottom floor up, turning on all the lights as they went, and then from the top floor down, turning them off again. Schwartz locked the door as they left. A delicate frigid breeze blew due west off the water. “I don’t like this,” Schwartz said. “I don’t like this at all.”

“Henry’s an adult,” Owen said. “Or close enough. He probably just wants to be alone right now.”

“He’s not
allowed
to be alone right now. Not without telling us where he is.” Schwartz held his watch up into the cool blue glow of a security lamp. “Bus to Coshwale leaves in eight hours.”

“Maybe we should return to the scene of the crime.”

They checked Westish Field, and then the big stone bowl of the football stadium. Nothing. There weren’t many electric lights nearby, and the moon that hung between banks of clouds was as slender as an eyelash. Schwartz had never experienced this kind of darkness before enrolling at Westish; in his first days on campus he’d been afraid to fall asleep, as if the night and the quiet might swallow him whole. Now he wondered whether he could ever live in a city again.

“I don’t suppose he’s out drowning his sorrows,” Owen said.

Henry never went to the bars unless he was forced to, like on a teammate’s birthday or the Harpooners’ annual Freshperson Initiation Night. But Schwartz and Owen found their steps tending toward Bartleby’s anyway. Westish was only so big, and there were only so many places to try.

It was prime drinking time for all non–baseball players: midnight on a Saturday in early May, with finals still two weeks away. The line to get into Bartleby’s snaked through the amusement-park ropes and continued down the block. Girls shivered in flimsy dresses, huddling together two to a thin black jacket. Guys jammed their hands in their pockets and tried not to look cold.

Schwartz unclipped the rope from its ball-topped metal pole and moved to the head of the line, Owen behind him. One of the young Harpooner linebackers perched on a tall wooden stool beside the door, toying with his clickable crowd counter. Schwartz gave him a friendly whack on the chest. “Lopez. I figured you’d have dropped out by now.”

Lopez shrugged. “Not yet.”

Schwartz peered into the tinted glass door. “Pretty packed in there.”

“Stuffed,” said Lopez. “I’m not even letting girls in right now.”

“You seen the Skrimmer at all?”

“Henry? Here?” Lopez squinted and scratched at his chin as if he were being forced to consider some complex riddle. “Guess not. Adam’s inside, though.”

“Starblind? What’s he doing here? We’ve got games tomorrow.”

Lopez shrugged. “Got me. He’s with some chick.”

“Great,” said Schwartz. “Outstanding.” Seven hours till the bus departed for the biggest and—if they lost, which they wouldn’t—the last games of his Westish career. Not only was he not asleep, not only was he out of meds and pissed about it, not only could he feel every beat of his pulse in his half-destroyed knees, not only was his best player despondent and AWOL, but his second-best player was breaking curfew to chase tail. “Mind if we take a peek?”

Lopez leaned into the glass door with a fleshy forearm, letting them bypass the line and the two-dollar cover. Bartleby’s was full of bodies and flashing lights. Neon cursive signs glared down from the walls, advertising the old local beers—Schlitz, Blatz, Hamm’s, Pabst, Huber, Old Style—that were now owned by a Southern tobacco conglomerate. NBA playoff games on the TVs, crappy hip-hop on the jukebox, two beefy townies aiming plastic guns at the console of Big Buck Hunter IV. Owen leaned forward to yell in Schwartz’s ear.

“What?” Schwartz yelled back.

“I said, I’m standing in beer.”

“We’re all standing in beer.”

“But why? It’s disgusting.”

It was too loud to explain heterosexual courtship to Owen, even if he’d wanted to, so Schwartz kept pushing through the crowd, peering out over the baseball caps and the glossy hair of girls, unable to stop looking for Henry even though there was no way Henry would be here. God, that beer smelled good. He tried not to drink before games, but in the absence of Vikes—he’d run out this morning—a few beers were a near necessity.

Owen tapped him on the shoulder. “I see Adam.”

“Where?”

“End of the bar.”

His face was obscured by the abundant wheat-colored hair of the girl he was kissing, but the shimmering silver jacket was unmistakably Starblind’s. When the kiss was finished he plucked a lime rind from his mouth, dropped it in a squat glass, and held up two fingers to signal the bartender for another round. The girl draped one arm around his neck, her head resting against his shoulder in drunken worship.

“Oh my,” said Owen.

Schwartz elbowed his way through the heaving, half-dancing crowd, fists clenching and unclenching in a slow alternating rhythm. The bartender poured out two more shots of tequila. Sophie stood up, gathered her hair in a two-handed sheaf, and presented her neck to Starblind, who licked it slowly, then picked a salt shaker off the bar and sprinkled some whiteness on Sophie’s wetted skin. Sophie took a wedge of lime from the bartenders’ condiment bins and placed it between her teeth, pulp side out. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back. Starblind leaned in, licked the salt from her neck in a leisurely, lizardly way, and with a surreptitious flick of his wrist as he moved in for the kiss tossed a strobe-lit shot of tequila over his shoulder and down the front of Schwartz’s shirt.

“Hi guys,” Schwartz said.

Starblind blanched. “Mikey-o!” Sophie crowed, flinging her arms around Schwartz’s neck and swooning in to peck his cheek. She had the same fish-belly complexion as her brother, minus the windburned tan that came from spending winter mornings running stadiums, plus the mottled tequila flush that spread from her cheeks to the neckline of her butter-colored sundress. “Owen-o!” she cheered, doling out another hug.

The Buddha smiled the sort of untroubled smile that had earned him his nickname. “Hello, my dear. Having fun?”

“
Yes.
Where’s my brother? I need to find my brother. Let’s all do a shot.”

“We were hoping you guys had seen him,” Schwartz said. “Where’s Pella?”

“Pella,” said Sophie, “is
beautiful.
”

“I agree. Buddha, would you order Sophie a cup of coffee? I need to confer with Adam for a moment.”

“Aye aye, Captain.” Owen wrapped a slender arm around Sophie’s shoulders and led her away, gesticulating with his other hand as he embarked on some complicated story. Sophie nodded hypnotically, her brow furrowed to show that, no matter how drunk, she was smart enough to keep up with whatever Owen was saying. Good old Buddha.

Schwartz looked at Starblind, to whose cheeks the color had mostly returned, though the arctic Starblind smile was nowhere to be found. “Where’s Pella?”

Starblind shrugged sullenly. “I bumped into them on the street. Pella said she wasn’t feeling well.”

“She left you in charge of Sophie?” Schwartz could get only so pissed at Starblind; Starblind was Starblind the way a dog was a dog and a shark was a shark. You didn’t expect moral distinctions from a shark. But Pella—what could she have been thinking, handing Henry’s sister over to a shark? Why, why, why? How irresponsible could she be? He trusted her, wanted to trust her, wanted to hold her to the same standard he held himself. And then she pulled something like this. “Team curfew is midnight,” he said.

“I could say the same to you.”

Schwartz stared him down in a way that emphasized his height advantage. “I don’t recommend it.”

“I wasn’t drinking,” Starblind said. “If that’s what you’re thinking. Just showing Sophie around.”

“She’s Henry’s sister.”

“So what? You never hooked up with anybody’s sister?”

“She’s seventeen.”

Starblind shrugged. “She told me eighteen. Anyway, Skrim owes me one. Little bastard cost me a win today.”

Schwartz picked up Starblind the way you pick a baby out of a bathtub, under the armpits, holding it at arm’s length so it won’t drip on your shirt, though Schwartz’s shirt was already wet with tossed tequila. Starblind’s feet kicked and flailed. Schwartz jacked him up against the side of the Buck Hunter machine. The machine rocked and shuddered. The two beefy townies turned to register their displeasure but stopped when they saw the warning ire in Schwartz’s eyes.

Schwartz fired his left forearm into Starblind’s collarbone to pin him to the machine. Starblind’s head snapped back and cracked against the plastic. The pain made Starblind angry, and being angry made him smile. One thing about Starblind was he wouldn’t back down. “Fuck’s wrong with you?” he said. “You’ve been getting sucked off by Henry for years. I just wanted a little Skrimshander love.”

Schwartz slid his forearm up from Starblind’s chest into his Adam’s apple. Starblind, coughing, twisted his head to the side to try to breathe. He brought up a knee into Schwartz’s balls—a glancing blow but a blow nonetheless. Schwartz crumpled, straightened, drove the palm of his hand into Starblind’s forehead, cracking his head on the plastic again. Starblind’s eyes rolled. He squirmed and twisted, freed one hand well enough to take a few wild swings.

Even in the haze of his rage Schwartz could tell that awareness of a fight was spreading through the packed noisy bar. He had to finish this before some cop he didn’t know showed up and there was hell to pay. He felt like killing Starblind but instead he cocked his fist and drove it low, as hard as he could, into Starblind’s solar plexus, where no one would have to know, and where the pain wouldn’t keep him from playing tomorrow. The breath whooshed from Starblind’s body as he slid down the side of the machine to the beer-slick floor. He looked up at Schwartz and sneezed pathetically.

“Hey,” Sophie protested as Schwartz lifted her drink-leaden arm, looped it around his neck, and steered her toward the exit. “I thought we were doing shots. Where’s Henry? Where’s Adam?” She leaned in to confide in Schwartz’s ear. “He’s
hot.
I mean like seriously.”

“He’s a dreamboat.” Owen held the front door, Lopez saluted, and they passed out into the night.

“My car’s down the block,” said Schwartz. “This way.”

Before they even reached the Buick, Schwartz’s phone began to ring. Or more likely it had been ringing all along, but he hadn’t noticed amid the din of Bartleby’s. He glanced at the caller name:
HOME
.

“Hey.”

“Hey,” said Pella. “Any luck?”

“We found a Skrimshander. But not the one we were looking for.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean Sophie. Remember Sophie? Sweet kid you were supposed to watch out for? She was at Bartleby’s, totally ripped, with Starblind sucking on her face. So I dropped him, which I maybe shouldn’t have done, but hey.” Schwartz, riled afresh, banged a paw on the hood of the Buick. “What’d you do, get her drunk and raffle her off to the shadiest guy you could find? What were you thinking? Where
are
you?”

“I’m at your house.”

“I know where you are!” Schwartz yelled. “Why aren’t you with Sophie? Why do I have to babysit the whole goddamn school? Why can’t I just worry about what I have to worry about?” His voice carried down the windswept street. A gaggle of sophomore girls wavered by in their heels, en route from Bartleby’s to some house party. No two of their tube tops or flouncy miniskirts were precisely alike, in cut or in color, and these slight variations made the outfits look all the more carefully orchestrated as they linked arms and passed by, pretending not to listen. Schwartz tried to comfort himself with a long look at their ten slender thighs turned pink by the cold, the good odds that he’d been between four or six of those thighs on oblivious drunken nights, but it was useless, the girls looked absurd to him now, and it no longer seemed that the universe contained an endless supply of anonymous pink thighs to which he could escape from his troubles. Pella would never dress like that.