Work Text:
27 June 2008
San Francisco, CA
When the July 6 issue of Sports Illustrated with his picture on it hits the newsstands, Tim takes cover in the clubhouse. He’d almost forgotten the interview he’d given Tom Verducci in January. At the time it’d been more an annoyance than anything. Verducci’d arrived in Seattle with an entourage - a photographer, two assistants, a driver - and he’d spent most of the time talking to Tim’s dad. The pointed series of questions he’d posed, all focusing on Tim’s height and weight, suggested he’d already framed the story, so when he opens the FedEx parcel with his copy of the magazine in it, Tim isn’t surprised to see the word ‘runt’ in one of the pull quotes.
By Wednesday, there’s copies of the cover above every urinal in the men’s room, and ‘freak’ and ‘Tiny Tim’ and ‘cover boy’ become his new nicknames.
When the beat reporters for the Mercury and the Chronicle show up for the obligatory interview-about-the-interview, Tim’s sitting with his legs folded up to his chest in a wheeled laundry cart, gloating with Cain and Zito over the run he’d managed to score yesterday against the Cubs. When Hank Schulman asks him how he feels about being called ‘Tiny Tim,’ Lincecum smiles.
- You should prolly call my dad, he says soberly. - I’m not old enough to talk to the press.
//
That evening, as Tim’s walking home from the corner bodega where he’s bought a four-pack of 75-watt light bulbs and a quart of Cherry Garcia, he punches in Megan’s phone number. He's resisted storing it in his address book, but he’s dialed it so many times now that he knows it by heart.
The fog’s thickened the air and brought the city in close. He’s engulfed in the end-of-day rush - Chinese grandmothers pushing strollers, black-on-black hipsters, schoolkids in crested navy blazers. He stops for the light, even though the Chinese grandmothers are jaywalking it, and glances at the guy next to him, who’s got a tattoo blossoming out of the zipped-up collar of his leather jacket, curlicues of blue-green that climb up into his sideburn.
Being out here in the middle of things makes him feel loose-limbed and worldly. When the call goes to voicemail, he feels something inside himself release, and he clicks off without leaving a message.
//
7 July 2008
San Francisco International Aiport
Tim’s phone goes off with the could-be-anybody ring at the airport when they’re in the charter-plane security queue. His jacket and his laptop, still in their grey plastic trays, are just emerging from the belly of the scanner. He’s in the middle of threading his belt back on, so he just manages to snatch it out of the jacket pocket before the final ring.
The screen says BRODERICK M.
- I saw you called a bunch a times - sorry I didn’t get back to you, says Megan’s voice, underlaid with the the grunt and roar of city traffic - it’s been a busy couple days. I’m working in midtown now, at the Grand Hyatt. There’s been three conventions this week, it’s been a madhouse.
- That’s where the team stays, says Tim in a rush.
He can hear her hesitate. - Yeah, I know, she says. - I heard about you’re gonna be here, but things’ve been unreal around here. I’m still learning the ropes. And I been meaning to call, it somehow just kept getting away from me.
- Yeah, well, we’ll be in New York next week. I asked Kell, that’s our traveling secretary, to do - he’s gonna make sure there’s two tickets at Will Call for you for the Mets game on the eighth. You have to work that day?
- I’ll make sure I don’t. Are you pitching, or is it Barry?
- I am, he says, surprising himself.
- Kay, she says, - fantastic. So just call me after you’re done? I’ll take care of the rest of it. I got a plan - There’s a place I want to take you. In Queens - it’s hard to explain. I’ll tell you about it when I see you. OK?
Tim’s jammed his shoulder up to cradle the phone against his ear while he buckles his watch back on. - I gotta go, we’re about to get on the plane, he says, his voice carefully neutral.
There’s a pause. - OK, she says. - I’ll see you.
- Yeah, he says, suddenly fumbling the words, - me too, I guess, yeah. So, later?
Jesus, he thinks to himself, it’s like I’m twelve.
As Tim pockets his phone, he lengthens his stride towards the gate, sprinting out ahead so Nate and Kevin won’t see him blushing. Not till after she’s clicked off does he realize that she hasn’t said anything about the magazine cover.
//
8 July 2008
Queens, NY
- Don’t be like that, Timmy, says Wilson.
They’re on their way to the first game of the series against the Mets, and the team bus is jolting along, its brakes squawking, through the red-blinking afternoon traffic of the LIE. The western sky’s yawning hot through the bus windows, a white blur around the crags of Manhattan behind them.
- The Beatles played at Shea, Brian says, - Before you were born. And the Stones. Even the Pope, he adds. - When the Popemobile cruised in, the clouds parted and the rain stopped. Yes they did, he says in response to Tim’s rolled eyes.
- You gotta respect Shea, Brian continues, hooking his chin over the arm he’s draped over the seatback, - There’s even dudes have named their kids after it. Who was it, Zeets? he says, turning. - Chipper Jones?
Zito’s across the aisle, his back squared against the window, scrunched sideways with his knees up to his chest. His eyes wide, he takes a long swig from his bottle of Evian water.
- Yeah, says Zito drily, after a pause that makes clear he’s only being polite. - But Chipper also named one of his kids ‘Camden’ cause he homered there so much, so you gotta consider the source.
Tim sighs and slides down till his ass is practically off the seat, his crossed arms pulling his shoulders tight. He doesn’t get why guys idolize the old stadiums. He’s played at Chavez Latrine and Wrigley Field and the Fenway, and what sticks with him about those places is the way the concrete is stained with old piss and the chairs are bumpy from too many layers of paint.
This series’ll be the Giants’ last play at Shea. The stadium’s scheduled to be demolished, imploded, to make way for the Mets’ new venue, Citi Park. By this time next year, the site of all these great history-making moments will be a parking lot.
//
Tim starts the first game of the series. By noon, as he’s warming up in the visitors’ bullpen, he can tell it’ll be one of those hot, still afternoons when a Hershey bar’ll melt in your pocket and, by four o’clock, the faraway rumbles of thunder will start to sound promising. The July issue of SI’s been out a week, and the ribbing he’s been getting from his teammates has only intensified as the Giants have strung up a series of eight consecutive losses. Tim thinks if one more guy calls him ‘cover boy’ he’ll go postal.
He realizes it in the first inning, when he throws Carlos Beltran a fat hanger that the Mets’ centerfielder sends over the right-field wall for a three-run homer.
Everything’s a little off today, his rhythm somewhere else. By the third inning, Tim’s hair is soaked under his cap and he can feel the sweat trickling down his spine into the small of his back. When Carlos Delgado hits him for a 435-foot blast in the sixth, Tim makes himself a promise that he’ll never give another magazine interview, not even if Time wants to make him the Man of the Year.
The Mets blank the Giants 0-7. It’s Tim’s first loss since April, and his ERA’s well north of 5.
//
Megan’s so small he almost misses her in the mass of press and WAGs and VIPs that’s spawning in the green room after the game. His eyes register she’s there, but for a moment he mistakes her for someone else. In a black t-shirt, jeans and beat-up Chucks, she looks like a sound gaffer or a photographer or somebody’s personal assistant. She stands very straight, her chin tipped up as she takes in the room, tucking her narrow black glasses into their hardcase. When their eyes catch, she grins and he remembers her smile’s lopsided, one eye nearly winking closed. She holds up the laminated visitor’s card that’s dangling from the orange-and-black Giants lanyard around her neck.
They meet each other halfway. She slips one arm around his waist in greeting and puts her mouth up to his ear - it’s so loud in here that normal conversation’s impossible.
- Jesus. Can’t even move in here. Who are all these people? she asks.
He steps back, not really sure where to put his hands.
- Wives and girlfriends. Honchos. Business dudes, half-shouts Tim. - Families. He points out Rich Aurilia, whose hair’s still wet from the shower. - Rich’s mom and dad are over there, and that’s his sister and her kids, they live out on Long Island someplace. The guys in golf shirts, they’re the ones who got luxury boxes - you know, law firms and stuff. The rest is people taking pictures of those people, he says, - you look like one of ‘em.
She pulls him close again. - So you know what this makes me think of? she says in his ear.
There must be some kind of way outta here, she sings, her breath buzzing against on his skin, and for a moment he feels her chest tighten as he slips one arm around her, - said the joker to the thief.
Her hair’s brushing against his face and she smells like what’s clean and outside and different, a room with the windows open on a soft day. He catches his lower lip in his teeth, remembering where he’s heard that before - it’s the words to a song his brother Sean used to play on his guitar, talking shit about Hendrix and Dylan and how things oughta have been.
A good part of Tim’s head’s still back in the locker room, in the game, his first loss in ten starts.
Still. He leans forward and dips his nose into her hair towards her ear.
Businessmen they drink my wine / plowmen dig my earth sings Tim back. None of them along the line, and then he hisses the last phrase - knows what any of it’s worth.
- C’mon, he says. He takes her hand in his and trawls her through the crowd, using his shoulders to wedge a route.
When they emerge from the DELIVERIES entryway into the loading dock, she follows his lead, vaulting neatly off the platform onto the concrete. She’s crossed the strap of her bag across her body like a messenger so it doesn’t slow her down. 126th Street, pocked with muffler shops and check-cashing parlors, wavers in the late-day heat. The sidewalk’s too narrow for even the butt-end of the postgame crowd, and Tim finds himself bumped off the curb into the gutter.
When the blast of sound pierces the thick air, he whirls around: Megan’s got her circled thumb and index finger in her mouth, whistling up a cab, and no sooner does the pitch fade than a taxi zags right in on them. They slide across the seat, and then Megan’s leaning forward, her freckled forearms on the driver’s seatback. She fires away at the driver in Spanish, and then they’re both laughing.
Suddenly tired, he leans back against the cool vinyl of the headrest, lulled by the scratchy music on the mariachi station and the occasional flat pop of an English word like ‘Roosevelt’ that reassures him they’re bound for somewhere.
//
Forest Hills, Queens, materializes in a mysterious way, as though someone suddenly dreamed up the idea of suburbs in the middle of the city. Strange place, Forest Hills - all four Ramones were from here, and Helen Keller, and the notorious ‘Big Mike’ Miranda, consigliere to the Genovese family. Austin, its downtown street, looks like it could be have been transplanted straight from Old Lyme or Grosse Pointe. The old-fashioned streetlights are still swagged with fourth-of-July buntings, and the store windows, framed by windowboxes, offer spa cuisine and organic pet food and hand-painted tile. On the side street where the cab drops them, the only hint that they’re in America’s biggest metropolis is the way the big black SUVs are jammed into millimetric parking spaces and the street-facing garage doors have signs that say don’t even think of parking here.
When they slide out, Megan gives the cabbie some bills she’s tucked into a small shiny booklet she’s pulled from her bag . Tim rubs his eyes, wondering if they’re deceiving him. Even though he’s just showered, they’re already filmed with the city dust that coats everything with a sticky tarnish, especially on hot days like this.
- What was that? he asks.
- What?
- That booklet? For a crazy moment he wonders if she’s a Jehovah’s Witness or something.
- A copy of the Constitution, she explains. - We were talking about probable cause and illegal search and seizure. That cabbie. His sister’s place got turned over by the cops a couple weeks ago for no reason, and now his brother-in-law’s in jail and they got no money coming in.
- You keep the Constitution in your purse? says Tim, incredulous.
- A copy of it, yeah, says Megan, and then she grins. - I got a bunch of copies in the glove compartment, too. You want one? It’s good to have around next time you need to discuss the fourth amendment. The thing that’ll surprise you, she says, puckering her forehead, - is that immigrants usually know the Constitution better than natives, cause they have to take a test on it.
She’s so straightforward, this girl, so guileless that he has to smile.
//
Tim doesn’t have high hopes for the pub she’s chosen, a place with an elaborate fake-Tudor facade called the Lamb & Flag. The uplit bar’s stacked three deep with shirtsleeved stockbrokers shouting at the Yankees game, watching Andy Pettitte take a no-hitter into the fifth against the Rays.
- Yankees fans? In Queens?
- Ignore 'em, says Megan, - I got something to show you. They pass through a narrow hallway crowded with aluminum kegs, up some stairs to a door that gives out on the falling darkness. Outside the heat feels like a tired argument. As Tim’s eyes adjust, he sees there’s a series of terraces built into the slope, with tables, and clutches of lounge chairs under the trees. The wind’s come up from the west, fresh and a little damp.
- It’s like you’re not even in the city, says Megan, - out here. I don’t know why everyone’s in there when they could be outside. She raises her gin and tonic.
- Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.
He clinks his glass to hers. - Where’d you learn to whistle like that? Like you did for the cab?
- I got five brothers, she says. - When they had me at the bottom of the dogpile, it’s how I told ‘em I couldn’t breathe.
//
By the time they’re on their third round, their chairs are jammed together, Megan’s got her bare foot up on Tim’s armest, and Tim’s giving her a lesson in pitching technique. He’s told her about the three ways to generate velocity and given her the practice ball he always carries in his bag. Right now he’s got her hand in his, showing her how to position her fingers for a two-seamer or a circle change. - And keep your elbow level with your shoulder, he says, - or they’ll say you throw like a girl.
She rolls her eyes. - I hate it when guys say that. She smiles and pokes his knee with her foot. - What do you even know about how girls throw?
Clouds of fireflies have begun to rise under the high hedge next to them, and the wind’s come up from the west, blowing grey strands of cloud across the dirty quarter moon.
He gets up, unsteady, swaying into the hillside. He stretches out his hand to her, and when she rises and takes it, he’s surprised by how natural the gesture feels.
- C’mon, let’s walk, he says. - It’s gonna rain, and I want to be out there in it when it happens.
//
They stroll aimlessly down the middle of the curling streets - marked private - of something called Forest Hills Gardens, where the leaves of the beeches and chestnuts are gnashing in the gusts of wind. The heat stirs a little around their legs, like a kicked-off blanket, and settles on their shoulders, sallow and heavy as the pools of yellow from the streetlights. Occasionally their faces are lit up by car lights, coming or going, but the place is uncannily quiet, its silence broken only by the wind and the blurred sound of airplanes above them, banking in towards La Guardia.
- I got an idea, says Megan, her voice nearly carried off by the breeze.
She points towards a patch of darkness ahead that, as they walk towards it, half-conceals a small parking next to a sign that says Westbrook Pool and Tennis. The pavement’s giving off the smell of summer and engine oil and the promise of rain. In the distance, there’s a low growl of thunder.
- You're right that it’s gonna rain, she says, - and I’m dying for a swim. I dare ya.
And with that, she’s off. Tracing the edge of the parking lot, they grope through the dark to a cyclone fence that’s fringed with trees and far enough away from the pool that they can’t be seen from the street. She’s already halfway up it by the time he’s got his toes in the diamonds, and with a couple of easy vaults, they’re both over.
The unlit pool’s almost darker than the sky; as his eyes adjust, he makes out a few lounge chairs, a lifeguard’s station, gleaming black-and-white signs that say no smoking no running no glass. While he’s peeling down his jeans he hears the splash - she’s in the water, swimming the length without surfacing, a pale flash receding like a fish. She surfaces at the far wall, spraying water and breath.
- It’s fantastic, she says, huffing a little. - Exactly what I needed.
Tim eases himself into the water slowly, feet first, then faster when he realizes the water’s almost as warm as the air around them. He’s luxuriating in the way the the heat’s cooling off his skin when the sky flashes broad daylight. The nearly simultaneous crack of thunder sends both of them thrashing out of the pool.
- We gotta get out of here, he shouts, remembering that lightning and water don’t mix. As he’s fumbling on his jeans, there’s a shot of headlights from the parking lot, glancing towards them through the gaps between the street trees. When he catches Megan’s eye, he puts his finger to his lips and points towards a narrow space between the the poolhouse and the fence. She snags her Chucks with two fingers and scurries across the deck, then ducks behind him into the narrow space as the sound of voices, distorted by the wind, carries towards them from the parking lot.
After a long pause broken only by the whistle of the rising wind, there’s radio crackle, the sound of hard-soled shoes crunching on the graveled walkway, and then the beams of two or three powerful flashlights playing over the pool area.
- Nah. Yeah, I know, says one of the voices, male and middle-aged. - Kids. Neighbors called it in. We been out here, oh, I don’t know, five or six times since school’s out.
- Rodg! says a hoarser, higher voice. - Yeah, see if you can put the lights on it. Two high-beam headlights flash over the diving ell, lighting up the pool deck.
A flashlight beam skates close to the edge of the poolhouse, less than a foot from their hiding place, catching as it moves the metallic glint of a ring of keys in the middle of the concrete pool deck.
Tim can tell Megan’s gone rigid in the dark; he hears her sharp intake of breath. But they can do nothing but wait and hold themselves motionless. Only when the beam plays out and away from the corner of the pool house does the air around them soften, and it’s an unbreathing eternity before the car doors slam and tires crunch out of the parking lot.
//
It’s Megan who suggests they take the subway back to the city instead of a cab, and Tim doesn’t really understand why until they’re both sitting there, their still-wet underwear soaking through their jeans, their hair raked back because neither one of them has a comb, and he can’t stop smiling. There’s some drunk gangsta punks in their car screaming at each other in Spanglish, and an Orthodox couple, the woman in a head scarf, and three girls in tight jeans and Cleopatra eye makeup and long red plastic nails. He’s tired and it’s late and he hates the feeling of being all sort of wet, and Megan’s sitting next to him, their legs and arms touching. There’s a smile curving up on one side of her face too.
- You look totally preposterous, she says, nudging him with her elbow, - you know how how cats look big, but when they get wet you see how skinny they are?
It’s still pouring when they get out at Grand Central, so when they stumble into the lobby of the Grand Hyatt nobody takes any notice of how wet and bedraggled they’ve become, and on the way up, in the elevator, there’s a guy who’s fashioned a rain poncho out of a 39-gallon garbage bag who winks at Megan.
- I got one of those, too, says Megan, - at home.
- You shoulda brought it, says the guy without missing a beat, - you never know when you’ll need it.
- I’ll remember that, she says solemnly as his floor dings. As the doors close behind him, they’re both nearly paralytic with laughter.
//
When she wakes the next morning he’s lying on his side next to her on the messed-up hotel-room bed, his head propped on the elbow of his pitching arm.
- The plane’s wheels-up at ten-thirty, he says. - I gotta be there. Last time I missed a plane, they made me unload everyone else’s luggage in Cincinnati, and it took me till three in the morning.
She sits up groggily and gives him a lopsided smile. As her eyes come into focus, she reaches for her glasses, slides them on, scrutinizes him.
- What’s your name again? she says, and then he’s on her with both pillows, tickling her face down till she stops moving and he’s afraid he’s done something wrong, and she flips him over and straddles him, her thighs like rebar.
- It’s OK, she says, getting her breath. Her cheeks are pink and her hair’s all over the place.
- No, it’s not, he says back, reaching up to smooth her hair with his hand, - Everything’s different. He sits up, tilting her back, takes her jaws in both hands and kisses her. His mouth moves to the outside corner of her eye, and she ducks her chin and meets his lips with hers.
For a long time they’re lost to it. She smells like sleep, and her mouth is soft and questioning, and it feels so good, he's thinking that there just might be enough time -
He pulls away, remembering. - I’ll call you, he says.
- No, you won’t, she says, - I’m a modern woman. I need you like a fish needs a bicycle.
He moves so quietly she hardly hears the door close.