City Boy (23 page)

Jack stared straight ahead of him. What had he done or said to make Ed think of him as a shark? He watched the first two Cubs go down in order, one strikeout and an easy tag at first, pop fly. Sammy Sosa was up next. The crowd did its thing. “Sam-mee! Sam-mee!” You had to have somebody to get excited about on this team. Sammy waved and tipped his hat, took a few more massive chops of the bat for practice. He bulled his way to first with a long grounder. The batter after Sammy got on base but Sammy was forced out at second. People swore and hooted. It was all part of the show.

The teams traded places and the Cubs took the field. Kerry Wood was the starting pitcher today and that got the crowd going again. It meant there would be no prisoners. The seats were close in enough to see the players’ features. Wood had his game face going. He scowled into his blond beard and threw a bullet, a dead-center strike. Then another. Then the catcher trotted out to the mound and everything slowed down. Ed hadn’t meant him.

It wasn’t some kid in the training group that Chloe had been talking about. It was Spence, and the fact that she hadn’t mentioned anything lately meant it was still going on, and Chloe had lied about everything.

He didn’t move. He didn’t want his face to register any expression. Ed had seen it right away, sensed something. Good old Spence. Good old Spence was taking his wife to New York for a week. The performance this morning had been for his benefit. Chloe hadn’t wanted to be the one to tell him. Maybe they weren’t even going to New York, but somewhere sexier. Barbados, or wherever rich men went for such things.

Slow down.
His head was pounding and his heart seemed to have dropped down deep inside him. Suspicion wasn’t proof. He had a choice here. He could be a blind complacent fool or a paranoid fool. He felt the terrible pressure of having to decide what he should do. He
tried to remember anything Chloe might have said about Spence. Spence was married himself and had children, well, that never stopped anybody. And her harassment story made a lot more sense if you substituted boss for coworker. A coworker wouldn’t have any power over her, and none of the temptations of power. Jack saw again Spence’s big, bearded face, his big, well-manicured hands, Chloe, naked, the hands touching her …

He refused to allow himself to think like this. It was pornographic. It wasn’t fair to Chloe. She had told him about it, or at least she’d told him some version of it. Had she wanted him to do or say something more, had he failed some test? But she’d said she’d handled it, it was over. Christ, didn’t he want to believe her?

The crowd roared and hooted. He’d lost track of the game, something had them excited. Allison was saying that one of the players was cute. Jack smirked along with Ed. Ha ha. His face had thickened, stiffened. He couldn’t say anything to Chloe, do anything, while her parents were around. He felt a coward’s relief.

“My
word
.”

Jack looked up to see Allison glaring at somebody behind her. “What?” he asked, leaning across Ed.

“He spilled beer on me!”

Jack craned to see who it was in the seat behind her. A gap-toothed white guy in a black T-shirt and a porkpie hat. His face had a crumpled look to it, as if someone had squeezed it, hard, when he was still a baby. Knuckles blue with scribbled tattoos. His equally skanky girlfriend sat next to him. She was wearing one of those bra tops and shouldn’t have been. Pork Pie raised his beer, shrugged. “Sorry, man. Accident.”

Allison said, meaning to be overheard, “Honestly. Some people.”

The world was full of scumbags. They came in all varieties. The Cubs were up again. No score. Jack hadn’t missed anything. It was only the second inning. He was going to have to sit here and practice what he’d do, say, when he next saw Chloe. Smile. Make chitchat. Keep it zipped.

From the corner of his eye, Jack saw Pork Pie nudging his girlfriend, saw him tip his beer, deliberately, delicately, so that a thin stream landed on Allison’s neck.

Jack was out of his seat even as Allison arched her back and felt at her collar. He planted one foot next to Pork Pie’s knee, leaned in to keep him from getting to his feet. “What’s the matter, asshole, game not exciting enough for you?”

He’d caught Pork Pie by surprise, but he still had enough attitude to come back at him. “Hey, get outta my face, man.”

“Apologize to the lady.”

“S’accident.” He was cock-eyed drunk. Jack could smell it on him.

“No, accident is what must have made you so damn ugly.”

“Fuck you, man.”

“That’s very original. Stunning, in fact.”

Skank Girl put in her two cents’ worth. “What is your major malfunction, huh?”

People behind them were starting to shout at him to get out of the way, sit down. Ed was saying, Jack? Jack? Reaching up to tug at Jack’s pants leg. “Apologize to the lady,” Jack said again. Adrenaline was making him shake. Just when you thought the universe was against you, it presented you with a pure gift like this jackass.

“The bitch? She’s—”

Jack tucked his head to protect it and drove his weight forward. He got one hand on Pork Pie’s throat, squeezed, swung with his free hand, connected. Pork Pie’s jaw felt like brick. Pork Pie unloaded a punch that glanced off Jack’s ribs. Jack hit him under his chin and felt the man’s teeth slam together. Pork Pie scrabbled at him with both hands, but only feebly. Jack realized he’d hurt him, and that felt fucking fine, he wanted to hurt him some more. Skank Girl was screaming and pounding on Jack with her hard little knuckles and that might have stung but Jack hardly registered it. He got in a good one on Pork Pie’s already smashed-ugly nose, heard something rip and pop that was either the nose or his own hand, he couldn’t tell, but it was the nose that bled. Noise reached him, people howling, cheering, either for him or the team, and then his arms were seized from behind and he was wrestled backward.

Two security guards had hold of him and they hurt him more than Pork Pie had, got him in a headlock and forced him down, then shoved
him to his feet and toted him off. Whoa, these guys were good. Another guard was hauling Pork Pie away. Jack was glad to see him stumble, his head lolling. Skank Girl was screaming that she was going to kill him, kill him, and Jack caught a glimpse of Ed and Allison holding on to each other, pictures of amazement wearing hats, before he was hustled up the stairs and down the ramp.

Then he was underneath the stadium in some sort of wire-mesh security cage with the two guards checking out his ID. They were big, solid men and they made it a point to take a long time with his license. Jack was just as glad Pork Pie wasn’t here also. They’d probably had to clean him up.

“Some folks don’t know how to enjoy a ball game.”

Jack said nothing. His ear and neck hurt where they’d wrestled him, and his right hand was already swelling.

“Mister Orvich. You a lucky man.”

Jack waited to be told how lucky he was.

“You didn’t break nothing serious on Mister Hauser. And Mister Hauser, he intoxicated. So this is within our discretion, you understand? Whether or not we call CPD?”

“Yeah.” They were screwing with him. They were either going to call the cops or they weren’t, and for all he knew it was within their discretion to pound the shit out of him. The noise of the game reached him dimly, a subterranean roaring. The guards’ faces were fixed and surly. They were loving this.

“Mister Orvich, you come here looking for a fight today?”

“No.”

“Excuse me?”

“No sir.”

“So why don’t you tell me what all the ruckus about?”

“He was pouring beer on my mother-in-law.”

They couldn’t help it. They cracked up. They couldn’t stop laughing.

“Mother-in-law.”

“Boy is
too
wild.”

“Go on, get out of here, man. Just go.”

They handed him his license. They unlocked the cage and one of
them led Jack to an exit, followed him out to make sure he left. “Mother-in-law,” he said, shaking his head, still mirthful.

Jack wondered where Ed and Allison were, whether they’d stayed to watch the game or were looking for him right now. He didn’t want to see them, or anyone, so he kept walking. His hand was, possibly, broken. It throbbed at the end of his arm. His knuckles looked like steak. To avoid seeing it he tucked it inside his shirt. His shirt was already bloody. He hadn’t noticed until now. It looked like he’d been finger painting in the stuff. For all he knew there were other things wrong with him, his hair on fire, maybe. People were giving him sideways looks, well screw them and everybody else, except there was no one here he was allowed to hurt or hate, and he felt helpless and stupid but also, he had to admit, ready to do it all over again.

It took him more than an hour to walk home. There was nowhere else he could think to go, unless he wanted to march back up to Chloe’s office and make some other kind of mess. When he let himself in, the message light on the answering machine was blinking epileptically. Jack ignored it and went to the kitchen to ice his hand. He was hoping now that it wasn’t broken, that it was only the swelling making it so stiff. The phone rang again. He listened to Ed saying to please call them at the hotel as soon as he got in. He took off his shirt, went to throw it out, decided not to leave such a thing festering in the garbage beneath the kitchen sink, made a special trip out to the alley to dispose of it.

By the time Chloe and Ed and Allison arrived, he was making potato salad for dinner. His hand was going to be a problem for a while but he could manage. They walked in the front door calling for him, reached the kitchen and halted in the doorway. “Hey,” he said.

“Are you all right?” Chloe asked.

“I’m fine. Did the Cubs win? Silly question.”

“Jack!”

“I didn’t start the grill yet because I didn’t know when you’d get here.”

“We spent all afternoon looking for you. We thought you were in the hospital. We thought you were in
jail
.”

“Well I’m not. Sorry.”

He wasn’t looking at Chloe but he could tell she was bristling like a cat. Then she made a point of shutting it down, being ominously normal. “You should probably think about the coals.”

“Check. How hungry is everybody?”

“Pretty hungry,” said Ed.

“Oh, whenever it’s ready,” said Allison. “Don’t feel you have to rush.”

“We’ll get it all on the rails,” promised Jack. “Ready to move out.”

“That’s the ticket,” said Ed.

By God, he liked his in-laws more and more. They were troopers. Whatever the program called for, they were game. Pretend the kids weren’t throwing knives? No problem. They’d stopped and bought beer and wine. There was probably no way to keep them from doing such a thing. In any crisis short of nuclear attack, they would stop at a liquor store. It didn’t seem like a big deal right now for Jack to help himself to a beer. His new, evil self.

Conversation took a little while to get airborne. There was talk about hamburger buns, about paper plates versus china. Allison said it had been nice to see where Chloe worked, it was all so downtown. Ed said it sounded like things were going awfully well for her, it sounded like she was tearing the place up. Chloe said she was still just a lowly trainee. Nobody was going to talk about the ball game.

“I’ve been thinking,” said Jack. “What if I went along with you when you go to New York? See the sights. Paint the town.”

“It’s not a vacation, it’s work.”

Chloe was running water in the sink. Watching her, Jack couldn’t tell anything.

“Oh, I’ll stay out of your way. Besides, I bet it’s not all work. I remember Spence said ‘junket.’ I’ve never been on a junket.”

“He was being funny.”

“He’s a funny guy.”

“It’s not a trip that’s set up for spouses. Not the airfare, not the hotel. Please don’t be a butthead.”

“I’m happy for you. I want to help you celebrate.”

“Fine. Just not in New York.”

He could have kept it up, made her keep saying no. Chloe was pretending to be only aggravated with him when she was actually furious. Ed and Allison looked as if they were watching a train wreck in progress. He didn’t want to do this, at least not now. Anger only fueled you for so long, before it receded and left you sick at heart.

“Maybe I could go out there for a few days. Let’s at least think about it. Where there’s a will there’s a way, you know? Do we have lighter fluid?”

The grill was set up in the backyard. Jack dumped charcoal out of a bag, poured on some liquid petroleum stink and set it ablaze. The yard faced west and caught the nearly horizontal evening sunlight, heavy and golden. A car rattled through the alley, trailing its blast and boom of amplified music. It was still a beautiful day. The back door was propped open and he saw Ed coming down the hallway to join him.

The last thing he wanted was another heart-to-heart, man-to-man with Ed. He wondered if the women had sent him to try and smooth things over. Perhaps you were allowed, in certain circumstances, to throw punches at a ball game. You were not allowed to skulk around the house acting like you were about to put your fist through a wall.

Ed stepped outside and made a point of looking around him approvingly. “This is a nice little spot. I bet you spend a lot of time out here in good weather.”

“Not really.”

“I don’t believe that jerk. Then they wonder why attendance at games is way down. That’s true. It’s a trend nationwide.”

“Still, you have to give their security points for a prompt, effective response.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything. MYOB.”

“Nothing’s your fault.”

“This parent business never ends. That’s all I can say for myself.”

Mr. Dandy’s back door opened. Mr. Dandy was one reason they did not spend time sitting in the yard. He was like mosquitoes, only louder. On this occasion Jack was glad to see him.

“Howdy-do, folks.” Mr. Dandy advanced on them, sniffing the air as
if to test for particulates. His skin was so white and pruney, he looked like he’d spent the summer buried in a pile of dead leaves. “Some nice evening.”

Jack made introductions. Mr. Dandy lowered himself into a lawn chair and elevated his feet on a ledge. He wore sandals and thin white socks, an old man’s concession to summer. “Lordy Lordy Lordy.” He sighed and belched, getting comfortable. “So what’s cookin’ tonight?”