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  He wasn’t sure, after all that explanation, whether or not to be flattered.

  “That’s fine,” he said. “I haven’t been out to dinner in…” Years. Eons. To be truthful here? No. “Some time,” he finished.

  “Fantastic,” she said. “I’ll come get you, if you like.”

  Volleyball women.

  “That’s all right,” he said, stepping into his role. “I don’t mind coming to get you, if you’d like me to.”

  She blushed again and nodded. “You remember where I live from last year’s faculty dinner?”

  He did: a big white house with a lovely, overgrown garden. The place where he had wandered out to find Stan, then still Mr. Janine Oaks, with his hand way up the short, black skirt belonging to Liz Cornwall from the Phys. Ed. department.

  “What time should I pick you up?” he asked.

  “How about six?” she said.

  “Great. Where are we going? Or is it a mystery?”

  She shook her head and he noted that her glossy brown hair was the color of the polished wood of his desk. “It’s on the canal in New Port Richey. ‘Max’s.’”

  He knew it. He had always been under the impression that mostly old folks ate there. Blue hairs. But then, volleyball players had always seemed like a conservative bunch.

  “I’ll pick you up at six,” he told her.

  Back at his desk, coffee in hand, he felt a bit giddy. It was ridiculous to feel that way about anything so trivial as a dinner. He was, after all, sort of technically middle-aged. It was not as if he were anticipating sex. Certainly, that would be nice, but Janine Oaks didn’t seem like the kind of woman who just hopped into bed, not that he would know how to recognize that sort of woman anyway. What he wanted, he realized, was to sit and talk with someone else, another adult. Tonight.

  “What are you over there grinning about?” Billy said, unusually perceptive.

  “I have a date.” Ben tipped the old wooden chair back and listened to it complain. The coffee was disgusting but energizing.

  “Ooo hoo,” Billy said, raising an eyebrow and grinning. “With who, may I ask? The lovely Mrs. Oaks?”

  Disappointed, Ben just nodded.

  “She’s been ogling you for months,” Billy said and Ben came to the sudden uncomfortable realization that they were gossiping.

  “She hasn’t,” Ben said.

  “For a washed-up former pitcher, boy, you don’t look that bad. You shouldn’t be that surprised.”

  “Billy, do you ever think we’ve known each other far too long?” he asked.

  The older man laughed and set down his mug with a thump, sending splashes of black liquid onto his desk blotter. Ben half expected it to eat right through the paper.

  “Probably,” Billy said. “Probably.”

  All afternoon, he tried not to think about it, but it was impossible. He felt a new buoyancy, unlike anything he’d known since his marriage had ended, years before. There were moments in the evening when he could still remember what it was like to have another person there to talk to, someone to share his day with. It hadn’t occurred to him how similar each day had become until he was relaying them only to himself.

  He and Billy put the boys through their paces, and he was especially tough on them. With their soft faces and easy grace they were asking for it, he thought. Damn teenagers. But the whole time, in the back of his mind, he was seeing Janine at the copier – she was just Janine now – with that soft rosy tint along the edge of her v-neck, dipping into her cleavage and intensifying there. And he realized he was thinking about sex, though not in the obvious, sweaty tangling of body parts way. He was picturing what it would be like to kiss her, to slide his tongue along her straight, white teeth.

  At home, he took a long shower. After spending the afternoon surrounded by boys half his age, he looked down at his own stomach and saw it stretched there. It wouldn’t suck-in any longer. Not that he was fat. He didn’t drink and he certainly exercised, but he was forty-four years-old. It didn’t matter how often he crunched in front of Seinfeld reruns in the evening, his smooth skin had become bulky. What would a woman think of this body he no longer recognized, he wondered nervously?

  He shaved carefully to avoid any nicks, his face appearing jaundiced in the yellowed glass of the old bathroom mirror. At least, thank God for small mercies, he still had all his hair – thick, dark and unresponsive, prone to collapsing in his eyes or standing up around the crown when he least expected it. Was he still good-looking? He was fairly certain he had been, once, when he was playing ball. Since his career had ended in injury, it had been impossible for him to really look at his own face. His features seemed to blur together until he barely registered himself, like a person seen briefly from a moving car. Tonight, however, he was determined to see himself as she would see him: tall, barrel-chested, with a pleasant face that really only worked because his lips were full and his eyes were large. Long hands, even teeth… there was nothing exceptional there.

  But there must be something, he thought, that he was missing, seeing that he wasn’t that bad looking. Why else would he be standing here preparing for his first date in four years? And then there it was, crinkling around the edges of his eyes: the sadness, the disappointment. Ah ha, he thought, and patted his face dry.

  He was so sure he remembered where she lived. And in truth, he did remember the house, which she had painted the pale yellow of an anemic winter lemon, but not how to get there. Several wrong turns after starting out, he spotted two of her fat, orange cats curled around each other in the front window and knew he had the place at last. Janine answered her door wearing ocean blue silk that stood away from her body despite the obvious tightness of the dress. He forgot to bring her something and felt sheepish about it except that she was practically hopping out the door into the car so perhaps she hadn’t expected anything anyway. Though, he mused as they drove through the early evening’s hazy light, it would have been nice to surprise someone, for once.

  In the car, they talked about their teams, about the season, about the year the way two people who work in the same office do. He watched her uncross her impossibly long legs and smiled when she caught him doing it. She asked what Billy was like to work with, and he commented on the way Ed Black made his kids run too many stairs. The restaurant rose up suddenly and he felt a delicious sense of relief at having arrived.

  “I’ve wanted to ask you out for years,” she said as they were seated. It was an odd comment, mostly because she had, until six months ago, been married. Though, he supposed, when it came down to it, that didn’t mean anything.

  “Really?” was all he could think to answer. He certainly hadn’t felt the same way about her. She had seemed even more intimidating when she was married. “I can’t believe that.”

  He sounded like an idiot, even to himself. But she just laughed and tucked her napkin into her lap, prompting him to do the same. “Sure,” she said. “You’re handsome, funny…” She trailed off.

  He ought to be complementing her, he realized. So are you, which was the first thing that came to his overloaded mind, was thankfully stricken before it left his mouth.

  “You look lovely,” he noted. “That’s a beautiful dress.”

  She blushed again, and he watched as it colored her skin.

  “Do you really think so?” She was smoothing her hands across her lap under the table. He could tell from the graceful movement of her arms.

  “Yes.”

  “I bought it when Stan and I…” she stopped. “Before I got divorced. But I never had anywhere to wear it after that.”

  “Well, it is lovely,” he said and then the conversation stopped. Frantically, he searched through his memory for some indication of what to say next. “So, what’s good here?” There, that was all right, wasn’t it? She smiled, looking a little pale under all that luscious tanned skin.

  “Everything,” she said.

  They stalled again. Run with it, he thought. Just pick up the ball and ru
n.

  “Have you ever tried the steak?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  He was clearly thinking of the wrong sport. He was never much of a football player.

  “So…” he said, mind whirring, “how are you doing? After the divorce, I mean?”

  That’s just brilliant, he hissed at himself. Ask about her divorce.

  “All right,” she said, and then smiled. “I’ve taken up some new hobbies.”

  “Really?” He was determined to find them fascinating, even if they involved taxidermy. “Like what?”

  “Swing dancing.” God, she was shy about it. That no doubt meant she was into it and would want him to learn to do it, should this go well. He nodded. “It’s just great, really good for the coordination and balance. I’ve even gotten some of my girls into it and it’s really improved their game.”

  “It sounds wonderful,” he said quickly when she stopped. “I wonder what it would do for my boys?” He was kidding, and thank God, she caught it.

  “Can’t you just see it?” she said, one dark eye winking at him.

  “There are football coaches who make their boys take ballet,” he pointed out and the conversation was off, easily touching each of the bases.

  At her door, she invited him in for a drink when he bent down to kiss her. He wasn’t sure what that meant, especially since she went to pour him a glass even after he’d pointed out that he didn’t drink. On her couch, he was actively lurked by a black cat with one fang missing, which gave the animal a snaggle-toothed rakishness. When Ben tried to pet him, the cat sneered and slunk just out of reach.

  Janine brought him a shot glass with Baileys and kissed him before she downed her drink. He kissed her back after she’d finished, setting his glass aside untouched. He might want someone to talk to, but in the end, kissing was good, too.

  To say he hit a home run, even in his own mind, did nothing to lessen the cheapness of the whole thing. Lying on his back after she’d rolled off him, the analogy just didn’t hold the sense of achievement he might have expected. One thing he did note was that she hadn’t seemed to mind his stomach, or his mouth, or any other part of him.

  “You realize I just wanted to get laid,” she said, and her voice seemed to vibrate off his aching head.

  “I know,” he said, though he hadn’t known, not at all. He had the vague suspicion he should have. “That’s fine with me.”

  “Of course it is,” she said, circling his nipple with a lazy finger. “I never pegged you as a prude.”

  God, he thought, when did anticipating a second date make you prudish?

  “You can stay here tonight,” she said sleepily, dissolving into a yawn and burrowing against him like an animal.

  “Thanks,” he whispered, wishing there was a polite way to slip away and not have to feel the firm strength of her shoulder beneath his hand, the warm press of her body against his own. It was better to lay in the dark alone, in his own bed, where the empty space was familiar. Somewhere in the dim room, a clock ticked with a rapid rhythm. One of the cats skulked in the window, a gray silhouette behind the white curtain. The dry rustle of traffic on the road outside kept him awake long after Janine had fallen asleep.

  American Girl

  1976

  The fall before the Atlantics made it to the Series the second time, my father threw a party. Not a small, intimate evening, but the sort of party where people end up parking on the lawn and burning holes in all the furniture. This was his first year as both a player and a manager, and he claimed it was necessary to “help the boys relax.”

  I lay upstairs in my bed, wide awake in the dim green light of my alarm clock, listening to the thudding of the bass from the stereo downstairs. I would have said it was impossible for anyone to sleep through the barrage of sound, except that on the other side of the room, my fourteen year-old sister Lee snored slightly, her mouth open.

  Though we had more money than most families in Florida, my father thought it was healthy for sisters to share a bedroom. This was in keeping with an unproven but powerful notion he had that children were actually born spoiled and it was his job to spend the next eighteen years making sure we understood the value of everything. Sharing our room bred a natural sense of camaraderie, he claimed, and a need for teamwork. Mostly, it led to a great deal of bickering over whose stuff was where. Lee usually won, being older and neater. I was always encroaching into her space, while she never managed to work her way into mine.

  Still, when necessary, Lee and I could band together and form a plan. Earlier that day we had begun the begging. We had hoped to be allowed to stay up for the party. We were absolutely convinced that we were missing something magical, some sort of shimmering adult world where things happened. What those things were, we didn’t actually know, but we were certain they must be exciting. Otherwise, why ban us?

  Lee worked the edge of my mother’s dressing table, talking about how pretty she looked in her red dress, how her black hair gleamed in the lamplight. They tried the same lipsticks and giggled together, and I watched from the bed, reluctant, but filled with yearning to join them. Lee was so like my mother, so easily female, while I struggled with my gangly body. I seemed to lack her ability to move with grace, to get my hair to sweep back from my face in the thick waves so popular with Lee and her friends. It was obvious to me that I was lacking something, some girl-gene that made it clear where blush went and how to sit with my legs neatly crossed at the ankle.

  As my mother separated long straight strands of hair from around her face, she let Lee roll them onto the curling iron. My mother kept one hand constantly touching her hair to be sure it hadn’t burned, although my sister knew exactly how long to leave it there. Eventually, feeling useless in the face of an extended lesson on eye shadow selection, I ventured downstairs to help my father mix up his secret, much-coveted barbeque recipe.

  After a little coaxing, he let me stir in a dash of something, cautioning against overdoing it as he sprinkled herbs gleefully beside me. He was inordinately proud of his sauce. To him, barbeque was a manly thing, like having the best chili in the neighborhood, or being able to bench more than his body weight. I could, I suggested, pass out plates. He said he’d consider it, and I returned to Lee triumphant, sure this time we would be allowed to stay. But when the doorbell rang for the first time, we were bundled off to bed without a second thought, despite the fact that the sun was still setting.

  No matter how raucous the party became, we were not allowed to go downstairs. It was a rule, and in our house rules had the finality of written law, as if my father could whip out Life’s Rulebook and cite page twenty-six, paragraph A. Which he might have done, if one had existed.

  Lee stirred briefly in the bed beside mine, pulling a pillow over her head without waking. The sound of something breaking rose over the music, followed by a scream and then more crashing. It was irresistible.

  “I’m going downstairs to get a soda,” I announced to the room. “I can’t sleep through this.”

  Lee slowly opened one eye and examined me, peering out from beneath her pillow, critical even when half asleep. Already she had developed a certain crispness, as if she could bring a logical order to our childhood with simple strength of will; the Mary Poppins of our family.

  “You can’t do that. You know we’re not allowed.”

  “Why are you whispering, Lee? We could shout if we wanted. See?” I said, pushing my voice above the music.

  We both waited for a moment, breathless. Nothing happened.

  “I’m going down there to get a drink.”

  Lee sat up then, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “Someone’ll see you,” she argued.

  “So what?” I answered. “They’re so drunk, they won’t care.”

  Pulling on my tennis shoes and an old pair of sweat shorts to go with the “rock and roll will never die” t-shirt I’d worn to bed, I slipped from the bedroom and out into the darkened hallway. Ahead, an eerie red glow came up through the
stairwell from the main portion of the house, as if we were living on the vibrating edge of hell.

  I paused at the head of the stairs for a moment, enthralled by the spectacle of bouncing, writhing people below. It seemed that if I descended, I might be swallowed whole and regurgitated somewhere else. The banister shuddered under my fingers like a track before an approaching train.

  I had thought it would be difficult to descend unnoticed, but the party seemed to be just as interesting to the adults as it was to me. No one looked up toward the bedrooms. At the bottom of the stairs, I ducked behind a group of revelers as my father passed by, yelling something at a friend, their arms around each other’s shoulders.

  Ahead of me, three players from my father’s team stood in a tight circle, shouting over the sound of the music.

  “…and sat there for an hour, thanking God for all of this. I think we forget…”

  The other two nodded solemnly, their heads oddly in time to Tom Petty wailing: “God it’s so painful, something that is so close… is still so far out of reach.” The three men moved politely out of the way as a man rushed by toward the toilet, his face a strange orange in the shimmering party light. To anyone else, a discussion of religion in the middle of hundreds of gyrating bodies might have seemed grossly out of place, but I understood that players were a religious and superstitious bunch. On the field, I had watched them reach down between plays and touch the grass, or jump over the white lines of the infield. At home, my father refused to eat spaghetti because he once lost a game after one of my mother’s hearty Italian meals. The fact that they were seriously discussing their religious convictions while holding huge red plastic cups filled with margaritas made a sort of sense to me. It was as if they couldn’t quite believe that fate, too fickle to everyone else, had granted them this one, shining example of a wish fulfilled.

  The oddest thing to discover was how easily I could move through the party, listening in on conversations, watching sudden flirtations flare up like the fireflies in our yard. Wives or girlfriends lurked around the edges, hanging out with the type of women who were never either. They watched me the way they would eye a spider in an unreachable corner of the room, sure I wasn’t meant to be there but unwilling to bother swatting me down. Slipping through a group of men singing along to a song that wasn’t playing, I made it to the kitchen.