No Relation (16 page)

Everyone else looked good out there on the field, with perhaps the exception of Professor Moriarty, our catcher. He was
still in his dress pants and black brogues, a lovely formal contrast to his green and yellow jersey. He also eschewed the glove, citing Hat’s cricket rationale. I tried to persuade him that he’d be just like a wicket-keeper in his position behind the plate, so wearing a glove would be okay. No luck.

I pitched for our team. Jesse approached me as the Meteors, in their rather bland black shirts with white trim, took the field.

“I like them low and outside.”

The umpire threw me the softball, which was really not soft at all.

“Batting leadoff for NameFame, number five, Jesse Owens,” announced the scorekeeper on his megaphone, with all the audio fidelity of a first-generation tin-can telephone.

There were a few titters among the small band of spectators upon hearing our leadoff hitter’s name. Jesse stepped into the batter’s box. The Meteor catcher held his glove at the ready. I delivered my first pitch. It was definitely low and outside.

“It’s not bowling,” shouted the Meteor catcher as the ball rolled along the ground on the wrong side of Jesse. There was laughter in the infield.

“Leave him alone, smart guy! It’s his first pitch of the season!” hollered a voice from our dugout that could only belong to Jackie Kennedy.

With one pitch behind me, I figured I now had my range. Jesse, a right-handed batter, kept eyeing left field as if she were going to drive the ball right over third base. She even pointed
her bat there once or twice during her warm-up swings. The Meteor outfield dutifully shifted toward left field. This time, my pitch headed just where Jesse wanted it, low and outside. She actually shifted her feet, turning slightly to her right, and blasted a line drive out over the first baseman’s head into right field. Because he’d already shifted over toward centre field, the right fielder was a long way from the ball when it landed. Jesse was on third when the ball came back in.

Our bench erupted as if we’d won the World Series.

“Now at the plate, number ten, um, Peter Parker.”

“Ooooh, my spidey senses are tingling,” yelled someone from the Meteors dugout.

“Yeah, like I’ve never heard that one before,” snapped Peter as he took a few practice swings in the box.

He pounded the first pitch right back from whence it came. I had time to turn ninety degrees so the ball struck the fleshy part of my right buttock, side-on. A direct hit. It felt just excellent. I seemed to be having my share of ass injuries in the previous week or so. As I lay there, writhing on the pitcher’s mound, the umpire added insult to my injury by calling Peter out because I’d interfered with the hit. I stayed in the game, my right buttock visibly larger than my left. On the bright side, it took my mind off the persistent pain in my tailbone.

“Batting third in the lineup for NameFame, number two, I’m not kidding here, folks, Mario Andretti. You might call him a speed merchant on the base paths.”

Pitching to your own team is intended to ensure that each batter actually hits. At least, that’s the theory. I’m not sure Mario understood this. I struck him out on four perfect pitches, each of them right in his wheelhouse. Well, it’s clear now that Mario doesn’t actually have a wheelhouse where baseball is concerned. He would have been out on three pitches, but the umpire generously offered him a fourth strike with no complaint from the Meteors.

“Batting cleanup for NameFame, number four, the supreme Diana Ross.”

The scorekeeper was starting to enjoy himself. Diana shot him a look as she walked up to the plate. She took a few tentative practice swings. I pitched. The ball sailed right across the plate as the bat remained resting on her right shoulder. Strike one. The same thing happened on the second pitch. Strike two. This happened three more times, although my pitches were outside of the strike zone, leaving Diana with a full count. She was frozen. I’d seen it before. I waved Diana out to see me and met her halfway to the pitcher’s mound.

“Diana, if you can’t swing, can you just hold your bat out over the plate?”

She nodded and walked back to the batter’s box. She lifted the bat off her shoulder and held it over the plate. I took a couple of small steps closer to the home plate without arousing any reaction from the Meteors. I took careful aim and then bounced the ball off the bat. I was quite pleased with my aim. The ball trickled up the first base line. The catcher had sprinted to the
ball, picked it up, and tossed it to first before Diana was even out of the batter’s box. In fact, I’m not convinced Diana was intending to leave the batter’s box anyway. In the meantime, Jesse was sprinting for home on the full count, two out, pitch. But it was a wasted trip. Diana was out.

“Okay, good first ups, everyone,” I chirped. “We’ve got six more innings to score some runs. There’s lots of time.”

Actually, there wasn’t. But I didn’t yet know that as we took our places in the field and the Meteors came up to bat. They were very intense. The mercy rule was invoked after they scored ten runs on ten hits. We failed to get a single out, though Hat almost caught a fly ball. He was backing up to make the catch, his bare hands in perfect cricket position, cupped in front of his nose, when he tripped on a rough piece of turf and fell, landing on his back. As he lay there, the ball struck him in the stomach and bounced harmlessly to the grass next to him. He was not happy. Let’s just say a lot of butterscotch was handed out before his equilibrium was restored.

With the score 10–0 for the Meteors, it was our turn to bat again. Marie was up first. She actually hit the first pitch I served up to her. It was a solid hit. I watched the infield roller go by me on the first base side of the mound. The second baseman snatched the ball off the grass with his bare hand and threw Marie out in the nick of time, just before she crossed the halfway point in her dash to first base. It was just that close.

Jesse came in to pitch when we reached my name in the batting order.

“Now batting for NameFame, number eight, he likes hunting, fishing, and bullfighting, the centre fielder, Earnest Hemmingway.”

Hilarious. The fans were getting a real kick out of it all.

I glared at the scorekeeper as I made my way to the plate, but he was chortling away at his own comedic brilliance and never noticed.

Jesse threw me a perfect pitch and I swung for the fences. It was a thunderous crack. The ball sailed up and up, and just kept going. I was nearly at second base when the left fielder caught the fly after backing up nearly to the fence. Solid contact, but easily caught. I trotted back to the dugout, leaving Jesse to pitch to Hat.

“Now at the plate, looking overdressed and without his spinning wheel, the right fielder, number six, Mahatma Gandhi.”

When I looked up, Hat was screaming and sprinting to the backstop. He smashed his bat against the chain-link fence separating him from the shocked scorekeeper cum comedian. Hat’s hollering ceased just as Jesse and I reached him. As we’d come to expect, he’d already caught himself.

“I’m so sorry. I should not have reacted that way. Although, sir, it’s a little bit offside to poke fun at someone’s name. You don’t hear us commenting on your gargantuan and misshapen nose that looks something like an overcooked yam, because that would be rude. Please accept this butterscotch as a token of my shame. It’s very sweet and tasty, the candy I mean.”

Hat pushed his index finger, his thumb, and the candy through the screen, and then flicked it toward the scorekeeper. It fell
short, but Jackie Kennedy had materialized on the scene. She picked it up and placed it on the table in front of him. Then she leaned down, placed her hands palms down on the card table, and lit into the scorekeeper for the next several minutes. Jesse and I left Jackie to her lecture and led Hat back to the batter’s box. The umpire and the Meteor’s catcher were unsettled.

Hat swung like a cricketer, with the end of his bat pointing down to the ground. It was certainly unorthodox, but he actually made it work, knocking a sharp line drive right into the second baseman’s glove to end the inning. He apologized to the scorekeeper again before trotting, still gloveless, out to right field.

In the next two hours, Team NameFame set a New York City Y softball league record that I doubt will ever be broken. They called the game after five innings, prompting what has come to be called “the NameFame mercy rule amendment.” The additional clause states that if the margin in the score reaches fifty runs, the game is forfeited. Each inning the Meteors batted, they scored their full allotment of ten runs without us once, not even once, getting a single out. We never got a chance to see how Professor Moriarty’s bare-handed spell as a wicket-keeper was going to work. He crouched in position very formally, as if he were wearing tweeds, and the batters hit every single pitch. Even the throws to home plate tended to end up rolling around the pitcher’s mound, so Professor Moriarty was largely unemployed.

We knocked out a smattering of hits but managed to strand every one of our baserunners. So the game ended after five
innings in a 50–0 victory for the Meteors. On the bright side, we were drinking earlier than we would have been had the game gone the full seven innings.

“Well, that was quite a game,” I said to my assembled teammates.

We’d gathered in a bar on Central Park West to celebrate our groundbreaking performance. Only Clark had left to get home to his wife and children. The rest of us were drinking draught from the three pitchers on our table.

“Holy shit, those guys were good,” Peter said. “Even their girls were good.”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” snapped Jesse.

“Oops. That didn’t come out right,” replied Peter. “I meant that everyone on their team was a star. And on our team, we only have you.”

“Nice recovery,” Jesse conceded. “Hem’s okay, too.”

“However, they did seem to take the game a little more seriously than did we,” offered James Moriarty. “I was just looking for bit of fun. For our friends, the Meteors, winning the game seemed like their singular mission in life.”

“They were jerks,” said Diana, who’d already downed three glasses of draught. “Especially the man with the megaphone. I think we should have let Hat go a few rounds with him. Anyway, we got pounded out there.”

“We’ll turn it around. We’ll start to feel more comfortable out there, and our game will get better,” I said.

“Hem is right,” said Hat. “I’m quite convinced that it would be impossible for our game to do anything else but get better.”

“Well, I suppose it could stay the same,” suggested Mario.

It was kind of nice just hanging out. The conversations splintered into smaller groups as we got to know one another. Jesse was chatting with Jackie and Mario. Diana was deep in discussion with Hat, Peter, and James, though the professor was casting glances Jackie’s way. Marie slid into the seat next to me.

“I think I’m starting to figure you out,” she said.

“Hmmm. That sounds ominous.”

“You upgraded our uniforms out of your own pocket, didn’t you?” She had tilted her head and was smiling, as she usually was.

“What do you mean?”

“I spoke to a few players on the Meteors. They noticed right away that our jerseys were not the standard Y-issue shirts that they were wearing. They said ours must have been custom-ordered.”

“Yeah, well, I hate the feel of those scratchy, plasticy, meshy shirts. It’s like I’m wearing a garbage bag.”

She just nodded.

“You could have just worn a T-shirt underneath. You didn’t have to go to the trouble and the expense of ordering us all better jerseys. That was very nice of you.”

“No need for the others to hear about …”

“Your secret is safe with me. You’re a nice man, Hem. But now I’ve got something on you,” she said, grinning.

“So who’s running the café-bakery when you’re patrolling left field on a Thursday evening?” I asked.

“I have a second-in-command, Tina, who can close up. She’s very good. We’re not that busy yet in the evenings anyway. We’re more of a lunchtime operation, at least for now.”

“Is it going well?”

“I knew it would be tough. Running a restaurant in Manhattan is always hard, but we’re on track. We’re right where we should be at this stage, so I’m encouraged, feeling good.”

“That’s great. Well, now I have another reason to come by, I mean, beyond the great food, ambience, and service.”

She patted my forearm.

“Thanks, Hem. Come by anytime.”

During our brief conversation, for the first and only time since the game, I was oblivious to the painful welt on the side of my right butt cheek.

The karaoke had started and Diana Ross was feeling no pain. With a little encouragement from us, and a final shot of tequila, she wobbled her way up to the microphone. She chose her song and waited for the music, and for the lyrics to start scrolling on the monitor. I recognized the intro to Diana Ross’s hit from the movie
Mahogany
, “Do You Know Where You’re Going To.” I kind of thought she might choose a more up-tempo number from any other singer in the world. Then she opened her mouth and the raucous bar fell silent. The rest of us at our table just looked at one another in astonishment. What a voice. It was beautiful,
stunning. She never looked at the audience. Not once. She was looking above our heads, focused on the back wall.

We started it, but in the end, the whole bar gave her a standing ovation when the last notes died away. After her performance, no one else went near the microphone for the rest of the night. Diana Ross of the
NYPD
was a born karaoke killer.

“Well, I guess Diana is what you would call a Projector,” commented Marie.

“Yes, I guess she is.”

The next week was frustrating and dispiriting. It left me a little unnerved, even a little afraid. It honestly felt like I might not ever be able to write again. Not a good state for the wannabe writer blessed, for once, with time and money simultaneously. I found that I’d actually forgotten how it felt to craft sentences, to find the perfect word, the perfect tense, the perfect construction. The sensation of rearranging the words in a sentence to heighten its impact, its interest, had all but deserted me. No literary laxative could unblock my writing, and I tried many. The Internet was a bottomless well of never-fail cures that in my hands were never-cure fails. I could sense Hemingway’s ghost hovering, an oppressive, smirking, sneering presence. I waited for it to speak. But it never did.