Soul Mates (24 page)

That should have been the Insult Heard Around the World, the one that started World War III in the stands, but instead the wife’s husband took the higher ground and gave a more mature response that put an end to the tiff right then and there.

“Real classy, pal. You’re class personified,” the husband called from five seats away.

Then all was quiet in the section, well, save for the typical ambience of a sold-out baseball stadium. Lilith took the lull in the action as an opportunity to look behind her and mark the idiotic blow-hard who was complaining about the homerun.

“I’ve been looking forward to making your acquaintance for eleven years,” she said under her breath as she turned her torso back forward in her seat.

“What, hun?” Tyler asked.

“Nothing, I was just saying how I have to go to the bathroom, but I’m going to wait until the inning starts so that the line won’t be a mile long.”

“Ok. By the way, I have to tell you that this surprise trip was so great. Thank you so much; I’m having a great time.”

“You’re welcome,” she answered. Tyler leaned in for a kiss and she kissed him back. As the inning started, the Yankees took the field and the Yankee fans in their section began a “BRE-ET GARD-NER!” chant, the blow-hard seated behind them got up and walked towards the concourse, stumbling a bit up the first two stairs of the steep cement staircase.

Tyler watched the game, and Lilith “watched” the game. She was, in actuality, frostily calculating and determining the optimum moment to retreat to the concourse behind the boisterous stew-bum for a life-changing rendezvous; life-changing for Lilith,
and
her husband. This was all part of the diabolically deific plan, you see.

After the final out of the inning was made, Lilith got up and made her way up into the concourse while Tyler remained enamored with the ballgame. The crowd roare
d–
save for the Yankee fans present, of cours
e–
as Dustin Pedroia made a diving stop at second base to rob the Yankees of two more runs and saving his pitcher’s earned run average. Lilith did not break stride.

*   *   *

Kenny Baker, a die-hard Red Sox fan, was jarred from sleep at 7:02am, on the same morning of the Yankees/Red Sox game at Fenway, after tying one on and summarily getting tossed out of the Wicked Compatriot, a notorious dive bar in South-Bosto
n–
or “Southie” as it is referred by its resident
s–
for picking fights with the patrons. Needless to say, Ken Baker, with his fiery red hair and the initial stages of a beer gut, was ornery when he was plucked from his semi-restful drunken slumber by the incessant buzzing of his cell phone, which was resting on a pile of change just to make the sound extra loud and irritating.   

“The fack! What!?” Ken barked into the receiver of his phone.

It was his friend Bobby “Sully” Sullivan who called to inform his friend that he would be turning himself into the Boston police on that day for a warrant that was issued for violating his probation. Surely not the worst crime in the world, and not nearly as bad as the assault and battery charge which set him on the path where probation would be a part of his life in the first place, but a crime nonetheless.

“Relax theah, hawt-shawt. I’m don’t need bail or nuthin’, I wanted to see if you wanted my fackin’ Sawx ticket fuh today.”

“Ahh, gawt jammed up again, pal? You gawta try somethin’ else; the criminal life ain’t agreein’ with you, ya cawk-knawka!”

“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind. You want ‘em or nawt?”

“Yaw muthiz ass! Yeah, I want em’!”

“So come get em’ ya fackin’ junk-head! I’ll leave them in my mailbawx. Don’t wurry, the mailman won’t snatch em’; I had my mail stopped in preparation for my next stint in county.”

After the articulately graceful Bobby Sullivan and Kenny Baker terminated their phone call, Kenny looked at his Facebook page on his phone and saw that he had no new notifications, no friend requests, and no private messages. He spotted a stray Skittle on the floor, picked it up, and ate it graciously and then retreated back to sleep for another four hours after he passed some gas, and tossed his phone onto his nightstand,
knawckin’
some of the change to the floor.

He was going to need his rest. The debatably poor soul had no idea what a pivotal role he would play later that afternoon.

*   *   *

It is rumored that a cure for a hangover is feeding it with fatty food, and of course, more alcohol, which is exactly where Lilith found Kenny Baker at Fenway Park: the concession stand lin
e–
in actuality, his third trip. Lilith sidled in right behind him in line, and if he were still alive to tell you, Kenny would report that there was an eerie magnetic allurement coming from behind him, which made him turn around and look upon the stunningly beautiful Lilith. Lilith needed not do any additional enticing; Kenny liked what he saw.

“Hey hawt stuff. Buy you a beah?” Kenny offered.

“I’m good, thank you,” Lilith answered. Although she was not nasty about it, there was an undertone of agitation in her voice.

“Yaw sittin’ a couple a’ rows in front of me, aren’t ya? Who’s that hump yaw with?”

“That “hump” is my husband. See the ring, asshole?” Lilith spat, as she held up her hand so that Kenny could see the ring and then quickly dropped every finger on her hand except for her middle one.

“A ring don’t mean a thing!” Kenny pointed out.

“How shrewd that would have been twenty years ago. Excuse me.” Lilith walked away back towards the tunnel leading to the stand.

“Yawr an ugly cunt anyway!” Kenny lashed out, clearly flailing because Lilith was nothing short of breathtaking.

Lilith’s signature smirk crept onto her face, and Kenny Baker immediately went cold. Goose pimples rose on his arms and the coarse, unwashed red hair that shrouded those ugly goose pimples stood at attention. “Besides changing your disgusting hair color, you should try showering on a regular basis, and stop eating Skittles off of your bedroom floor you slovenly pig. By the way, the Red
Sawx
suck.”

The lines of Red Sox fans around them waiting for their beers and Fenway Franks erupted into applause despite Lilith wearing enemy colors, further humiliating the unfortunate Kenny Baker.

Lilith turned and walked up the tunnel and back to her seats. Her back was turned to Kenny, so he could not see the wicked smile she was proudly wearing. A young adult male, seeing the smile, plastered himself to the tunnel wall as she passed, giving her as wide a birth as he possibly could.  

When Lilith returned to her seat and to her husband, Tyler could see that there was something wrong.

“What’s the matter, babe?”

“Some low-life piece of shit was harassing me on my way back from the ladies room,” Lilith informed her husband.

“What? Where!?” Tyler started to get up, but was pulled back down with incredible strength that he barely noticed in his climb towards rage.

“Relax, I took care of it. I humiliated the pig.”

“What did he say? Tell me what he said,” Tyler commanded.

Lowering her voice, trying to get Tyler to do the same, she put her imagination to work. “He told me that he wanted to take me into a bathroom stall and ‘break one off in me.’ Classy…how could I resist, right? Then, he said that he didn’t care that I was married. He said, get this: A ring don’t mean a thing.”

At least
that
part was true. The story itself resembled what actually took place, but was obviously embellished in order to stir up that dark rage that resided deep in Tyler. It was working. His face was turning from red to purple, but Lilith was still in good spirits as she recalled the tale to her husband. “I told him that he should change his awful hair color and that he was a disgusting pig and that the Red Sox sucked. Even though I was surrounded by Red Sox fans, they laughed at what I said. He learned his lesson I think. Let’s watch the game, Ty.”

She turned her head back towards the field and began watching again and clapping as Jacoby Ellsbury, a defected Red Sox, stole third base. Lilith knew that watching the game would now be an impossibility for Tyler.

Kenny Baker exited the tunnel, spotted the Yankee-cheering couple both draped in enemy colors, and trudged down the nearly vertical cement staircase towards them.

Tyler was seething while he watched the game. He had to make a conscious effort to keep from trembling with the rage that was threatening to burst out of him in some way. A fleeting thought that entered Tyler’s mind was that this is what caused strokes or infarctions. He begged himself to let it go since his wife seemed no worse for the wear, but this man had insulted his wife, and by extension, had insulted
him
in one of the most unforgivable ways. He imagined that the only thing worse would be if he had found out that Lilith had had an affair, that would jus
t
–

“Hey, cunt,” Kenny Baker calmly said, not angrily, and hurled his steel-toed boot in a side-kick into Lilith’s upper shoulder, the momentum of the kick carrying his boot passed her shoulder and into her right cheek. The collective gasp of the crowd in their section was shockingly loud. People would later swear that Brett Gardner heard the gasp from left field and glanced over to see what had happened.

Kenny Baker had just completed the happening that Lilith had orchestrated eleven years prior. The rest would take care of itself from this point forward, and Lilith’s yelp of what one would construe as pain was actually one of triumph.

Tyler looked wide-eyed at his wife keeled over in her seat, holding her palms up to her face, seemingly in agony, and then sprung from his seat as if he was watching the game on an air-bag that was suddenly engaged. This was it. This is what he came to Boston for.

In Tyler’s haste to get past his wife and at the pre-condemned Mr. Baker, he accidently bashed his knee into her other shoulder, but Lilith was just elated: Tyler passed the point of no return and his rage at this point was simply inexorable, taking over his body like a seizure.

Tyler reached and grabbed the lapel of his wife’s attacker, the ill-fated and now, wide-eyed Kenny Baker and rocketed his fist repeatedly like an oil derrick souped-up with some impossible steroid injected engine into Bakers face. With each fist thrown, the other fist, which had Baker’s blood splattered David Ortiz jersey balled up in it at the lapel, pulled Kenny Baker closer to ensure maximum damage.

There were no fists thrown by Kenny as he was 100 percent on the defensive since the manic flourish began. The scuffle carried the one-sided battle from the third row, where Tyler and Lilith were seated, to the left-field foul line wall.

“Chill! Chill! He’s had enough , man!” a fellow Yankee fan called to Tyler, who stopped punching long enough to reassess the situation, really, to admire his handiwork: the dismantling of the animal who had attacked his wife. Tyler let go of Kenny and backed away after his last punch crunched Baker’s nose, leaving it at a ghastly angle. He had Baker’s blood all over his Derek Jeter jersey, as well as on his punching hand.

Kenny staggered, trying to right himself, briefly succeeding, and then losing it, and then succeeding again. He repeated this cycle a few times before he collapsed backwards into the edge of the foul line fence and tumbled over it backwards. Kenny Baker fell six and-a-half feet to the clay/dirt turf of the baseball field with an audible crunch as he let out a brief shriek that was heard by the first few rows of fans.

It was not a terribly high fall, but such a high fall was not necessary if he landed just right, or wrong, as it were, which is what he did. The crunching sound heard by some when he fell onto the field was his neck breaking. Kenny Baker, the expendable pawn in Lilith’s life’s work, was dead. Role fulfilled; you may go now.

Chapter 6

After strike three was called on Dustin Pedroia, Corbin Morasco, the rookie Yankees third baseman noticed a man falling backwards from the stand and onto the field head first about fifty feet from him. As the man lay lifeless on the field, the rookie screamed for “time out” and the umpires temporarily stopped the game.

Everything happened very quickly after the incident took place. Tyler looked around his section like a cat stuck in a room full of pinwheels and saw a wave of blue shirts coming to engulf him. Amidst the blue security shirts were the unmistakable uniforms of the Boston Police Department.

Tyler was very quick to flash his Nevada State Police badge as he was being detained. It was not that he expected special treatment, he was simply trying to avoid being tuned up. Remember, although he did not implement these practices himself, he was familiar with the dreaded phone directory and its alternate use, as well as the “wood shampoo,” and we’ll just say that Tyler had heard stories about some of his Boston brethren.