Be My Baby Tonight (15 page)

Time to change the subject. “So, you’re sure
you’ll be okay, alone in the box? I’m sorry Mort Sadie bailed at
the last minute, but she’s practicing her audition song for
South Pacific
with the organist from the church.”

“‘Bali Ha’i,’ accompanied by pipe organ. I’m
sorry I had to miss that.”

“Yeah, well, Bali Hi-note is something you
really might want to miss. Not that anybody but dogs can hear her
when she goes for the top ones.”

“I think it’s sweet,” Suzanna said, playfully
bumping Tim’s shoulder as they walked toward the elevator.
“Although I have to admit that the grass skirt she showed me
yesterday sort of scared me. Mrs. B. said Aunt Sadie will probably
end up in the chorus, as usual.”

“Not Mrs. B. Director Mrs. B. Do you remember
the musical we put on for her our senior year?”

“
Oklahoma,
sure, I remember,” Suzanna
said, nodding. “O-k-l-a-h-o-m-a, except Tommy Crimmins always tried
to sing it O-a-k. And he had the loudest voice in the chorus. I
thought Mrs. B. was going to stuff a gag in his mouth.”

Tim grinned at the memory. So many
memories.

Could you build a life on memories?

Hey, it was working so far.

“Okay, here we are, specialized door-to-door
delivery for the little lady. Now, how many home runs do you want
me to hit for you tonight?”

“Oh, golly-gee, Mr. Trehan, you’d do that for
me?” Suzanna said, teasing him.

“Can’t impress you no-how, can I?” Tim asked,
gathering her close in his arms.

“Yes, you can.” She moved closer, sort of
ground her hips against him. “You can
impress
me anytime,
big boy.”

“You sure do pick your times,” he all but
growled, then swooped down to kiss her.

“Knock, knock.”

Suzanna froze in his arms, then quickly
stepped back as Dusty Johnson entered the super box, already
wearing his uniform pants, topped by a sleeveless T-shirt with
“Property of the Philadelphia Phillies” printed on it.

“Dusty? What are you doing up here?”

The first baseman scratched at his red head.
“Well, nothin’ much, Tim. I saw your car, and someone told me you
might be up here. I just thought maybe I could meet the missus,
that’s all.”

Tim frowned. “You and Suzanna haven’t met
yet?”

“Nope.” He winked at Suzanna. “Keepin’ you to
himself, ain’t he, ma’am?”

“No, that’s my fault, Dusty,” Suzanna said,
shaking the boy’s hand. “I haven’t been able to come to many games.
So nice to meet you. And, please, call me Suzanna. Ma’am makes me
feel ancient.”

“Yes, ma’am, I mean, okay, Suzanna.” He
turned to Tim. “Pretty as you said she was. Nice, too.”

“Dusty’s my roommate on the road,” Tim
explained to Suzanna.

“Yes, I know. You told me.”

“Oh, wow, I forgot,” Dusty said, slapping at
his forehead. “When I told Sam I was comin’ up here, he said for me
to fetch you down. There’s some reporter wants to talk to you.”

“He can wait,” Tim said, wishing Dusty out of
the box, and himself alone with Suzanna and her apparent desire for
some friendly fooling around.

“Nuh-uh,” Dusty said “Can’t. She’s already
talked to everybody else, and Coach wants her outta the dressin’
room before one of the guys gets frisky.”

Tim snorted. “Sam said frisky?”

Dusty shot a quick look toward Suzanna.
“Sure. Frisky. Well, he kinda said that.”

“I’ll just bet,” Tim answered, knowing Sam
Kizer’s opinion of female reporters in the clubhouse. “Okay, before
Kolecki decides to accidentally drop his towel, I’ll go on down
there. Suzanna? Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”

“Tim, it’s a box in a baseball stadium.
What’s not to go right?”

“Hey, I’ll stay with her awhile, Tim, if
that’s okay with you. I can tell Suzanna all about how you talk
about her all the time, and how much you miss her.”

“I don’t talk about her all the time,” Tim
said, but he was inwardly pleased. Why not let Dusty talk him up a
bit? It couldn’t hurt. He kissed Suzanna once more, quickly. “Just
most of the time.”

“Oh, go away,” she said, playfully pushing at
him. “If you’re late again, Sam is going to make you stay in Philly
during home stands and not let you come home.”

“In his dreams,” Tim said, and headed toward
the clubhouse.

* * *

Listening to Dusty Johnson was a real treat.
He was so young, so innocent, so sweet. Suzanna was surprised his
mother let him out alone.

“... and my mama told me I had to go to
church every Sunday, just like at home in Tennessee, and I told
Coach—Mr. Kizer—and he said then I could flap my wings and fly home
from Chicago, because the plane was leavin’ in an hour. It snowed
all night, ya see, in April if you can believe that, so the Sunday
game was already postponed. We had a chance to get home early, and
Coach took it.”

Suzanna sucked on her straw one more time,
then winced as it made an awful sound. She’d been so busy listening
to Dusty’s down-home stories that she hadn’t realized she’d
finished the entire soda. “What did you do?” she asked, depositing
the empty cup at her feet.

“Well, ma’am—Suzanna—I just said that if
that’s what I gotta do, then that’s what I gotta do, because I
promised my mama.”

“So, Dusty, after they peeled Sam Kizer off
the ceiling, what did
he
do?”

“Well, that’s when Tim and me became roomies.
Because Tim put his arm around me and said he’d stay with me, go to
church with me. And then Jose said he’d go along with us, and then
Dave Frey said he was staying, too. Next thing you knew, we were
all goin’ to church. Even Coach. Not a one of ’em was Baptist,
neither. And we don’t never fly on Sunday mornings ever since, no
matter what.”

Suzanna sat back in her seat and sighed. That
was her Tim. No wonder she could never stay angry with him, even
when he deserved it. “And now you and Tim room together on the
road. That’s nice.”

Dusty rubbed at his shaggy red head. “It
wasn’t for awhile, I can tell you. Those nightmares he was
havin’?”

Suzanna perked up. Nightmares? He’d had one
that first night. But not since then. At least not on the nights
they had been together.

“They were bad, weren’t they?” she said,
figuring the best way to learn something was to pretend she already
knew more than she knew.

“Oh, yeah. Real bad. The curse, you
know?”

“Oh, the curse,” Suzanna said, relaxing
again. “Yes, I know about that. Some sportswriters saying maybe
he’d get hurt, because Jack had gotten hurt.”

Dusty nodded. “Yeah. And the rest of it.”

Suzanna narrowed her eyes. “What rest of
it?”

“You know. The baby, the weddin’.”

Suzanna rested her elbow on the arm of the
chair, dropped her chin into her hand. “The baby? The weddin’—I
mean, the wedding?”

Dusty grinned, “What his brother did, he
does. That’s what Tim said. Man, and he’d
dream.
Sometimes
it’d be dreams where he was injured. Sometimes, it would be about
weddin’ gowns. He’d see the pitcher when he was at the plate, and
the pitcher would be wearin’ a weddin’ gown. Spooky, huh? But the
worst? The worst was when the pitcher’d throw the ball to the
plate, and it wouldn’t be a ball, but a baby. Comin’ straight for
him. Old Tim’d sit up in bed, his hands out, yellin’, ‘
No,
no!’“

She’d seen that. In Pittsburgh, during their
first night together. Tim, sitting up in bed. She’d heard that.
“No, no!”

Suzanna sat up straight herself, put her
hands in her lap. Then she sort of clapped them together a time or
two. She didn’t know what to do with her hands. She didn’t know
what to do with her body. She just knew she felt as if she might
just jump out of her skin.

“Bad... um... bad dreams.”

“Oh, yeah. Then, the last time, he had all
three
things happen in the same dream. It just kept gettin’
worse and worse for him. It was gettin’ so as he couldn’t
play.”

“The last time? When was that?”

“Let me think. Oh, okay. In Pittsburgh. Yeah,
in Pittsburgh. Right before you two got hitched.” He grinned at
her. “I knew it would work.”

“
You
knew it would work? You knew what
would work, Dusty?”

He looked at her, suddenly nervous. “He
didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what, Dusty?”

“Nothin’.”

“Dusty...?”

He sat forward, his elbows on his knees.
“Okay. Tim does what Jack does. But not all the time. That’s what
he told me. Not all the time. Two out of five, I think he said. So
I said, would that be one out of three? And Tim said sure, maybe.
So I said, why don’t you pick one and just do it, and then you
won’t have to worry about the other two. Next thing I know—bam!—you
two go and get married. And we’ve been back on the road since, and
no more nightmares. Isn’t that cool?”

“Frigid,” Suzanna said, summoning a weak
smile.

“You knew, right?” Dusty looked
frightened.

Suzanna nodded, forced herself to widen her
smile. “Oh, certainly. Tim and I have no secrets. I’m... I’m just
glad it worked.”

“Good,” Dusty said, bobbing his head as he
stood up. “Well, I’d better get down there. Battin’ practice starts
in a coupla minutes. Anythin’ you want me to say to Tim for
you?”

“Nope,” she told him brightly, blinking fast,
to keep back the tears. “Not a thing.”

...
why don’t you pick one and just do it,
and then you won’t have to worry about the other two?

Great advice.

And in walked good old Suze, right on cue, to
help Tim out of a jam.

It was going to be a long game.

It was going to be an even longer ride
home....

I made a game effort to argue, but two things
were

against me: the umpires and the rules.

— Leo Durocher, manager

“Suze? Suze, wake up, babe, we’re home.”

Tim watched as Suzanna slowly opened her eyes
and sat up. She’d wadded her sweater into a pillow and had been
half leaning against the door all the way home—about as far away
from him as she could get without crawling into the
backseat—pretending to be asleep.

He knew she’d been pretending, because there
had been a tension inside the car all the way home, a tension thick
enough to chew on.

He also knew because when he’d met her
outside the clubhouse door, she’d looked at him as if he’d just
crawled out from beneath some rock, telling him she wanted to go
home, not stay at the apartment, as they had planned.

So he’d kissed her.

And she’d stood there, like a statue.

“Want to stop for something to eat?” he’d
asked.

“No, thank you.”

“Tired, huh?”

“If you say so.”

“Suze? What’s wrong? Come on, smile. We won.
We’re tied with the Mets for first.”

“Yippee-ky-o,” she’d said without an ounce of
emotion, and then headed for the car.

Two minutes after getting in the car, she’d
rolled up the sweater and gone into her “don’t bother me, I’m
sleeping” routine.

He’d given serious thought to driving home
via West Virginia, just to give himself more time to figure out
what the hell had happened between their hot kisses in the super
box and now.

The only thing he could come up with was
Dusty Johnson, and that was ridiculous. Dusty was just a kid. A
nice kid. Suzanna couldn’t be angry that he’d left him there to
talk to her for a while, keep her company. Still, whatever had set
her off had been stewing inside her for about five hours now, and
he knew there was an explosion on his horizon, God help him.

Tim hit the lock release and walked around to
Suzanna’s side of the car, to help her out, be the gentleman, but
she’d bolted from the seat the moment the locks popped and was
already in the house.

She must have hidden the house key in her
fist, to get inside so quickly.

“Nice night,” he said, standing on the steps,
looking up at the starry sky, then headed inside. “Wonder if I’ll
live to see the morning.”

He could hear Suzanna in the kitchen, banging
cabinet doors, clunking crockery on the counter.

Maybe he could go knock on Jack’s door, beg
him to put him up for the night.

“Suze?” he said, entering the kitchen. Well,
standing at the entrance anyway, half in and half out, thinking
about that wooden block of very sharp knives that sat on the
counter next to the stove.

“I’m making herbal tea for myself,” she said,
holding the teapot spout under the faucet and jabbing at the single
faucet handle.

None for him, obviously.

The water came out full force, missing the
spout and splashing all over, spraying up at Suzanna’s face.

“Maybe you should have taken off the lid,
filled it that way,” Tim said, knowing he probably wasn’t being
helpful—to Suzanna, or to himself.

“Damn it! Damn it, damn it,
damn
it!”

Tim had always prided himself on his sharp
reflexes. Not that he’d need them, because Suzanna would never
throw a teapot at him or anything.

Except that when he looked at her as she
headed for the drawer containing the dish towels, and she looked so
silly—all wet and dribbling—he laughed.

Bad move. The next thing he knew, good old
Suze had grabbed the sugar bowl, and it came winging toward
him.

“Don’t laugh at me!” she yelled at him as he
ducked, and the ceramic bowl hit the wall beside him, taking a
good-size chunk out of the plaster. Yeah, well, he was thinking
maybe Keely had been right, and they should put wallpaper in here.
Guess that was one decision now made for him.

“I’m not laughing at you, honest,” Tim said,
daring to bend down, pick up the bowl that had emptied, but not
broken, and place it on the counter. “I’m still too busy trying to
figure out who you are and what you did with my wife.”