Hardball (9 page)

“Don’t be fooled by the handsome ones or, God forbid, the rich ones,” she’d say. “Look for a beautiful heart.”

I was six. I remembered it because of her intensity. If she’d lived, she probably would have had to repeat it a hundred times before it stuck. But she didn’t live, so her advice went into the vault, only to be trotted out when a rich, handsome man like Dash Wallace held my hand and I didn’t know why.

But, Mom, I want to. Can I just do this one thing?

The elevator doors slid open, and I knew my mother would tell me it was all right.

Just this once.

Vivian

The rooftop party was less carnival and more soirée. The winter night was cold for LA and clear by the same standard. When I looked up, I could see all of Orion, not just the belt.

Dash knew people. He waved, said a few words, but he kept his hand on either my arm or my back, subtly guiding me to the edge of the roof. He’d said he didn’t have a plan, but he knew where he was going and never deviated.

I pretended I belonged there, standing straight and holding my purse in front of me. I looked at all of the other women’s expressions and imitated them, faking it all the way. I didn’t fit in, but it didn’t have to be so incredibly obvious.

I may have been uncomfortable and self-conscious, but I was elated to be next to him. He took me to the edge of the roof that overlooked the city and held his hand out for me.

“You’re cold,” he said.

Understatement of the year. I hadn’t been prepared to go outside, and it had to be sixty degrees. “People from Minnesota would laugh.”

He shrugged out of his jacket and, in one fluid move, draped it over my shoulders.

“But you’ll be cold,” I said.

“This isn’t cold.”

Of course it wasn’t. Between rewatches of the Youder interview, I’d spent some time on Wikipedia, getting the facts on Mr. Wallace. He was from upstate New York. Albany or something. A small city so buried in snow it looked flat white in satellite pictures for a third of the year. His brothers threw snowballs, and he caught them.

“This doesn’t feel fair,” I said.

“How is that?”

“I know all kinds of things about you, and you don’t know anything about me.”

“Tell me what you think you know.” He put his elbow on the slate ledge and cupped his perfect chin in his perfect hand. His body was half-stretched out, half-curled in on itself, as if he was ready to spring for a grounder.

“You’re not cold because you’re from Buffalo.”

“Ithaca.”

“Upstate New York. You were drafted out of high school but made a deal so you could play minor league ball when school wasn’t in session, and you played for Cornell the rest of the year.”

“All they wanted was for me to stay sharp until they could call me up. My parents didn’t think I was really going to play major league ball, so I went to school to make them happy. None of this is relevant.”

“Really?”

What was relevant to him? I had the feeling it wasn’t numbers or stats. Maybe it was the way he caught a ball off-balance and spun on his left toe while he threw to second behind his back, cutting three milliseconds off his time, to make the out? Or the way he wore down a pitcher with foul balls, risking the at bat in favor of a longer ball later?

“Why don’t you give TV interviews?” I asked.

From his expression, my question was relevant but not what he’d expected. “It’s a distraction. Anything I have to say, I say on the field.”

A closed-door answer. Dad the lawyer had named all of my teen argument techniques, and this was a non-sequitur meant to cut off further discussion on the topic.

“My turn.” He leaned on the wall. “Where does a librarian get a dress like that?”

“That’s a long story.”

He shrugged. “I don’t need to be anywhere. Do you want to sit?”

“Yeah, actually.”

He pulled a chair out for me, and he sat on the opposite side of the round cocktail table, elbows on the marble, waiting for me.

“It’s my mother’s dress. She was a very glamorous woman.”

“Was?”

“She was hit by a drunk driver on Wilshire and Rodeo. I was eight. My stepdad raised me. He kept her house, her clothes, all the things she loved.”

“Her daughter too.”

I pulled the lapels of his jacket close around me. It smelled like him even in the cold outdoor air. Dusty and masculine. Grass and sky and everything in between.

“The glove,” he said, picking at the leaves that had dropped off the centerpiece and gathering them into a neat little pile. “I know it’s trouble to find it, so I want to explain. It’s not the glove. I can buy another glove. I even have time to wear it in. I have ten spares. But I had a sister. Her name was Daria, and she died, God, seven years ago now.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you. It was undiagnosed leukemia. Which is crazy. But there it is. That’s not even the point. The point is when I went to college, we traded pins. The kind with the snap in the back. I gave her one of my Eagle Scout
fleur-de-lis
. To annoy me, because she thought I should have just skipped college and gotten drafted, she gave me a princess pin she got at Disney. I wore it inside my glove.”

“It was inside the glove that was taken?”

“Yes.”

The missing glove had gone from inconvenience to serious business. Just about every step of the way, I’d failed. I’d been unable to prevent the theft and assumed the worst of the victim when it came to light. I was guilty on both counts.

“I feel terrible,” I said. Three words to describe a much more complex web of self-reproach.

“I wasn’t trying to ruin your evening. But not telling you why I wanted it back didn’t seem right either.”

“I want to run back to work and start making phone calls.”

He took my hand again, and again, I was swathed in shock.

“Thank you for taking it seriously,” he said.

“I’m all about serious. I’m wearing my dead mother’s shoes.”

“The shoes too?”

“I have enough to get me through middle age as long as I don’t gain a hundred pounds.”

He laughed. He was going to say something. It was going to be terribly witty, then I was going to stutter nervously and his seduction would be complete. He would win in thirty minutes or less.

But he never said anything because a man in an Armani suit approached with a boob job on his arm. I shot up, nearly toppling the chair.

“Vivian?” Carl said. “Hi! Wow! I can’t believe it. You look va-va-voom!”

He reached for me with his hands splayed and his arms bent, the Angeleno sign for “I’m hugging you now,” except low, as if he was going to grab my tits.

Dashiell Wallace of the lightning reflexes and recently discovered jealous streak stood, grabbed Carl’s shoulder, and yanked him back, sending my ex-boyfriend off-balance and forcing Boobjob’s mouth into a lipstick-and-collagen grimace.

“It’s okay!” I said. “He’s a friend.”

Dash was being an ape, but he wasn’t a stupid ape. He let Carl go with a push, letting me know with the tilt of his head that he felt justified.

Carl straightened himself. “Sorry.” He glanced at me then Dash.

“You caught me by surprise,” Dash said, slapping him hard on the back with a big smile.

“Cool, cool, it’s cool. Hey, yeah, Viv and I know each other from a long time ago.” He turned to me. “This is Cherry.” He indicated his date.

“Nice to meet you. Dash, this is Carl. Old friend.”

Did I feel smug? Sure, I did. I was standing at a VIP event in a designer dress, on the arm of a professional athlete who could have any woman he wanted. If that wasn’t the antithesis of boring, I didn’t know what was.

Handshakes were exchanged, and it was very clear Carl had no idea he was shaking hands with a two-time World Series champion. Dash didn’t wear his ring, not that Carl would have recognized it. We had a gender switch with regard to sports. To him, sports were for illiterate clods, and baseball hearkened back to a dead agricultural past. I’d agreed with him and followed the game despite his disdain. Wives dealt with sports obsessions they didn’t understand all the time, and husbands went about their business, loving what they loved without apology. I’d done the same. To Carl, that had proven I was boring and provincial.

“You hurt me,” Carl said, hand over his heart. “When was I demoted to old friend?”

Jesus Christ. Was I really supposed to answer that?

Cherry put her hand on Carl’s shoulder and looked me up and down. “This the Viv who dumped you, baby?” She held her hand out for mine. “Thank you for setting him free.”

My jaw came unhinged from the rest of my head. I couldn’t imagine how unattractive that was because I was too busy imagining what kind of situation would lead Carl to lie about how we’d ended.

I put my finger up to accuse him of something. Not just lying but manipulating this woman’s heart. She was obviously defending him and pumping up his ego. It was nice. Too nice for him.

I pointed at her. “Don't believe a thing he says.”

“It’s complicated,” Carl mumbled.

A weight snaked across my shoulders. Dash Wallace’s arm pulled me away. I heard him say, “Nice to meet you,” but I didn’t feel fully present. I walked steadily on those tricky shoes but didn’t feel balanced.

What. A. Dick.

I must have had a black squiggle over my head because Dash didn’t say a word. He kept his arm around me, pulling me close as he guided me to the elevator, down to the parking lot, and to the valet. He opened the passenger door of his black Mercedes.

I wasn’t supposed to let him drive me home, but I didn’t care anymore. I got in, and he shut the door.

I got my phone out quickly to text Jim.

Don’t need a lift home. Everything good.

I shut off the phone. I didn’t even want to let him tell me good-night-see-you-tomorrow. I just wanted to go home and say the most terrible things to myself.

But Dash was driving, and he didn’t know where to go.

“West,” I said. “Left on Spaulding. Right on Hilgreen. You’ll wonder if that’s in the Beverly Hills city limit. It is. It’s a gorgeous house. You’ll wonder how I can afford it. I can’t. You’ll see it’s behind on upkeep. You can deduce why.”

“He really pissed you off.”

“You’re the one who nearly belted him.” My words were tight and accusatory. I didn’t know how to lighten up.

“I saw how you reacted to him. I’m sorry, I—”

“Because fuck him.”

I was forgetting to be happy. I was in a car with a dream guy, and I was still hung up on the douche who had crushed me two years earlier. I couldn’t control my thoughts or emotions. Couldn’t choose the fun thing over the sad thing.

“He dumped me. He just one day up and decided I was the reason he was a loser. Well, I never called him that. I never treated him like the piece of shit he was. And one day, he gets himself all pissed off over nothing and leaves. And guess who’s devastated? Me. And who’s the one who moves? Me. Who only goes out with
our
friends when he’s doing something else so she won’t be uncomfortable? Who watched him get his life together only after he dumped me? Who was boring? Who’s lower than shit? Me, me, me. And now he goes around playing victim with all his new girlfriends? What the fuck? He stole everything from me, and now he steals my victimhood? Well, no. He can’t have it. I was the wronged party. Fuck him. That’s mine.”

Was I crying?

No, I was not crying. Given another minute, maybe. But I crossed my arms and, clamping down on the tears, looked out the window as Dash drove past the closed storefronts of Olympic Boulevard.

“You could give it to him,” Dash said.

“He gets nothing.” I waited a minute as the storefronts turned to apartment buildings. “Give him what?”

“Your victimhood. You don’t really need it.”

“Fuck you too,” I said softly.

And wrongly. He didn’t deserve to be cursed. I was still wearing the jacket he’d surrendered so I wouldn’t be cold. He’d known me a total of two hours and had been more attentive to me than Carl had been in five years.

He stopped at a light, and I faced him for the first time since I’d started cursing.

He looked back at me. I hadn’t hurt him—I knew that much from the smile he was trying to hide—but that was no excuse.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You’re something when you’re mad.”

I laughed nervously and looked at my lap. “Yeah. I’ve heard that.”

“Have you ever considered boxing?”

The light went green.

“I used to ice skate, and when I was mad, I’d go to the rink and just pound the shit out of a double lutz. Hours and hours. I was mad at everything, so I got real good.”

“You don’t skate any more?”

“Nah. No time. No money. Not enough talent. Turn here and bear right.”

He took the direction, and when he came to my house, I wanted him to keep going. Pass it by. Stop someplace that was fully mine. A house that didn’t bear the scars of someone else’s difficulties. Something new and fresh. I didn’t want to leave my house, but I didn’t want him to see it either.

“Stop right there.” I pointed at the spot in front of my house. “The white with blue trim.”

I’d forgotten to think about my living situation and how unattractive it was. Sure, I lived in a big house in Beverly Hills, but it had been won by my mother in a divorce settlement, and my stepfather lived there. I couldn’t ask him in.