Playing the Field (5 page)

Mom didn’t call him back. She sighed and
wiped the counters for a minute longer. “We’ll give him a little
time to adjust to the idea.”

I figured he could adjust while I moved his
things out, but I didn’t say so. I was being a model child.

Still, later that night as I as I lay in bed,
I stared at the ceiling and wondered whether I’d be like my dad and
have to share my room until I left home. Then I thought about my
dad’s job, and ROs, and how much extra money my parents would need
to buy a bigger house.

Were there really secrets to selling things,
like Tony had said? Would they work on selling anything? And if so,
could Tony’s dad teach them to my dad?

I didn’t imagine my dad would want to go over
to the Manetti’s house for salesman lessons, but maybe Tony’s dad
could tell me the secrets. Once I’d shown my dad how easy it was to
sell things, he’d change his mind about being a salesman. Maybe
he’d become really good at it. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about
money anymore, and my parents would never again argue about the
credit card bills, or where we went on vacation, or whether it was
okay to buy juice boxes for our school lunches. Maybe someday we’d
even own a BMW like the Manettis.

All I needed to do was learn the secrets.

* * *

The next day before I went to school, I
searched through the filing cabinet where Dad kept his paperwork
for his job. After a few minutes I found a brochure on Hendricks
reverse osmosis systems. It didn’t look very interesting. Mostly it
was stuff about filters and workmanship. Still, I shoved it in my
backpack to study later. Before I finished shoving, I noticed the
price for the system. Six hundred and ninety-nine dollars.

I almost gave up any idea of salesmanship
right then.

Six hundred and ninety nine dollars? For
something that just gave you water? Who’d buy that?

But I knew the answer. Tons of people. You
only had to take one taste of the tap water to convince yourself
you wanted to get your drinking water from somewhere else. So you
could either buy a reverse osmosis system that filtered out
whatever it was that caused the bad taste, or buy bottled water.
You could even order water and have it brought to your door
straight from—the TV advertising promised—some crystal clear and
pristine spring which looked like the fountain of youth. Or you
could do what my parents did: take water jugs to the grocery store
and fill them up at 25 cents a gallon at the water machine.

Six hundred and ninety-nine dollars.

At 25 cents a gallon you could buy . . . I
took a moment to do the math . . . 2,796 gallons of water for
$699.

How long would it take for a reverse osmosis
system to pay for itself?

I didn’t try to figure it out. It seemed too
much like an algebra problem.

Dang. Mrs. Swenson had told us that we would
use algebra in real life. Maybe she was right all along.

I swung my backpack onto my shoulder and
headed for the front door. The price of the RO didn’t matter. After
all, Tony’s dad sold houses. They were a lot more expensive than RO
systems. If he could sell a house, he could tell me how to sell a
water purifier.

After school, while Tony’s dad drove us to
the ballpark, I decided to bring up the subject. Instead of goofing
off in the back seat with Tony, I leaned toward the driver’s seat
and said, “Coach Manetti, you’re good at selling houses,
right?”

“I’d like to think so,” he said.

“What are the secrets?”

“The secrets?”

“Yeah, you know, the secrets to selling
stuff.”

He shrugged. “Well, in general, I guess I’d
have to say you get a good product and then show the buyer how the
product will improve his life. And if the buyer doesn’t bite the
first time around, you keep working on it until you find something
he does want. You be persistent.”

I took the brochure out of my backpack and
unfolded it. “So, if I were going to sell a reverse osmosis system
to you, I’d have to tell you about its twelve-month warranty and
how much better off you’d be drinking fresh, clean water straight
from a Hendricks system.”

“Right,” Coach Manetti said.

“It has four filters which completely take
out color, odor, and bad taste. It also takes out microorganisms.
You wouldn’t want to drink those, would you?”

“I guess not,” he said.

I waited a moment. “So, do you want to buy a
Hendricks RO from my dad?”

The coach glanced back at me for a moment.
“You’re really trying to sell me one?”

“Sure. Is this the part where I get
persistent?”

Coach Manetti shook his head and laughed. “I
walked right into that one, didn’t I?”

“Microorganisms could probably kill you,” I
said.

Coach Manetti looked at me through the rear
view mirror. “When did your dad start selling ROs?”

“He just started. Do you want to see a
brochure? The RO costs six hundred and ninety-nine dollars, but
it’ll pay for itself. Sometime.” I dropped the brochure on the seat
beside him. “How long do I have to be persistent for? Hours?
Days?”

He laughed again. “Okay, Okay. I guess I have
been thinking about getting an RO. I’ll call your dad when I run
out of my supply of bottled water.”

I leaned back into my seat and smiled. Not
only did I now know the secrets, but I’d made a sale on my first
attempt. It was easy. My dad would be so impressed. He’d be
grateful. Maybe he’d even sell enough ROs he would get a promotion.
A new house with a nice big empty room for me couldn’t be far
away.

Tony rolled his eyes at me, and I knew he
thought my salesman’s routine was stupid, but he could afford to
think that. Tony had always had his own room.

We got to the baseball field and did our
normal warm-ups. While we were waiting to bat, Tony and I sat next
to each other on the bench. He stretched out his legs and leaned
back as much as he could without falling off of the bench
altogether.

“I talked to Rachel today.” He said this in a
louder than normal voice, so I knew that part of the reason he was
telling me was to impress the other guys on the bench.

“Oh? Were you funny, honest, attractive,
loyal, and understanding?”

“Definitely.” He surveyed the field and
nodded slightly. “I think she likes me. I told her I played ball
and she ought to come and watch one of the games sometime.” Now he
looked over at me with half a smile. “She said she’d bring Serena
with her.”

I felt both dread and excitement. It was
flattering to think Serena might come to one of the games. I liked
the idea of her sitting in the bleachers rooting for me, watching
me do something I did well. The next Monday at school she would
look at me admiringly and say, “I never knew you were such an
athlete, McKay. Suddenly I find you the most interesting boy in the
eighth grade.”

But then there was the dread. What exactly
had Tony said about me? I could just imagine his conversation with
Rachel. “Yeah, McKay really likes Serena. Just today in algebra I
was telling him he had to name their first born after me . . .” And
of course, Rachel would immediately pass on any information she got
from Tony to Serena, which meant that rather than face her every
day, I would have to go live in a monastery in Tibet.

I lowered my voice so the other guys wouldn’t
hear me. “What did you tell Rachel about me?”

Tony’s smile grew. He knew he had me gripped
in suspense, and he liked it. “I didn’t say a whole lot to her
about you, but I did tell her you thought Serena was cute.”

On one hand this wasn’t as bad as it could
have been. Thinking someone was cute was not as bad as say, telling
a girl you were already planning what to name your children. Still,
it made me angry that Tony had talked to Rachel about me at
all.

I stared at Tony. “Great.”

Tony looked surprised. “You think she’s cute,
don’t you?”

“It’s as good as telling Serena I like her. I
might as well walk around with an I Have a Crush on Serena sign on
my shirt.”

“Well, don’t you want to know if she likes
you? Rachel said she’d ask Serena what she thought of you.”

I put my hands over my face and groaned. I
could almost feel my ego shrinking as we spoke. “No, I don’t want
to know. I’ve only had two conversations with her and one of them
was about the letter x. I know what she thinks of me. She thinks
I’m strange. I wanted to have a few more conversations with her
just to prove I’m a normal person before I even asked her to help
me with my homework, and now Rachel is going to tell her that I
like her. Double great.”

Tony got that don’t-be-a-baby-McKay look on
his face again. “You need help with your homework right now. If she
doesn’t like you, then we’ll have to find someone else in our math
class who does.”

“No, we won’t, because I’ve decided to pay
for a tutor.” After the last few days, an expensive, funny-smelling
guy who spits seemed like good company. “And from now on, don’t
tell anyone anything about me. I don’t need your help when it comes
to girls.”

“You need somebody’s help. Unless you plan to
run for the most-likely-to-wind-up-a-loser award.” He shook his
head, then stood up to take his turn at bat.

Usually I loved baseball practice. Nothing
made me happier than seeing the ball soar through the sky. It made
me feel like I was soaring too. Today everything felt heavy. Tony
and I didn’t say anything to each other for the rest of practice. I
was so mad at him, every time I threw the ball to third I purposely
aimed for his stomach. He always caught the ball, but he gave me
dirty looks, like he knew what I was doing.

Isn’t that the way life goes? I hadn’t been
in a fight with Tony since fifth grade when he wouldn’t believe
that Baby Ruth candy bars weren’t named after Babe Ruth. We’d
argued about who knew more about baseball and ended up not talking
to each other for a week. Three years we’d gone without fighting,
and now after less than a week of trying to impress girls we were
mad at each other.

Girls just had a way of changing everything.
That was a good enough reason not to get involved with them.

When I got home from practice, I took Kirk
aside and sat down on the couch with him. “Kirk,” I said, putting
my arm around him, “You’re in kindergarten this year. You’re
getting to be a big guy, and as your older brother I have some
words of wisdom for you. Someday one of the girls in your class
will want to hold your hand. Take my advice. Just don’t do it.”

* * *

It wasn’t until I was getting ready for bed
that I remembered to tell dad about my first sale. Then, with
toothbrush in hand and wearing my pajamas, I went and found him in
the family room. He was relaxing on the couch watching TV and
eating potato chips.

I sat down on the couch by him. “Hey Dad,
Coach Manetti says he’ll buy an RO from you.”

Dad popped a potato chip into his mouth. “Why
would he do that?”

“Because I talked to him about it. He told me
the secrets to sell things and then I turned around and used them
on him.”

Dad chuckled. “And so now he’s buying an
RO?”

“Yep.”

“That’s great. Next time see if he’ll buy a
bridge or two.”

“No, I’m serious. Coach Manetti wants to buy
an RO from you.”

Dad glanced over at me. “Did he give you any
money?”

“Well, no.”

“Then I think the coach was pulling your
leg.”

“No, he’s just waiting until he uses up his
bottled water. Then he’s going to call you to buy one.”

Dad chuckled again. “It seems like he sold
you a bill of goods and not the other way around.”

“He’s really going to call you,” I said, and
walked out of the family room.

Dad ought to have realized I would have known
if Coach Manetti was pulling my leg. The coach said he’d call my
dad, and he would. I knew he would. After all, the Manettis had
money. What was an RO system to them? He’d call, and then my Dad
would see I was right. Maybe he’d even start listening to me when I
told him something.

Chapter 5

The next day was Saturday, and we had a game
against the East Mesa Firebrands. I wondered how Tony would act
toward me. The truth was that while I didn’t want to fight with him
anymore, I didn’t exactly want to apologize to him either. What
would I say I was sorry for? I just wanted to forget yesterday ever
happened.

When I got to the ball field, Tony walked
over to me and nodded toward the bleachers. “Adam the Magnificent,
Mr. Baseball himself, is here to watch us play.”

I looked up and saw Jenna with a tall blond
guy.

“Jenna is paying me five dollars not to blow
her cover,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean you can’t talk to
them.”

I smiled back at Tony because he obviously
wanted to forget yesterday too. “Should I ask her who her favorite
shortstop is?”

He smirked. “She’d probably say Mark McGwire.
Whenever she doesn’t know what to say she just talks about
him.”

Coach Manetti called us over to do our
warm-ups, and I didn’t think about Jenna and Adam again. We played
a good game and won by four runs. While Tony and I were putting
equipment in the back of the Manetti’s Silverado, Jenna and Adam
sauntered up next to us. Adam patted Tony on the shoulder in this
sort of patronizing way. “Hey, that was a nice scoop of the line
drive—but you could have made the double play if you’d fired off to
second instead of settling for the sure out.”

“Uh, right,” Tony said.

“And you could have shown a little more
hustle too.”

Tony forced a smile. “I’ll try to keep that
in mind for next time.”

Adam turned and looked at me. “Good hit in
the second.”

Jenna nodded. “Yeah, the way you hit reminded
me of Mark McGwire.”