Want Not (41 page)

“Thanks, dude,” said Matty. “That felt
delicious.
We gotta turn in here. (Coming through, bro.) Our seats are down this way. (Seriously, man, you gonna let me pass? Jesus.) I think we’ve missed, like, the whole first inning. Here we go, down here. Damn, you see that asswipe? Just standing there. I was like, dude, coming through,
hello.
”

“I’m just following you,” said Talmadge, as they emerged from a gray concrete corridor into the massive sunlit bowl of Yankee Stadium—and the bottom of the bowl, at that, to a section along the first-base line that was almost level with the field. “Holy shit, what’d you
pay
for these seats, man?” Talmadge called out. Then a sudden grin quirked his face. “Or are we squatting?”

“Screw squatting.” Matty quartered back as if to say something further but shook his head instead, swallowing whatever he’d been fixing to say, and then descended down the concrete steps. “They’re
our
seats, okay? This row here.”

“Oh,
man,
” Talmadge said, more impressed than he wanted to be. Until this moment he’d thought his dad’s box seats at the Superdome were the shit. But Dick Bertrand had nothing on these. Third row from the field, just to the right of the Yankees dugout. He was almost shocked to see the field up close as actual grass with actual blades; the anomaly of seeing genuine earth in this unearthly city never failed to stagger him. He was near enough to see the thick, sunlight-glossed forearm hair of the Yankees’ first baseman, the rawhide curls on his glove, the weave of his socks. This was high-definition seating. He sat down in amazement.

To Talmadge’s right sat a fortyish brunette whose enormous silicone breasts he couldn’t help noticing first, though with nonbiological interest, and certainly no amazement. They were positioned unnaturally high, aimed skyward like anti-aircraft guns, and set just barely inside a blue satin dress that must’ve been custom tailored to restrict them within the confines of indecent exposure laws. To her right sat a distracted, sweaty man at least a decade older, cursing at something on his cellphone screen, who Talmadge presumed to be her husband. He had one of those lumpy misshapen bodies on which shirts never fit properly, shirts bunching and puffing as his was bunched and puffed now, but this didn’t matter because at a certain tax bracket dishevelment was mistaken for charm. Dick Bertrand had a body like that, but without the bank balance to render it charming. With great agitation the man flashed the screen for the woman to see. She shrugged in the most noncommittal manner Talmadge had ever seen a person shrug, a scant lift of shoulder that could’ve signaled
There’s nothing you can do right now about the price of crude
as easily as it could’ve signaled
I have no idea why you’re showing me that battery-operated contraption.
Settling himself into his seat, with his beer between his legs and the nachos transferred to Matty’s knee, Talmadge greeted the woman with a Southern hello. She pretended not to hear, staring expressionlessly up toward the Jumbotron or the blue sky beyond it, conceivably scanning for enemy aircraft. Talmadge tried not to mind. Even the snottiest matrons of the Gulfport Yacht Club—he was thinking now of Mrs. Dubuisson, to whom his father had devoted years of courting for insidious society reasons—would’ve made
some
gesture in response. (In Mrs. Dubuisson’s case, a lavishly condescending return greeting that only later would you register as devastating.) He thought of what Micah would do, in similar straits. Probably plant herself on the woman’s lap until either acknowledgment came or those boobs opened fire. But then Micah would never be found lounging in a field box at Yankee Stadium. The point was way beyond moot.

Just then the inning ended and the Cleveland Indians came jogging out onto the field. Their first baseman—copper-skinned, with Popeye-grade arms and an ornate black goatee—had a thick sinister shape to him, a streetfighter’s physique crammed into the temperate uniform of a ballplayer. From the rows above and behind him Talmadge heard people yelling something to the first baseman. Something scraggly and bitter-sounding, the word hurled like a shotput. It sounded like
herpes.

“Does he have herpes?” Talmadge asked Matty.

“No, man. That’s his name.”

“His name’s Herpes?”

“His name’s Hermes, dude. Hermes Ortiz.”

At this point Matty joined in, cupping his mouth and shouting, “Hey, Herpes!
Herpes!
” Matty seemed pleased with himself, devouring a nacho as reward, but at this near distance, so close to the field and thereby to Herpes/Hermes, something felt off to Talmadge, as though at this point-blank range the partisan became personal. Evidently he wasn’t alone. With a sharp crank of her head the woman beside Talmadge shot them a glare, withering upon impact, and her husband leaned forward in his seat and pointing a rolled-up program at them said, “Come on, boys.” Even Hermes himself took notice, flashing them a quick but meaningful scowl. From what Talmadge could gather an unwritten code had been violated, and he found himself slinking down into his seat even as the fans in the higher seats, emboldened by Matty’s breach, broke into a caustic mob-chant of
Herpes Herpes Herpes.
Talmadge was reminded of the way he’d felt when his Uncle Lenord, regrettably introduced to the open bar at his cousin’s son’s wedding reception, commandeered the microphone and concluded his toast by saying of the bride, “I’d slide buck-nekkid down a rusty razor blade into a pool of rubbing alcohol just to hear her fart over a walkie talkie.” The bride’s father chased Lenord out into the parking lot but ultimately it didn’t matter because the marriage failed to survive a year; the investment had been bad from the start.

Not wanting to see Matty chased into the parking lot, Talmadge diverted him by asking, “Are the Yankees any good this year?”

Matty snorted. “You really don’t follow, do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Baseball. You don’t follow baseball.”

“I guess not.”

“Well, they’re in first. The Sox are three games back.”

“What about Cleveland?”

“In third. Four and a half back.”

“Okay.”

“But Cleveland’s on a big fucking streak right now. They’ve won seven road games.”

“Gotcha.”

“And the Yankees, man—injuries out the ass. It’s tight.”

“Okay.”

After a moment Matty said, “So it matters.”

“The game, you mean?”

“Yeah. The game.”

With a perfect-sounding
crack
a Yankee batter hit a pitch high out to left field and Matty rose from his seat to watch it, lips parted in expectation. When it dropped into the outfielder’s glove Matty dropped himself back down, lips resealed. “Thought he had the goods on that one,” he muttered.

“I guess we’re more like football people,” said Talmadge. “In the South, I mean.”

Matty’s face clouded. “Yo, space dude, you forgetting who I am?”

“I’m just sayin.”

What he was saying, he thought afterwards, as the teams switched fields and shouts of
Bye Herpes
chased Ortiz across the diamond, was that this—the game itself, the field box seats, his extravagantly rude and siliconized seatmate—was all foreign and exotic and vaguely incomprehensible to him, and not just because Micah (who at one time and maybe still was foreign and exotic and incomprehensible to him) had rewired his thinking so that every component of his life needed to jibe with their all-encompassing moral vision, all these square pegs needing to be rammed into impossible round holes. But then no, scratch that. He took a long swig of beer to flush out the confusion. Truth was, he
didn’t
know what he was saying because he didn’t even know what he was thinking—not lately, anyway. All his thoughts were clipped short, like the grass on the field. Maybe it was that he shouldn’t have come here in the first place, maybe just that—that something was wrong about this, though precisely what he couldn’t say. Where he should’ve been, he knew, was home with Micah—especially now.
Because of.
Except that—he cut the thought short with a sigh, revisiting his beer. But the thought unspooled anyway: Except that he couldn’t
stand
to be home with Micah right now.
Because of:
again.

“Gentlemen?” Someone was calling to them from Talmadge’s right. Looking over he saw a stadium guard leaning across the sweaty husband who seemed oddly okay with having his view of the field blocked. “Can I see your tickets, gentlemen?”

“Fuck,” Matty whispered. “Be cool.”

“What’s going on? We
are
squatting, aren’t we? It’s no big deal.”

“Just be cool,” Matty hissed, passing the ticket stubs to Talmadge who had to awkwardly angle his arm in order to pass them to the guard without brushing his seatmate’s inflations.

The guard checked the tickets and returning them said, “Enjoy the game.”

“What was
that?
” Talmadge asked Matty.

“What was what?”

“Why’d you freak?”

“I didn’t freak. Shut up, man. Jeter’s up.”

“You freaked, dude.”

“Just shut up. I’ll tell you later.”

So something
was
wrong about all this: Talmadge’s Spidey-sense stood confirmed. How much
had
these tickets cost, anyway? In his chivalrous effort to avoid boob contact he’d missed an opportunity to note the price when conveying the tickets back and forth. He rewound his memory to an argument with Micah that he’d had about a month ago: Matty had come home one evening with roughly thirty boxes of Ho Hos which he’d claimed to have found in a trash bag outside the Gristedes on Mercer Street. Alone with Talmadge later she’d called bullshit. “No one throws Ho Hos out,” she fumed. “That shit’s got the shelf life of chainsaw oil.” Talmadge’s response was along the lines of
so what.
“We’re not running a hostel, man,” she said. “If Matty wants to join forces, or even just show some goddamn respect for what we believe in, then it’s cool, but otherwise . . .”

“Join
forces?
” Talmadge interrupted. “Since when are we at war?”

With a sadness that seemed to him terribly and even mysteriously overwrought, considering they were fighting about Ho Hos, she put a hand to his chest and said, “You just don’t get it, man,” and by walking away left him smoldering and confused. He
didn’t
get it. She was right.

But then he also didn’t get where Matty had scored the cash to buy thirty boxes of Ho Hos unless he contemplated the obvious answer which Talmadge didn’t want to do. So as the fresh Ho Hos continued to pile up in the cabinets and a new longboard appeared in the outside hallway and Matty’s creased-up old Doc Martens were replaced with crisp new waffle-soled Vans, Talmadge willfully ignored it all, allowing Matty his charade (“Yeah, there must be, like, a recall on Ho Hos or someshit”) while avoiding the topic with Micah with the same twisty exertion he’d just applied to dodging his seatmate’s breasts. But now, as the theme from
Rocky
came raining from the loudspeakers above them: What the
hell,
man? Five hundred bucks for these seats? Maybe more? He took an anxious sip of beer as the Yankees orchestrated a double play to retire the inning and Matty rose up cheering.

“Something’s up,” Talmadge finally said to him. “You’re back to dealing again, aren’t you?”

Scrunching his face, Matty blew out a fat derisive
pshaw
sound. “I’m not
dealing,
okay? Will you just enjoy the fucking game? Did you even
see
that play?”

“I don’t like it. It feels weird, dude. Like I’m sitting in a stolen seat.”

Noting a beer vendor, Matty waved him over and signaled for two. He peeled off a twenty for Talmadge to pass down. As Talmadge stood to retrieve the beers he heard Matty say, “Watch out for those tits,” and was this time relieved at the woman’s deafness act. He did, however, sneak a glance down the engineered crevice of her cleavage which was gleaming with sweat droplets, a water slide to paradise or if not paradise then a reasonable imitation. He’d never fiddled with anything like them, he realized. Becky Annandale’s, back in college, were reputed to be fake, but at the time he’d touched them he hadn’t had enough experience to tell the difference; but then Becky’s certainly weren’t like these, mere pints to these gallon-plus jugs. When Hermes Ortiz took the field Matty waved to him like someone trying to catch a date’s attention in a crowded restaurant. “Yoo hoo, Herpes,” he called, and Talmadge noted a sharp hissing from his right, from the husband. Then in a low conspiratorial voice Matty said to Talmadge, “So what if you are?”

“Are, what?”

“Sitting in a stolen seat.”

“Am I?”

“Keep your voice down.”

Talmadge’s voice twanged in anger, “What the fuck, dude?”

Matty shifted his attention to the field. A strike. Two balls. A softly popped foul that went arcing into the stands behind them, which Matty didn’t crane his neck or even raise his head to watch pass. It was like he was watching the game without watching it. Another strike, followed by another. The batter punished the dirt with a sharp kick before heaving the bat to the batboy. One out.

“This stays between us, right? No exemption for the chick.”

“Right,” Talmadge agreed.

Matty paused to watch the next batter, some inner conflict torquing his face; he looked indigestive, licking his lips, his Adam’s apple throbbing from his frequent swallowing. “Now batting for the Yankees,” came the announcement, “Johnny Damon.” Matty clapped, so Talmadge did too. One strike, then another, then a
crack
that sent the ball skittering past the second baseman out into center field, a ground-ball single that landed Damon on first base. “Way to play it, Johnny!’ Matty shouted, as the loudspeakers blared some godawful techno song that Talmadge associated with amusement parks and other manufactured fun, like his other seatmate perhaps. Adjusting his helmet as he headed back to the base, Damon turned to give Matty a wink.

“You see that?” Matty bubbled.

He was stalling.

“Come on, dude,” Talmadge urged.

“Okay.” Rolling his shoulders like an on-deck batter, Matty cleared his throat and said, “I’m kinda doing this, like, entrepreneur thing.”