Chapter Ten Jimmy

Chapter Ten

Jimmy

T HEY WIN THEIR GAME ON S ATURDAY, WHICH MEANS THE STREAK is still alive when Jimmy comes into the locker room Sunday afternoon. Jonesy is sitting in a rolling chair with Hugo and a few of the other guys clustered around him, all of them snickering like middle schoolers waiting for their teacher to notice someone drew a cock and balls erupting on the dry-erase board.

"What's funny?" Jimmy asks, tossing his backpack into his locker and unbuttoning his shirt. They're looking at Jonesy's phone, their heads all ducked close together like pigeons going after a pretzel nugget in the waiting room at Penn Station. "I like to laugh, too."

"No no no, don't show him," Jonesy chides the rest of them immediately. "It's gonna hurt his feelings."

"Fuck you," Jimmy says with a roll of his eyes. "I don't have feelings."

"That's true!" Tuck calls from across the room, voice muffled as he rips a piece of KT off the roll with his teeth and sets about taping his ankles. "His ex-wife got 'em in the divorce."

Jimmy ignores him, hanging his shirt in his locker and holding his hand out for the phone. "Give me that fucking thing."

"Sorry, Cap," Hugo says, passing it over. On the screen is some hot pink web page—a gossip site, Jimmy sees on closer inspection, something called the Sinclair that he only vaguely recognizes. "But it looks like you're not going to be Lacey Logan's girlfriend after all."

It takes some effort, but Jimmy keeps his face very, very blank. "Oh yeah?" he asks. They mostly let that whole thing go after Minneapolis, distracted by Jonesy's feud with some fuckface on the Astros and a particularly disgusting rash on the back of Ray's calf that might or might not have been scabies. Jimmy figured they'd mostly moved on. "Why's that?"

"She's back with her man," Tito reports seriously. "The skinny dude, the comedian. He announced it on Instagram and she sang a song about it at her concert the other night."

Once, very early on in his career in the majors, Jimmy got hit in the head with a baseball so hard he briefly lost consciousness, coming to maybe thirty seconds later with no idea how much time had elapsed. He doesn't know why he's thinking about that right now. "Well," he manages eventually, aware of having paused for just a beat too long. It's not true, probably. And if it is true, it's not like he has any right to feel any kind of way about it. They were fooling around, that's all. Not even actually fooling around. Just, like... talking about it, or something. "My loss, I guess. I was awfully pretty for her."

"Yeah, I think she's a little taller than you, too."

She's not , Jimmy barely stops himself from shooting back. "Could be," he agrees gamely. "They say you start to shrink in your old age."

"Not your nose and ears," Hugo puts in helpfully. "Your nose and ears keep right on getting bigger and bigger until you die."

Jimmy nods. "Hot tip." He stands there for another moment, then abruptly realizes he's still standing there and heads back to his locker, managing by some miracle not to yank his phone out of his pocket and immediately start googling in front of God and the entire starting lineup. He clomps off to the bathroom instead, shutting himself in a stall and typing Lacey Logan + Toby into the search bar on his browser. He doesn't remember Toby's last name, but it turns out it doesn't fucking matter because here are a thousand fucking news articles about the two of them that no sane person needs to be reading; here are a million different slideshows ready to be pored over and perused. Jimmy thumbs the first result, a decently reputable news organization reduced to a gasping tabloid: Tobcey Fans! the headline proclaims. We Are So Back!

It's not... unconvincing, is the wildest part. Jimmy can see how, if one was the type to buy into a certain kind of deranged, tinfoil-hat logic, the clues are there: The sudden breakup. The T-shirt. And the smoking gun, Lacey's surprise encore at last night's show in Montreal, a deep cut called "Laugh Lines" widely known to be the first song she wrote back at the beginning of their relationship.

Jimmy scrubs a hand over his beard. He does not, as a general rule, make a habit of dabbling in conspiracy theories regarding the love lives of megacelebrities, but she said it herself, didn't she? I am often trying to send secret messages.

So. That's that, he guesses. Message received.

This is ridiculous, Jimmy thinks, remembering belatedly that he has a professional fucking baseball game to get ready for. He's thirty-seven years old. He's going to just call her. He scrolls to her name in his contacts, dialing before he can talk himself out of it.

She sends him directly to voicemail.

Jimmy grits his teeth, telling himself not to jump to any conclusions. He's going to be an adult about this. He's going to be a grown fucking man. Hey , he texts, hoping he sounds casual. You got a minute to talk?

I wish , she texts back a minute later . In a car full of people headed to the airport. And I'm still super sick. A frowny face here, and then the one with the mask. There's some stuff I want to chat with you about, though. Call me when you get home later tonight?

Aaaaaannd there it is. Jimmy doesn't slam his hand against the tile wall, but he thinks about it. He would certainly like to. He almost just asks her then— Yo, real quick: Are you back together with your boyfriend? Just wondering, since if you guys are making another go of it I figure he's probably not going to like me telling you to lick your fingers and rub your nipples for me four nights of the fucking week— but that makes him feel insane. That makes him feel like a girl, actually, and not just any girl but the kind of girl who might use the word Tobcey in casual conversation.

Sure, he texts back. Will do.

Okay , she replies—another emoji, the smiley face this time. Have a good game.

***

J IMMY DOES NOT HAVE A GOOD GAME.

The opposite, actually. It's a shitshow from the very first inning, sloppy and slow. Jimmy knows from the moment he crouches behind the plate that his head isn't in it, which is a thing that happened to him sometimes, back when he was breaking up with Rachel. Not that he's breaking up with Lacey—not that they were ever together; not that she owes him anything, an explanation included—but historically Jimmy's baseball has been better, by a not-insignificant margin, when he's been single. The last few weeks were a fluke—except they weren't actually a fluke, because again. He is single. He is unattached.

His game remains absolute shit.

Jimmy hates having a bad game as a catcher, because to casual fans it looks like the pitcher is the one fucking up. All game long Tuck pitches what Jimmy tells him to pitch, throwing a screwball when he calls for a screwball and a curve when he calls for a curve, and all game long he gets hit.

In the top of the sixth, Jimmy calls time and stalks up to the mound.

"I don't have it today," he admits, his glove over his mouth so the other team can't see him. "Just—do what you think you gotta do."

Tuck's eyes widen, and it's not like Jimmy blames him. The whole point of Jimmy is that he doesn't get rattled. That's the one thing he brings to the team. The other side could come out dressed in women's evening wear; a UFO could land in the outfield; and Jimmy could keep on calling for pitches, steady as a beating heart.

Except tonight, apparently.

By the time they take the loss and break the streak Jimmy's mood has blackened into something sticky and malignant. He's so deeply irritated at himself, at his own dumbass fallibility, at the fact that he's built this Little League non-relationship into some kind of idol in his head to the point that apparently he gets the fucking yips now if she's too busy to whisper sweet nothings in his ear every night. He doesn't deserve to be in the majors, if that's how he's going to act about it. He doesn't deserve to be the one behind the plate.

Jimmy doesn't say anything as they shuffle back down the ramp to the locker room. As their captain he's supposed to give the rest of the team a speech about how they'll get 'em next time, and he musters one up, sort of, but his heart isn't in it and he knows everybody can probably tell. It's not about Lacey, really. And it's not about his brother. It's about him.

He's done. He knows he's done. Fuck the streak; fuck the playoffs. He let himself get sentimental, a baseball diamond and a pretty girl and the idea that in spite of everything he might have one big win left in him after all. But Jimmy's known he was finished for a long time, is the cold hard truth of it. The last couple of weeks, he just let himself forget.

"You all right?" Tuck asks him as they're heading down to the garage.

Jimmy nods. "I'm fine," he says. After all, he thinks: it's not like he's never lost before. "I'm great." He is great. He's fine. He can lose a baseball game; Lacey Logan can get back with her boyfriend. He can go home for good at the end of the season having never won a World Series, and there will never be anybody less bothered about it than him. He is chill. He is low-key. Hell, he's ready to party.

"We should go out," he announces.

That gets Tuck's attention, a slow, brilliant smile spreading across his face. They haven't been out since New York. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," Jimmy decides. All at once it sounds like a truly excellent plan, the only logical thing to do. It's Sunday night; they've got tomorrow off before they need to be back at the clubhouse. And what the fuck else is he going to do, go home and call Lacey so she can let him down easy? He'll pass, thanks. They can just as well have that conversation another day. "We should."

They round up a dozen guys and go to a dive bar on Miles Avenue: darts and a jukebox, the linoleum floor sticky underneath the soles of Jimmy's sneakers. "It was a good run," Jonesy says, raising his beer, and it takes Jimmy a minute to realize he's talking about the streak and not Jimmy himself.

"It was a good run," Jimmy agrees.

Ray trots off to try his luck with a couple of coeds playing the photo hunt game in the corner. Hugo feeds a twenty into the jukebox and programs it to play "Unwritten" by Natasha Bedingfield a dozen times in a row. Jonesy orders a round of shots, and then Tuck orders a round of shots, and then they all peel Ray away from the college girls and make him order a round of shots, too, even though he keeps crying poverty, and pretty soon Jimmy is filled with the kind of mellow, drunken well-being he associates with going to field parties in the summer outside Utica when he was in high school, the sky and the possibilities both endless overhead. He loves these guys, truly. He hasn't been paying enough attention to them.

"To the streak," Tuck toasts, standing up on a barstool.

"To Ray's maximum-strength antifungal medication," Tito volunteers.

"To Lacey Logan's inevitable sex tape," Hugo chimes in, "and the fact the rest of us will be able to enjoy it without Jimmy's hairy ass getting in the way of the shot."

That one really fucking tickles them, their hoots and laughter rowdy and good-natured. Jimmy laughs, too, but all at once he's not having fun anymore, swinging from good drunk to bad drunk in the time it takes the last shot of Fireball to burn sweetly through his chest. It feels like too much to hold all of a sudden, Lacey and the streak and the definitive end of everything. The polite, careful wording of the text from his mother. His brother, still relentlessly fucking dead.

He waits until enough time has gone by that he won't look like a whiny little pissant in front of the entire team, then digs a wad of cash out of his pocket and drops it onto the bar. "I'm out," he tells Tuck, who's trying to flag down the bartender for a bucket of Coronas. "I'll see you clowns on Tuesday. Don't take any wooden nickels, et cetera."

"Okay," Tuck says, eyeing Jimmy speculatively over the mouth of his beer bottle. "You sure you're all right?"

"Never better," Jimmy promises, then turns and weaves his way through the crowd and out onto the sidewalk, turning his face up for a moment to the cool, quiet Maryland night.

***

L ACEY CALLS AS HE'S LETTING HIMSELF INTO HIS CONDO . "H EY ," she says when he answers, the noise of her TV faintly audible in the background. "There you are."

"Yeah, sorry." She texted him a couple of times while he was at the bar, Still around for a phone call? plus the eyes emoji. Jimmy didn't text her back. "I went out with the guys for a bit."

"Sounds fun," Lacey says, her voice a little congested-sounding. "How was your game?"

"It sucked, thanks."

There's a hesitation, just for a second. "That's too bad."

"Yeah, well." Jimmy sits down hard on the sofa, tries to soften his tone. "It happens that way sometimes."

"That's what I hear," she says. "Sorry I missed you earlier."

"It's fine," he says, tipping his head back. "You were busy."

"Not really," she counters. "I was just sitting next to my assistant in the back of a Chevy Suburban, so."

"Right."

Jimmy feels his eyebrows twitch. "That what's going on?"

Lacey huffs a quiet laugh. "Um, yeah," she says, sounding a little cautious. "Why?"

"No, nothing," he says, closing his eyes for a moment and wishing he'd gotten himself a glass of water before he sat down here. Already his head is starting to throb. "No reason."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm great."

"Okay," she says, "because you're kind of acting like a dick, so I'm just wondering if maybe you're tired and need to eat a banana—"

Jimmy opens his eyes again. "Okay," he echoes. "Well. Thanks for the advice."

"Seriously," she says, "what is up with you?" She pauses. "Look, is this about—"

"About what, exactly?" He cuts her off.

Lacey sighs. "I mean, you're going to think it's stupid, but. I know there are rumors going around about me and Toby, and I don't know if that's something you care about or not, but for the record, there's nothing true about any of them. That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"I—" Jimmy stops. "Okay." Rumors , he repeats to himself, embarrassed for a moment by how relieved he feels to hear it, only then instead of it calming him down it just feels like popping a particularly gross blister, like now the gunk is everywhere. Like he threw away a fucking ten-game streak on a piece of celebrity hearsay that wasn't even true. "Well. I don't really read the gossip rags, so."

"No, of course you don't," Lacey agrees, an edge in her voice. "You're too cool."

That irritates him. "Can I ask you something?" Jimmy says, and he knows, he knows he's being an asshole, but he can't seem to stop himself. It used to make Rachel insane when he did this, digging his heels in for no discernible reason like a little kid. "Just—in your estimation. What's the point of all this, exactly?"

Lacey is quiet for a moment. "The point of what?" she asks.

"This," Jimmy says. "The two of us. Just, like. Chitchatting on the phone."

"Is that what you'd call this?"

"What would you call it?"

"I mean, I think I probably would have called it something different twenty minutes ago, but now I'm not entirely sure, so by all means, you tell me."

"I don't know." Jimmy shakes his head, trying belatedly to clear it. He wants to tell her to come here so they can talk about this in person. He wants to tell her that he didn't realize he was lonely until they met. He wants to tell her he's scared of how much he likes her, that he's scared about the end of his career, but all of that feels like too much work for the drunken way the room is suddenly spinning, so he blows it all up instead. "A distraction, maybe."

"A distra—okay," Lacey says again. "That's good to know."

Right away, Jimmy knows that was the stupidest fucking thing he could possibly have said to her. Back when he and Rachel were in couples therapy the shrink was forever trying to get him to ad mit he was a person who sabotaged his relationships. "Lacey—" he starts, but this time she's the one who interrupts.

"No, you're right," she tells him tartly. Her consonants are very crisp. It's the diction of the person he thought she was before he spent all these hours talking to her, before he learned her ragged edges and her tells. "I think we've both been goofing off a little bit here, haven't we? Maybe it's better for us both to get back to work."

"Okay, hang on," he tries again. He feels panicky all of a sudden, sweaty with the queasy knowledge that once they hang up that's going to be it, it's going to be finished. He's going to have missed his chance. "That's not what I—"

"I gotta go," she announces. "This has been great. Loved talking to you, really."

"Lacey—"

" What , Jimmy?" She sounds so annoyed. "Because I gotta tell you, I'm a pretty busy person, so whenever you want to stop wasting my time would be super."

Jimmy opens his mouth, closes it again. "Fair enough," he says. "You take care."

***

J IMMY HANGS UP AND STAGGERS AROUND THE APARTMENT FOR A while, collapsing into bed fully dressed and passing out on top of the covers only to startle awake two hours later with a blistering hangover, his mouth dry and sour with regret. He heaves himself up and forces himself to chug a bottle of water and pop a couple of painkillers, then kicks his jeans off and drags himself back into bed. He thinks about calling Lacey again, though it's three a.m. at this point and he suspects I'm sorry, I'm drunk is not an excuse that is going to particularly move her.

He gropes around until he finds his phone on the nightstand anyway, scrolling through his contacts until he gets to Ike's name. Ike isn't the kind of agent who answers texts late at night—in fact, he's not really the kind of agent who texts at all—but Jimmy feels like he needs to do this before he changes his mind.

Hey , he types, squeezing one eye shut so he'll quit seeing double. Give me a call first thing, will you? Turns out I'm ready to announce after all.