The Art of Fielding. Chad Harbach

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ than might have been maximally productive. I don’t wish to impose on your busy schedule, but perhaps we could schedule a smaller meeting to determine which initiatives might be fiscally possible?

      Sincerely,

      O.

      A Dear Guert and a one-initial signature, coming from a student, would normally have annoyed Affenlight. In this case, for whatever reason, it felt more like intimacy than presumption. Since then he and Owen had met several times, had put together a plan, and a plan for achieving the plan. Owen’s group would collect the student signatures; Affenlight would rally the faculty and lobby the trustees.

      Had Owen caught him staring and known what it meant? Was that why he’d written that e-mail? The eyes behind those wire-rimmed glasses seemed to miss nothing. In their subsequent meetings, Owen was self-assured and patient and sometimes teasing; Affenlight was rapt and eager to please. After nearly thirty years of student-teacher interactions, he’d found himself on the wrong end of a crush. After a few weeks the word crush no longer covered it.

      Affenlight drew another fry from the carton. Henry’s eyes were squeezed shut—he wasn’t asleep but seemed rather to be wincing, perhaps in memory of his errant throw. His face was ghostly pale, still dusted with infield dirt. He was in full uniform, except for his cap. His glove sat on one knee. “It’ll be okay,” Affenlight said. “He’ll be okay.”

      Henry nodded, unconvinced.

      “He’s a wonderful young man,” said Affenlight.

      Henry’s chin squinched, as if he might cry. “Schwartzy,” he said, “do you have a ball on you?”

      Schwartz, having finished his dinner, had pulled out his laptop and begun typing away, a stack of note cards at his elbow. Now he reached down into his backpack and flipped a baseball to Henry. Henry spun the ball in his right hand, slapped it into the glove. The gesture seemed to enable him to speak. “I keep seeing it over and over in my head,” he said miserably. “I’ve never made a throw like that. A throw that bad. I don’t know how it happened.”

      Schwartz stopped typing and looked up, his face bathed in the cool submarine glow of his laptop screen. “Not your fault, Skrimmer.”

      “I know.”

      “The Buddha’s going to be okay,” Schwartz said. “He’s already okay.”

      Henry nodded, unconvinced. “I know.”

      “Goddamn Dunne.” Coach Cox kept his eyes on the bikini-clad Catholic girls on TV, who were testing the novitiates’ faith with back rubs. “I’m going to wring his scrawny neck.”

      A door opened. “Guert Affenlight?” called a young woman in pale-blue scrubs, reading the name off her clipboard.

      “Yes.” Affenlight stood and straightened his Harpooner tie.

      “My name is Dr. Collins. Are you a relative of Owen Dunne?”

      “Oh, no,” Affenlight said. “His family, actually, is from, um . . .”

      “San Jose,” Henry said.

      “Right,” Affenlight said quickly. “San Jose.” He’d felt such stupid pride at having the doctor call his name, as if he were the person nearest to Owen. The doctor turned to address herself to Henry:

      “Your friend isn’t doing too badly, all in all. The CT showed no epidural bleeding, which is what we worry about in this kind of case. He has a severe concussion and a fractured zygomatic arch — that is, a cheekbone. His functions appear normal. The arch will require reconstructive surgery, which I imagine we’ll try to do right away, as long as we’ve got him here.” Dr. Collins, who despite the purple fatigue marks under her eyes looked no older than twenty-five, paused to pluck at the V of her scrub top, above which her skin was Irishly pink and mottled. Affenlight saw, or imagined he saw, her tired eyes settle on Henry in an interested way.

      “Can I see him?” Henry asked.

      Dr. Collins shook her head. “His concussion’s pretty severe, and we’re going to keep him in the ICU tonight. He seems to be suffering some short-term memory loss, which we assume will clear. Tomorrow you can see him all you like.” She patted Henry consolingly on the arm.

      Affenlight’s cell phone shivered against his thigh. The number was unfamiliar, with a 312 prefix, but he knew who it would be. He made an apologetic gesture toward the doctor, who didn’t notice, and walked into the hall. “Pella. Kiddo. Where are you?”

      “Chicago. I made my connection. We’re about to board, so I should be right on time.” Her voice sounded thin and crackly through the pay-phone static. “I thought maybe we could go to Bau Kitchen.”

      This was Pella’s favorite restaurant in Milwaukee, the place where they’d celebrated her sixteenth birthday. If Affenlight had been zipping down I-43 toward the airport, an Italian opera tucked into the Audi’s CD player, he would have been heartened by this suggestion, which seemed like a gesture of peace. Instead he was bound to be late, and he couldn’t help wondering whether Pella had already sniffed out his neglect, or what was bound to seem like neglect, and had decided to punish him with solicitude. “That’s a wonderful idea,” he said. “But I’m afraid I’m running a little late.”

      “Oh.”

      Disappointment, fragility, the phrase picking up where we left off— these things and more came streaming through the phone line’s silence. “I’m at the hospital,” Affenlight said, trying to ward them off. “We’ve had an accident at the school. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

      “Sure,” Pella said. “Whenever.”

      As he hurried out, Affenlight paused long enough to buy a pack of cigarettes — Parliaments, his old standby — from the hospital gift shop. A hospital that sold cigarettes: he rolled this notion in his head, wondering whether it spelled doom or hope, while he thrust a twenty at the gray-haired woman behind the counter. He shoved the pack in his pocket and tried to leave without his change, but she summoned him back and insisted on counting out, with excruciating and perhaps remonstrative slowness, a ten, five ones, and several coins. Coach Cox drove him to his car, and he rocketed down the empty interstate, Le Nozze di Figaro blasting, windows down.

       Chapter 10

      Pella left San Francisco with only a floppy, cane-handled wicker bag that contained whatever remained from her last trip to the beach nine months ago, a useless assortment of crap — sunglasses, tampons, gummy worms, sand — to which she’d added nothing but her wallet and a black bathing suit, designed for serious swimming.

      As the plane slipped up the narrow industrial corridor that connected Chicago to Milwaukee, the darkness of Lake Michigan spread beyond the starboard windows, she was already beginning to regret not having packed a suitcase. It was the kind of overly emphatic gesture she was famous for, at least in her own mind, and should have outgrown by now. Maybe she’d thought it would make the break with David cleaner, easier, more decisive: See, I don’t need you. I don’t need anything. Not even underwear. She hadn’t bothered to remember that there was nowhere decent to shop near the so-called city of Westish, Wisconsin.

      How stupid she felt, to feel this bad, to feel her life lying around her in ruins, and yet to have no story to tell СКАЧАТЬ