The New York (12 page)

“The only thing I can guarantee …,” Sid said.

“Yeah?”

“… is we can put George Bremenhaven in the middle of it. The arrogant cocksucker, he thinks he's going to get rid of agents by trading with Cuba, he's got another think coming.”

And I was relieved all of a sudden, despite the pounding at the door and despite the fight with Charlene.

It never occurred to me that this might be personal for agents as well.

Chasing out to the airport was a hoot, me and the three TV vans, but I got there a good ten minutes before them and took the first plane to anywhere. First fun I'd had in days, punching along at 90 and 100, watching them old vans in my rearviews fall behind.

Anywhere turned out to be Kansas City, which figures. I thought of looking up that wise-ass reporter who showed off his fancy knowledge of different kinds of Spanish, but I didn't. In fact, it amused me more now. I bet George didn't know when he hired me that I only spoke Spanish with Mexicans and that Mexican Spanish wasn't like Cuban Spanish.

While I waited around in the K.C. airport for the next plane to Chicago, I tried to think of everything I knew about Cubans.

I knew about Castro. Everyone knew about him. Wore a beard, smoked cigars, wore an army uniform to bed at night, and gave long speeches. He played baseball once. Pitcher. But I didn't know anything else.

Ricky Ricardo. Lucy's husband. Now I was getting someplace. Come to think of it, he spoke lousy English all his life. Part of the fun of watching the “I Love Lucy” reruns was trying to figure out what Ricky was saying, How could someone spend all those years in America and not speak better English?

Take Mexicans. They pick up English fast and good, and you give a Mexican enough rope and he'll talk better English than they do in Detroit.

So maybe the smart-ass from the
Kansas City Star
who once wanted to hang me for accidentally beaning one of their players was right. Maybe George had hired me on to do something I couldn't do — speak Spanish with Cubans the same way they can't speak English to us, even if they've been here a million years.

That thought kept me tickled all the way to Chicago. I took a cab downtown to the Drake Hotel and checked in without even looking at the room rate. I looked up Sid, but he wasn't in yet so I left a message for him.

Next, I called Charlene at work to ask her to forgive me. But she was taking the day off. I called her at her apartment, but she was taking the day off from there, too.

Then I had a sudden and brilliant and sickening inspiration.

I called her at Ernie's Cafe.

She came to the phone. She sounded fuzzy around the edges, which I know is the way she sounds when she's been crawling around inside a bottle of Smirnoff long enough. She is not a drunk, but she can drink when she wants to.

“Where are you?” she said.

“Chicago.”

“Why?”

“I'm gonna meet with Sid here.”

“And do what?”

“I dunno. Sid hasn't figured it out yet.”

“Fuck Sid,” she said. I could hear the weave in her voice.

“Charlene. You drinking alone?”

“I drink with whoever I want.”

“Who you drinking with?”

“Jack Wade, if you want to know.”

That's what I mean about having an inspiration that was both intelligent and sickening.

“I wish you wouldn't.”

“Ryan Patrick, I am free, white, and over twenty-one, and I drink with whoever I want and wherever I want.”

“Just don't go to bed with him,” I said. This was the wrong thing to say. I knew it when I said it. There was a long silence.

And then: “We were talking about you, you shit.”

“Charlene, I called to tell you I was sorry.”

“That ain't saying ‘I'm sorry,' saying don't sleep with the first man buys you a drink in Ernie's Cafe, man you knew since college, man with a wife and two little children.”

“It's just that he's a car salesman,” I said.

“And it's just that you're a broken-down ball player who everyone in the country right now thinks is a Communist and a scab. If I didn't know better and know you're just dumb, I'd think it, too.”

“So what does Jack think?”

“Jack thinks you need a lawyer,”

“Sid is a lawyer.”

“He's an agent more than a lawyer.”

“Well, I don't need two lawyers.”

“I didn't say you needed one lawyer. I said Jack said you need a lawyer. I told Jack he was Ml of shit,” Charlene said. “I said what you need to do is cut your losses and go out and resign and maybe punch George in the nose for the hell of it to do what you should've done last Thanksgiving if you remember I told you.”

She was stringing her words together as carefully as a drunk putting popcorn kernel by kernel on a needle and thread to form a decoration for the Christmas tree.

“Charlene, I feel terrible about everything, just everything. But mostly, I feel terrible about walking out on you that way.”

This produced more silence. Was she figuring I hadn't said enough? Or too much? it is hard to tell with a woman's silence which is intended.

I said, “Can you just let me apologize?”

“I thought you just did that.”

“Well, I didn't hear nothing from your end.”

“Like what?”

“Like, you accept my apology.”

“No, you didn't.”

“Does that mean you didn't?”

“It don't mean anything.”

“I wish you would go home, Charlene, and get a good night's sleep and I'll call you in the morning.”

“You do? I figure to go on drinking until I can't stand up and depend on Jack to take me home.”

“That would be a mistake. I wouldn't trust Jack to take Mother Teresa home.”

“That's a terrible thing to say, Ryan. You judge everyone by your own standards, which are none too high. Or so it seems from everything I been reading about you in the papers and on the TV. They say you beaned a ball player once and got suspended. You never told me that.”

“Charlene, you know me more than a year. You know —”

“I know that you told me some things and I know that you convinced me there is no Miss Roxanne Devon of Brunswick, New Jersey. I don't know any more than that.”

“You know I love you.”

Now, I am not a glib talker and I do not go out of my way to say “I love you” to ladies I meet and even might go to bed with. The ladies and I have an understanding that if we meet up after a game someplace — say like Toronto, after a game — we have a couple of hours to decide to do it or not. Mostly the ladies decide by the look of me and whether there's kink in me and whether I hold my liquor, and I decide if the girl is honestly sincere about having fun or one of those naggy kinds of groupies who'll end up selling her story to the
National Enquirer
I haven't done that for a while — like I told Charlene, it was the truth — but I used to. I am thirty-eight years old, after all. I ain't a stud, but I ain't a virgin. And I never told Charlene I loved her before — well, maybe once — so I guess I meant it.

“I don't know that, Ryan,” she said after a moment. Her voice was soft then, and sober-sounding, though that was impossible if she had been drinking with Jack Wade a whole boozy afternoon.

“Well, I mean it.”

“You never said it before.”

“Which proves I mean it.”

“Like the telephone operator proves there's no Miss Roxanne Devon of Brunswick, New Jersey.”

“I don't know what to say,” I said.

“It's all right. Don't say anything. I'm going home now. Call me in the morning,” she said.

It was good enough. Not great. But good enough.

“Safe home,” I said.

"I'll be fine.”

“If you can't drive, let Jack drive you.”

“You think I'm crazy?”

“Is he that drunk?” I said.

“Ryan. He's a car salesman,” she said, and hung up.

Sid Cohen is tan, tall, has a great toupee — the kind you can wear in a pool that is all tied to your real hair — and wears sunglasses all the time, He never says “baby” to you, because it doesn't fit the role of a sports agent. Other than that, he is pure Santa Monica in Los Angeles and is not to be trusted kissing babies,

I mostly got along with Sid in my salad years in the league because when he went out on the edge, I pulled him back in. Some players get with agents who think they're representing King Kong. There are no King Kongs except for maybe a Michael Jordan or Shaquille or Bonds, or a couple of others. The rest of us are higher-grade replacement parts from Mr. Goodwrench or we're down-and-dirty knockoffs from the discounters. Notice I mentioned basketball players being among the King Kongs. Big difference with 12 men on a team compared with 25, like in baseball, or 47, like in football. The stars get fewer, the bigger the night sky.

I knew that and made Sid know that I knew that. Sid always said I held myself back, but I kept making money, which is more than some wannabes made sitting out the seasons.

We met at a table in the Coq d'Or, which is a brassy little bar on the ground floor of my hotel. I had a beer and Sid had an iced tea and a salad. Angelenos in the show biz business eat very little of substance and never really look healthy except to one another, if they were cows in Texas, they'd be shot in a pit and burned.

“You looking good, Sid,” I said. It was omelette time again.

“Hmmph,” Sid said, gnawing at his lettuce. It was winter in Chicago and the salad did not meet California standards. Sid chewed on grimly like a rabbit in a wire cage waiting to be potluck. It was all the rabbit knew how to do, even though it was going to come to no good end. I felt so sorry for myself I ordered a steak on toast and a mound of french fries because Charlene wasn't around to smell meat on my breath.

“I gave it a lot of careful thought on the plane. I even keyboarded myself' a few notes. What you're going to do is say you had no idea that George worked out a secret deal to trade off the whole team and import Cubans and that you want to resign, but that you have signed a valid contract and you can't back out on it. You know, blah blah, your word is your bond and blah blah blah,” Sid began.

“But that isn't the way it was,” I said.

Sid looked up at me sharp across his salad. “Who am I talking to? Diogenes?"

“Well, for one thing, there was Sam the equipment man. A couple of days after the season was over, George brought him into the office and had him speak Spanish at me, to see if I spoke Spanish.”

“You're telling me George told him what was going on?”

“No, I don't think so. George just told him to try out my Spanish.”

“So?”

“So what if Sam says anything about that?”

“Why would he?”

“Same reason people go on the Phil Donahue show, to make fools of themselves just to get on the TV.”

“I know Phil Donahue and I know he doesn't want to put a Mexican equipment man on his show. Unless he wears a dress in the locker room.”

“Well —”

“Look. Don't tell me Sam wears a dress in the locker room, I would have heard. George wanted to know if you spoke Spanish. You pass his test. You ask him why. He says, I can't tell you. He says, sign a contract. You sign a contract. Adios. The next thing you know, George tells you to go to L.A. You go to L.A. — and, I might add, you don't even give me the courtesy of a phone call to tell me you're in town — and the next thing you know, George is announcing the end of baseball as we know it and implying that you're part of the conspiracy. Now, that's not true.”

“That's sort of not true.”

“It's not true for reasons of clarification.”

“All right, it's sort of not true for that reason.”

“Not sort of. We've got to get ‘sort of out of your vocabulary if you ever are going to do anything. I'll hold a press conference Thursday, after I meet with the Cubs tomorrow. We'll do it in New York. You'll stand up and —”

“I ain't ever gonna do no press conference again.”

“That's right. I forgot. You're terrible. All right. We'll issue a press release and I'll do the press conference and say you are in seclusion with your family.”

“I don't have no family left, not anywhere. Except for Uncle Dave in the Panhandle, he's three bricks shy of a load. I'm not sure he wasn't adopted by my grandfather, because they never spoke about where he come from.”

“It's an expression, Ryan, don't get tedious with me. Being % seclusion with your family' means you're going through the grieving process, and the press likes that, believe me. It shows you're human even if you're a Commie lover and a beanball pitcher.”

“I told you about beaning that guy in Kansas City, he was practically hanging over the plate with that goofy pumpkin head of his.”

Sid held up his forkful of lettuce. “Joke, Ryan. Chill out.”

“I can't chill out when that son of a bitch has made me a goat.”

“Oh, George? He hasn't managed to do that yet. What we have to do is damage control. And then we go back into the burned-out hulk and do damage assessment.”

“I sound like a building.”

“It's like that. And I'm the fireman petting out the fire.”

“Then what?”

“We wait on the pleasure of the Yankees. On George, On whether this mild protest from Miami goes into a full court press and the government backs down and revokes the permits for the Cubanos. In which case, George is holding a sack of shit. This is a gamble on George's part, Ryan, not a done deal. I made a couple of calls to people inside the Beltway, The Democrats want to make the bold move, bet they would jest as soon have a Republican creep do it for them if they can get the eventual credit. An old Democratic trick is to get Republicans to do their foreign policy work for them. Nixon in China, Bush saving the oil states. If it terns south, they cut loose and George will have no payroll, bet also no team. Unless you can pitch and catch at the same time.”