City of Boys by Beth Nugent

Author:Beth Nugent [Nugent, Beth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80067-1
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-05T04:00:00+00:00

Abattoir

—Look, Teddy says, and when he turns to me, his eyes are the unquiet blue of the television, his skin lit by the reflected glare.

—Look, he says again. —You’ve got to see this, so I put my finger on a word to mark my place in the magazine article I am reading and look up to see a tangled heap of men on a baseball field.

—Not that, he says. —Wait. They’ll show it again. He leans forward on his knees, his face a foot away from the television. —Watch, he says; then, —Okay.

The slow-motion replay begins, and we watch the man on third base run several yards into a dramatic collision with the catcher, the pitcher, and the umpire. Somewhere in the confusion, the baseball is thrown, and out of the pile the catcher’s arm emerges, miraculously holding the ball.

—Amazing, Teddy says. —Amazing. He turns to me.

—You’ll never see a better play at the plate. That guy should have been safe. Anyone else would have dropped the ball.

He looks back at the TV. —You’re looking at one of the best catchers in baseball, he says. —I don’t care what they say. The catcher stands, and walks around, shaking out his legs. His thighs are enormous, one of them alone the size of the waist of any model in the magazine I am reading.

—His thighs are huge, I say, and Teddy looks at me.

—He has to have those thighs, he says. —He’s got baseballs coming at him ninety miles an hour. He nods. —You’d want thighs like that, too.

The men on the screen untangle themselves, coaches hurtle out of dugouts, and everyone’s mouth is moving, but no one appears to be listening. I turn back to my magazine article about the things women do when they are on the rebound from love.

—If I’d had thighs like that, Teddy says, —I could have been a catcher in high school, instead of playing first base. I might have gone to the minors. They always need catchers. He sighs and turns back to the television. —That would have been a good career.

He rubs his hands up and down his thighs; even bent double, they aren’t as wide as those of the catcher on TV.

—You have a career, I say. —At the Safeway.

He turns to look at me. —I don’t think, he says, —that being an assistant manager in the produce section at the Safeway is exactly a career.

He watches the next batter swing and miss to end the inning. —Shit, he says, then turns back to me. —At least not yet, anyways. He watches the commercial a moment, then says, —But maybe someday. Maybe someday I might just manage the whole place.

He nods thoughtfully as the game comes back on. He says this often, that he might someday manage the store; in fact, he has promised me that when I am ready, he will get me a job at the Safeway, and together we will move slowly up the ranks, so that one day we will be at the top, a brother-and-sister management team.

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