The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [105]
The ice was making her second and fourth fingers numb. “Mike and I broke up.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And David’s coming tomorrow. I mean today.”
“David?” Affenlight stiffened in his chair as if he’d heard an intruder.
“He claims he’s in Chicago on business. Not that I believe him. He’s never gone to Chicago on business before. But he knows I’m here and he wants to come and I told him it was a bad idea and he insisted. So he’s renting a car and driving up. Today. And then when he leaves he’ll be gone forever.”
“Okay,” Affenlight said.
“And I need your help to get through it. Okay?”
Affenlight nodded. “Of course.”
Pella pushed back her chair, picked up her melting ice bag, and kissed her father on the temple. “I’m sorry I’m so mean.”
“You’re not mean,” he said. “There’s Advil in the bathroom.”
She popped a few Advil and washed her face with one hand. She went into the guest room and undressed slowly and awkwardly, inching her sweatshirt’s sleeve past her injured digit. At least she didn’t have a T-shirt or bra to wriggle out of—that was her reward for leaving them at Mike’s house. Every cloud had a silver lining, right? She had to be up in an hour, but at least she wouldn’t have trouble falling asleep. Another silver lining.
She went to the window to pull the curtains shut. Dawn was approaching. She thought the quad was empty, but then a figure dropped from a tree branch and landed in a shallow crouch, knees splayed. It seemed hard to believe he could still be out there, but there he was. He jangled his wrists, shaking the pain or the tension out of his arms. He walked clockwise around the trunk five times, counterclockwise five more. He clapped his hands together, just once, and jumped up to grab the limb again.
36
Shortly after dawn, eight Schlitzes in, Schwartz walked to the VAC under low-slung clouds, not feeling drunk or sober. He took the elevator up to his office and unlocked the cabinet that stored the navy binders and reams of expensive watermarked paper he’d bought back in September. The conference table where he worked looked disastrous, littered with coffee mugs full of dip spit, protein-bar wrappers, note cards bearing hundreds of choice quotes and turns of phrase he’d never deployed. The introduction wasn’t finished, much less the bibliography. Back in December, on the basis of his research and outline, his adviser had assured him he’d win the History prize.
He used his school ID to jimmy the lock on the office of Duane Jenkins, the athletic director. There was a high-speed, high-quality printer there, for flyers and posters and press releases. Schwartz slid his watermarked paper into the tray, connected his laptop, and began printing his rough-draft chapters in twelve-point Courier, the official font of idiot jocks.
As the Courier-besmirched pages spooled and printed, in triplicate, he picked up Jenkins’s phone.
“Skrimmer,” he said. “Why aren’t you in class?”
“Why are you calling me,” Henry countered, “when I’m supposed to be in class?”
“You can have an off day, Skrim…” God, Schwartz was sick of his own shtick.
“… but I can’t have a day off. I know.” Henry sounded annoyed; he was sick of it too. Schwartz couldn’t remember him ever skipping class before. He wanted to broach the topic of Henry’s panic attack, but the distance between them seemed too great. “Feeling any better?”
“I’m fine,” Henry said. Which was part of the problem: Henry always said he was fine. Generally Schwartz considered this the proper attitude—say you’re fine and you’re fine. It was what made Henry such a perfect pupil. Except now, when nothing was fine. Probably Pella was right that he needed a therapist, but there wasn’t time for that anyway. Twenty-four hours to Coshwale, twenty-four hours to Henry Skrimshander Day.
“Meet me at the VAC in ten minutes,” he said. “No need to change.”
ON A SHELF IN HIS OFFICE Schwartz kept a long row of DVDs of Henry taking batting practice. Labeled and arranged by date, they formed a complete record of Henry’s progress as a hitter under Schwartz’s tutelage, week by diligent week,