The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [130]
“We need to start hitting some balls at Skrimshander,” said the man sitting behind Pella. “Let him boot a few.”
His neighbor chuckled.
“I’m not kidding. Apparently the kid’s lost it. You don’t read Tom Parsons’s blog?”
“We’re talking about the shortstop with the streak? The kid all the scouts are after?”
“Not anymore they aren’t. According to Tom Parsons the scouts started sniffing around and he started thinking about it. You know what happens when that happens.”
“Think yourself out of a job.”
“Bingo.”
“I bet the kid pulls it together, though. He’s the best I’ve seen in this league. He’s like an acrobat out there.”
“Care to put your money where your mouth is?”
“Meaning?”
“Hundred says he chucks one in the stands before this game ends.”
The second guy thought about it. Come on, second guy! Pella silently cheered. Show that first guy who’s boss! “Guess not,” he said at last. “Shame, though. Kid was fun to watch.”
Before she knew what she was doing, Pella had whirled toward Guy #1: “You’re on.”
He looked like you’d expect him to look: an overfed shiny-cheeked guy in a beet-red golf shirt. He clutched his plastic plate of grilled shrimp in his stubby arms and leaned away like she was feral: “I’m what?”
Pella patted the thin sheaf of twenties in her windbreaker pocket. Easy come, easy go. “You’re on,” she said evenly. “Hundred says Henry won’t chuck one in the stands.” She held her hand out to shake. It hung there in the air.
Guy #2 grinned and winked at Pella, clapped Guy #1 on the back. “Cat got your tongue, Gary? Sounds like a wager to me.”
Gary arranged his pudgy features into something resembling a smirk. “Fine. You’re on.” His handshake was either naturally effete or a form of condescension to the fact that she was a woman. Pella made a show of wiping her hand on her jacket afterward.
“Good luck to your boyfriend,” Guy #2 said, referring to Henry.
Pella flicked her eyes toward Gary. “Good luck to yours.” Several people sitting nearby guffawed. Nothing like some casual homophobia to win over a crowd.
As she turned around she glimpsed through the fence, over on the Westish side, that oh-so-familiar head of silver-flecked hair. He was so extravagantly busy all the time, holed up in his office from four a.m. till evening every day, too busy to show up to dinner last night—and yet he had an awful lot of time to spend watching baseball. He’d been out later than Pella, and then up and out the door before she awoke—unless he hadn’t come home at all. Who knew what his personal life was like these days? He never spoke of it, and even her gentlest teasings about Genevieve Wister had been met by a colorless silence.
He was sitting in the front row of bleachers behind the home dugout, flanked by a big Nordic guy in a leather jacket and a slender Latino man who, like her father, was dressed in a jacket and tie. Her dad looked dashing as always, he ruled the school, but among their trio it was the Latino man who seemed somehow to be the leader. He had the graceful, upright posture of a monk, shoulders back, hands folded placidly in his lap. When he spoke, the two taller men leaned toward him, straining to hear, and nodded eagerly. Pella imagined him divulging great truths with extreme modesty, and at extremely low volume.
After a few minutes her father excused himself. He stood and stretched and walked along the chain-link fence, shaking hands with parents and students, exchanging pleasantries, in full baby-kissing mode, until he reached the spot where the fence abutted the far end of the dugout. There, leaned against the inside of the fence as if waiting for him, stood Owen Dunne.