The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [135]
Henry tapped Izzy on the knee. “Play their three hitter toward the hole a little more. You could’ve had that last ball he hit.”
Izzy nodded.
“Especially with Sal pitching. Compared to Adam, play everybody a step to pull against Sal. Unless he has his changeup working. Then you have to watch Mike’s signs and play it more by feel.”
Izzy looked down at his yogurt.
“Comprende?” Henry said.
Izzy nodded. “Comprende, Henry.”
Henry hauled himself to his feet and walked over to the fence, where a skinny, coltish girl with long wavy sandy hair was waiting for him. As he approached she poked her index finger through the fence. After a moment Henry touched it with his own.
“Who’s that?” asked Starblind.
“I think it’s Skrim’s sister.” Rick looked to Owen. “Buddha?”
Owen nodded.
“Huh,” Adam said. “Not bad.”
52
Izzy scored the winning run in the second game of the doubleheader when, with the score tied 6 all in the bottom of the tenth, Schwartz hammered a double into the left-field corner. The Harpooners poured out of the dugout to greet Izzy as he crossed home plate, trading fist bumps and man hugs and muted words of praise. The split left them one game behind Coshwale in the UMSCAC standings, with another doubleheader tomorrow at the Muskies’ home diamond. “Tomorrow,” someone said, and it became a refrain to nod to and repeat.
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.”
Back in the locker room, they set about their private postgame rituals, stretching and heating and icing, showering and shaving and scraping off eye black, slathering on the stinging menthols of Icy Hot, Tiger Balm, Fire Cool, detonating sneezy white puffs of foot powder, baby powder, fungus powder, crotch powder. Schwartz headed into the whirlpool room to soak. He turned off the lights, lowered himself into the rattling tub, and tried not to think about baseball for a few minutes, tried not to think about Henry, while the salts and churning water did their inadequate work on his body. He’d spotted Pella in the stands today—she hadn’t hopped a plane back to San Francisco with The Architect. It had been sweet to see her navy windbreaker amid all that ugly red.
When he returned to the locker room it was empty. His back hurt as much as it ever had. It took two minutes to put his underwear on. He popped a handful of Advil—he was fresh out of anything better—and finished dressing as quickly as he could.
By the time he emerged onto the broad stone steps of the VAC the sun had set, and the evening had turned spring cool. Through the semidarkness he could see someone wandering the parking lot in mothlike circles—she stopped and looked up as the wooden doors creaked shut. “Sophie,” he said.
“Mike?”
She trotted over, backpack bouncing on her shoulder, and gave him a commiserative hug. Schwartz felt like he knew her well, though they’d only met once. She looked distinctly like her brother—same slender neck and elegant posture, same soft features and pale-blue eyes. She looked older than the girl in the faded photo above Henry’s desk, more nearly adult, but also as skinny and credulous as Henry had been when he arrived at Westish. The Skrimshanders were late bloomers. “Where’s Henry?” she asked.
“Probably at Carapelli’s, with the rest of the team. I’m late to meet them.”
“I saw the rest of the team,” Sophie protested. “Henry wasn’t with them. I figured you two were together.”
Goddamnit. Schwartz reached for his phone—his first impulse was to call Owen, but he didn’t want Sophie to know that he didn’t know where Henry was. Instead he tapped out a text: is H w u? “Your brother likes to use the fire door,” he lied. “One of his rituals. Where are your folks?”
Sophie rolled her eyes. “My mom dragged my dad back to the hotel to keep him from yelling at Henry. He’s, like, half