The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [143]
Henry nodded. “Thanks.”
“Oh, many welcomes. What else would I do with my Sunday morning? Messenger to the stars.” She looked down at Henry’s feet, which were still pruned and past white. “Sorry about the game. That was rough luck.”
“Luck,” Henry repeated.
“I guess luck’s the wrong word. Anyway, I just… if you ever want to talk, I’m around.”
“Thanks.”
“You’re fairly monosyllabic, you know that?”
“Sorry.”
“That’s better.”
Henry expected her to leave, but instead she just stood there fooling with her sweatshirt strings, alternately looking down at his feet and past him into the room. He tried to come up with something polite and polysyllabic to say. “Would you like some tea?”
Pella shrugged. “You’re probably in a hurry. Directions on the seat and all that.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Oh. Well. In that case. Sure. I’ll have tea.”
Henry had never made tea before; that was Owen’s department. He tried to arrest the electric kettle at the proper gurgle, and he tried to add the right amount of English Breakfast to the porcelain pot, not that he knew what the right amount would be. Pella stood in the middle of the rug and looked around. “This place is pretty nice,” she said. “For a dorm room.”
“It’s mostly Owen’s stuff.”
“Did Owen paint this?” She pointed to the green-and-white painting that hung over Henry’s bed, the one Henry liked because it resembled a smeary baseball diamond.
“When I first moved in I asked Owen that same question, and he said, ‘Sort of, but I stole it from Rothko.’ I thought Rothko was like Shopko—that he’d really stolen it, from a store. I was amazed, because it’s so big. How would you steal it? Then I took Art 105.”
Pella laughed. Henry regretted the anecdote, which made him seem dumb. The effort required to speak was immense, like hauling stones up out of a well, but he’d decided to try his best. At least she seemed cheered up a little.
“You really like it here,” she said, “don’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, all of you guys—you, Mike, my dad. Maybe Owen too, though I don’t really know Owen. You all just seem to love it here. Like you never want to leave. Part of me suspects that Mike didn’t want to get into law school, that he sabotaged himself in some subconscious way, so that he has no reason to leave this place, the only place he ever felt happy. I mean, why’d he only apply to six schools? The six best schools in the country? It makes no sense.”
“He’s graduating either way,” Henry pointed out. “He can’t stay here.”
“He can’t stay but he can’t leave, not without a destination. And, well, maybe it’s the same for you. Maybe you’re just not ready.”
Henry looked at her.
“Sorry,” Pella said.
“Everybody else thinks I wanted to go pro too much. You think I didn’t want it at all.”
“What do you think?”
“I think you should all go fuck yourselves.”
Pella grinned. “That’s the first step to recovery.” She walked over to the mantel, where a baseball, Owen’s lone bottle of scotch, and a slim, leather-bound navy book Henry didn’t recognize sat in close proximity. “There’s not even any dust in this place,” she said. She unsheathed the amber bottle from its cardboard cylinder. “May I?”
Henry nodded. Pella poured some into a tumbler, took a sip, rolled it in her mouth appraisingly. “Mm. Not bad.” She held it out toward Henry.
Henry took the glass and sipped the light-shot fluid, which perfectly matched the color of Schwartzy’s eyes. The taste overwhelmed his sleep-deprived senses; he coughed and spit it out on the rug.
“Hey, don’t waste that.” Pella arranged herself cross-legged on Owen’s bed. She pulled down the navy book—it looked like an old register—and opened it. After a moment she looked up at Henry, her eyes inscrutable. “My dad and Owen are sleeping together.”
“Your dad?” Henry said. “President Affenlight?”
Pella handed him the open book. “Top left.” It looked like a youthful shot of some now-famous poet or playwright, the kind of thing