The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [166]
Working with Henry was the closest he’d ever come, because Henry knew only one thing, wanted only one thing, and his single-mindedness made him—made both of them—pure. But Henry had tried to beat himself, had inserted himself into the equation, had started to worry about being perfect instead of simply becoming the best goddamn shortstop ever, and now he was no better than Schwartz. He was just like Schwartz, a fucked-up guy with a fucked-up life.
“Schwartzy!” yelled Rick. “Get the bleepity bleep out here!”
Henry, Schwartz thought, hauling himself up from the sink over which he’d been hunched, staring at his sunken but shaven face through a mess of dried toothpaste and spit flecks. Henry’s here. He headed back into the locker room, still throttling his empty champagne bottle. The Harpooners had gathered in a huddle in the center of the room, undressed and dripping champagne, arms draped around one another’s shoulders. Rick and Owen stepped apart to open a spot for Schwartz, and the circle expanded to accommodate his girth. Henry wasn’t there. The rest of them pressed their temples together and swayed back and forth like junior high school kids at their last-ever junior high school dance, singing the school shanty at the top of their lungs.
67
Late that night, after the team returned from Chute, Owen came. And as they made love, and afterward, as they lay together in the dark, Affenlight kept one ear open, listening for Pella. It was unlikely she’d show up unannounced, after so emphatically declaring she wanted a few weeks to herself, and now past midnight it grew less likely with each passing moment. Even if she did come she wouldn’t barge into his darkened bedroom. And yet. Every voice that floated up from the Small Quad seized his senses. Every standard nighttime sound produced by the apartment—the crack of frost in the back of the fridge, the chiropractic groans of walls and floors, the scratch of the mouse Affenlight had never seen but knew existed—caused his breath to catch, just for a second. His breath caught a lot; there were lots of sounds.
“Are you all right?” Owen asked. “You seem tense.”
“I’m okay.” He felt guilty more than anything. Guilty to Pella for having Owen here; guilty to Owen for the way he himself was absent, his attention scattered like pollen over the quad.
“Tell me about the house.”
Now that he was no longer in the house, knee-deep in the Bremens’ belongings, distracted by Sandy’s superior saleswomanship, surrounded and perplexed by their superfluously detailed lives, the place had begun to take shape in Affenlight’s mind. He began to talk about it to Owen, haltingly at first, but as he got rolling he started to remember and describe the shapes of rooms, the size of windows, the shaved-wood smell of the kitchen’s ancient buckling cedar floor. Soon he was verbally ripping up carpets, repainting rooms, converting the Bremens’ den into a proper library with custom bookshelves. The backyard was even expansive enough that you could build a little writer’s shed there at the back edge of the property, overlooking the lake; perhaps that would be profligate, given how big the house was already, but it might also be fun, and clarifying to the mind, to have a spartan outpost back there, a spot without comforts or distractions, in which to sit and write. Perhaps—he couldn’t believe he was saying this aloud—he would even be moved to revive the novel he’d begun so long ago, Night of the Large Few Stars, the 153 pages of which were still sitting in a drawer somewhere. Or, better yet, to begin something new—no use chasing the dreams of so long ago. But to have the shed, to bundle up and stoke a tiny stove and look out at the lake and write, would be good. And if visitors with writing projects to pursue—here he glanced at Owen—would make use of it too, well, all the more reason.
“Sounds like you want to buy it.”
Affenlight hesitated. “I