The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [49]
After an interminable ascent, he reached the top row and slammed a gloved hand against the big aluminum 1 bolted to the back wall. He gave it a good whack, but the frigid atoms barely resounded at all. When he turned, he was standing atop a steep precipice that fell off into darkness. He kept his back against the wall as he edged, as quickly as his quivering legs would let him, toward the staircase between Sections 1 and 2. He could practically touch the rumpled quilt of cloud overhead.
He minced quickly down the stairs between sections—the descent, though easier on the legs, was the scary part—using his windbreaker sleeve to wipe his nose. His ears burned. At the bottom he turned and gave a little skip and duck, like a high jumper beginning the approach. “Come on!” he growled aloud in Schwartz’s voice, trying to rally himself as he shoved off and headed grimly back to the top, dragging one weary leg before the other, slamming a squeezed fist into the frozen metal 2.
Just do half, he told himself on the way down, shaking his limbs in a full-body shiver. Half a stadium, seventeen sections, and then home to a hot shower, so hot it’d feel cold on his numb skin, and some hot chocolate from Owen’s hot pot, and anything else that’s hot. And then burrowing back beneath the sheets, the warm hot sheets, until physics class, which was still five hours away.
But then around Section 5, his legs began to loosen, his lungs to unclench. Better thoughts flowed through his brain. He picked up the pace. The blood worked through his body, trapping warmth between the layers of his clothes. His feet landed more lightly on the stone.
First he took off his gloves and flung them aside. Two sections later, he grabbed his Cardinals cap in one hand so he could peel off his windbreaker with the other, jamming the cap back on as he tossed the windbreaker. It floated up, bloated by the wind, before settling on the steps. Heat radiated off Henry’s face. Salty snot ran down over his upper lip. A majestic fart propelled him to the top of Section 12, just at the springing of the stadium’s curve. He slapped the sign as if high-fiving a teammate. It gave back a game shudder. He was cruising now, darkness be damned, stripping off his sweatshirt and his long underwear top without breaking stride. He moved through the dark, glad of the dark, part of the dark. He was down to his vest and T-shirt, wielding his own heat. A warm pocket of dark in the large cold dark.
14
Before Pella had lain down, she’d taken her swimsuit from her wicker bag and spread it on the David side of the bed, a reminder of what this day would contain. Now she undressed, put on the suit, dressed again. She hadn’t really slept; it was three thirty in the morning, San Francisco time. The suit was a little snug—okay, it was a lot snug—but it was what she had. She twisted quickly past the bureau mirror, timing the movement to a blink. If no one saw her, including herself, it didn’t matter what she looked like.
She could hear footsteps in the kitchen, the protest of the espresso machine as it pressed a few last drops, but it was too early even to exchange pleasantries with her dad. She slipped down the stairs and onto the quad, where a heavy, soggy snow was beginning to collect on the grass. She put up the hood of her sweatshirt and, in a gesture that seemed downright exuberant, since it wasn’t strictly necessary, tied the strings into a bow.
Pella hadn’t been in the water in forever, and yet, when she’d contemplated the possibility of coming to Westish to stay