The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [87]
“Well, yeah…” Now it was Pella who seemed disappointed. “I guess he hasn’t mentioned me.”
“Of course he’s mentioned you,” Henry said vaguely, though Schwartz hadn’t. “I just… I’ve had a lot on my mind.”
“So I hear.”
Rick and Starblind were watching this exchange without, thankfully, being able to hear it. Henry shot them a stern, desperate, get-out-of-here look over Pella’s shoulder. Starblind licked his index finger lasciviously and made a little tally mark in the air. Finally they wandered off toward the north doors. Henry headed the other way. Pella Affenlight matched his steps, all the way through the dining-hall line and back outside, where they settled with their trays near the Melville statue. On sunny days this was a popular spot, because you could look out at the water without leaving the quad, but today the sky was a low gray dome, and they had Melville to themselves. Henry sipped a glass of skim milk, which the outdoor light made feebly blue, and waited for Pella to speak.
“It must be nice,” she said, “to be so good at something.”
Thunder shuddered somewhere to the northeast. “Um,” Henry said, embarrassed.
“Am I embarrassing you? I don’t mean to.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’m just wondering what it’s like, to be so good at something and know it. For a while in high school I thought I wanted to be an artist, but I gave it up, because I could never convince myself that I was good enough.”
Henry, not sure what to say, made an interested noise meant to encourage her to continue.
“I mean, I made some okay paintings, but nothing I made had any life to it. You know? Finally I just said fuck it. I decided I didn’t like painting so much as I liked covering myself in paint and drinking a lot of coffee. So now I just do that once in a while.” She jabbed her fork at her dish of chickpeas and ducked her head and laughed. If you could have said with any certainty that someone like Pella Affenlight was capable of nervousness, you might have called it a nervous laugh. She looked up at Henry. “So?”
“So what?”
“So what’s it like to be the best?”
Henry shrugged. “There’s always somebody better.”
“That’s not what Mike says. He says you’re the top—what is it, shortstop?—in the entire country.”
Henry thought about it for a moment. “It doesn’t feel like much,” he said. “You really only notice when you screw up.”
Pella nodded, finished chewing. “I know what you mean.”
Out over the lake, the clouds were pulling apart into pale-gray gauze, blueness shining through from behind. The sky was lightening lumen by lumen. On how many rainy game days had Henry stared out a classroom or bus window, wishing for exactly this kind of reprieve? But now his stomach churned at the thought of having to play.
When he arrived in the locker room, Schwartzy and Owen were discussing the Middle East. Henry was late; the discussion had already entered its terminal stage.
“Israel.”
“Palestine.”
“Israel.”
“Palestine.”
“Israel!” Schwartz roared. He slammed the heel of his hand into the steel of his locker.
Owen shook his head and whispered, with no less conviction, “Palestine.”
It was Owen’s first appearance in the locker room since his injury. “Owen,” Henry said. “How’s your face?” It was funny how glad he could feel to see his roommate, even though they were roommates and saw each other all the time. And yet over the winter holidays or during the summer, when Owen went to Egypt, as he’d done last summer, or home to California, as he’d done the summer before, Henry didn’t miss him much at all. The more he saw him, the more he missed not seeing him.
“Getting better,” Owen said. “I’m still having some trouble with my studies, though. The words swim around.”
“Are you going to play today?”
“No, no. I’m out until these bones heal. A month, they say. I came to support my comrades.”
“Buddha!” cheered Rick O’Shea as he ambled out of the bathroom with his belt undone. “What’s the matter? You missed seeing me naked?”
“I’m not into fat guys,” Owen said.
“Fat? That’s not fat. Just a little moss on the ol’ rock.” Rick hoisted his T-shirt and slapped