The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [88]
“Ugh. Get away from me.”
“Suit yourself.” Rick tugged his shirt down, clapped Henry on the back. “Hey Skrim. How’d it go with Pella Affenlight? Looked like she was really feeling your fabric.”
Henry glanced around, worried that Schwartzy would hear and get the wrong idea, but Schwartz had already dragged his banged-up body down to the trainer’s room to get taped and wrapped. Izzy’s impish face appeared around a row of lockers. He tilted his head to one side as he unpinned a gleaming diamond stud from his ear: no jewelry allowed during games. “Feeling his fabric?” he said. “What kind of phrase is that?”
“Whaddya mean, what kind?” Rick said. “It’s just a phrase. It means she’s into him. She’s down. She’s feeling his fabric.”
Izzy shook his head. “That’s not a real phrase.”
“Sure it is. It’s a phrase in the culture.”
“Estúpido.” Izzy tossed the earring from one hand to the other, spat into one of the grated floor drains. “You made it up, man. Admit it.”
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“Not.”
“Too.”
“So what if I did?” Rick’s face was bright pink with exasperation. “How do phrases get started anyway? You think they’re all written down in a book somewhere? Somebody has to make them up!”
“Somebody,” said Izzy. “Not you.”
“Why, because I’m not black? What’s so great about black people anyway?”
“We’re more authentic,” Owen said.
“Irish people are authentic. Look at this chin. You think this chin’s not authentic?”
“It’s a pretty good phrase,” Henry said. “I might use it sometime.”
Rick smiled, grateful for the kind of pleasant intervention Henry could always be counted on to provide. “Thanks, Skrim.”
Izzy spat again. “Estúpido.”
Coach Cox poked his head into the room. “Dunne! How the goddamn hell are you?”
“Much improved, Coach Cox.”
“Well, you look like hell. Skrimmer sure did a number on that cheek. Skrim, you got a minute?”
“Sure, Coach.”
They left the locker room and wandered the corridors of the VAC. The medieval fencing club was scrimmaging in one of the all-purpose rooms, off hands tucked behind their backs as they danced along lines of masking tape. They wore chain-mail vests and what looked to Henry like pirate hats. The lights were off in the other AP room. A winsome music of chimes and woodwinds issued from the room’s speakers as the students sat cross-legged on the floor. “If you feel the need to pass gas,” said the instructor cheerily, “it’s important that you do so.”
A lopsided leather medicine ball lay in the hallway. Coach Cox gave it a dull kick as they passed. He wasn’t much for heart-to-hearts. “So,” he said.
Henry nodded. “Yeah.”
“Been a rough week. But you can’t get down.”
“I know.”
“Just relax out there. Scouts or no scouts. Let ’em sit there, type on their fancy laptops, talk on their fancy phones. Relax and play your game.”
“Right,” Henry said. “I will.”
“I know you will.” Coach Cox gave him an awkward pat on the back. “We’re with you, Skrim.”
By the time Henry returned to the locker room, banter had given way to preparatory solemnity. Each Harpooner sat half or mostly uniformed in front of his locker, nodding along with his iPod’s pregame playlist. Schwartz used an ancient cassette-tape Walkman; only Henry didn’t listen to music at all. Izzy twisted his wristbands so the Nike insignia were aligned just so. Sooty Kim buttoned the bottom two buttons of his jersey, unbuttoned one, buttoned two more, unbuttoned one. Detmold Jensen worked at his glove’s leather with tiny pinking shears, snipping off a superfluous centimeter of lacing. Henry went to the bathroom, which was still thick with the ordurous odor of Rick O’Shea, and urinated a long clear stream. He soaped his arms and hands with industrial candy-pink liquid soap, rinsed clean.
His stomach was rumbling queerly. It always clamped down before a game, not from nervousness exactly—it was more like self-containment, a narrowness of purpose that made the idea of putting anything into his body seem bizarre. Today, though, something was amiss. He could taste bile in the back of his throat. He went into