Peter Abrahams - The Fan

“Forget it.”

Val, on her way up to the house, stopped and turned. “Come all over shy?”

Wald laughed.

The photographer smiled a puzzled smile. “It’s up to you, of course,” he said.

Bobby thought: I’m in the best shape of my life. And: It might be good for a GM or owner somewhere to see that. Use the media. But sticking it to Val was reason enough. He took off his shirt, stepped onto the diving board. Val crossed the patio, disappeared through the French doors, closed them hard enough for the sound to carry down to the pool.

“If you would maybe sit on the end of the board,” said the photographer.

Bobby sat.

“And be looking directly in the lens.”

Bobby looked. The lens was a big indigo eye. He could see his reflection in it, tiny but very clear. There was nothing wrong with the eyes that did the seeing, nothing wrong with the reflected body they saw.

“Relax,” said the photographer.

That annoyed Bobby. “I am relaxed,” he said.

“Of course.” Click. “Very nice.” Click click. “All finished. Thank you so much.” The photographer started packing up.

Bobby felt the evening sun on his bare back. He closed his eyes. A minute or two later the photographer said good-bye, and Bobby, eyes still closed, nodded. Was he relaxed? No. He knew that. Out on the end of the diving board, he tried to relax, to the marrow of every bone, to the nucleus of every cell. Not easy, with his ninth-inning at bat replaying itself in his mind. He didn’t watch it, but it was there, looping around over and over. Bobby told himself: I’ve still got the eyes, the body, the hands, good as ever. A gift, like Einstein’s brain. He’d tried everything, gotten nowhere. The solution was obvious: he had to play on a team where number eleven was available. All his problems, even the fiasco of his stupid, broken promise to Chemo Sean and the lost four-leaf clover, stemmed from not wearing it.

“I meant it,” Bobby said. “About trading me.”

No answer.

He opened his eyes. Wald had gone too. Bobby stood up, took off the rest of his clothes, dove into the water. It was warm. He floated, gazing up at the purpling sky, quieting his mind. He could almost have fallen asleep like that, except for an awakening tension in his groin, caused simply by the warm water and his nakedness, but sparking desire for a woman. He thought at once of the scraps of paper jammed in his glove compartment, scribbled in girlish hands with names and phone numbers. Easy to dial the numbers, easy to meet somewhere; the problem was he couldn’t picture the faces that went with the names. A bar, then? That sports bar, Cleats, for example. Almost as easy.

A hand touched his shoulder.

Bobby jerked his head out of the water, twisted around. A woman knelt by the side of the pool, her arm still outstretched.

“Didn’t mean to frighten,” she said, “but you didn’t hear me.”

“My ears were underwater,” Bobby said. “And you didn’t frighten me.”

The woman almost smiled. She seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place her. No chance that he’d slept with her, though, so nothing embarrassing was about to happen: she was older than the women who hung around ballplayers, her dark hair streaked with gray along the sides. But not unattractive, despite her pallor and a nasty scrape along one side of her jaw.

“Sorry I’m so late,” she said. She glanced up at the house. “Your wife told me to just walk down.”

“Late?”

“Jewel Stern. For the Times interview. I was… unavoidably detained.”

Bobby had forgotten he was pissed off. He slipped back into the mood. “I’m on my way out,” he said.

“I don’t need long.”

Bobby shook his head.

“Fifteen or twenty minutes.” No pleading in her tone, he noticed, a little surprised; just announcing the fact.

“I’ve got other commitments.” Bobby swam to the ladder, started pulling himself out. He was halfway up when he remembered he wasn’t wearing a suit. He turned to see if she was watching.

She was. “Catch,” she said, and tossed him a towel.

Bobby caught it, wrapped it around his waist, climbed out.

“Funny how no one ever goes into a fielding slump,” she said.

On the top step, Bobby paused. “What do you mean by that?”

“Just an observation.”

Bobby started up the slate path that led to the house. She drew alongside after he’d gone a few steps.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“What’s beautiful?”

“The flowers. I didn’t take you for a gardener, Bobby.”

“I’m not.” He hadn’t even been aware of the flowers bordering the path. Who took care of them? He hadn’t noticed anyone working on the grounds. Now he saw that the flower beds needed weeding, and the lawn needed mowing. He would have to speak to Wald.

The woman went up the patio steps ahead of him. She had a nice body. Use the media, he thought. Then he realized he’d forgotten her name.

“Why don’t we start with the tour?” she said. “We can talk after.”

“Tour?”

“Of the house. Didn’t Wald mention that?”

“You don’t seem to be hearing me,” Bobby said. “I’m on my way out.”

“I hear you,” she said.

They went into the kitchen. There were drop cloths on the appliances, wires dangling through holes in the ceiling, pink-and-green marble tiles forming the beginning of a checker-board pattern at one end of the plywood subfloor.

“What’s this?”

“She’s remodeling. Valerie, if you’re going to mention her in the article.”

“Not Val,” the reporter said. “She already covered that.” Again, she seemed to be on the verge of smiling. “But how can there be an article with no interview?”

“Not my problem,” said Bobby. “Can you find your way out?”

“Of course,” the woman said. She reached into her shoulder bag. “Your wife asked me to give you this.” She handed Bobby a note.

He unfolded it and read: Gone to dinner w/Chaz. Sean’s eaten. He’s in his room. V.

Bobby looked up. The woman was watching him. He thought of the girlish handwriting on the scraps of paper in the glove compartment. This woman’s handwriting wouldn’t be anything like that. Without a word he turned and went upstairs.

Sean was at the space console, the crusts of a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich on a plate beside him. “You have thirty minutes, eighteen seconds,” came a deep voice from the computer. “Then your entire planet will be sprayed with the gas Sorgon B, and all oxygen-based life will be vaporized.” In an on-screen window, a video previewed the catastrophe.

Not looking up, Sean said, “What’s oxygen?”

“The stuff you breathe. Is the baby-sitter here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Is she coming?”

Sean, tapping at the keys, didn’t answer. He paused, waiting for a response from the computer.

“Negative,” said the deep voice.

Bobby returned to the kitchen. The woman was sitting on the bottom rung of a stepladder. She had known the whole time, of course, known he wasn’t going anywhere. He was forming a stinging remark when he saw that her face was even paler than before.

“I’d like some aspirin, please,” she said.

Bobby searched three or four of the seven bathrooms, without success. Then he remembered that the Moprin people had sent him a case. He found it in the basement, brought her a package. She was where he had left her, motionless on the bottom rung of the ladder.

He handed her the package. She removed the bottle, fumbled with the plastic seal around the top. She couldn’t get it off. He took it from her, ripped the seal, popped off the top, pierced the foil, drew out the cotton. Her gaze was on his hands the whole time; another one of those women who noticed hands. He waited for her to say something about them, but she did not. Instead, she took the bottle-her fingers felt cold-shook out two pills, and asked for a glass of water.