Peter Abrahams - The Fan

Bobby came through the door, carrying his bags. Ordinary luggage, Gil noticed with disappointment: Bobby could have done better than that. A reporter asked him a question, stuck a microphone in his face. Gil heard Bobby say: “We’ll just have to go on, that’s all.”

The reporter said: “About your own play; you really seem to have turned things around.” And stuck the microphone in his face again.

Bobby said: “That’s the way the game is sometimes.” And pushed by.

He walked right past Gil, not two feet away. Gil felt a huge smile spreading across his face, but Bobby passed without looking at him. He left behind the scent of that coconut shampoo he used in the ads, and Gil made a note to get some.

Fishing pole in his hand, knapsack on his back, hair freshly washed and smelling of coconut, Gil walked along an endless beach that was sometimes sandy, sometimes shingle. The sea was glassy blue; a red sail cut across it toward the eastern horizon. On the other side of the beach rose big houses, separated from each other and the water by broad lawns, tall hedges, well-trimmed bushes. Gil stopped when he thought he’d come to the right one.

Unlike Bobby’s luggage, the house looked the part. Tall, sprawling, shining, it had chimneys, arches, balconies, decks, a terrace, and a pool, gleaming under the clear sky. Two lines of cedars marked the borders of the property from the house all the way down to the beach. Some dead branches needed clipping and the lawn needed mowing, but otherwise this was the model of life perfected. Still and peaceful: Gil gazed and gazed, losing track of time.

Then a movement caught his eye. By the pool a leg-bare, a woman’s leg-straightened, stretching up into the air. Red-painted toenails sparkled in the sunshine; Gil could see the color all the way from the beach. He walked along the shore to the nearest line of cedars and ducked behind the first one.

From that angle, he could see her better. She lay on her back on a chaise, wearing a baseball cap, oversized sunglasses, and a skimpy bathing suit, or perhaps none at all; Gil couldn’t tell. He began making his way up toward the pool, moving from tree to tree, silent, like a woodsman back home. Once he disturbed a crow. It took off, and spiraled cawing into the blue. The woman turned her head to watch it. He recognized her from the shots they always took of players’ wives in the stands: Valerie Rayburn. He crept closer, close enough to see that she wore bikini bottoms but no top, and stopping only when his next step would have brought him into the open. He crouched behind a cedar branch, with nothing in mind.

Somewhere nearby a radio played, quiet but very clear. Gil couldn’t see the speakers, but he heard the sound:

“… just missing, inside. Boyle walks around the back of the mound. He wanted that call. Two and two. Infield still at double-play depth. Boyle steps on the rubber…”

Valerie Rayburn raised her other leg, stretched, sighed. A long, well-toned leg of the kind SI liked to feature in the swimsuit issue. And Val was that kind of woman. Gil couldn’t take his eyes off her, and not only for erotic reasons. This was no Lenore, or Boucicaut’s woman, he couldn’t remember her name. This woman was fine. He didn’t even get aroused, at first.

French doors swung open at the back of the house. A man in a suit came out, carrying an enormous inflated great white shark. Val saw him, made no attempt to cover up. The man crossed the terrace, walked onto the pool deck. Gil didn’t recognize him.

“Sean napping?” he said.

“She put him down ten minutes ago.”

“Where is she?”

“I gave her the afternoon off.”

The man smiled. He put the shark down, went to Val, and lightly brushed the underside of one of her breasts with the back of his hand.

“Mmm,” she said.

He knelt beside her.

“… down by three, Zamora’ll lead it off. The little guy’s oh for two this afternoon with a sac fly in the…”

Gil looked around again for the source of the sound, without success. Was he imagining it?

Soon Val and the man were naked, except for their sunglasses, squirming on a towel by the side of the pool, skins glistening. “Oh, Chaz,” Val said. Gil parted the branches for a better view.

Chaz was a balding man with a paunch and a cock that looked average size or smaller. Why would someone like her want to fuck someone like him, especially when she was married to Bobby Rayburn? Gil didn’t get it at all. But Val said, “Oh, Chaz,” again, and wrapped her elegant legs around his flabby back.

“… and the crowd comes to life as Rayburn steps up. Bases loaded, two out, Rayburn representing the winning run. He singled up the middle in the first, doubled into the gap in right center in the fourth, hit the solo round-tripper that brought them within three in the sixth. Normally a fast worker, Mardossian is taking a lot of time out there. Looks in for the sign and here’s the pitch. Strike one, over the inside corner. That’s the call Boyle hasn’t been getting all day. Hard to call ’em from up here, of course, but…”

Val got her legs up on Chaz’s shoulders. Sweat dripped off his chin. “Oh, Chaz, I-” Gil thought she was going to say “I love you,” but she didn’t finish the sentence.

Chaz grunted and pounded harder.

“… and the pitch. Swing and a miss. A curve ball and a beauty. Dropped right off the table. Oh and two. Mardossian steps on the rubber…”

Val pounded back.

“… here it comes. Rayburn swings. And there’s a long drive, deep to left, a looooong drive, deeeeeep to left, it is going, it is going. See. You. Later. Grand slam, a grand-slam ding-dong-dinger for Bobby Rayburn…”

“I don’t believe it,” said Chaz, going still.

That’s when Gil knew the game was real.

“You didn’t come, did you?” Val said.

“No, I didn’t come.” And Chaz started moving again, but Gil could see that the mood had changed. “Can’t you turn that thing off?”

“The controls are in the kitchen. Come on, Chaz, I’m so hot. Don’t leave me here.”

Chaz reached down between them.

“Oh, Chaz, I’m coming.”

“Me too.”

And they did, but the mood had changed.

“… touch ’em all, Bobby Rayburn…”

Chaz and Val rolled into the pool, drifted apart. He paddled around for a while. She got out, wrapped herself in a towel, and went up to the house. A few minutes later, he got out too, dried himself, put on his suit, knotted his tie-red and black, much like the stand-up tie Gil had lost somewhere along the way-and followed, leaving the blown-up shark by the side of the pool.

“… believe we’ve got Jewel Stern down on the field. Can you hear me, Jewel?”

“Loud and clear. I’m standing with Bobby Rayburn, and, Bobby, I think everyone’s asking themselves-”

The radio went off.

It was quiet. Gil sat behind the cedar tree. He thought he heard a car start up, drive away. The sun, lower now, glared huge on the sea, much smaller on the pool. A breeze sprang up, rustling the cedars to life and cooling his skin; like Val and Chaz, he had sweated too, had heated up too, but not just from the voyeur part: he’d had an idea.

At first, his idea seemed full of possibility. In minutes, he began to have doubts. He lacked information: about Chaz, Val, and Bobby, and their various relationships. The idea began unraveling in his mind.

And then, as he had in the steam bath, he got lucky. The French doors at the back of the house opened again, and out came a boy in shorts. A boy younger than Richie, Gil saw as he came closer, but sturdily built, and graceful. He rose, and crouched behind the cedar.

The boy spotted the inflatable great white shark at once and went toward it. A gust of wind came off the ocean, bent the cedars, snapped Gil’s pant legs, and blew the shark into the pool, just as the boy was reaching for it. The shark floated in the water, a foot or so from the side of the pool. The boy knelt at the edge, stretched out his arm, got a hand on the shark’s dorsal fin. The shark slid away under the boy’s weight; and then he was in the water.