Robert Coover - The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop

A plump little man, tuxedoed, bobbed up beside them: "Good evening, Mr. Engel. Two?" The owner, of course: Lou always knew the owner, wherever he went.

"Evening, Mr. Porter. This is my friend Mr. Waugh I've told you about." Mr. Mitch Porter, not quite smiling, surveying Henry's slack condition and obvious need, dipped his head in recognition of this wondrous encounter, then led them primly to a table in the center, underneath a pillar. A litde like Frosty Young, but better mannered. Not a third baseman, though. Second maybe, like Frosty. Or a catcher. Yes, that was it, put him back behind the plate, guarding home. "He won't believe, you know, that the food's so, as good as I say, so he's finally come to find out for himself."

"I hope you won't be disappointed, Mr. Waugh," the owner said politely, discreetly nodding them into their places. He bestowed menus upon them with his right hand, his left discharging a practiced and imperial command kitchenward. Henry saw no one there to receive it, yet a moment later a waitress was headed their way with table linen and silverware. Mitch Porter knew he was good. Poise: no really great star was ever without it.

"Lou's kidding you, Mr. Porter," Henry assured him. "He's what they call in baseball a real swinger at the plate, and I have complete faith." The waitress, bellied over the table, spreading the fresh white linen as though preparing a marriage couch, smiled at that. The worm stirred… yes, balance, let the dark forces rise. Plop! plop! the napkins, and long silver instruments — the better to fork you with, my dear, as Willie O'Leary would say, but she was gone.

Henry picked up the menu to read it, but Lou had already pushed his aside, was leaning sideways in a bulky list to confer with Mitch Porter. "I was thinking about.. the steaks," he said softly, as though making confession.

Mitch Porter gazed thoughtfully toward the kitchen, then around to be sure there were no spies, bowed slightly forward. "I'm just not entirely pleased with them this evening, Mr. Engel. They look good, but they're — I wouldn't tell anyone but you, Mr. Engel — but they seem cut a little too green from the tree, if you know what I mean." Lou, knowing well, inched forward, ears cocked for the word. "But the duck," Mr. Porter whispered, puckering his lips and touching them with the tips of two fingers and a thumb: a soft insinuating kiss blessed them and the hand opened like a blossom.

"Duck!" announced Lou firmly, leaning back.

"Me, too," said Henry.

"And before?"

"He makes a wonderful seafood cocktail, Henry."

"Okay by me."

"Two cocktails," beamed Mitch Porter. "And to drink?"

"Right now, I'd like an Old Fashioned," said Henry, having seen that the menu plugged them, and Mr. Porter smiled, raised his brows to Lou. Lou nodded. Mr. Porter slipped away then, passing unheard instructions to barman and waitresses: whump! gaped the kitchen doors, and swallowed him up.

Lou, following Henry's gaze, turned back and whispered: "He makes the duck himself!" The kitchen, having inhaled Mr. Mitch Porter, now exhaled a waitress, exiling in a handsome breech delivery, bearing aloft a tray heaped high with silver-canopied dishes. "Henry, your eyes look all bloodshot! What have you been doing?"

"Working." And though hard, not hard enough. He'd wanted to start Monday clean and fresh, his decision made, but he doubted now he could finish the season tomorrow.

"Are you still taking that extra work home, Henry?" Lou shook his head. "Just what I thought. You come dragging into the office at noon — you're gonna end up losing your steady job at DZ&Z just for the sake of a few extra dollars, it's not worth it, Henry. What do you wanna be a millionaire for? Who're you gonna leave it to?" Lou clucked disapprovingly as the drinks came. Who was he going to leave it to? The dark bird flapped in his breast again and beaked bis throat. At another table, under a storm at sea, the youngsters blew kisses at each other over their plates, and across the way, a navy officer leaned over a young woman's bosom. . "No, really, Henry—"

"What I do, I do because I want to," Henry said, and lifted his glass in a toast, then drank. In one corner, two old men played chess beside an aquarium of goldfish, and somehow neither they nor the fish seemed out of place. Maybe he could move his Association over here. Might rescue it. He smiled.

Lou twisted around to see what he was smiling at, saw the chinless cod-faced woman who slouched dumpily back of the cash register, under a pair of lovebirds, reading a movie magazine. "Mrs. Porter," he explained. "You wouldn't believe it, would you?"

"Of course, I would!" Henry laughed. "Couldn't be anyone else!" Lou laughed blankly, not getting it. An old hand came down and touched a crown, veered past it to elect a seahorse, white as death: it leaped forward, but currents carried it slantwise. To be good, a chess player, too, had to convert his field to the entire universe, himself the ruler of that private enclosure — though from a pawn's-eye view, of course, it wasn't an enclosure at all, but, infinitely, all there was. Henry enjoyed chess, but found it finally too Euclidian, too militant, ultimately irrational, and in spite of its precision, formless really — nameless motion.

Lou asked about the interview with Zifferblatt and Henry told him, all the while watching the chess players, the excited youngsters, all the paintings and dour Mrs. Porter, the people at the bar, the waitresses, that girl with die navy officer— who was he? seen him before. . young Brock Rutherford Jr. maybe… "So when I told Ziff that the Greek god of commerce was a thief and led the dead to hell, Ziff said: 'Yeah? well, look what it got the Greeks, all they got's a few restaurants!' "

Lou wheezed with giggling, his round face pink with the thought of a foolish Zifferblatt. "Did he really say that, Henry?"

"No, I'm just kidding, Lou. To tell the truth, I don't know what either of us said, because I fell asleep."

Still giggling, but shaking his head at the same time, sipping the Old Fashioned, Lou seemed to find that harder to believe than the dialogue. "I couldn't fall asleep in front of Mr. Zifferblatt," he confessed, "if they gave me ether!"

Pink sea monsters, washed up on a shore of lettuce leaves and parsley, arrived, iced, their pungent sauce piercing through the present aroma of the Old Fashioneds' bitters like an arrow: zingo! right to the nose! and to the palate! terrific!

While the waitress was still at hand, Henry, munching a cherry, asked for another round of drinks, then with a wink at the lady, forked the earthly remains of a once-proud crustacean. The whiskey was having a wonderfully balsamic effect; he was glad he'd come. Lou, like any artist in confrontation with the raw stuff of his vocation, fell silent, but for barely audible mumbles of judgment or bliss. The waitress, under-belly apron white, floated by, deposited fresh drinks like a lay of eggs, then flipping her rosy tail, drifted on, starched apron strings waggling in her wake. Others watching her, too. That officer, even while sounding other knees and thighs below the table. One's not enough for him. Never is. What was the mechanism? Maybe those little buggers had eyes, after all: we got that one already, dad — move on! Long Lew apologizing to Fanny McCaffree: I'd like to get married, Fanny, it's a wonderful idea, but what am I gonna do with this? Holding up that old sea serpent that dragged him under every time.

Impotent? not really. But sometimes total power was worse. Message of the Legalists: without law, power lost its shape. That was what kept Casey proud: born into a going system, he judged himself by it, failed to look beyond, look back: who said three strikes made an out? Supposing he just shipped Casey to the minors and to hell with the rules? He could at that. If he wanted to. Could explain it in the Book. It wasn't impotence. Still, it might cause trouble. What trouble? The players… What players? Some kind of limit there, all right, now that he thought about it. He might smash their resistance, but he couldn't help feeling that resistance all the same. Their? mine; it was all the same.