Leon Uris - A God In Ruins

However, when they all sat down for dinner, Quinn’s girlfriends were pleasures. Imagine, this one studying law and that one studying engineering. Brave new world, they call it. Father Scan says even Catholic kids shack up.

Well then, maybe Quinn will find a good girl, one interested in her personal dignity. Holy Mother!

Quinn fungoed fly balls to the outfielders. A potbellied Coach Boy stood with hands on hips, bellowing to his fielders to peg the ball home.

When Quinn changed buckets of balls, he realized he was putting on a tad of a show for the same girl who had been watching practice for three days now.

She wasn’t all that much to look at. She was thin but moved in a manner that said that being lean didn’t cost her too much. She moved it all in concert when she walked. That was good stuff. Cute, about a seven on the female scale. Date? Maybe.

Coach Boy called an end to the outfielders’ drill, and as they jogged toward the dugout and locker room, Boy whistled and waved for the girl to come over.

“Quinn, I want you to meet this young lady, here.”

“I’m Greer Little.”

“Greer writes for the Bison Weekly and is doing an in-depth piece on someone from each of the teams. You’re the baseball interview.” His bow legs disappeared into the dugout.

“All yours,” Quinn said.

They took a front row seat in the stands, and she took down the vitals. Junior year, rancher’s son, general humanities courses, some politics, some lit. He seems a little light on drugs, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll. Close personal friend with the illustrious Professor Maldonado.

Vibes! Quinn thought. I’m getting vibes.

The first thing Quinn noticed was a very light olive skin that seemed too smooth to be skin. She let her clothing work for her, enfolding her little highlights with a drifty material that picked up her salient points. Knockout jewelry, not expensive but explosive. Her body language was speaking but not tauntingly. Aware but not aware.

“I’m going to need at least another two or three sessions,” she said.

“Anything for my country.”

“Men’s locker rooms smell,” she said. “My apartment has two other girls in it who are messier than boys. Library?”

“How about a working dinner?”

“Yes,” she said, “and yes again. The damned football players think you can suck on a beer all night.”

“Let’s go off campus,” Quinn said. “There’s a restaurant a little ways up the valley.”

With a nearby motel handy, Greer thought.

Greer ate more than her size would indicate. And afterward. Three milk shakes. “Let’s see, Daddy’s a state senator. Mind if I say, off the record, he’s a terrible reactionary?”

“He’d be the first to agree with you. He still undresses with his clothing on.”

“Tell me about the orphan business?”

Quinn’s eyes instantly became moist, and he shook his head. “Pass.”

She simply stared as he worked his way through his discomfort. “Greer, I don’t think your readers need an Oliver Twist chapter.”

“All right, then, let’s go off the record,” she answered.

“Why are you doing this?”

“For Christ’s sake, Quinn. I like you. I like you a lot. Coach Boy gave me the pick of the litter. I saw your tush doing all those little first baseman ballet steps and the long stretches. Then you examine the ball and whip it to the third baseman in the same motion. The first baseman’s moves are unique.”

“I leap, too, for overthrown balls. You want me to leap for you?”

“Depends on where you land.”

“The only thing is,” Quinn said, “I’m a nonentity until I know who my parents are. Was I born in a lady’s room? Have I got a sister in Dallas? The people who adopted me were sworn by some kind of Catholic voodoo to silence, and they have suffered from it as much as I have. My dad told me last weekend that a lot of the anger against me was not that I wasn’t his son, but that I could do most things better than he could. Dad’s your basic Brooklyn cop. He’s tough and knows the territory. So, this little squirt here is found under a rock, shoots better, rides better, reads books he’s never heard of, repairs cars, and loves the Mexicans in the valley whom Dan is never quite comfortable with.”

Greer flipped her notepad closed. Quinn looked so smooth and easy on the ball field she’d thought she’d gotten a pudding. Six hours into a relationship and it was void of vulgarity and snappy rejoinders about feminists and bras.

She slurped the bottom of the milk shake as though it was a dying man’s last supper. “One more?”

“Pass.”

“How do you stay so slim?”

“Sex,” she answered.

“Here, you’ve got a mustache,” he said, dabbing her lip with a napkin.

“I want to thank you for the dinner, but I have bad news.

You hit two-seventy last year because you’re loaded with bad habits. I could get you up to three hundred.”

“Excuse me?”

“My pop played double-A ball for Des Moines, and being the son he didn’t have, I have intimate knowledge on everything, including jock straps.”

“You wacko?”

“Yep, but I can raise your batting average. You’ve got me, afraid to say, ‘in more ways than one.””

“Explain.”

“You’re either a batsman or a gorilla. Nine out of ten college players are gorillas. Quinn, no offense to your macho, but I could throw you sliders and split-finger fastballs all day, and you wouldn’t hit one past the pitcher’s mound.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday. See you after noon mass?”

“I don’t go to mass.”

“Neither do I. I think I’m like a Lutheran or something

Scandinavian.”

They loaded up the ball machine and took a dozen bats from the racks. Greer stood at the pitcher’s mound, set the machine on medium speed, and the iron arm began hurling missiles.

Quinn was a right-handed batter who got a piece of most balls and cracked a few that sounded like a hallelujah chorus. After thirty or forty swings she stopped the machine and came to the plate.

“Ski?” she asked.

“Half-ass racer.”

“Golf?”

“Few times.”

“How about tennis?”

“I love it, but I’m a real hacker, a lefty.”

“All right,” she said. “We’ve just thrown a club to a cave man, and he’s going after a lion. Most of his moves are natural. Put a bat in your hand, and most of your moves are what you feel comfortable with. There is one basic movement in tennis, skiing, and baseball. Drive your hip.”

She swung in slow motion, the forward step natural, and that set off the sequence. The hip turn and change of weight must be fluid and part of the whole swing, or everything goes out of synch.

She drilled him as though he had never held a bat. What was astonishing was her reasoning.

“You bat right-handed but play tennis left. Now, I want a back-handed swing, hold the bat with your left hand only. Don’t let your backswing fall too low. Now loft the ball like a backswing, loft it this way, loft it that way.”

Quinn found himself seeing more of the ball than he ever had. His swing had been jerking his eyes and thrusting his bat out a millisecond too late. She came to him and backed up into him. “Here is the part of the movie where the instructor gets fresh,” she said. “Arms around me, get against me as close as you can. Now, let’s go through some swings.”

“I can’t,” Quinn said.

“Why?”

“You’ve given me a hard-on.”

“Well, I do declare, Mr. Quinn Patrick O’Connell.”

They teetered thusly for a moment, and Greer stepped away. “I know I’ll forget this. Don’t line your fingers up on the bat. I want you to move the knuckles of your left hand about an eighth of a turn. All kinds of control falls into place.” She went back to the ball machine.