So We Can Glow - Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith Page 0,40

like his girlfriend, so maybe he doesn’t; maybe he’s one of those guys who only thinks girls who look like his girlfriend are pretty. His girlfriend has straight hair and mine is curly. So curly I can put pens in it and forget they’re even there until I wonder to myself where did I put that dang pen and start feeling around my head for it.

I keep double-checking my pocket to make sure the little piece of paper is in there and it is. It’s probably nothing, but I want it, so I keep it. I’ve taken small things before. Once I took a tube of his Chapstick. Another time, a bottle cap. Things he would think he’d accidentally thrown away or would have eventually thrown away on purpose. I have the tube of Chapstick and I put it on every night before bed. And he’s fine. He must’ve gotten a new one because his lips have never looked chapped, not even once. Something else Felix gave me that I keep is the one time he told me get home safe and I wasn’t sure if he meant it as a baseball pun, but I think about it every time I leave work. I’m extra-careful because Felix told me get home safe once. And I think about it whenever I’m watching him play baseball and he’s up at bat or stealing second or running from third to home on a wild pitch or an outfielder’s error. Get home safe, Felix Phoenix!

I cry every time he gets a home run; he’s hit forty-seven home runs so far this season. I’ve cried forty-seven times. The season is almost over. I keep checking my pocket for the piece of paper and wow I’m hoping it’s something good because my back and arms are so sore from cleaning, and I can feel that hot-hot bathwater already. He didn’t get a home run tonight so I won’t get off. During the regular season I only get off on the days he hits home runs. On the days he hits a home run during playoffs, I do it twice. No getting off tonight, just the piece of paper with my wine and my bath and one cigarette too. On the regular season nights Felix doesn’t hit a home run, I allow myself to have one pink Nat Sherman cigarette. I like to smoke that cigarette in the bathtub with my wine and I’m usually listening to some beautiful woman who has already gone to the great beyond gut-sing about how much she loved someone or how lonely she is. Like Bessie Smith or Big Mama Thornton or Koko Taylor or Billie Holiday. I’ve already decided on Billie Holiday for tonight, for the piece of paper. I’ll light my candles. I love the tiny jump of a tealight! Obsessing over Felix Phoenix is my engine, my fireplace. And baseball is leaving us in October. It’ll be getting cold soon and I’ll curl up in front of that obsession fireplace and feel it warm on my face, the glow.

There was nothing else new in Felix’s locker. He’d gone home already. A little girl had given him a fluffy brown teddy bear a year ago and some months later, that little girl died of cancer. Felix kept the brown teddy bear in his locker, and every night I’d take it out and smell its head and put it back exactly how I’d found it. The bear smelled like the expensive wood of the locker. I hang Felix’s clean white uniform on the front of his locker with the back of it facing out. PHOENIX in shimmery gold. And I can’t wait to get home, but I remember get home safe, so I drive the speed limit and don’t go through any yellows. I stop completely at the stop signs in my neighborhood.

* * *

When I get naked at home, I eyeball that crumpled piece of paper on the bathroom counter and light the candles, turn off the lights. I go to the kitchen to get the bottle of red, the glass, my pack of cigarettes, and a lighter. I take my time getting in the water because it’s so hot. I have the paper in one hand and use the other hand to pour myself a glass of wine. I take a big gulp because I want to feel it before I read the piece of paper. I take another big gulp and put the glass down. Billie Holiday