Asymmetry - Lisa Halliday Page 0,29
manager who’d been dragged out of retirement to manage them, went into the dugout one day and said, ‘Can’t anybody here play this game?’ ”
It was still four–four in the bottom of the ninth when he muted a Viagra ad and swiveled brightly to face her. “Darling, in the cooler in the back of the deli here on the corner they have Häagen-Dazs bars. Do you want one?”
“Now?”
“Sure. You’ll be right back. But listen. I want vanilla on the inside, chocolate on the outside, nuts. If they don’t have that I want chocolate on the inside, chocolate on the outside, no nuts. And if they don’t have that I want vanilla on the inside, chocolate on the outside, no nuts. Plus whatever you want darling. My wallet’s right on the table there. Go!”
At the deli they only had raspberry. And in the convenience store one block up they had only chocolate on the inside, chocolate on the outside, nuts. Alice picked one up and stared at it for a faintly agonizing moment—it wasn’t even the right brand—before putting it back again and running the long block over to Amsterdam, where, in the narrow all-sorts shop that sold pornography next to Caramel Creams, she found, in the back, a freezer stocked almost exclusively with vanilla on the inside, chocolate on the outside, nuts.
“Sí!”
The cashier was eating takeout and watching a television stashed under the counter. “What happened?” Alice asked.
“Ortiz struck out.” Fork aloft, he continued watching for a moment before lifting his other hand to take Ezra’s money. When at last he looked up and saw the B on Alice’s hat, he inhaled sharply. “Ah, la enemiga.”
“Where have you been?” Ezra asked her when she got back.
In the twelfth inning, Ortiz tried to steal second but was called out after Jeter, legs spread, sprung vertically into the air to catch a high throw from Posada. He snagged it and, after seeming to hang in space for an impossibly long moment, returned to the ground and tagged Papi on the back.
“My God,” said Ezra, pointing his ice-cream stick at the screen. “For a moment I thought I was watching Nijinsky.”
“Ugh. I can’t stand him. Look how smug he looks.”
“Remember when we used to have sex, Mary-Alice?”
“He was safe!”
“No he wasn’t darling.”
“Yes he was!”
In the thirteenth, Varitek dropped three knuckleballs, letting Yankees advance to second and third. Alice groaned. Another sign went up in the stands: BELIEVE.
“In what?” said Ezra. “The tooth fairy?”
With two outs in the bottom of the fourteenth, Ortiz fouled right, then left, plus two more fouls up and over the backstop, then hit a fair ball that dropped down in centerfield, driving Johnny Damon home.
“Hoooraaaaaaaayy!”
“All right, Choo. That’s it. Time for bed.”
“Uh, Mary-Alice,” he said to her voice mail the following morning, less than an hour after she’d left. “I’m sorry to ask you this, but before you come over here this evening—I assume you are coming over here this evening—would you mind first going to Zabar’s and picking up some applesauce? The chunky kind? I’ll pay you back.” His voice sounded flat and irritable, drained of the previous evening’s garrulousness, and when Alice arrived after an emergency ebook meeting that had run the full length of the afternoon he was holding his back, pacing and grimacing again, the television on mute and an electric heating pad warming the empty seat of his chair. As quietly as she could Alice put the applesauce into the refrigerator, got a tumbler down from the cupboard, and unwound the wax on a new bottle of Knob Creek. CALL MEL RE: WILL read a Post-it note stuck to the counter. A second note next to it read Q-TIPS!!! Even the way this looked in his incontrovertible hand made her feel a fool for ever thinking she could write. When she looked up again he was in his chair, neck stoically erect, the back of his head like a wax copy of itself if not for its infinitesimal pulsing.
She carried her drink to the bed and lay across it. In the flickering silence they watched the pregame graphics as intently as if any moment now their own life expectancies would be posted there. GAME 3. LONGEST 9 INN. GAME IN POSTSEASON HISTORY (4:20). GAME 5: LONGEST GAME IN POSTSEASON HISTORY (5:49). 21 HOURS, 46 MINUTES TOTAL OF 1ST 5 GAMES. 1,864 PITCHES. Alice memorized each lineup, briefly contemplated life in the Dominican Republic, and wondered about dinner. Her instinct, if not innate then informed by