Chapter 46
Night Eighteen
Zeke
Zeke convinced Sybil that they needed to get out of the apartment.
It was almost midnight! It was New Year’s Eve!
Also, he was drunk, and he was pretty sure that she was halfway there, too, and if they sat next to each other at the breakfast nook, their thighs touching, their heads angled together as they organized the postcards and looked for a pattern to predict where Levi could be now, he wasn’t going to be able to stop himself from kissing her.
And kissing her was just so, so inappropriate right now.
They were trying to track down their friend who was in serious trouble!
Technically, ostensibly, they should also still be mourning their other friend who may have been in even deeper trouble.
And here he was, trying not to stare at her pink lips, trying not to think about if he’d be able to taste the champagne on her tongue when he’d had just as much, more actually, champagne.
It was blisteringly cold outside. The kind of New York City night where your skin cried out when the wind kicked up.
He was in a goose-down parka, but his elbow ached nonetheless, like he was now one of those people whose joints hurt when a storm blew in.
His progress had been steady and not even all that slow, even though to him, it was a frustrating drip of molasses.
He knew he could do better, be better, but that required sleep.
But his trainer, after chastising him for taking Christmas off, was pleased; Timothy was pleased; the front office was pleased.
The Upper West Side was buzzing despite the windchill.
They walked uptown, as if they were still headed to visit Betty at the diner.
Sybil had called and called until she finally reached the owner a few days back, who said Betty simply didn’t show up one day, and when he tried to contact her, she had either blocked his number or she was ignoring him.
“If you track her down,” he said, “I still have a paycheck for her. She was a fucking great waitress, and she is always welcome back.”
“He must have wanted to sleep with her,” Sybil had concluded. “Because she was a terrible waitress.”
Zeke wondered how Betty was getting by without a job, if the parachute of living with him was part of her plan, a way to stow more money for when she had to leave.
After Sybil hung up, he went into Betty’s room and looked through the drawers again, double-checked the bathroom vanity.
Finally, he raised the mattress—and at this, his pitching arm did protest—and found a wad of cash.
She left so quickly that she didn’t even bring it with her.
Then he remembered that key that Sybil had found a few weeks back.
He’d noticed she’d returned it the next day, left it on the kitchen counter.
It must have been Betty’s because it was gone by that night when Betty left for her shift. The last night he’d seen her.
Zeke didn’t want to walk to the diner. It was New Year’s Eve; he wanted to do something wild.
Well, wild for a professional athlete who was known for his intense discipline.
So not particularly wild. He looked at Sybil, who was wrapped in a cashmere scarf, a fuzzy hat, bulky mittens.
She was tucking her chin into the neck of her coat to stave off the chill.
God, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to press her up against a streetlamp, make out with her against the side of a brick-walled building.
He grabbed her elbow with his gloved hand.
“Should we just…let’s take a cab to the airport and get on a flight.”
She stopped. “What?”
“Let’s go to Paris. Or London or I don’t know…anywhere but here.”
Her eyes were watering from the cold, and she wiped her face with the back of a mitten, smudging her makeup. He wanted to run his tongue over it. Jesus Christ.
“We can’t just…”
“Why not?”
“Well for one, Pluto will poop all over your apartment.”
“We’ll bring Pluto.”
“We’ll bring Pluto to Paris?” She furrowed her brow, and he could just make out the dart of her eyebrows underneath the cuff of her poofy hat.
“Also, and don’t get me wrong, I love Paris, but what about Betty?
What about Julian? And…” She reached out and held his arm.
“Your recovery. You can’t just go to Paris. ”
He tilted his head back and stared up at the sky.
You couldn’t see any stars in Manhattan.
It was so odd, to think that he used to stare up at the same sky in his backyard in Oklahoma, when he was so spent after throwing and throwing and throwing after dinner until his fatigue was so deep that he just had to flatten himself on the ground.
The universe was within reach in his backyard in Oklahoma.
He’d raise his hand as if he could touch the stars.
There was the Big Dipper, there was Orion’s Belt. Everything felt within his grasp.
“We could walk through the park?” she suggested.
“I mean, it’s not Paris.”
“You’re drunk.” She laughed. He wanted to bottle up the sound and keep it on tap for whenever he needed it.
“I think you are too,” he replied, but looped his arm into hers, reveling in their intimacy, and they pointed themselves east.
They walked for a block in silence behind throngs of other New Yorkers out to celebrate.
No one recognized him thanks to the layers of winter gear, a glimpse into normalcy if he hadn’t been born with a miracle of an arm.
He’d probably still be in Oklahoma like Lani.
He’d probably be a high school coach or an accountant or run a landscaping company.
He probably would sleep just fine at night.
He would never have met Sybil, Betty, Julian.
The duality of this: How much he wanted to lean into the normalcy, how much he couldn’t turn off his drive to be back at the top of his game, was splitting him in half. A wishbone being pulled at both ends.
“It’s weird,” she said, “that there were four of us. And now we’re the only two left.”
“Betty’s still out there though,” he said.
“It makes me sad to think she’s alone.”
“Maybe she’s with Levi,” he replied. “Maybe we were just a stop along the way.”
“That makes me sad too.”
“I know,” he said, because he did.
Someone’s phone was vibrating, and it took Zeke four buzzes to realize it was his. His phone was stuffed in the inside pocket of his parka, so he tugged a glove off his hand, unzipped and regretted it as the frigidity permeated every pore.
“Fuck, argh,” he said, grabbing his phone. Sybil took off her own mitten and hurriedly zipped him back up.
“Hello?” He mouthed Thank you to Sybil, and she smiled.
“Uh, oh shoot,” a woman’s voice said. “I didn’t expect you to pick up.”
“Betty?”
Sybil’s eyes flared, and she pressed herself against him and stood on her tiptoes so she could hear too. Zeke wrapped his free arm around her to pull her closer.
“No, sorry,” the woman said. “I’m sorry, is this Zeke Rodriguez?”
Zeke shot a look down at Sybil, who glanced back at him indicating she didn’t have a clue either.
“Yes, this is Zeke.”
“Right, okay, I apologize, I thought I was going to go to voice mail. It’s New Year’s Eve,” she said.
“Sorry, I’m a little off my game. But this is Annabeth Collins, from The Macon Telegraph?
Again, I’m so sorry, I honestly was just prepared to leave you a message. I didn’t mean to bother you tonight.”
Now he and Sybil were practically levitating together. She was bouncing on the balls of her feet; he was squeezing her arm.
“No, no, Annabeth, amazing! There’s no better time.”
“I just got back from vacation,” she said. “And I got your email. And…wait, is this really Zeke Rodriguez?”
Zeke winked at Sybil as if to say, I told you this would work. He’d forgotten that just a few minutes ago, he was moored in ambivalence over his fame.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s me. Although there are other Zeke Rodriguezes, just to be clear.”
“My dad is a huge Mets fan,” she said. “God, sorry to be so unprofessional, I just had to at least say that.”
“Thank your dad,” he said.
“He’s going to freak.” Then she cleared her throat and pivoted.
“Anyway, sorry, okay, with that out of the way, after I got your email, I went back through my notes, wanted to see if I had anything that could help you. Are you just curious about what happened? I heard movie producers might be interested.”
“Oh,” Zeke said. “Well, no, actually, I am friends with Betty.”
“Betty?”
Elizabeth, Sybil mouthed. They were standing outside a twenty-four-hour Duane Reade, and she nudged her head toward the entrance. Her nose was ruby red, and her cheeks even redder. The automatic door whooshed open, and the rush of heat felt something like heaven.
“Elizabeth,” he corrected.
“Oh, the youngest.” Annabeth paused. “I didn’t realize she had turned up somewhere.”
“Well, actually, she’s gone,” he said. “And we’re trying to figure out why. And also if she’s okay.”
There was a long gap on the other end of the line, and Zeke wondered if she’d hung up on him.
Finally, he heard her exhale.
“Listen, there are some rumors,” she said. “They’re unsubstantiated, and I could never print them, but you know they never officially found Pastor Jones either.”
“Presumed dead, I thought?”
“Presumed,” she said, and let it hang there. Then another long sigh. “Look, I’d rather not get into all of this at eleven thirty p.m. on New Year’s Eve when I’m jet-lagged and maybe being catfished by a man who claims he is Zeke Rodriguez.”
“I really am,” he said. “I can send you a selfie?
“Actually…look, okay, the rumors were that Jones was up to his neck with tax evasion and money laundering—his treasurer died a few years prior—and a variety of nefarious stuff—”
“Right, we’ve seen the FBI files,” Zeke said. He and Sybil had wandered into the candy aisle, which felt like a sign from Julian.
“Oh wow, okay, you may know more than I do then,” she said.
“I don’t know, but it was always my theory that maybe he was the one who set the fire, his way to leave it all behind.
” She hesitated again. “Look, this is going to sound nuts, I know, and I swear to god it’s not just to get your autograph for my dad, but…
would you want to come down here and see everything for yourself? ”