Chapter 57
Night Twenty-Four
Zeke
Timothy was drunk and sprawled on the couch in Zeke’s condo.
Zeke wanted to nudge him, tell him to go back to his suite at the Four Seasons, but he was feeling gregarious and didn’t want to kill the vibe.
For the first time since his injury, he’d had an excellent day of training.
He threw a fastball that was almost on par with last season; he showed laser-like placement; he got through what would have been a full batting rotation without surrendering much velocity or control.
Timothy had wanted to celebrate, and Zeke figured why the fuck not.
His arm was throbbing, on its way to a bruising soreness tomorrow, despite an ice bath, despite a massage, but in the moment, on the mound at the spring training facility, it had felt worth it.
He threw and he threw and he threw, and he didn’t have to think about Sybil or Betty or Julian, and he resolved that this really was his purpose in life.
He’d been given a once-in-a-generation arm, and who was he to be selfish and greedy and squander it?
“I knew we’d get you back,” Timothy slurred. “I knew we just had to bring you down here, get you focused, train the shit out of you. Remove all the distractions.”
Timothy always shot his mouth off when he was drinking, but still, Zeke bristled.
“I’m not a rescue dog who needs training,” Zeke said. He thought of Pluto and the dog’s rancid breath that he had grown to love. Was it possible he’d just never speak with Sybil again? Could he live with that in pursuit of a World Series?
“Sometimes everyone is a rescue dog who needs a little training,” Timothy said.
“I wasn’t distracted either.” Zeke rose, found the electrolyte drink in his fridge, swigged from the bottle. His nutritionist had banned alcohol, so forced sobriety with his intoxicated agent was the only option.
Now Timothy snapped open his eyes.
“I saw you playing detective with that woman. I watched that documentary on the Zodiac killer on HBO, you know; I saw what you guys were doing.”
“We weren’t playing detective,” Zeke sighed. “And she’s not that woman, she’s a friend of mine.” He paused. “And Jesus Christ, we were not trying to solve, like, the Zodiac killer.”
Timothy raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “I knew it was the right thing to bring you down here. This is why you pay me,” he said. “You have to trust me. Ten days in Arizona and you’re already seventy-five percent there.”
Timothy closed his eyes and started humming.
Zeke suddenly felt a wave of nausea, that he was trapped in his cookie-cutter condo with this man whom he paid 10 percent of his earnings, and for what?
He didn’t have Zeke’s talent. He didn’t have Zeke’s drive.
He didn’t have to do the physical therapy, the grueling workouts, the regimented diet, the emotional isolation that Zeke imposed upon himself so he could be the best best best. He wanted to tell Timothy to shut the fuck up with his humming, to get the fuck up and get out.
“Her name is Sybil,” Zeke said, and Timothy fluttered his eyes open, looked confused, then settled.
“Okay, that’s cool.”
“And the other girl you met, her name is Betty.”
“The more the merrier.” Timothy shrugged. “As long as they’re consenting adults. Don’t make me pull in legal.”
“Fuck you, Timothy. They’re my friends.”
Timothy eased his way into sitting, wobbled a bit. “All right, all right, I’m glad you have friends, Zeke. Everyone always says you need to get laid, but in this case, I’ll take the friendship.”
“No one says I need to get laid.”
“No,” Timothy said, and reached for an open beer bottle on the coffee table. “They do. I just keep all that shit away from you because your job is to focus.”
“My job is playing a sport that I happened to be good at as a kid.”
“That makes you lucky,” Timothy said. He drained the beer. Stood, wobbled a little more. “I think you’ve forgotten in all of this that this makes you exceptionally lucky.” He found his keys by the front door. Zeke knew he should stop him from driving back to the hotel.
“I’m not lucky anymore,” he said to his agent’s back. “I’ve earned it.”
“That is true,” Timothy said, a hand on the doorframe. “You’ve earned everything. And you can be pissed at me for forcing you down here, for not calling you out five months ago when we both know you were fast enough to dodge that hit.”
Zeke’s chest rose and fell. There it was, someone said it. Someone else knew his secret too.
Timothy turned toward him. “I’m the only one here, Zeke.
Those girls, women, whatever. They’re not here.
Your family, they’re not here. Your teammates?
As I said, they think you need to get laid, then maybe you’ll be more fun.
I’m down here in Arizona for you. Be glad you have someone in your corner, someone who will burn everything down in service to you. ”
Zeke sat with that long after he left. Not the getting-laid part and not the part about his family, because Lani probably would have punctured Timothy’s tires if she heard him speak that way to Zeke.
But about how far someone would go to protect the person they loved.
He’d thought he could come to Arizona and silo himself off from his life, from Sybil and Betty and the loss of Julian.
What he had missed is that his attempted laser focus had partially rendered him impotent.
Timothy hadn’t been wrong about everything.
A puzzle piece slid into its notch, and he jumped off the couch. He found his phone charging in the bathroom.
He went to her voice mail.
“Annabeth, uh, hey, it’s me, Zeke Rodriguez. The pitcher? Anyway, could you call me back when you have a second? I have some questions about Matthew.”