“Okay, so we need to talk about you now,” Joy said, leaning up to stare at me through the small screen on my phone. “Tell us about your life. How’s the shoulder?”
“Shoulder is good. Arm is good. Team is good,” I tossed out by rote.
“That’s reassuring. Dating anyone of interest?” she prodded none too gently. Kirby rubbed his hands over his face while moaning. She glanced at her husband, then back at me. “Ignore him. He keeps telling me not to bring up personal stuff, but we’re family. Family brings up personal stuff all the time. Ask my parents.” I would not ask her folks because they were just as nosy and amazing as she was. “So, anyone caught your eye? Pretty girl in the stands? Hot guy in the locker room? Oh! Oh, you should so ask Yanni out!”
“He’s my catcher,” I explained for the ten thousandth time. “Also, very straight.”
“Pish, maybe he could be a little bi,” she countered, then began reciting all the women she would love to sleep with if only Kirby weren’t so uptight.
“Honey, I’m not uptight. I’m just not living in the fantasy world where you, me, and Emily Ratajkowski end up getting our freaks on.” I could see the pink in his freckled cheeks through the screen. Kirby was too crazy in love with Joy toever think of sleeping with another woman. The sole love I had in my life now was with the baseball diamond and the team’s masseuse. Big Swede named Ivan, who could work the knots out of marble, had been the only hand on me in ages. Sad, really, but I’d been working like a demon to get back into shape after the debridement surgery on my left shoulder last fall. The Iron Horses had been delighted with my recovery. They would have paid to have a fake arm a la Bucky Barnes built for me to keep a southpaw on the pitching roster.
“It could happen,” she told him, then returned her attention to me. “So, no one exciting. That sucks. We should have you over for dinner and invite Monica again. She and you got along well at the presser for the book.”
Kirby leaped in. “Joy, no, just… no. She’s my editor. I cannot imagine a world where I have to have her commenting on the rare sex scenes in the next book by comparing the man’s stamina to good old Cam ‘The Stamina Man’ Blackburn.”
I laughed out loud at the look of disgust on his face. “I think I hear my tea pot whistling,” I slipped in as they went off on some tangent about horror book sex scenes. There was no kettle on the stove.
“Oh, okay. Seriously, come out to see us. Baltimore isn’t all that far from Harrisburg.”
“I will, I promise. The season is almost over, and the Horses aren’t making the playoffs, so after Greece with Yanni, I’ll be footloose and fancy free until spring training.”
“Cool. We’ll do a Halloween thing then. Maybe a ghoulish meal. Oh, Kirby! We can invite the cute guy who works with Monica. What is his name? Twinky, bright eyes, dark liner. Brings everyone coffee. He loves athletes. He told me that once, when he saw my Iron Horse hoodie.”
“Okay, go make your tea before my wife tries to hook you up with the pizza delivery guy. Talk to you later,” Kirby said with a smile.
“Definitely. Kiss the kids for me.”
The call ended with the sound of Joy’s infectious giggles. I leaned back into the thick cushions of my sofa and listened to the silence of my home. A fantastic home to be sure, overlooking the Susquehanna River among many other historical homes costing tens of millions of dollars. I’d brought in a designer when I’d bought it seven years ago, and she’d done a spectacular job with the old mansion situated on North Front Street. Why I felt I needed a Victorian home with ten bedrooms, four baths, a grand staircase, and stained-glass windows that looked out over the river in one direction and the capital in the other, I have no clue. Perhaps I imagined I would fill the place with kids, but that hadn’t happened. The designer and I dated for a while after the restoration and redecorating had been completed, but the spark had fizzled.
So here I sat with a home big enough to house half the team and not even a goldfish to share it with, which was terribly sad. No wonder Joy was always trying to find me a person to build a future with, as she had with Kirby. Being bisexual should present twice the opportunities to locate Mister or Missus Right, but nope. I was pitching a no-hitter in the game of love.
“Okay, enough.” I pushed to my feet, leaving the massive living room behind for the kitchen, another huge room filled with pretty things placed by a stranger with no real love for the house. Not that I blamed Penny. My agent had said it would be an investment, and I needed those, so I’d bought it. Now I hated it, but not enough to sell it and try to find another place that would sit empty from April to October.
“Tea. Let’s do tea.”
I plugged in the electric kettle, then opened the cupboard to peruse the couple dozen tea tins neatly arranged on shelves by my housekeeper, Mrs. Oliver. Lovely lady, late fifties, from some tiny village in the UK whose name escaped me. It was very long, that village name, and very British—Upper Cricket White Willow on-the-Water at the base of Derbyshire Fields or something like that. I hailed from Long Branch, New Jersey, the birthplace of Bruce Springsteen. And Cam Blackburn, obviously, but the Boss got all the exhibits at the local cultural center, as was fitting. I mean, yeah, he’sThe Boss, and I was just a thirty-five-year-old pitcher looking at the end of his time on the mound in a few years. Maybe sooner if my shoulder couldn’t hold itself together.
“Fuck it.” I tossed the tin of mint tea aside. A run would clear my head and get me ready for the game tonight at seven. Maybe I could stop at B&B Coffee for a pumpkin latte to talk with Bruno. Bruno was the sports king of Harrisburg.
No matter the sport, he knew what was going down, who was coming, who was going, and who sucked. And in proper Pennsylvania sports fan mode, he did not hold back, letting me know if I’d looked like shit on my previous outing. Tying up my running shoes at the front door, I then pulled on an Iron Horses hoodie, grabbed my phone and my keys, and stepped out into a cool fall day. The leaves on the trees were starting to turn. Maybe the hoodie was overkill, but keeping the shoulder area warm was important. Warmth promoted blood flow and reduced the chance of injury. Not that a jog around the block was akin to pitching over a hundred balls over several innings, but still better safe than sorry. I wasn’t ready to hang up my cleats just yet. What would I do with myself if I did? Golf? Probably. Spend more time with the Dauphin County Mental Health Coalition? Sure. Then what? Hang out in Baltimore to watch Kirby write scary books? He'd love it, as would Joy, but I couldn’t live my life through them.
I needed something or someone in my life, but the searching was tedious. So, I would continue to devote my life to the Iron Horses, spend my afternoons and nights on the mound at HP&L Field, and shop for different types of tea online.
“Ugh, okay, enough. Pumpkin latte here I come!” I took a moment to stretch, set the security alarm, and headed out. The steadythumpof sneakers on the sidewalk soon became a rhythm I knew well. As I ran, I would periodically roll my arm in a circle, nod at people waving at me, or stop to pet a dog. Being a name here in Harrisburg was nice. Take me out of the state capital, and most people wouldn’t know my face. I was no Cy Young, Tom Seaver, or my idol growing up, Steve Carlton.
Kirby’s dad, aka my Uncle Roy before he turned into a fucking shithead when Kirby was ill, would take us to the games in Philly as often as he could afford, and I recalled each one clearly. Carlton had long retired by the time I was going to games, but I could pull up games online. I could still hear that dial-up clatter as Kirby and I waited, squished into the same old office chair, to dive into whatever we could find about baseball. I dreamt of being as good as Lefty, as Carlton was nicknamed, and had even wheedled a jersey with 32 on it in the Philadelphia colors of red and white. I wore that shirt to threads, then wept when Aunt Iris, Roy’s wife, also now passed away, had thrown it in the rag bin out in the garage. Maybe I’d not reached Carlton’s fame, but I’d done well enough to buy a dumb mansion I rattled around in like a ghost from a Dickens novel.
The run ended at the doors of the B&B. The rich aroma of coffee and baked goods enveloped me in a warm hug. The place was packed, filled with office workers hurrying to grab a coffee and one of Bonnie’s freshly baked muffins. Bruno spied me from behind the counter. I nodded. He nodded back. He knew my order this time of year: a pumpkin latte, a ginger pear muffin, and a table in the corner. One emptied as soon as I entered,so I made my way over to it, stopping to chat with an old gent wearing a Railers jacket topped with an Iron Horses ballcap. I slipped into the two-seater table after a handshake before I pulled out my phone to skim through social media while waiting for my order. Nothing of note was happening in the world of influencers aside from a small article about a singer becoming engaged to a football star.
“Hey there, Cam, got your treats,” Bruno said as he placed my order in front of me, then laid the daily newspaper beside my muffin. The man knew me well.
“Can you sit for a minute?” I nudged the spare chair toward the large man in the fussy yellow apron with the big B’s on the front. He stroked his whiskery chin as he scanned the coffee shop.
“For a few,” he said with a wink, knowing his wife would soon be looking for him when the muffin orders backed up.
“So what’s up in the world of sports?” I asked with a grin. He loved this.
“Yeah, well, big day on the ice in the sports section.” He tapped the paper as he lowered his girth into the seat. Bruno had been a football player in his college days, but a bad back had ended his aspirations to go pro. So, he settled down, married his college sweetheart, and opened a little coffee shop. That was twenty years ago, and the shop, as well as his marriage, was still cooking. “You know about this story?”
