“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 somethingwild. Well, wild for aprofessional 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, IloveParis, 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 couldtouch 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 mouthedThank youto Sybil, and she smiled.
“Uh, oh shoot,” a woman’s voice said. “I didn’t expect you to pick up.”
