Betty had gotten sloppy in New York, falling a little bit in love with the Insomniacs, falling a little bit in like with Caleb. Shooting that stupid commercial. Even if it had been local. Even if it had been for five thousand dollars. Now, someone could turn on their television, see her face and easily trace her back to New York. To the casting agency. Who knows what from there. She wasn’t sure how Julian was involved, how he’d gotten wrapped up in her mess, but she knew in her bones that it wasn’t a coincidence.
Betty showered at the hostel, the water lukewarm, and found a diner down the block. She hadn’t treated herself to a warm meal in days, partially to conserve money, partially because she thought she had seen someone with a shadowy resemblance to her dad in St. Louis, and even though she knew it was her brain again, playing a trick, she raced back to her motel, grabbed her bag and hoofed it to the bus station. Glancing over her shoulder the entire time.
She forked the eggs, marginally better than the ones from her former place of employment. She sat at a booth with an expansive window by the street, so she could see all the passersby, and thought about St. Louis again. It couldn’t have been him. Itwasn’thim. She snapped a piece of bacon between her teeth. But the seed of doubt had rooted itself.
It was untenable, living like this forever. She could alter her hair color, give herself a new nickname, switch jobs, change cities. But it wasn’ttenableto do this forever. She was weary in a way that she felt on a cellular level. Her purple welts beneath her eyes were puffy and protruding; her skin was sallow, herbrain misfiring on occasion, which could have been the leftover trauma, but could have also been that your body can sustain a level of fear for only so long before it collapses.
She checked her phone again. She knew Levi wasn’t going to call her back on this line because he was too disciplined. But she had to check anyway. Her fingers floated over Caleb’s number, then Sybil’s, then Zeke’s. But she worried they were angry with her, at how she had left, and more critically, she worried that reaching out to any of them could draw her into more of a trap, as with Julian. She’d ignored or deleted all of their initial texts and calls, and eventually, they stopped calling. She told herself this was for the best, for their own sake, but she wanted to just this once think abouthersake. She couldn’t be an island forever.
She left a twenty-dollar bill on her table, a luxury she couldn’t necessarily afford, but she’d once been a diner waitress too. Now she was an anonymous traveler moving through the city, like anyone else.
But she wasn’t like anyone else.
She was her father’s daughter. Her brother’s sister.
Elizabeth Jones was ready to live life on her own terms, tired of being that anonymous traveler wafting through cities, through life, always looking behind her. She was ready to end things so that she could start looking forward, shoulders straight, face toward the sun.
57
Night Twenty-Four
Zeke
January 15th
Timothy was drunkand 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 wasalmoston 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 reallywashis 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 wejust 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 notthat 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 thebest bestbest. 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.”
