A yankee red sox wedding, p.6
A Yankee Red Sox Wedding, page 6
“Of course,” Chris stared through her. Do I dare? “What are yours?”
“Well…I work in an emergency room so…oh, I’m afraid I’m not very good at self-analysis.”
“So, you help others in crisis? For a living. Everyday of your life.”
“Well…yes.”
“What about your own?”
“My own what?” Chris waited resolutely as Angela grew uneasy. “Did I say I was in crisis?” she calmly snapped. “What do you know about crisis? Besides making money off it. Now who’s being rude.”
“You’re right, that was rude.” Chris was sure she’d walk out on him now, and he was right. She turned and took a step toward the living room. He had to say something, anything, fast. “I’m glad I met you tonight. I’ll be honest, it’s been hard meeting people up here. Being from the Bronx doesn’t exactly help. Maybe I try too hard, maybe I’m insecure. Anyway, I’m sorry for offending you. I didn’t mean to.”
She stopped in her tracks but didn’t turn around, splashing the last of her punch around in neat little circles. “Things’ll get better for you, believe me. A lot of people go through that when they get here. I’m sure in time you’ll meet the right person. And there are plenty of Yankee fans up here by-the-way,” she injected with contempt, finally turning around. “And yes, you do try too hard. And I hope you reconcile with your father, if that’s what you want.”
“It doesn’t matter at this point.”
Angela was taken aback by this response. “Well, I know it must be difficult moving on. I mean…I’ve never quite done the same, but I would imagine it’s tough settling into a new city and leaving your family behind. Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay.”
Angela nervously flung her long, silky hair aside. “I, uh, I guess I can relate to some of the things you’ve said. I mean, we all go through our own thing. We all have goals, and we all get frustrated in the pursuit of our goals when we feel setback.” She tried changing the subject, but it was really the same. “Yeah, working in an ER is extremely stressful. I’m not going to lie to you. It doesn’t help when you witness unspeakable things and feel trapped in that environment by your own personal predicament.”
“Trapped?”
“Yes. Trapped. Sometimes I feel like my life has been one long series of mistakes and has left me where I am because of my choices. I wish I’d chosen another path. I mean…all my girlfriends are married and starting families and here I am living in my parent’s basement paying off grad school loans. I wish I’d gone away to school. I wish I had left Bos—”
“You can start over again Angela. It’s not that bad.”
They smirked kindly at each other, and themselves.
“20! -19! -18!—” rang the snuggling crowd off the ivy clad terrace overlooking the rowdy square. Noisemakers honked as they downed champagne, bobbing frenetically on heels, keeping warm in the excitement while the jeering echoed throughout the jubilant court. Babz, hard to miss clanking around all night in her tight red skirt and stilettos, was now officially missing.
“Well, shall we head outside with the rest?”
“Why not.”
They wandered the fancy, disheveled living room toward the terrace, resurrecting their horseplay.
“Hey, that is some fantasy. And I thought I was kinky cause I still sleep in a pinstriped bed set with matching pillow and comforter.” Lodging thumb in waistband, he stretched his khakis, revealing his blue and white pinstriped Yankee boxers.
“I…I get it, really I do,” she frowned in disgust, using her palm as a stop sign, visibly nauseous. He smiled warmly; she read his mind. “This could never work,” she said from left field, peering bravely into his cocky eyes. “I could never date a Yankee fan, not in a thousand more years.”
“I know. I could never bring a girl with those earrings home to my mother anyway.”
“I understand. Nuf Ced.”
“10! -9!—”
They reached the boisterous terrace when he extended his palm. “Well, happy New Year.”
She stayed back, touching it cautiously. “Yeah, happy New Year.”
“5! -4!—”
“Maybe you’ll win a world series this millennium.”
“Ha ha. Starting right now, we’re all the same.”
He didn’t know what she meant by that, but it felt like a good one to end on so he didn’t bother turning. Opening the French doors wide, the gusty silk curtains blew wildly about. He stood at the entrance, facing the night.
“2! -1!—”
Screams of newfound joy, sighs of melancholy near and far, blow horns and blowhards, canned confetti and canned hugs, waves of solace and tears of contrition resonated throughout the delirious white sky. A thousand years had expired, a new thousand had begun. Colder than the cruel winter numbing their faces was the irrational outbreak of invented brotherhood as strangers on the terrace exchanged forged embraces. Far more menacing than the angry dissonance of piercing horns, the new ice age had already conquered man’s reason. As the Square’s bells tolled and the grandfather clock above chimed, Christopher turned to glimpse the Boston beauty one last time, but she was gone.
7
Swooning cattle grazed in their engraved stools at bar’s far end, tuning sluggishly into the Outback Bowl. Kenny took off his shrunken, booze stained Boston College baseball cap and yawned viciously, exposing his gray Red Sox sweatshirt as Chris counted seven silver fillings in his gaping mouth. They nursed their New Year’s Day hangovers at the Casket Flogger on Lansdowne. The Flogger—by default a Fenway Irish pub with a red and black facade featuring a derby donning, curly-gray mustachioed man whipping his friend’s casket as it enters church doors—doubled nicely as a trusty baseball haunt.
Today marked the beginning of a new millennium. Fortunately for Chris, Kenny’s hangover was worse than his, so he couldn’t possibly muster the brain energy to bore him again with one of his Kelly Klassics: “Some people were born to love, some born to live; I…am one of the laddah.” They’d been there three hours, however, and Kenny was already pretty wasted, so they’d found themselves cornered in yet another of their brash, platonic rants.
“What good is freedom in life if you have no one to share it with?”
“No, no rhetorical questions big guy.”
“It’s only rhetorical if you assume loneliness can buy you happiness.”
“Ah, loneliness is a state of mind my friend,” Kenny topped his subordinate.
“Loneliness is a predicament,” Chris rebutted. “State of mind is a symptom.”
“Thanks doc. Symptom of what?” Kenny derided, rolling his eyes adolescently like, I have to listen to this twenty-something crap.
“The longing not to be free, but to be free of something.”
“What something?” he ridiculed nervously.
“Something you can’t shake.”
Choosing Boston College on a baseball scholarship, Kenny, a Charlestown product, was the Eagle’s starting second baseman. Adept hands and a quick left-handed bat, a .363 batting average and twenty-two stolen bases his senior year sent him off in the nineteenth round—Detroit Tigers, in the 1983 major league baseball draft. Kenny got laid a ton freshman year, having his pick at each keggar, until word spread like syphilis amongst the Jesuit B.C.’s girls that he was an emotional slump and baseball braggart. He went inexplicably cold the next year—sophomore jinx. Struggling through those bad underwear years, ‘Underwear limbo’—too old to depend on those same parents you crave liberation from, too indisposed to buy a pair yourself. His teammates busted his balls, calling him “Charbonneau.” One clown even hounded him with “Oil Can.” Baseball stardom, Underwear Limbo, easy sex, and uninvited celibacy alike, he wished he had those days back. To stop competing is to stop dreaming, and life isn’t worth living without dreaming. Where the fiery contest of sport ends, the essential game of life begins.
“Ah yes ‘take a stab at romance,’” Kenny paraphrased from Springsteen’s Jungleland, howling from the CD player just feet behind them. He snatched an idle butter knife off a cheese plate. “Find the right girl and ‘take a stab at romance’ ahah!” he staged a self-stabbing, drawing Seany’s concern at the end of the bar. Kenny didn’t want to “start over” the way billions of defeatist divorcees do. Starting over meant going back and doing the whole fucking thing over again, and a new beginning shouldn’t mean revisiting old pain. Starting over meant celebrating unadulterated liberation from life’s humdrum hardships—relishing in his new, low-maintenance contract. Harboring deep seeded anger at his ex and her family, women in general, and the common idiotic presumption that romantic love is real and ever present, he loved venting at his protégé after a few. Just another puke of a Yankee fan, he was Kenny’s puke of a Yankee fan, and he now considered Chris the best drinking buddy he’d ever had. They went to a dozen games at Fenway that first season—all Flint paid—downing a dozen beers each time. They even road-tripped to the Bronx for one; Chris never even mentioned it to his folks. “What’s a matter, don’t want them to think you turned gay up there,” Kenny pried, painfully downplaying Chris’ own demons stemming from his family problems. He loved the Bronx, but got sick from too many pre-game shots of Jägermeister at Stan’s, vomiting violently from the bleachers into Monument Park, where Chris had dragged him just to rub it all in.
“Seany, two shots of Johnny,” Kenny ordered, “and put the B.C. game on this one, will ya. It’s the Aloha Bowl. It should be on now.”
“Blue,” Chris specified.
“Way to start the year,” Seany obliged.
“Yeah, by soaking my pension. Red here Seany. And a couple of pints of Bass. I’m switching over, New Year’s resolution.” Kenny’s head slumped against his palm, he was now visibly drunk, all the while nursing a hangover. From the moment he’d woken, Chris had been looking forward to a laidback, thoughtful discussion with his boss—that somber day-after peace and quiet while the rest of the world slept—but only to discuss Angela and test his excitement over meeting her just precious hours earlier. Now, he wasn’t up for this.
“So, who was that girl you were with last night?” Kenny asked looking away, brandishing an aspirin bottle from his sport jacket’s interior, jiggling three or four tablets into his hand.
“Her name’s Angela. She’s friends with the one you know.”
“Who?”
“Man, you were ripped boss. The one in the short, tight red skirt. It looked like a Sox wrist band.”
“Oh Babz. Ole big mouth. She went to B.C. ‘Blabz’ we called her.”
“She ran off somewhere on Angela. Then, Angela left at midnight, alone, I think.”
“I was talking to Babz in the kitchen before you got there. She hooked up with Charlie later. They were getting pretty cozy on my terrace, then they disappeared. She kept saying ‘eh keep me warm, eh keep me warm.’ Shoving her nipples in his face. Man, you could kick a field goal between them things. I think he was getting a Lewinsky in my bedroom at midnight.”
“Who’s Charlie?”
“He’s a B.C. guy. We played ball together. Known him forever.”
“Did Babz leave with him?”
“I doubt it.”
“Who’d she leave with?”
Kenny was confused by Chris’ line of questioning about his guests and was getting annoyed. “Not me. Who cares? I think Howard drove her home. Why, you want her? Dude, I remember her from B.C. All the guys remember her. My boy even titty-banged her once or twice. She’s the reason they call it Chest Nut Hill. Pre-Med she was.”
“So, she left with Howard, not Angela?”
“I don’t know big guy, I’m not that good a host.” He shook his head in both amusement and disgust. “Man, I was wasted.” He lifted his pint when Arizona State’s tailback rattled off a forty-two-yard run. “Aw shit! Well, here’s to Chestnut Hill anyway.” He popped his aspirin and threw back his shot, tapping his glass as he sang the ole fight song: “Oh-Charlie titty-titty bang bang, titty-titty bang bang we love you. One boob, two boobs, three boobs four, there goes Charlie out the door!”
Chris looked at his drunken friend with concern while Seany, whistling softly, glanced down the bar again. “Happy New Year,” he said somberly, throwing back his Blue Label.
Kenny licked his sweetened lips thoughtfully. “So,” he stared up at the television, “you like her friend?”
“Who, Angela?”
“No, Charlie.” Kenny waited for an answer, jiggling out another aspirin. Kenny didn’t play anyone’s game, and let them know it any way he felt fit.
“Me? Uh—”
“Forget about it.”
“Why?”
Kenny sucked the unsettled head atop his Bass. “She’s no good for you.”
“How do you know? You don’t even know her.”
“I know Babz.”
“No, you know yourself Kenny. You know your own experiences. Don’t speak for others.”
“Babes,” he snorted, “they’re all alike.” Boston College recovered an Arizona State fumble. “Yeah baby!”
Chris sipped his Sam Adams. ‘They’re all alike.’ Were they? Maybe Kenny is right. Maybe Angela was just putting on some act Chris couldn’t comprehend. Maybe all those things she said were just casual conversation: living at home, wishing she’d gone away, her stressful job. Maybe she had a boyfriend. Maybe she didn’t and wasn’t looking for anyone. Maybe she was just teasing him. Maybe she really doesn’t hate all Yankee fans. No, she definitely hates all Yankee fans.
Both vegging, they watched football and drank beer for well over an hour without saying a word—an unusual way for two ambitious, hard drinking lawyers to start the year. They remained silent during half-time, sipping lagers; Kenny sneaking in another Red Label as a band of toy soldiers marched militantly center gridiron, blowing into gleaming brass instruments, filing into formation around Hawaiian belly dancers quaking talented navels while forming ‘ALOHA’.
“Not her.”
“Huh?” Kenny’s flushed face awoke. He had no idea what Chris was now talking about.
“Angela.”
“You’re serious aren’t you big guy?”
“Was Munson better than Fisk?”
“Hm,” Kenny relaxed, then chugged half a pint. “Oh, loyahs in love!” he enlivened gaily, like a medieval maiden tossing flowers to the wind.
B.C.’s tailback took an end around for an explosive seventeen-yard pickup. “Yaaaaaah! Seany two more shots of Walker, Red.”
“Blue here,” Chris corrected. “There’s something about her. She’s different from other girls.”
“They’re all alike big guy. Women are so god-damn-selfish-now-a-days,” Kenny banged his empty shot glass to each spoken word. “They care more about their careers than their babies. What does that say about them?” He put his arm around Chris. Massaging his shoulder blade, he reiterated softly in an undertone. “What does that say big guy?” He sloshed an ocean of warm stout about his bulging reddened cheeks. “Then, there’s the other kind,” he continued, “She either wants your money, your Mercedes, or your manhood. Cash, cars, and cack!” He banged his empty shot glass impatiently three times hard.
“Easy Kenny,” Chris eased.
“No easy!” Kenny slurred.
“We get the picture,” a stranger weighed in.
“Cack!” He banged the shot glass so hard he chipped its base.
“Calm down,” Chris said.
Kenny leaned forward and scoped the bar, not knowing which patron had popped off. “I was talkin’ to him not you.” He focused again on Chris. “You’re the one that’s gotta learn, not me. I got my values straight. Their values are all screwed up,” he said, pointing a finger out there. “It’s not like the old days. Women aren’t women anymore. They’re guys without cacks. And it’s sad because feminism stole from both genders what makes us different; what makes us men and women. The cat and mouse thing. The chase. The game. It’s what makes us hope, what keeps us alive, makes life worth living. The gender gap is gone.” He slammed the shot glass again. “Gone!”
“Sh…Kenny come on,” Chris calmed, noticeably embarrassed at this point.
“Oh yeah, where we going big guy!?” Kenny slobbered. “It’s like the rivalry between us and you pricks. It’s gone. And you know what? You know what?” he rambled on, “it never existed,” he admitted, seeming relieved. “Who the hell are we kidding up here in this stupid town? There is no rivalry. That’s like saying Alabama and B.C. have a rivalry in football. It’s a myth, a goddamn illusion. At least I admit it. I’m the only one up here who admits it. That’s the problem with this fucking town,” he hammered his fist into a bowl of fish crackers, flipping the Styrofoam upside down and scattering orange crumbs down the bar. “Nobody can admit anything. Like this dork,” he pointed to a customer, guessing he was the one. “Well I can. I’ve got the balls!”
“Hey Kenny, quiet down,” Seany said.
A brawny son of Boston imbibing heavily himself took notice. “We heard you pal. Hope he ain’t drivin’ a cah home,” he said to Seany, loud enough so Kenny could hear.
“He’s cabbin’ it mate. I’ll see to it,” Seany promised.
“What if I am pal? What’s it to you?”
“Ken—”
“Mind your own business pal,” Kenny said.
“Well when yaw talkin’ about my team, my town, it is my business.”
“Oh yeah? I’m from The Town pal.”
“I don’t care wheeah ya fr—”
“And there ain’t no rivalry dickhead.”
The dude killed his bottle and started at Kenny, madly, rushing down the bar like George Brett out of the dugout seeking pine tar justice. Chris jumped in front of his boss signaling peace. The featherweight Seany, a soft spoken, sharp-witted Irish immigrant and agile man, leaped the bar sideways in a flash like a gymnast over a horse. The guy threw both arms under Chris’ extended forearm and up at Kenny’s throat. Chris wedged his torso in between at the last second, catching an elbow to his nose. Kenny slid back off his stool squatting wearily into wrestling position. Using Chris as a pick, he snuck around, sticking his arm under the guy’s armpit in a haphazard Half Nelson hold. When the guy whipped his free arm back violently, Chris got his left arm around his neck, capturing him in a headlock while Kenny grappled for his tie, wrapping it three-fold around his face. Seany, adept from years of descuffling, pushed the three toward the front with all his might. Back peddling, three on one, the big man gave in, pushing hard off Kenny. He stammered out the door. “I’ll remembah this Seany,” the guy yelled while pointing at Kenny.
