Page 52 of Breakout Year

Akiva

Several hours earlier

“Akiva Goldfarb—I think there should be a ticket under my name.”

The woman staffing the early hours at the Crooks box office frowned, then proceeded to dig through a set of labeled paper envelopes.

For a moment, Akiva wondered if he’d come all this way only to be stranded outside the stadium.

He could buy a ticket, attend like any other spectator.

Book his own passage home without Eitan ever knowing he had been there.

A twenty-four-hour jaunt that would be more traveling than he’d done since he’d returned from Arizona seven years ago.

Players in triple-A took commercial flights to games, but Akiva had never made it that far up.

He’d gone from the bus leagues to a fall in Arizona to a long flight home.

After that, he’d stuck to trains, which stayed reassuringly on the ground.

He’d spent the flight out watching the flow of clouds, the slow rise of the city as his plane descended back to Earth.

Had he been to Cleveland before? He thought he had, then realized he’d just written a character from there, an aspiring opera singer who lit up the stage at the Euclid Avenue Theater before he made his way east, only to fall on hard times.

Akiva’s main impressions of Ohio were that it was relatively flat, relatively quiet, and relatively small. Too small a place for Eitan, really, but perhaps it was easier to shine bright with fewer eyes on you.

Perhaps Akiva would be better off turning around and going back to New York.

“Oh, here it is,” the box office attendant said. Eitan would know her name by now—and how many grandkids she had and who her favorite ballplayer had been growing up.

Akiva settled for taking his paper ticket.

There was the small problem of his battered overnight bag.

In Sue’s manuscripts, such considerations would come only with a note.

Logistics . It was up to him to determine where a character might stash a bag or how they might go about securing a train ticket.

Purchased by a rich benefactor seemed a bit outlandish—or had before this morning.

Now the bag handles sat heavy in Akiva’s hands.

The box office agent took pity on him. “There are storage lockers over there if you want to stow your luggage.”

He thanked her, went to the indicated locker, crammed his bag inside.

Paid with his debit card, hoping his bank would see the purchase of an overpriced cup of coffee at the Newark airport and a cab ride to downtown Cleveland and make the intuitive leap that he was traveling and not that his card had been stolen.

The locker interface took its time but eventually registered him as paid and issued him a key.

Which only left the game. Akiva had his ticket.

He could go in, buy a program from whoever was selling them, score the game with a little stub of a pencil.

He might even get an overpriced stadium beer or a guaranteed kosher hot dog.

If he went to this, Eitan would see him.

He’d know Akiva had come all this way. He’d be happy about it—effusive, really.

Worst of all, he might have hope that this could last longer than the end of the week, as if Eitan wasn’t leaving and Akiva wasn’t staying behind. Logistics.

Still, Akiva wanted to watch him play, that same impulse he’d had seven years ago watching Eitan run around the outfield with no shirt and seemingly no worries.

So Akiva would not think about Sunday or the end of Eitan’s lease or what would happen when Eitan left New York for good.

He would not think about this ache in his chest, one not attributable to getting up early—because Akiva was one of those people who liked to be at a flight two hours early, even if he wasn’t checking a bag—or about what that ache might mean.

He would not think about Eitan whispering, You’re who I was waiting for amid the rattle of a train.

And Akiva would certainly not think about the lightness he’d felt, as if he’d put down something heavy he’d been carrying for a long time, as he’d said it back.

He would go in and eat and cheer when the announcer called Eitan’s name. Eitan deserved that.

It was just late enough in the afternoon that the gates were open. Akiva submitted his ticket to be scanned, his body to a cursory metal detection and wanding.

“Rivkin fan, huh?” the ticket taker said, indicating Akiva’s sweatshirt. “Guy’s kind of a?—”

And Akiva was about to object: to cut him off, to solve this through a glare, possibly a stern word and the implication that he shouldn’t say something like that to someone of Akiva’s size, even if Akiva had never so much as thrown a punch, when the man continued.

“—a heel.”

A heel . Someone who played hard within the context of the game, who you didn’t like, unless he was on your team. Akiva could live with that. “He does love a big moment.”

“Too bad about how that trade shook out,” the man said.

Akiva smiled. “Agree to disagree.” Then he pushed his way through the turnstile into the ballpark.

Two hours later, Akiva stood at his section entrance as the usher greeted ticket holders by name and slowly admitted them to their seats. The worst social crime one could commit in New York was to make other people late. Ohio moved a little slower, it turned out.

Still, he was grateful for the momentary reprieve—Eitan’s parents were probably already here, which would mean questions, the first of which would likely be, Who are you to Eitan?

Something Akiva didn’t know the answer to.

He’d spent the afternoon milling around the ballpark with a certain aimlessness that felt inherent to baseball.

He’d nursed a beer, browsed the team store, asked where the Rivkin merchandise was before he’d been pointed to a sales rack.

Crooks Stadium was older than the one where the Cosmos played, but it felt newer or perhaps was just slightly cleaner without everyone trekking in subway dirt and car exhaust. A nice place to play, really, if Akiva was being generous, which he absolutely wasn’t.

The line moved up. The usher inspected his ticket, gave him the eye over his ballcap and sweatshirt. “We had him first,” she teased.

But I have him now . A thought Akiva turned over as he thanked her and walked down the concrete steps to his seat.

Eitan’s parents were in fact there. They looked like they did in the picture on Eitan’s nightstand, a recognition that felt intensely personal. Helpfully, they were also holding a large poster-board sign—now wrinkled from age and storage—advertising Eitan’s draft rank.

Akiva said his excuse me ’s as he navigated down the row, finally ending in a seat next to theirs. He considered what to say, beginning with hi and ending with, I really like your son .

Eitan’s mother turned, gave him an appraising look. They’d met once, very briefly, seven years ago. Hardly more than a wave to one another in an Arizona parking lot. “You’re the boy from Instagram,” she said.

Whatever Akiva had been expecting her to say, it wasn’t that. “I’m Eitan’s friend, Akiva.”

She sniffed at the word friend , then seized both of Akiva’s hands in her own. She was stronger than she looked. “You came from New York to see him play?”

“He got me a ticket and?—”

Akiva didn’t finish that sentence, mostly because he was being hugged and impressed upon to call her by her first name, which was Irene.

Over Irene’s shoulder, Eitan’s father was studying them with the look of a man used to being next to public outbursts.

He shrugged, then extended his hand and shook Akiva’s once he’d been released.

“Eitan is not calling as much as he used to.” Irene said it in carefully enunciated English, with only a hint of an accent lingering in its vowels. She was in her late fifties at most, with a few lines around her eyes like her face was accustomed to smiling. “He’s been busy in New York?”

Akiva pushed down the urge to apologize to her for whatever was about to happen between him and Eitan. “New York is a busy city.”

“Good. I want him to be happy.”

Akiva didn’t think busy was necessarily a substitute for happy , but hopefully Eitan had been both. “Me too.”

“Especially with this team of—” She gestured to the field and said a word in Russian that Akiva didn’t know but could translate based on her tone. “He should be in a place that loves him.”

He is . A thought Akiva couldn’t interrogate with Eitan’s mother studying him as if place meant something else entirely. “Yes,” Akiva said finally. “Yes, he should.”

Akiva was saved from having any more feelings in public by the anthem.

He stripped off his ballcap, stood out of some sense of ritual rather than conviction.

Next to him, Irene was grumbling, words he could only make out the very edges of but one sounded a lot like mandatory.

Still, she rose from her seat, removed her hat, then immediately shaded her forehead with her hand.

Remained that way for the duration of the anthem, then finally wiped her eyes.

“The sun,” she said, even though the sky was darkening and the stadium faced east.

Cleveland took the field to a reasonable number of cheers, muted perhaps by the end of the season, which would go down in the books as yet another bad one.

Eitan loves things even when they’re futile .

Akiva decided he was done with melodramatic thoughts for the day and so flagged down a vendor and offered to buy Irene a beer.

The scoreboard lineup declared that Eitan was hitting third.

Akiva waited as the first Cosmos player went down on strikes, then watched as Eitan came to the on-deck circle and prepared for his at-bat.

Something in the brace of Eitan’s shoulders made him seem wary.

Un-Eitan-like. Look up. Eitan should know he wasn’t doing this alone.

Eventually, the umpire ushered him to the plate.

Paused as Eitan doffed his helmet and scanned the crowd.

They put his parents on the scoreboard, of course.

Akiva should have expected that, but still his face flushed hot when he appeared on camera with them.

Not knowing what else to do, he waved. That got Eitan’s grin—fluorescent, even in the bright ballpark lights—before he settled into the box to hit.

He took his time, adjusting his gloves and readying his bat.

Akiva didn’t know much about Cleveland’s pitcher: what he threw, if he also posted bible verses on Instagram about himself as a warrior against evil or whatever.

It was possible he was going to throw a ball at Eitan’s back to teach him a lesson.

It was possible he was going to throw a ball at Eitan’s head .

Akiva set down his beer, leaned forward, hands tense on his kneecaps. Be careful. A foolish plea, but he made it anyway.

The first pitch was a ball thrown tight inside to Eitan, to the point that he jumped back. Intent to hit him or an honest mistake in avoiding New York’s best hitter? The second pitch was a strike delivered low enough in the zone that Eitan simply stood pat as it went by.

The third pitch flashed as it came out of the pitcher’s hand, a high fastball with some extra oomph. Even seven years removed from the game, Akiva could admire a pitch like that.

Or could’ve, if Eitan didn’t swing and make contact and send it screaming out of the park and possibly into downtown Cleveland.

When the home team hit a home run, there was fanfare: stadium lights flashed, music played.

Some ballparks popped off fireworks. Now there was only silence, then a scatter of jeers, then a collective sigh like the air had been let out of the crowd.

Eitan ran to first, a touch slower than his usual trot.

When he turned, making his way toward second, he threw his hand up—pinky, index finger, and thumb extended.

I love you . A gesture Akiva had seen him make on each of his preceding home runs, usually to the accolades of the New York crowd.

Here, there was no one to receive it. Was this Eitan declaring that, despite everything, he still loved this city?

Or was it—Akiva barely allowed himself the thought—meant for a more specific audience?

His heart had almost settled as Eitan finished rounding the bases, as Irene nudged Akiva with her elbow and said, “He started doing that for me.”

Right. Of course. And it was a cool evening, but Akiva’s face went hot with embarrassment, until she added, “Maybe not for me anymore,” then downed a few swigs of her drink and began in on the greatness of the American brewing industry and its something for everyone varieties of beer.