Page 5

CHARLIE

I’ve always liked New York.

Always liked playing here.

There’s something about the city, about the energy, that makes me feel like I can do anything.

And boy, did I.

My bat always got hot when we were in town. Mets and Eagles fans loved to hate me, still do probably. It’s only been a couple of years. Not long enough for that hate to have run its course.

The city is different from LA , sure, but not as different as people from either place want to believe.

They’re both a hell of a lot different from Canton Creek, Iowa, the place listed on the back of my baseball card.

Now the mathematics of life have me out of there longer than I was ever in.

I can’t even remember the last time I went back.

More than a decade ago, for sure, when they named the high-school field after me.

Mom and Pop were still around, proud as all hell, maybe prouder than at any other moment in my career. And Gemma was there too.

That was a good day. One of the last really good days before things went to shit. Before my folks got sick. Before Gemma wanted out.

Reaching up to rub at the back of my head, the cool air hits me as I step out into the sharp bite of the late fall, with a mist that feels like it’s appearing in the air instead of falling from the sky.

Yeah, definitely different from LA . I let that train of thought fly off into the early morning hours, the only time this city is even semi-quiet.

I’m not used to a quiet New York. It wasn’t back when we played the Yankees in the Series.

Not even my hot bat could push the team over the finish line, however, and that elusive world championship I chased my whole career slipped through my fingers.

Yankee fans don’t hate me the way Mets and Eagles fans do.

It’s easier to have respect for someone you beat, I guess.

“Hey, are you . . .” a slightly quaky voices asks from my left. I know that voice. Well, not the voice specifically, more the tone. I’ve heard it hundreds, maybe thousands of times in the last twenty years.

A kid, maybe nineteen or twenty at the most, is squinting at me through the soft mist that’s started to fall.

“. . . are you Charlie Avery?”

“Used to be.”

“Ha! You were my favorite player when I was a kid!”

I let out a soft snort, but allow the kid to think he’s grown.

“You mind taking a selfie with me? My dad won’t believe it. He used to let me stay up to watch when the Eagles were on the west coast swing.”

“Sure.” I lean in while the kid raises his phone, giving a half smile.

“Thanks, man, I really appreciate it. What are you doing in the city? They gonna hire you to do one of those desk gigs on TV ?”

At that I really do snort. There’s nothing I’m worse at than TV commentary, following some kind of script to gin up conflict where there isn’t any, except what’s about to happen on the field, like baseball isn’t a game mostly about whose pitcher has a bad day, and if the guy in the lineup you never expected to do a damn thing happens to run into one.

The silence gives it away and the kid changes tracks. “Wait, no way! Ae you here for the job?”

“What job?” I ask, but the kid has me and we both know it. I’ve always been a terrible liar.

The Eagles have been looking for a manager since their last game of the season. Their old skipper, Stew Reynolds, is headed to the front office to take over as general manager. He’s been getting on in years and his wife has been on him to retire. So he compromised. An office job.

“No way. That’s insane.”

“Kid, I’d appreciate it if you . . .”

“No worries. I’ll keep it locked down. No one would believe me anyway. Why would you want to manage the Eagles?”

That’s the real question, isn’t it?

I’ve got my reasons – more than one, really – but they aren’t anyone’s business. Definitely not a stranger’s I just met on the street, even if he is a fan.

“You have a good night, okay?” I say, and shake the kid’s hand before turning and looking at the cars as they pull up. Stew said the team would send a car, but there’s a sea of sleek black SUV s and luxury sedans jockeying for position, even this early in the morning.

There’s one, and, yeah, it’s got an Eagle logo on it, subtle to avoid attracting attention, but definitely there.

Except there’s a woman getting into the car, a foot encased in a stiletto heel that leads up to a long, shapely calf and then a black skirt that just skims her knee, but it does nothing to disguise the curve of her thighs and the absolutely incredible rise of her ass.

I’m not ashamed to admit that it’s a familiar ass.

Frankie Sullivan, former VP of major league analytics for the Dodgers, before she left last year to take the Assistant GM job with the Eagles.

Our battles were legendary. She was always so sure that her equations and whatever answers her computer spat out should be taken as gospel, even when my gut, the thing that got me to the majors, the thing that kept me there, was telling me otherwise.

Then there was that last night in LA , the last night of my career, after everyone had gone home – one hell of a kiss.

I haven’t seen her since then, not even the next season, when they retired my number. I wondered then if she was avoiding me, but that day was such a whirlwind I never got the chance to track her down.

“You jackin’ my ride, Sullivan?” I call out.

She freezes at the sound of my voice and then turns, eyes wide, her hair falling out of a loose bun at the top of her head, strands of her long blonde hair sticking to her cheeks, her generous mouth open in a small o, as the rain starts to fall harder around us.

Yeah, she definitely had no idea I was coming.

Interesting.

I assumed her boss would have warned her, that maybe she even gave the okay to bring me in for an interview.

I’d be lying if I said that thought hadn’t intrigued me.

That maybe, in her time away from LA , her philosophy had shifted toward an approach that prioritized on-the-field decisions made by actual human beings.

“What are you doing here?” she asks, and I assume she’s censoring herself more than a little bit. I can practically hear the fuck that she left out.

Oh, I’m going to enjoy this, probably more than I should.

“Stew didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?” she asks, but the question is barely out of her mouth before it clicks for her, just like it did for the kid I just met.

“No.”

“No?” I ask, unable to stop a corner of my mouth from lifting, and she glares at the mere hint of a smirk.

“No,” she repeats. “Absolutely not.”

“I don’t think that’s your call, is it?”

“Why would you . . . you never said that you’d be . . . how is this . . .”

My grin grows wider and wider every time her thoughts cut off and change track.

“Uh, folks?” a new voice, lower and a little gruff, cuts in. “We should get going. The cop’s gonna kick my ass if we keep blocking this spot.”

The driver gestures toward the open door and then goes to take my suitcase from me.

I let him and then give the still stunned woman in front of me a nod as I move toward the car and wait for her to climb in.

“Are you gonna get in,” I ask, “or are we just gonna stand here in the rain holding up traffic?”

She gives herself a little shake and a droplet runs off the tip of her nose and lands on her bottom lip, where her tongue darts out to catch it.

A jolt runs through me, the same kind of feeling I used to get when a runner would arrive just behind the throw home and blast into me to try and knock the ball loose.

That’s what that kiss felt like two years ago. At least some things haven’t changed.

Thank God she’s already turning and stepping into the car, balancing on those heels as she climbs into the SUV and then slides across the backseat to make room for me.

“You never answered my question, Sullivan.”

“What?” she asks, like my voice pulled her out of some deep thought.

Her mind always seemed to be whirring at a hundred miles an hour and I never could get a read on her, even after working together for five years.

At first it was an irritation, but, as time went on, it morphed into a real problem.

We were never on the same page and I couldn’t predict what kind of shit she’d pull, always somehow talking the front office around to her way of thinking.

And making my life harder in the process.

If I take this job, I’m gonna need assurances from Stew that she won’t be able to overrule my calls on the field. I’ll have it put in my contract if necessary.

I’m not getting back into the game just to be undercut over and over again by someone who never played at day at the major league level.

And if that makes me the asshole, so be it.

“I wasn’t jacking your ride,” she insists. “Or, I am, but . . .”

Frankie hesitates and I look over at her, her hair still damp, easily the least put together I’ve ever seen her.

“We’re going to the same place, so I thought . . .”

“It’s fine. You can admit it: you just missed my face.”

Her jaw drops open again, the second time I’ve made her do that in as many minutes. I might start a tally. I wonder how many times I can make it happen before the season starts.

If I take the job, that is.

Because I still don’t know if I’m going to do that.

I retired for a reason and it wasn’t just because my knees broke down.

I was tired. Tired of the long plane rides and the bland hotel rooms, of my body breaking down and of trying to fend off kids half my age from stealing my job, of never being able to figure out if a woman wanted me for me or because I was Charlie Avery, Los Angeles Dodger.

Twenty years, a lifetime really, and I was done.

But you can’t do something your whole life and not miss it. And I do; I miss it a lot. The game itself. Baseball has always been more of a calling than a job. Some guys just happen to be good at it. Some guys love it more than anything. I was both.

I missed it almost as soon as I hung ‘em up.