Extra Innings, Chapter 15 · Magic Number

The roar came through the radio before the call did.

Rennie was in the visiting training room under the stands in Round Rock holding two ice bags by their knots, and the little radio on the counter, the one Turo kept tuned to the home broadcast because he liked to hear what the other side thought of them, went from the announcer’s voice to a sound like surf. Then the announcer came back, hoarse, telling Central Texas it was a fly ball to right and Villalobos was under it and that was that, the Stockmen had won the division in somebody else’s park.

Next door, the clubhouse went up. Somebody kicked the door of the corridor open with a crack that shook the tape cart. Rennie set the ice down on the counter, very carefully, and stood there with his palms on the steel, listening to forty men lose their minds.

Turo leaned in from the laundry room with a towel over his shoulder.

“You going out there?”

“In a minute.”

“They’ve got the plastic up.” Turo grinned. He was sixty-one and had been through this eleven times by his own count and had never once stopped grinning about it. “Frye bought the cheap stuff. Lonnie bought the good stuff and hid it. You want my advice, Doc, you take your glasses off before you go through that door.”

“I don’t wear glasses.”

“Then take your eyes off.” Turo went back to the dryers.

---

The plastic was up over the lockers, sheets of it taped at the top and sagging. The floor was already slick. Pike had a bottle in each hand and was pouring both of them over Wexler, who stood blind with his arms spread, taking it like a trip through the car wash, and Frye was on a folding chair shouting a speech nobody could hear. Reyes was on a phone held up by somebody else, calling in from Denver, a tiny face yelling.

Rennie got one step in before the first bottle found him. It hit him square on the back, high up, and went down his collar, ice cold, and he yelped, and the whole near corner of the room cheered as if he’d hit a home run.

“Doc’s in,” somebody yelled. “Doc’s wet!”

“Doc’s sober,” Rennie said, and wiped his eyes, and got another one full in the face from Villalobos for it.

He found Gil at the centre of it, planted by the lineup board with his cap turned backward and his grey hair plastered flat and dark, champagne dripping off his nose, his arms folded, letting them do it to him. He didn’t drink any of it. Rennie saw two players try to put a bottle in his hand and saw him pass it straight on without looking, to the next man, as if he were relaying a ball in from the outfield.

Lonnie was next to him with a bottle of the good stuff held down by his leg, label turned in.

“Bud,” Lonnie said to Rennie, and poured a careful measure over Rennie’s head, seasoning him. “That’s for June. For Pike.”

“Pike’s standing right there, healthy.”

“That’s what it’s for.” Lonnie poured a little more. “That’s for Teague.”

“Teague’s in Denver.”

“That’s what it’s for,” Lonnie said again, and went off with the bottle to find somebody else to be thoughtful at.

Gil looked at Rennie across the space Lonnie had left. Neither of them moved toward the other. The room knew, had known since August, and the room did not care, but the room also had a reporter from the Round Rock paper in the doorway with a notebook, and two front-office men from Omaha who’d flown in that morning, and Gil had a rule about the park that had held since April with one exception, the first night, and he wasn’t going to break it under plastic sheeting with a camera on the door.

So he just nodded, once. Rennie nodded back. It was enough to make his ears hot.

“Hell of a season, Doc,” Gil said, in his public voice, the one for the reporter.

“Hell of a season, Skip.”

Frye fell off the chair.

---

The team bus took them back to the hotel at half past eleven. It was an extended-stay place off the interstate, four floors of suites with kitchenettes and a breakfast room on the ground floor with a long counter and two ovens and a sign asking guests to wash their own dishes. Somebody had talked the night manager into letting them have it. By midnight the breakfast room had become the party.

Rennie leaned on the last stretch of counter with a can of ginger ale and watched it. The night manager, a heavy woman of fifty or so with reading glasses on a chain, had decided to be delighted and was making grilled cheese in batches of eight on the griddle, and Wexler was helping her by buttering bread, carefully, his tongue poking out at the corner. Pike had a bag of frozen peas on his throwing shoulder and was telling Villalobos about the catch as if Villalobos hadn’t made it. The front-office men had gone up early. The reporter had gone.

Gil came in last. He’d showered and changed into a dry T-shirt and jeans, and his hair was still damp, and when he walked in the room cheered again, softer, and he raised one hand to stop it and they ignored him.

He made a slow circuit. A word to Wexler, a hand on Pike’s good shoulder, a long minute with Lonnie by the coffee urn, the two of them not saying much, just standing together with their arms folded. Then he came down the counter to where Rennie was and stood next to him, and took a grilled cheese off the next plate that went by, and ate half of it in two bites.

“Haven’t eaten since one,” he said.

“I know. I sat through you not eating.”

“You watching me again, Doc?”

“It’s my job to watch you.” Rennie drank his ginger ale. “It’s in the policy. Section nine. Managers who skip meals during a pennant race.”

“There’s no section nine.”

“There is now. I wrote it on the bus.”

Gil laughed through the bread, and finished the sandwich, and cleaned his hands on a paper napkin and balled it up. Their arms touched from the elbow to the shoulder. Nobody in the room looked at that. The room had stopped looking a month ago.

“My knee’s talking,” Gil said quietly.

“Which part?”

“The usual part. The front. Nine innings on a dugout step and then an hour standing on a wet floor.”

“I’ll look at it.”

“I know you will.” Gil turned the can of ginger ale in Rennie’s hand a quarter turn so he could read the label, a thing he did with lineup cards. “Not here.”

“Not here,” Rennie agreed.

---

Rennie examined it in Gil’s suite at twenty to one, with the door shut and the chain on.

The suite was like all the suites, a bedroom and a living room and a kitchenette between them, a two-burner stove nobody had ever used and a fridge with a plastic tray of ice. Gil’s room was on the fourth floor, last door before the ice machine. Rennie’s was on the third. They’d booked them that way in March, before anybody knew anything, and nobody had changed it.

Gil sat on the couch with his jeans off and his right leg out on the coffee table on a pillow. Rennie knelt on the carpet beside him with his kit open and both palms round the knee.

It was swollen a little across the front, warm, nothing that worried him. He pressed along the joint line on both sides and watched Gil’s face and Gil let him watch. He bent it and straightened it. Out of habit more than need, his thumb ran the scar from 2004, the long pale seam of it.

“Ice and sleep,” he said. “Twenty minutes on, then off. You’ll be stiff in the morning and fine by batting practice.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. You’re fifty-three and you stood on a wet floor in a pair of spikes for an hour letting grown men pour wine on you. Your knee’s entitled to an opinion.”

He made the ice bag at the kitchenette, a towel folded round it, and came back and laid it over the knee and watched the cold go in, watched Gil’s thigh muscles give up, one after another, above it. Then he rose and washed his hands at the little sink, and dried them, and came back and didn’t kneel again.

He stayed standing, over by the couch.

“I’m finished treating you,” he said. “That’s over. The ice is yours now. You take it off in twenty minutes yourself.”

Gil leaned back to see him. He’d been waiting for it. He always waited for it, every time, since the first night, and never once had he started anything without it.

“All right,” Gil said. “You’re done. What are you now?”

“I’m off the clock.” Rennie sat down on the coffee table, next to Gil’s iced knee, so they were face to face. “And I’ve had two ginger ales and a grilled cheese and nothing else, and I’d like to go first.”

“Say it, then.”

“Come to bed with me. I want to lie down on my side and have you come up behind me and fuck me from there, slow, with your knee on the mattress and your back flat, nothing to kneel on, nothing to hold up. It’s been in my head since the eighth inning.” He didn’t let himself look away. “That’s what I’d like. I’m asking you if you want it too. And if your knee says otherwise once the ice is off, tell me before I find it out for myself.”

Gil took his time answering. He looked at Rennie a good while with his hands loose on his own lap.

“The eighth inning,” he said.

“Villalobos’s double. You took your cap off to wipe your head. Your arm went up. That did it, for me.”

“Well, Doc.” It came out rough. “Yes. I want it. I’ve wanted it since the bus, and before the bus I wanted it under the plastic, and I’d have been a damned fool about it if you’d stood any closer.”

“Are you sober?”

“I haven’t had a drop. They poured it on me. None of it went in.” Gil rubbed his face. “You saw.”

“I saw.”

“There’s condoms in my kit and a bottle of water-based lube. You put it there in May.” He said it flat, as he would read a scouting card. “I’ll get it. And when that ice comes off, if the knee’s wrong I’ll say so and we’ll do something with my mouth instead, and I’ll be glad of that too.”

“All right.”

“Twenty minutes, then,” Gil said, and took the hem of Rennie’s wet polo between two fingers. “Take that off. You’re dripping on my furniture.”

Rennie stripped it off. His skin came up in goosebumps under the air conditioner, and Gil leaned forward over the ice bag and laid his mouth on Rennie’s sternum and stayed there.

---

The twenty minutes were long.

They spent them on the couch. Gil lay back against the arm with his leg up and the ice on and Rennie lay along him, on his front, between Gil’s legs, his chin on Gil’s belly. Shirt and khakis went to the floor. Gil’s hands moved slow over Rennie’s shoulders and down his sides, and Rennie kissed the soft grey hair under Gil’s navel, and the line of it down into his shorts, and felt Gil’s cock stir and fill against his throat through the cotton.

“Oh, now,” Gil said quietly. “Hello, you.”

Rennie pulled the grey shorts down to Gil’s knees, careful of the ice, and took Gil in his hand. Gil was thick and already heavy, the head dark and wet, and Rennie licked it once, slowly, to see what Gil would do. Gil’s head tipped back onto the cushion.

“Doc.”

“You’ve got eighteen minutes on that ice.”

“Don’t make me count, I’ve been counting all night.”

Rennie took him in. He did it slow, his lips stretched round the head and then lower, his tongue pressed under the shaft, Gil’s hips holding still because the knee wouldn’t let him move them and Rennie knew it and used it. He went down until the grey hair tickled his lip and stayed there and breathed through it, and Gil groaned low, and his hand settled on Rennie’s shoulder, light.

“Doc,” Gil said, and the sentence never finished.

Rennie kept on, wet, and let it get loud, and Gil started talking low and filthy above him, about wanting to put him over the bat rack with the bench and the Round Rock paper watching. Rennie laughed round him and pulled off.

“The bat rack.”

“I said it. I’m not doing it.” The ice dripped off his knee onto the pillow. “Don’t stop.”

Rennie didn’t. Gil kept talking in his public voice, the even one, and every so often it cracked, and that crack was what Rennie was waiting for.

At the fifteen-minute mark Gil’s hand closed on his shoulder.

“Come up,” he said. “Come up here. I’ll go off in your mouth otherwise.”

Rennie came up. His jaw ached. He kissed Gil with his mouth still tasting of him and Gil kissed back hard, his hand on Rennie’s jaw now, his thumb wet on Rennie’s lower lip.

“Five more minutes,” Rennie said.

“I’ll take it off myself. You said so.”

“I said twenty.”

Gil looked at the clock on the stove, across the room.

“You said I take it off myself in twenty,” he said. “I’m a man of my word. I’m going to lie here five more minutes and watch you and not touch you, and then I’m going to get up and take you to bed.”

He did it. Rennie stood in his shorts on the carpet, hard against the cotton, and was looked at for five minutes, which turned out to be longer than the other fifteen. His face went hot. He didn’t want it to stop.

At the end of it Gil swung his leg off the table and took off the ice and set it on the carpet and bent the knee, once, twice, testing it, and stood.

“Well?” Rennie said.

“It says yes.” Gil walked across to him. He was naked, his shorts left behind on the couch, his cock up and heavy, his knee a little stiff on the first step and fine on the second. “It says yes and so do I. Bed, Doc.”

---

The bedroom had one lamp. Gil turned it on and Rennie turned it down, and Gil got his kit off the dresser and put a condom and the lube on the nightstand, and nobody remarked on it.

Rennie lay down on the bed on his left side, toward the window, cheek to the pillowcase. The sheets were cold. He pulled his right knee toward his chest, and left his left leg long, and felt the mattress dip behind him as Gil came onto it, the long warm weight of Gil settling in along his back, Gil’s knees tucked in behind his, Gil’s chest to his shoulder blades, Gil’s breath on the back of his ear.

“Like this?” Gil said.

“Like this.”

“My knee’s on the bed. My back’s flat. You planned this whole thing.”

“Since the eighth inning. I told you.”

Gil’s left arm slid under Rennie’s neck and folded across his chest, so that Gil’s hand lay open over his heart. Gil had never laid a hand there before. Rennie’s own free hand found the edge of the pillow.

Gil’s other hand went down his side, over his hip and in.

He opened Rennie slowly, lube cold and then warm, one finger a long while, then two, his mouth on the back of Rennie’s neck. Rennie pushed back and set the depth of it, and Gil crooked them, gently, and Rennie bucked and let go a sound that surprised him.

“Say what you want,” Gil said, at his ear.

“Again. Then three.”

Gil gave him three when he asked. It stung, and Rennie held it with his mouth against the pillowcase, and Gil held still under his palm, feeling the heart go like a rabbit’s, until the burn turned over into something else and Rennie pushed back hard.

“Doc. You’ll finish me like this.”

“Then get in me.”

Gil drew his hand out. Rennie heard the packet rip, the roll of latex, the slick click of the bottle. He felt Gil shift behind him, felt his hips come in close, his left arm tightening across Rennie’s chest, then the thick head of Gil’s cock at Rennie’s hole, hot under the latex, nudging.

“Easy now,” Gil said.

Rennie loosened for him, and Gil pushed in.

On his side like this, with his top knee up, everything was closer and tighter than any other way they’d done it, and Gil came into him by slow degrees, breath held. Halfway he stopped. Rennie felt him shaking.

“Tell me,” Gil said.

“Keep going.”

“All of it?”

“All of it. Slow.”

Gil pushed home and they lay there breathing, joined, Gil’s chest heaving against his back, Gil’s knees behind his knees.

“Oh,” Gil said, into his skin. “Oh, Rennie.”

He didn’t say Rennie much. Rennie felt it go through him.

“Move,” he said. “Please. Move.”

Gil moved, rocking, his hips doing the work, his back flat on the mattress and his knee taking nothing. It was so slow it was almost nothing and it set Rennie alight inside. He moaned. The sound filled the small bedroom and Gil answered it, lower, and pushed in deeper.

“That sound,” Gil said. “I’ve wanted that noise since the bus.” He settled into long, deep strokes. “I won the division tonight and I don’t care. This is the thing. You, in a hotel bed in Texas, and the whole team two floors down eating grilled cheese.”

“Don’t,” Rennie said, half laughing, breathless. “Don’t talk about the team.”

“Pike’s down there with frozen peas on his shoulder.”

“Skip.”

“Wexler’s buttering bread with his tongue out.” Gil thrust into him slow and hard on every word, and Rennie gasped and laughed and gasped again. “Lonnie’s by the coffee urn. And I’m up here. And I’ve got the sweetest ass in the whole damned league right here on my cock and nobody downstairs knows what he sounds like but me.”

“Gil.”

“Say it again.”

“Gil.” It broke in the middle. “Harder. Please.”

Gil gave him that. The headboard started tapping the wall, and Rennie stopped caring about the wall. He shoved back at him, and Gil swore and went faster, then slow again, reading him as he read a pitcher in the seventh, easing off each time Rennie got near and starting over. Rennie’s cock leaked onto the sheet, bobbing with every thrust. He left it alone. He wanted this longer.

“Finish while I’m in you,” Gil said at last, his voice gone ragged. “I want it squeezing me. Let me have that?”

“Yes.”

“Then touch yourself. Do it now.”

Rennie let go of the pillow and took himself in hand, loose, lazy, only the heel of his palm at first, and Gil slowed to match him, a long push for each pull. Gil’s thumb found his nipple, and Rennie heard himself say a word he’d never once said in front of Gil, a word his mother would have soaped out of his mouth.

Gil laughed against his neck. “Again.”

Rennie said it again, and his grip tightened, and the bed knocked. “Gil. Now.”

“Go on, Doc.”

Rennie came with a shout into the pillow that went on longer than he meant it to, his whole body tightening round Gil, his hand jerking it out of him onto the sheet in pulses while Gil rocked him through each one, murmuring his name, until he lay shaking with his hand slack against his stomach.

“Oh, hell,” Gil said. “Oh, hell, Doc. You nearly took me with you.”

Rennie couldn’t speak yet. He breathed. Gil was still hard inside him, still and deep. He could feel Gil’s heart hammering against his back.

“You want me to pull out?” Gil said quietly. “You’re tender now. I can pull out and finish myself off.”

“No.” Rennie found his voice. “No. Stay. Finish in me. I want you to.”

“You’re sure.”

“I’m sure. Finish in me, Skip.”

Gil kissed his nape and moved again, careful of how sensitive Rennie was, a raw sweet ache Rennie pushed back into, and then faster, chasing it.

“Rennie.”

“I’m here. Go on.”

Gil came with his forehead jammed against Rennie’s nape and a groan Rennie felt through his ribs, throbbing in the condom, his whole body shuddering along Rennie’s back. Then his arm went loose and he lay heavy against him, still inside him.

They lay there a long time.

---

Gil pulled out eventually, slow, pinching the condom’s rim, and Rennie winced and Gil kissed his shoulder for it. Gil got up, stiff, and went into the bathroom, and Rennie heard the water. He brought a warm washcloth and a towel and did the both of them, Rennie first, wordless and careful, and pulled the wet sheet out from under them and dumped it on the carpet and settled them on the dry half.

Rennie turned over to face him. It took some effort.

“Knee?” he said.

“Knee’s fine. Knee hasn’t felt this easy since August.”

“Back?”

“Back’s flat on a hotel bed with a man next to it. Back’s got no complaints.” Gil reached across and rested his palm on Rennie’s hip. “You?”

“I’m done in.”

“Happy tired?”

“Tired. Happy. Ask me at breakfast.”

Gil smiled, a small one, private, and Rennie thought nobody in the clubhouse had ever seen it, and nobody in the stands, and nobody in Denver.

They lay there. The air conditioner kicked off and the room went quiet, and from far down the building, through the floor, came a faint burst of laughter from the breakfast room and somebody’s music, and then that went quiet too.

“There’s a letter in my bag,” Rennie said.

Gil’s hand didn’t move on his hip.

“Denver postmark,” Rennie said. “It came to the condo on the first. I haven’t opened it. I’m telling you it’s there. That’s all you need to know about it.”

“All right.”

“I’m going to open it when I’m ready. On my own.”

“All right,” Gil said again, and closed his eyes. “I’m glad you said.”

“You won’t ask.”

“There’s a paper with my name on it that says I won’t.” He opened his eyes again. “And I wouldn’t, paper or no paper.”

“I know that.”

Gil studied him in the lamplight. Then he kissed him, once, slow, and lay back.

“Division champs,” he said, to the ceiling.

“Division champs.”

“Nine more wins and it’s the whole thing.”

“Don’t count,” Rennie said. “You said you’d been counting all night.”

“I’m a manager, Doc. Counting’s all I do.”

---

At five to four Rennie got dressed in the dark to go down a floor.

Gil slept face up with one arm thrown across the place Rennie had been, his mouth open, snoring a little, his knee straight under the sheet. Rennie stood at the bedroom door and watched him for a minute. Then he picked up his kit and his damp polo and let himself out, and stood in the corridor while the door eased shut behind him on its slow arm and clicked.

The corridor was carpeted and dim, lit at the ends by the exit signs. Somebody’s room-service tray sat outside 409 with two glasses on it and a bottle upside down in the ice bucket. Further down, outside the elevator, a strip of the plastic sheeting from the clubhouse had somehow travelled up here on somebody’s shoulder and lay in a heap on the carpet.

And the whole hall smelled of champagne. It came off the carpet, sweet and sour and flat, off the plastic, off the tray by 409, off his own polo crumpled in his hand, off his own hair, Lonnie’s good stuff dried in it, and he stood there in it and breathed.