you just don't talk about a guy's girlfriend like that.
I try to imagine the conversation Zik and Michelle are having as he gets into the car. Michelle waves to me from the dri-ver's-side window and I wave back. What's he telling her? What's
she
telling
him?
No way to know.
Meet me at SAMMPark?
Well, what else do I have to do?
Chapter 10
Rachel's Pitch
SAMMPark was built a few years back. Some old shoddy buildings were torn down and the whole area was resodded and landscaped. It all started around the same time as Eve's trial; for a while there, it was like dueling headlines in the
Times,
with one crowding out the other on occasion but nothing else interfering with the front page.
They originally would shut the whole thing down at eleven, but some local religious group wanted to hold a midnight prayer vigil there and then the ACLU got involved and eventually it was just easier to leave the park open, with a Rent-A-Cop stationed at the main gate. Hell, Zik and I had been hopping the fence on the east side of the park to play midnight baseball anyway, and judging by the scattering of Coke cans, beer bottles, used condoms, and burger wrappers, we weren't the only ones in violation.
I wait in my car by the gate. It's cool out, so I roll down the window to catch the breeze and lean out the window. I look up at the sky.
Ursa Major and Ursa Minor are both really bright tonight. I pick out Venus, twinkling away like a star ... to the uninitiated eye. Venus, 67.2 million miles away from the sun, is technically the closest planet to Earth, but it's usually on the
other side
of the sun, so for all intents and purposes it's much farther away than you'd think. You couldn't send a manned mission there—the pressure from the superhumid atmosphere would kill any astronauts, assuming that the 900-degree heat didn't do it first. Still, spacecraft have been sent there, and I like to imagine that someday we'll figure out a way to put a person there, in a protected environment. I like to think I'll help work that one out.
I love the stars. Love them for
how
they are almost as much as for
what
they are. Stars are just mathematical equations, when you get right down to it. Precise ratios of helium and hydrogen, heated and lit just the right way, all of it balanced and perfect for billions of years as they slowly churn their way toward iron, toward entropy. Space is one big mathematical construct. It's just figuring out gravity and electromagnetism and thrust and lift and BOOM you're off the earth, you're walking the moon like Neil Armstrong in those old, old videos.
Just when I figure Rachel has either stood me up, died in a car accident, or never planned to come here after all, I hear tires crunch the parking lot gravel and catch headlights in my rearview.
I get out as she pulls up next to me. She's wearing a gray South Brook Bobcats cap, a yellow shirt, and a pair of green shorts. The shirt is cut loose, the shorts tight.
"Sorry I'm late," she says, waving to me as she goes around back to her trunk. "I had to change from work."
"That's OK."
She digs into her trunk. "Get your bat."
"My
bat?
"
She slams down the trunk; she has a glove in one hand and a softball in the other. It looks like a pumpkin compared to the balls I'm used to hitting.
"Yeah, your bat. Time to measure up, big guy."
You're kidding me. She wants to
pitch
to me?
"Rachel, I don't—"
"I know you keep a bat in your trunk. Come on." She doesn't even wait for me to finish—she just heads off toward the gate.
I pop the trunk and grab my bat and glove, then hustle to catch up to her. No need to run, though—turns out she's waiting just inside the park entrance, near the nurse statue and the big bronze plaque that reads "Susan Ann Marchetti Memorial Park." Spotlights shine up from the ground, shrouding the statue's upper half in shadows.
"Hey, Rache, can we talk?"
"You ever think about her?"
Shit. She's not even looking at me but at the statue of the
I try to imagine the conversation Zik and Michelle are having as he gets into the car. Michelle waves to me from the dri-ver's-side window and I wave back. What's he telling her? What's
she
telling
him?
No way to know.
Meet me at SAMMPark?
Well, what else do I have to do?
Chapter 10
Rachel's Pitch
SAMMPark was built a few years back. Some old shoddy buildings were torn down and the whole area was resodded and landscaped. It all started around the same time as Eve's trial; for a while there, it was like dueling headlines in the
Times,
with one crowding out the other on occasion but nothing else interfering with the front page.
They originally would shut the whole thing down at eleven, but some local religious group wanted to hold a midnight prayer vigil there and then the ACLU got involved and eventually it was just easier to leave the park open, with a Rent-A-Cop stationed at the main gate. Hell, Zik and I had been hopping the fence on the east side of the park to play midnight baseball anyway, and judging by the scattering of Coke cans, beer bottles, used condoms, and burger wrappers, we weren't the only ones in violation.
I wait in my car by the gate. It's cool out, so I roll down the window to catch the breeze and lean out the window. I look up at the sky.
Ursa Major and Ursa Minor are both really bright tonight. I pick out Venus, twinkling away like a star ... to the uninitiated eye. Venus, 67.2 million miles away from the sun, is technically the closest planet to Earth, but it's usually on the
other side
of the sun, so for all intents and purposes it's much farther away than you'd think. You couldn't send a manned mission there—the pressure from the superhumid atmosphere would kill any astronauts, assuming that the 900-degree heat didn't do it first. Still, spacecraft have been sent there, and I like to imagine that someday we'll figure out a way to put a person there, in a protected environment. I like to think I'll help work that one out.
I love the stars. Love them for
how
they are almost as much as for
what
they are. Stars are just mathematical equations, when you get right down to it. Precise ratios of helium and hydrogen, heated and lit just the right way, all of it balanced and perfect for billions of years as they slowly churn their way toward iron, toward entropy. Space is one big mathematical construct. It's just figuring out gravity and electromagnetism and thrust and lift and BOOM you're off the earth, you're walking the moon like Neil Armstrong in those old, old videos.
Just when I figure Rachel has either stood me up, died in a car accident, or never planned to come here after all, I hear tires crunch the parking lot gravel and catch headlights in my rearview.
I get out as she pulls up next to me. She's wearing a gray South Brook Bobcats cap, a yellow shirt, and a pair of green shorts. The shirt is cut loose, the shorts tight.
"Sorry I'm late," she says, waving to me as she goes around back to her trunk. "I had to change from work."
"That's OK."
She digs into her trunk. "Get your bat."
"My
bat?
"
She slams down the trunk; she has a glove in one hand and a softball in the other. It looks like a pumpkin compared to the balls I'm used to hitting.
"Yeah, your bat. Time to measure up, big guy."
You're kidding me. She wants to
pitch
to me?
"Rachel, I don't—"
"I know you keep a bat in your trunk. Come on." She doesn't even wait for me to finish—she just heads off toward the gate.
I pop the trunk and grab my bat and glove, then hustle to catch up to her. No need to run, though—turns out she's waiting just inside the park entrance, near the nurse statue and the big bronze plaque that reads "Susan Ann Marchetti Memorial Park." Spotlights shine up from the ground, shrouding the statue's upper half in shadows.
"Hey, Rache, can we talk?"
"You ever think about her?"
Shit. She's not even looking at me but at the statue of the
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