Read Online My Favorite Midlife Crisis by Toby Devens - Free Book Online Page B

used to. My father, the rabid Orioles fan, took me to games from the time I was six until I lost interest at fourteen. We’d sit in the bleachers at the old Memorial Stadium, higher than heaven, hotter than hell, nosebleed territory where he’d keep score in his program while I stuffed my face with hot dogs. He got us both out of the house in summer for night games, where you could see the soupy air, thick with gnats in the light. Shimmering down below was the field, brilliant, faceted with shadows of the players moving, twinkling, more like an emerald than a diamond, an emerald ocean that could sail you away from someone yelling at you all the time and flailing the air with her hitting hand as you ducked by. My mother eschewed all sports that did not draw blood. She watched boxing on TV, screaming at the fighters to go for the kill, and she loved hockey—not the game, the brawls. To irritate her, and because I had a crush on Brooks Robinson, I memorized the Oriole lineup and pinned an orange-and-black felt “Birds” banner to the bulletin board above my bed. But that was more than forty years ago and I hadn’t kept up.
    I told Jeff I’d gone to plenty of games with my father when I was a kid. He said, “That earns you a B+ in my book.” He flicked me an appraising look. “At least you know how the game is played. So I don’t have to start from scratch. I usually have to start from scratch. It’s a bummer.”
    I stared at him, wondering what happened to the charm I’d heard on the phone. Who killed Rhett Butler?
    At Camden Yards, we sat in a box over third base reserved for Jeff’s business clients. He let me know he owned half an office tower in downtown Baltimore and part interest in two restaurants. He didn’t talk much to me after that. He concentrated on the field, grunting and whooping at appropriate times and chewing gum so hard his jawbones moved like tectonic plates in a Mesozoic shift.
    Fans stopped by for autographs. Most of the people who remembered Jeff Feldmacher were over forty, but at the seventh-inning stretch we were rushed by three women in their mid-twenties wearing short shorts, halter tops, and Dundalk hairdos—homemade peroxide streaks in perms half grown out.
    Did I ever have breasts that high? I knew for certain I’d never walked out of the house with my nipples outlined like elevator buttons against clingy fabric. As if this weren’t blatant enough, they’d powdered their cleavages with gold dust.
    “God, you girls are a sight for sore eyes,” Jeff said, as if I weren’t sitting next to him nibbling on my barbecue sandwich. He looked down only long enough to sign one exposed hip, one patch of smooth, tight skin below a belly-button ring, and one front triangle of a satin thong. For this last, Terri tugged down her jeans while executing a mini bump and grind. Jeff’s voice was wet with suppressed drool. “Nothing more beautiful than a beautiful woman. And I got me a triple here. To Chris, To Denise, To Terri with an i. With love, Jeff Feldmacher.” He poked his tongue through the o of his lips as he wrote. He drew a little baseball next to his name.
    On the drive home, Jeff said, “Faith Shapiro tells me you’re divorced. Twelve years out for me. She’s about your age, my ex. Very wrinkled though. Lives in Florida. A sun worshipper and a smoker. You look good for...how old are you? Faith said she thought late forties, maybe fifty.”
    Faith Shapiro knew damn well how old I was. Her husband did my taxes.
    “I’m fifty-four.”
    “No kidding. I wouldn’t have guessed. You’re an eyeful. Really well maintained. Money helps, right?”
    At my door he said, “I told Faith I usually don’t date women over forty or under five foot nine, but she said to broaden my horizons—you were a special lady. And she was right. You’ve got lots of class, and class makes up for just about anything. What do you think? Should we do this again?”
    “Sure,” I said. Hating myself. I’ve