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Authors: Dennis Lehane
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sticky ice cream bars that melted into the hairs of their wrists. They came to be elated and uplifted, Dave knew, raised up out of their lives by the rare spectacle of victory. That’s why arenas and ballparks felt like cathedrals—buzzing with light and murmured prayers and forty thousand hearts all beating the drum of the same collective hope.
Win for me. Win for my kids. Win for my marriage so I can carry your winning back to the car with me and sit in the glow of it with my family as we drive back toward our otherwise winless lives.
Win for me. Win. Win. Win.
But when the team lost, that collective hope crumbled into shards and any illusion of unity you’d felt with your fellow parishioners went with it. Your team had failed you and served only to remind you that usually when you tried, you lost. When you hoped, hope died. And you sat there in the debris of cellophane wrappers and popcorn and soft, soggy drink cups, dumped back into the numb wreckage of your life, facing a long dark walk back through a long dark parking lot with hordes of drunk, angry strangers, a silent wife tallying up your latest failure, and three cranky kids. All so you could get in your car and drive back to your home, the very place from which this cathedral had promised to transport you.
Dave Boyle, former star shortstop for the glory-years baseball teams of Don Bosco Technical High School, ’78 to ’82, knew few things in this world were more moody than a fan. He knew what it was to need them, to hate them, to go down on your knees for them and beg for one more roar of approval, to hang your head when you’d broken their one shared, angry heart.
“You believe these chicks?” Stanley the Giant said, and Dave looked up to see two girls standing atop the bar all of a sudden, dancing as a third friend sang “Brown Eyed Girl” off-key, the two up on the bar shaking their asses and swaying their hips. The one on the right had fleshy skin and shinygray “fuck me” eyes, Dave figuring she was in the peak of a tenuous prime, the kind of girl who’d probably be a great roll on the mattress for maybe another six months. Two years from now, though, she’d be gone hard to seed—you could see it in the chin—fat and flaccid and wearing a housedress, no way you’d be able to so much as imagine she’d been worthy of lust not all that long ago.
The other one, though…
Dave had known her since she was a little girl—Katie Marcus, Jimmy and poor, dead Marita’s daughter, now the stepdaughter of his wife’s cousin Annabeth, but looking all grown up, every inch of her firm and fresh and defying gravity. Watching her dance and thrust and swivel and laugh, her blond hair sweeping over her face like a veil, then flying back off again as she threw back her head and exposed a milky, arched throat, Dave felt a black, pining hope surge through him like a grease fire, and it didn’t come from nowhere. It came from her. It was transmitted from her body to his, from the sudden recognition in her sweaty face when her eyes met his and she smiled and gave him a little finger wave that brushed straight through the bones in his chest and tingled against his heart.
He glanced at the guys in the bar, their faces dazed as they watched the two girls dance as if they were apparitions bestowed by God. Dave could see in their faces the same yearning he’d seen on the Angels’ fans in the early innings, a sad yearning mixed with a pathetic acceptance that they were sure to go home unsatisfied. Left to stroking their own dicks in 3 A.M . bathrooms, wives and kids snoring upstairs.
Dave watched Katie shimmer above him and remembered what Maura Keaveny had looked like when she was naked beneath him, perspiration beading her brow, eyes loose and floating with booze and lust. Lust for him. Dave Boyle. Baseball star. Pride of the Flats for three short years. No one referring to him as that kid who’d been abducted when he was ten anymore. No, he was a local
Win for me. Win for my kids. Win for my marriage so I can carry your winning back to the car with me and sit in the glow of it with my family as we drive back toward our otherwise winless lives.
Win for me. Win. Win. Win.
But when the team lost, that collective hope crumbled into shards and any illusion of unity you’d felt with your fellow parishioners went with it. Your team had failed you and served only to remind you that usually when you tried, you lost. When you hoped, hope died. And you sat there in the debris of cellophane wrappers and popcorn and soft, soggy drink cups, dumped back into the numb wreckage of your life, facing a long dark walk back through a long dark parking lot with hordes of drunk, angry strangers, a silent wife tallying up your latest failure, and three cranky kids. All so you could get in your car and drive back to your home, the very place from which this cathedral had promised to transport you.
Dave Boyle, former star shortstop for the glory-years baseball teams of Don Bosco Technical High School, ’78 to ’82, knew few things in this world were more moody than a fan. He knew what it was to need them, to hate them, to go down on your knees for them and beg for one more roar of approval, to hang your head when you’d broken their one shared, angry heart.
“You believe these chicks?” Stanley the Giant said, and Dave looked up to see two girls standing atop the bar all of a sudden, dancing as a third friend sang “Brown Eyed Girl” off-key, the two up on the bar shaking their asses and swaying their hips. The one on the right had fleshy skin and shinygray “fuck me” eyes, Dave figuring she was in the peak of a tenuous prime, the kind of girl who’d probably be a great roll on the mattress for maybe another six months. Two years from now, though, she’d be gone hard to seed—you could see it in the chin—fat and flaccid and wearing a housedress, no way you’d be able to so much as imagine she’d been worthy of lust not all that long ago.
The other one, though…
Dave had known her since she was a little girl—Katie Marcus, Jimmy and poor, dead Marita’s daughter, now the stepdaughter of his wife’s cousin Annabeth, but looking all grown up, every inch of her firm and fresh and defying gravity. Watching her dance and thrust and swivel and laugh, her blond hair sweeping over her face like a veil, then flying back off again as she threw back her head and exposed a milky, arched throat, Dave felt a black, pining hope surge through him like a grease fire, and it didn’t come from nowhere. It came from her. It was transmitted from her body to his, from the sudden recognition in her sweaty face when her eyes met his and she smiled and gave him a little finger wave that brushed straight through the bones in his chest and tingled against his heart.
He glanced at the guys in the bar, their faces dazed as they watched the two girls dance as if they were apparitions bestowed by God. Dave could see in their faces the same yearning he’d seen on the Angels’ fans in the early innings, a sad yearning mixed with a pathetic acceptance that they were sure to go home unsatisfied. Left to stroking their own dicks in 3 A.M . bathrooms, wives and kids snoring upstairs.
Dave watched Katie shimmer above him and remembered what Maura Keaveny had looked like when she was naked beneath him, perspiration beading her brow, eyes loose and floating with booze and lust. Lust for him. Dave Boyle. Baseball star. Pride of the Flats for three short years. No one referring to him as that kid who’d been abducted when he was ten anymore. No, he was a local
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