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Tim’s truck has old-style headlights, meaning there’s no warning beep if you forget to turn them off. Unused to San Francisco’s daytime fogs, Tim’s already killed the battery so many times that he’s put a post-it on the dash that says LIGHTS OUT MORON.
The reminder, though, winds up making him think more about pitching than about truck lights, and eventually he stops paying attention to it. So he shouldn’t be surprised when, one evening, he opens the door and the dome light’s off. Tim doesn’t need to turn the key in the ignition to know the battery’s dead. He slams the door and smacks the fender with his glove hand. Fuck. It’s seven-thirty - he did some extra work after practice - and everyone’s gone.
He flips open his cell and calls Triple A. There’s some pileup on the Bay Bridge, the dispatcher says, and it’ll be at least an hour and a half before they can get someone out.
To cap it all off, it's started to rain.
Tim’s leaning against the truck, considering where to go for a beer, when the automatic gate lets in a red Mercedes that pulls up crosswise. The tinted window scrolls down.
- Barry, says Tim. - Hey.
Jesus fuck, he thinks to himself. Of all the guys.
- Dead battery? Zito asks.
- Yeah, says Tim. - Triple A’s coming but they won’t be here till nine.
- You got jumper cables in the back of that thing? asks Zito.
Tim shakes his head.
- C’mon, says Zito. - I’ll buy you dinner. We’ll get you back here by nine.
The way he says this makes Tim feel like he’s about fourteen.
Zito’s car door closes behind him with the hydraulic whoosh of an airplane hatch, and the seats have the fresh-tobacco smell of new leather. Tim’s hair’s still wet from his shower. Feeling self-conscious, he avoids leaning up against the headrest.
Zito turns down the R&B he’s been blasting and suddenly it’s quiet enough to talk. Tim promptly turns it back up, louder.
- Sushi sound good? shouts Zito over the racket. - I know a place in the Marina.
- Fuck no, Tim hollers, a look of disgust on his face. - I don't eat bait.
Zito smiles and shakes his head. - Then what? he roars.
– There’s a taqueria over in the Western Addition. On Divisadero, Tim yells back.
Zito’ll hate it, Tim thinks to himself - he’ll think it’s slumming.
As they pass the lit-up facade of City Hall, the skies open and it starts to pour.
Zito seems comfortable just driving. Tim’s lulled by the slap of the wipers and he’s pleasantly tired, starting to enjoy the rhythm of the music and the surge of post-workout endorphins flooding through his body. He settles his shoulders back against the seat and stretches his arms, pressing his interlaced fingers against the car’s ostrich-leather roof.
From the corner of his eye he knows Zito’s looking at him, and he keeps his eyes straight ahead.
//
The taqueria has a hand-painted mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe and an old-fashioned high tin ceiling, but it’s not much more than a takeout place. The three plastic tables in the front are overhung by potted ficus trees that have dropped most of their leaves.
- Order for me, will you? says Barry, handing Tim a couple of twenties.
They got pretty soaked running in from the car. Zito snags a handful of paper napkins and uses them to blot the raindrops off his leather jacket. He raises his eyebrows at the proprietor to signal him, and grabs a couple of Negro Modelos from the cooler.
As he makes his way over to one of the tables, he’s waylaid by two guys in painters’ clothes, waiting for their takeout orders, who recognize him and ask for autographs. Zito obliges, signing their menus. When Tim glances back, he’s joking around with the men as though they’re old buddies.
At the counter, Tim orders himself a carnitas burrito. For Zito, there’s a minor mountain of food: four pupusas with fermented cabbage, three tacos made with brains and tongue, and a corn-smut quesadilla. In honor of the team, he also orders Zito a “Los Gigantes” special - black beans and orange sweet-potato fries that Tim drizzles liberally with habanero vinegar.
Tim chats with the cooks while they put the order together. The tray, when it’s ready, is jammed - way too many little plates for the table where Zito’s sitting.
Zito’s unfazed. He pulls over an extra table and lays everything out, including fresh napkins and lime wedges, as though he’s playing solitaire.
- So what is all this?
- I thought I’d get you some stuff you maybe hadn’t tried before, says Lincecum.
Zito picks up a pupusa, dripping with cabbage and melted lard and lime juice, and takes a big bite.
- Fucking fantastic, says Barry. What is this?
Lincecum raises his eyebrows. - I think it’s Salvadoran.
While Tim picks at his burrito, he watches as Zito finishes every bit of the food, polishing off the pupusas, all three tacos, the black beans, the quesadilla with its smelly grey bits of huitlacoche, the incendiary french fries. Plus the end of Tim’s burrito and his pico de gallo. And both beers - Tim’s had a coke.
After he finishes, Zito goes over to compliment the cooks on the “Los Gigantes” special and they wrap him up one to go, on the house.
When the two of them leave, the line of customers and the staff howl them out the door with shouts of “Viva Gigantes!” The cash-register lady is holding an autographed menu to her chest and smiling like crazy.
It’s finally stopped raining.
- I think you’re pretty fucking boring, says Zito, as they slide back into the car.
- What?
- A carnitas burrito? A coke? Not very adventurous, says Barry.
When Zito drops him back at his truck, Tim’s almost sorry to see him go. He doesn’t realize until later that he’s forgotten to give Zito his change. He wraps the bills around the coins and puts the bindle in the back pocket of his jeans.
//
June 8, 2007
Zito’s Marina condo, a three-story converted Victorian so old it must have survived both big quakes, looks out and sideways toward the bridge. When there’s sun, you can sit out on the terrace with a macchiato and an almond croissant, screened by a enormous creeper of orange trumpet-vine, and watch the people below.
The bottom floor’s set up for a permanent party. It’s a meandering series of high-ceilinged rooms linked by a narrow central hallway; the lighting is amber and gold and flatteringly indirect. There are cabretta leather sectionals and high-tech Italian chairs, and cashmere throws to forestall the grey San Francisco chill that creeps right through the windows. There’s a good ratio of soft carpet to highly polished oak floor, and the little half-baths off the hall ensure that private business never takes anyone too far away from the center of the action.
Zito’s settled comfortably into the role of host, taking care of little problems as they arise. For example, since everyone knows it’s impossible to park in the Marina, Barry’s reserved half the spaces in a nearby private garage for the use of his guests. And then there's his housekeeper Maricela, who appears miraculously when she’s needed and disappears with equal alacrity when she’s not.
He likes to keep things simple, having become convinced that too much is basically just, well, too much. Tonight the drinks have been Veuve Cliquot and mojitos with fresh mint from the terrace. To eat, there were Roman-style baby artichokes deep-fried in olive oil and Shinnecock oysters from Long Island.
It’s not his fault that the party was over by midnight. Saturday day-games, with their eight-thirty a.m. ballpark call, have a way of putting a damper on Friday-night festivities.
He’s standing at the computerized control panel in the entryway, setting the alarm and turning down the lights in the three different sections of the first floor, when he becomes aware of a pair of stockinged feet, crossed at the ankles, propped on the arm of one of the couches.
By feel in the half-darkness, he makes his way across the hall to figure out whose feet they are.
//
One mojito had been enough. The taste of rum reminded Tim of college drinking games, games that’d ended with his arms around the toilet.
And today'd been a bitchingly long day - they’d lost the first game of the series to Oakland. Boch had taken both him and Bengie out in a double-switch in the fifth, and Shannon Stewart had gotten a two-run homer in the tenth. Fucking train wreck. Two guys injured, Boch was running out of guys to play, and by the tenth everyone just wanted a mercy-killing anyway.
Until he’d gotten to the party, Tim hadn’t realized how tired he was. And the blunts they’d smoked, some incredibly stony stuff of Zito’s, had carried him off away from the game talk, and he’d practically pissed himself laughing at Noah Lowry telling long jokes with punch lines he was too stoned to remember.
//
The feet in the orange-and-black striped socks belong to Lincecum, who’s partly stretched out and partly curled up on the couch, like a kid, asleep. One arm’s across his forehead, the other wrapped around a kilim pillow on his stomach.
Zito plunks down in front of the couch. He can’t resist: he reaches up and scrapes the tip of his fingernail along the arch of Tim’s foot, first once, then again. Tim stirs and his eyes come open. Instead of being surprised, though, he grins at Zito and stretches both of his arms up, rotating his wrists and spreading his fingers in the air.
- What the fuck are you doing here, says Tim, yawning and smiling. - Get outta my junk.
- I live here, says Zito, - remember?
Tim says nothing but, rolls onto his side, facing Zito, and pulls one knee up to his chest.
- Hand me that? he asks Zito, pointing at a throw draped over the opposite arm of the long couch. Zito obliges and Tim pulls the woollen comforter up and over himself. His eyes are half-closed, his skin flushed.
- Make yourself entirely at home, says Barry, rising to his knees and snagging two empty glasses from the coffee table.
- Wait, says Lincecum, who sits up abruptly and rummages in his jeans pocket.
Zito sighs. It’s past one, and he also has to be at the park at eight-thirty tomorrow. He’s starting, for the first time, against his old team, the As, facing his one of his best buddies, Dan Haren. This party was supposed to keep him from thinking too hard about it.
- Your change. From the taqueria the other night, says Lincecum.
When Zito doesn’t respond, Tim takes Barry’s left hand in his right and closes it around the carefully folded square of bills that’s heavy with coins. It takes Barry a minute, but when he figures it out, he has to smile.
//
June 9, 2007
The best way to get rid of sports reporters, Zito knows, is to give them sound bites, so after he gives up five runs and Bochy pulls him in the seventh, he lets the rest of the game blur while he decides which cliches he’ll throw at Jenkins and Schulman in the postgame interview.
Sitting next to his locker, the lights and microphones focused on him after the game, he winds up delivering the cliches more accurately than he threw his curve or his fastball earlier in the afternoon.
- You’re gonna go out there next time and fuckin’ dominate ‘em, says Lincecum in an exaggeratedly deep voice, laughing. He’s all too familiar with the speech in which the pitcher needs to be repentant-yet-defiant about taking the loss.
They’re having a couple of beers at a dive in Hunter’s Point, in the shadow of Candlestick Park. Zito feels OK right now, but he knows that later he’ll want to smash things.
- Yeah, Haren called me after the game, says Zito, - but I wasn’t having that shit, I turned my phone off.
Danny, he thinks to himself. I hardly knew ya. Fuck. This game was the most brutal of Zito’s life, the walk from the mound to the dugout his longest ever.
Lincecum doesn’t say anything, and Zito likes him for that.
//
Tim’s never seen the old ballpark up close; he’s too young and too not-from-the-Bay-Area ever to have gone to a Giants game there. So Zito drives him out to Candlestick and they sit in the empty parking lot, cracked and weed-choked now that it’s not football season. The observation towers make the place look like a minimum-security prison, and shreds of colored paper from last night’s fireworks are blowing around the concrete.
They get out of the car and Lincecum leans against it, wrapping his sweatshirt more tightly around himself. The wind, which never leaves this place, slithers down their collars and burns streams of tears from their eyes.
- Fans used to die of exposure here, shouts Zito. - You wanna hear some of the stories?
Zito’s not sure what comes first, the warm hand on his neck or the sea-green eyes, larger than he’d expected, so close to his face.
- I just want you to know, says Tim, - that I’m not drunk.
He reaches up, now, both hands warm on Barry’s neck, and pulls him in, his mouth soft and hot and wet. The green eyes are wide open, looking straight into his, and as their mouths slowly find each other’s shapes, Barry lets himself breathe for the first time since they left the clubhouse. Tim tastes like afternoon, and he smells like cooked sugar, and he uses his roughened fingers to smooth away the tears the wind’s blown all the way back to Barry’s ears.