worth huge amounts on account of Caspar burned all the pre-August 1963 cards, including a 1954 Alvin Dark that was the pride of my youth.
Don Drysdale, ’65, fell on the floor, and when I bent to get him I discovered one table leg was propped up by
The cover was a boy in a home uniform, tagging second and making the throw to first. The kid on the cover was right-handed and my kid was left-handed, but even that didn’t spoil the moment. I opened to the title page and read the inscription: For Wanda, My love for you shall never fade nor falter. You are my purpose. Yours, Sam.
“Sam, come here,” Gilia called.
“Just a sec. I found the cards.”
“Now would be better.”
I followed Gilia’s voice down the hall and into a bedroom, where I found Wanda passed out in a bed with two men—kids really. She was in the middle, on her back with her mouth open, naked. Wanda’s breasts were so small she looked like a little girl. Her pubic hair had grown out some since I’d last seen it, and she had a bruise, or a hickie, I don’t know which, on her thigh.
“Are they alive?” I asked.
Gilia stood against the wall. “I think so. They all seem to be breathing.”
The guys had long hair. One wore an ankle bracelet made of leather and the other had a dark blue tattoo on his shoulder that said Hog. Both of them were touching Wanda.
“They’re making a movie,” Gilia said. She nodded toward a Panasonic videocamera on a tripod. It was aimed at the bed. A red light on the side blinked slowly.
I looked from Wanda to the book in my hand, and back to Wanda. Memory was hard to connect to reality.
Gilia stepped toward me and touched my arm. She said, “I can’t picture you married to her.”
“Would you gather up the cards? They’re on the kitchen table.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’d like to stay here and watch her for a while.”
Gilia glanced in the rearview mirror, then over at me. “Did you steal the videotape?”
“How did you know I wanted to?”
Her face crinkled into a smile. “I’m starting to see how that misguided mind of yours works.”
Everybody thinks they know how I think but me.
“You look at watching your wife’s porno flick as a duty,” Gilia said, “as if you owe it to the experience of losing her.”
Those weren’t the exact words I’d used, but close enough.
“Besides,” Gilia went on, “that tape in the hands of a lawyer would put an end to Wanda’s hopes of taking your money.”
“I guess I couldn’t do that.”
“Or we could mail the tape to her parents. It might actually help Wanda in the long run.”
“I’m not good at hurting people in the short run to help them in the long run.”
Gilia made a right-hand turn that left rubber on the curb next to my driveway. Her mind seemed to drift, which left her braking foot unattended until almost too late to save my garage. Only by stiff-arming the glove compartment did I avoid seat belt burns.
“You always drive like this?” I asked.
She looked at her hands on the steering wheel. “I was thinking about seeing Jeremy in bed with another woman. They were ignoring me so I got up and sat in a chair at my vanity table and watched him on top of her. She lifted her feet high and sweat ran down her neck. Jeremy’s eyes were open in that foggy look I’d always thought was love. It was like a dream where you want to scream, but can’t.”
“Wanda must have been a low-quality person when I married her. I wonder why I didn’t notice?”
“You see what you want to see and hear what you want to hear.”
“Is that a quote? Sounds like Shakespeare or Woody Allen.”
“It’s me.”
“Oh.” We sat looking at the garage, the yard, and my big old house. I didn’t want to go inside. I wanted to sit next to Gilia and feel clean.
“Did you love Jeremy?” I asked.
“A lot. Did you love Wanda?”
I saw Wanda on our wedding day. She’d worn a beige dress and smiled at me. “I thought I could save her.”
“That’s not the same as love.”
I leaned across and kissed Gilia. Her lips didn’t respond. She didn’t flinch or fight, but it was definitely a one-sided kiss.
After about four seconds, she pulled back and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Is it because you might be my sister?”
The eye contact was intense. “The rebound is too hard right now. I trusted a man and he slept with others, and no matter how nice it feels with you, I know it felt just as nice once with Jeremy. I can’t ever go through that again.”
“My wife sleeps with others and I don’t see it as a reflection on the female gender.”
Gilia’s eyelids were so vulnerable they were translucent. “I’m not ready to trust yet.”
Pursuing Gilia went against the choose-women-who-can’t-hurt-you rule. A tramp’s exit had knocked me into emotional chaos; the mind shuddered to think what would happen if I got attached to, then lost, Gilia. A good relationship might be more risk than I was willing to take.
“When do you think you may be ready?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe never.”
“I’ll hang around a while and see what happens.”
“I’d like that.”
Gilia covered my hand with hers. It was more intimate than any sex I’ve had. She said, “Breakfast tomorrow?”
I said, “Cheese blintzes at nine.”
Gilia drove away, and as I carried the grocery sack full of baseball cards, Me Maw’s jewelry box, and
On the other hand, it’s not like Gilia and I were going steady. We weren’t even dating yet. There’d been a few conversations over breakfast and one unrequited kiss. At what point does a commitment begin? Normally you’d think the line was clear-cut, but I’ve run into problems during that fringe period at the outset when one person thinks you have an unspoken understanding and the other person is oblivious. Those unspoken understandings can wreak havoc.
Something heavy hit the garage wall from the inside—
