were pretty and her body — she knew what to wear on her feet — was well proportioned. He admitted she was attractive although as a rule he never thought so unless they were slim like Memo.
So he asked her right out was she married.
She seemed startled, then smiled and said, “No, are you?”
“Nope.”
“How is it the girls missed you?”
Though tempted to go into a long explanation about that, he let it pass with a shrug. Neither of them was looking at the other. They both stared at the road ahead. The car hadn’t moved.
Iris felt she had been mistaken to come. He seemed so big and bulky next to her, and close up looked disappointingly different from what she had expected. In street clothes he gained little and lost more, a warrior’s quality he showed in his uniform. Now he looked like any big-muscled mechanic or bartender on his night off. Whatever difference could it have made to her that this particular one had slumped? She was amazed at her sentimentality.
Roy was thinking about Memo. If not for her he wouldn’t be here trying to make himself at ease with this one. She hadn’t treated him right. For a while things had looked good between them but no sooner had he gone into a slump when she began again to avoid him. Had she been nice to him instead, he’d have got out of his trouble sooner. However, he wasn’t bitter, because Memo was remote, even unreal. Strange how quick he forgot what she was like, though he couldn’t what she looked like. Yet with that thought even her image went up in smoke. Iris, a stranger, had done for him what the other wouldn’t, in public view what’s more. He felt for her a gratitude it was hard to hold in.
“When you get to know me better you will like me more.” He surprised himself with that — the hoarse remark echoed within him — and she, sure she had misjudged him, felt a catch in her throat as she replied, “I like you now.”
He stepped on the starter and they drove off in the lilac dusk. Where to? he had asked and she had said it made no difference, she liked to ride. He felt, once they started, as if he had been sprung from the coop, and only now, as the white moon popped into the sky, did he begin to appreciate how bad it had been with him during the time of his slump.
They drove so they could almost always see the lake. The new moon climbed higher in the blue night, shedding light like rain. They drove along the lit highway to where the lake turned up into Indiana and they could see the lumpy yellow dunes along the shore. Elsewhere the land was shadowless and flat except for a few trees here and there. Roy turned into a winding dirt road and before long they came to this deserted beach, enclosed in a broken arc of white birches. The wind here was balmy and the water lit on its surface.
He shut off the motor. In the silence — everything but the lapping of the lake water — they too were silent. He hesitated at what next move to make and she prayed it would be the right one although she was not quite sure what she meant.
Roy asked did she want to get out. She understood he wanted her to so she said yes. But she surprised him by saying she had been here before.
“How’s the water?” he asked.
“Cold. The whole lake is, but you get used to it soon.”
They walked along the shore and then to a cluster of birches. Iris sat on the ground under one of the trees and slipped off her shoes. Her movements were graceful, she made her big feet seem small.
He sat nearby, his eyes on her. She sensed he wanted to talk but now felt curiously unconcerned with his problems. She had not expected the night to be this beautiful. Since it was, she asked no more than to be allowed to enjoy it.
But Roy impatiently asked her why she had stood up for him the other night.
She did not immediately reply.
After a minute he asked again.
“I don’t know,” Iris sighed.
That was not the answer he had expected.
“How come?”
“I’ve been trying to explain it to myself.” She lit a cigarette. He was now a little in awe of her, something he had not foreseen, though he pretended not to be.
“You’re a Knights fan, ain’t you?”
“No.”
“Then how come — I don’t get it.”
“I’m not a baseball fan but I like to read about the different players. That’s how I became interested in you — your career.”
“You read about my slump?” His throat tightened at the word.
“Yes, and before that of your triumphs.”
“Ever see me play — before the other night?”
She shook her head. “Once then and again yesterday.”
“Why’d you come — the first time?”
She rubbed her cigarette into the dirt. “Because I hate to see a hero fail. There are so few of them.”
She said it seriously and he felt she meant it.
“Without heroes we’re all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.”
“You mean the big guys set the records and tile little buggers try and bust them?”
“Yes, it’s their function to be the best and for the rest of us to understand what they represent and guide ourselves accordingly.”
He hadn’t thought of it that way but it sounded all right.
“There are so many young boys you influence.”
“That’s right,” said Roy.
“You’ve got to give them your best.”
“I try to do that.”
“I mean as a man too.”
He nodded.
“I felt that if you knew people believed in you, you’d regain your power. That’s why I stood up in the grandstand. I hadn’t meant to before I came. It happened naturally. Of course I was embarrassed but I don’t think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own. What I gave up was my privacy among all those people. I hope you weren’t ashamed of me?”
He shook his head. “Were you praying for me to smack one over the roof?”
“I hoped you might become yourself again.”
“I was jinxed,” Roy explained to her. “Something was keeping me out of my true form. Up at the plate I was blind as a bat and Wonderboy had the heebie jeebies. But when you stood up and I saw you with that red dress on and thought to myself she is with me even if nobody else is, it broke the whammy.”
Iris laughed.
Roy crawled over to her and laid his head in her lap. She let him. Her dress was scented with lilac and clean laundry smell. Her thighs were firm under his head. He got a cigar out of his pocket and lit it but it stank up the night so he flung it away.
“I sure am glad you didn’t stand me up,” he sighed.
“Who would?” she smiled.
“You don’t know the half of it.”
She softly said she was willing to.
Roy struggled with himself. The urge to tell her was strong. On the other hand, talk about his inner self was always like plowing up a graveyard.
She saw the sweat gleaming on his brow. “Don’t if you don’t feel like it.”
“Everything came out different than I thought.” His eyes were clouded.
“In what sense?”
“Different.”
“I don’t understand.”
