“Samuel, please, I cannot—”
“Just how did Timmy come about?” I demanded, overriding her. “Did Colm force himself on you?”
I regretted it the instant it left my mouth. Christ, we’d never even alluded to sex and now I say something like that.
“I gave myself to Colm,” she said, her eyes flashing.
“Because you loved and wanted him,” I replied. “Was that pressure?”
“That’s not your concern.”
“Fine.”
We sat through another silence.
“I can’t see you for a few days,” she said finally.
I kept from asking what difference it made. “Why not?”
“I can’t tell you.”
I stood up. “It was okay when I was a visiting nurse, but now I guess it’s back to real life: Fenian war games.”
“Samuel, I didn’t mean to upset you, but you will NOT speak slightingly to me of the society!”
“I’m going,” I said. “Good-bye.”
Helga didn’t want to charge me for the room, but I paid two weeks in advance at Gasthaus zur Rose. I took to sleeping there most nights and rising early to stop at the nearby Backerei for sweet rolls and coffee. Then I sauntered along the river—following any breeze that carried its pungent smells away—and through the jumble of narrow streets. I loved the old-world brick houses with clean-swept sidewalks and garden plots and gingerbread windows swelling with flowers. I loved the early-morning bells in tall churches with clock towers. I tested my pidgin German on old women wearing wooden shoes who sat knitting in the sunshine, and on their husbands smoking long pipes nearby, figures out of Brothers Grimm.
I also kept my room at the Gibson, where I dropped by the aromatic barbershop more to hear the latest sporting talk than to have my beard trimmed. I liked the downtown bustle: cries of bootblacks and vendors; rumbling carriages and drays, their drivers shouting furiously; clanging bells of streetcars and omnibuses; organ-grinders and oom-pah bands in squares and parks; the busy squalor of the riverfront; the cool green hills ringing the city basin. I’d fallen in love with Cincinnati, I realized. Why had that feeling—and everything else, lately—taken on such urgency?
Afternoons I worked out with the Stockings, mostly because I had little else to do. Johnny and Helga had the concessions running smoothly. I’d doubled their pay as they took complete charge. Johnny had used his earnings to buy a gleaming top-of-the-line velocipede to race in the county finals at the upcoming annual fair. Several mornings I watched him train on the track at the Union Grounds. His spindly legs generated impressive power on the new machine. I hoped he had a real chance to win, suspecting that losing would devastate him.
Meanwhile, with the western trip looming, there was no reason to work harder or dream up new promotions. My job, already marginal, would soon end. With the passing of baseball season I’d have to confront the issue of purpose in my life. Sports offered a cozy refuge from reality. On the other hand, what was real? Some mind-numbing job to keep me from wondering what to do with myself? I had enough money—over six thousand dollars remained from Elmira—not to worry for a while.
I tried to stay calm about Cait. But not seeing her made me realize how large a void she and Timmy had filled. Insofar as I could remove them from my thoughts, memories of my old life seeped in. My job at the Chronicle didn’t seem so inconsequential now. Working at one’s craft—wasn’t that essential? And the idea of raising my daughters, even part-time, brought back old aches. Ah, the biological imperatives. Had I deluded myself in thinking I could satisfy them with Cait and Timmy?
We met the visiting Rochester Alerts two days after my fight with Cait. I sat at the scorer’s table in street clothes for the first time, feeling decidedly less glamorous. Harry had already hired Oak Taylor, the star of the juniors; he would make the western trip. I toyed with the thought of disabling him.
My own status cleared up a bit when Champion assured me that sufficient space existed and that he had no objection to my going. That was how Mr. Warmth put it. But I’d have to pay my own way. Did I want to do that? I told him I’d let him know before final ticket arrangements had to be made. Did I want to go? God, yes, I wanted to go—in some inexplicable way I had to. And yet was unaccountably afraid of it. I didn’t know what I wanted.
Seeing the Alerts in their crisp white jerseys took me back to the first game I had witnessed, on that distant rainy day—was it really only three months ago?—when I’d awakened in Rochester. They were a good-looking club, second only to the Rockford Forest Citys among all-amateur clubs we’d faced. But in the fourth, sparked by Mac’s gargantuan homer and Andy’s steal of home, we broke things open.
The Alerts matched us afterward but couldn’t gain, and it ended 32-19.
Images of San Francisco haunted me. At night, my sleep torn by exhausting dreams, the city beckoned me like a lover, calling me to come back, whispering that my destiny waited there. But the city in my dreams was the one I had known. Not whatever existed there now.
After vacillating for nearly a week I went to Champion and asked if the club would consider paying half my train fare if I covered all food and lodging. No, he said. How about a fourth? I’d help with security, run errands, and provide Harry a second substitute. I reminded him of the Troy game, when two regulars were injured, and said I’d hate to see the perfect season ruined for the sake of saving a few dollars. My salesmanship was never better. With some reluctance he agreed.
Next I visited the Enquirer and Gazette and made each an identical offer: pick up half my travel costs, and I’d wire them exclusive reports. I
