the steam in one corner, and a double row of tile benches on three sides. Primo lay prone on the top row at the back, wearing nothing but a gold chain. His head was turned toward the door, but his eyes were closed. The cross on the end of the chain rested on the tile near his chin; one of those crosses bearing a twisted figure of Jesus.
This was perfect. No need for all those moves he’d practiced long ago with his father: hitting the ground, rolling, springing up from behind with a slash-slash at the back of the knees. Primo was laid out like a lamb for the slaughter. Gil raised his pant leg and pulled the thrower from its sheath. This was perfect; but he just stood there, watching. Then the control panel clicked, and steam began hissing from the nozzle in the corner. Gil opened the door and went in.
Into the heat and the noise. Not hissing, much louder than hissing; the steam roared from the nozzle like a violent storm. That was perfect too; no way that Primo could hear him. He fixed his eyes on one of those sinewy, copper-colored legs; just one, the near one, the right one: he would do no unnecessary damage. He would be a pro. Steam billowed around him as he moved closer, and sweat seeped into his clothes. Cut deep, but clean-the surgeons would probably have him fixed well enough for golf by next spring. He had plenty of money, was set for life; it was a slightly premature retirement, that was all. He raised the knife.
Primo opened one eye.
Slash: at the back of that coppery right leg, just above the knee.
But the coppery leg was no longer there. The blade cracked against the tiles, sending a jolt up Gil’s arm, down his spine. And Primo was no longer prone on the bench: he was behind Gil, almost at the door already. Gil had never seen a man move like that. He lunged across the room, knife out, aimed low, at the back of those legs. But Primo lived in a fast-forward world-they all did, goddamn them-and before Gil could react, or even realize what was happening, he had whirled around and kicked Gil hard, inside the elbow. Everything went wrong at an unreal speed. The knife flew out of Gil’s hand. Primo caught it, caught it by the handle, right out of the air, and slashed Gil across the chest, opening him up from nipple to nipple. Gil fell to the tile floor, shrank toward the benches.
Something hard and lumpy pressed into his back. The knapsack. He reached over his shoulder, struggled with the flap, got his hand inside. Primo stepped toward him, sweat running down his body, sinewy muscles popping in his chest, face all jaw and cheekbones, eyes burning. And Gil, fumbling over his shoulder to free a knife from its sheath, knew that he was no match for this man. This man was harder, tougher, quicker, blessed.
Primo came forward, crouched, Gil’s father’s blade out in front. Gil slid a knife free and threw; a wild throw, jerky and aimed nowhere. But lucky. It caught Primo high up one leg, sticking at a funny angle in the inner thigh. Not deep; it couldn’t be deep, because at least six inches of blade were showing.
Primo stopped, looked down, then yanked the knife out in fury. He held it high over his head, an enormous bowie, twelve inches at least, and advanced on Gil. Gil cowered on the steam-room floor. Something warm and sticky sprayed him in the face, blinding him. He waited to die.
But nothing happened. He wiped at his eyes, looked up. Primo had stopped again, was again looking down. Blood-too bright, too red-was gushing from the hole in his thigh, and arcing onto Gil. Primo frowned. Then he sat down, hard. Down there on the floor, his eyes met Gil’s.
“Get Stook,” he said.
He gazed expectantly at Gil. Then the expectant look faded from his eyes and was replaced by nothing. He sank back and didn’t move again.
Gil rose. He gathered up the knives, put them in the knapsack, stepped over Primo. A cloud of red mist followed him out the door.
25
Bobby Rayburn sat very still on a stool in the visitor’s clubhouse. He checked the urge to move because he knew that any movement he made would lead to breaking things, and he didn’t want to do that with the press around. He glared at the back of Burrows’s head, bobbing over a microphone. Maybe he wouldn’t have gotten a hit-maybe he would never hit again-but he would never have dropped that fly ball. From long ago came a memory of kids’ teams he’d played on-how the subs would roll in the dirt and slide on the grass, just to get their uniforms dirty too. The memory maddened him: they were subs, and he was who he was. In his spotless road uniform, he glared again, uselessly, at the back of Burrows’s head. Maybe he would never hit again.
A few stools away sat Primo, shirt off and sweaty, surrounded by Spanish-speaking reporters, some from Mexico or God knows where; it was always like that when they played on the coast. Stook stood behind him, massaging his shoulders.
“Just a little sore,” Bobby heard Stook say, “from when you made that catch.”
“Be on the highlights, for sure,” said someone else.
“Take a sauna when you get back,” Stook said.
“Don’t like saunas,” Primo said.
“A steam, then,” Stook replied. “It doesn’t matter.”
Enough of that, Bobby thought; enough of watching Primo get treated like a superstar instead of the slap hitter he was. He began unbuttoning his shirt, a little roughly perhaps. The last button snapped off and flew across the room. A woman coming through the door picked it up and handed it to him.
“Jewel,” he said.
She nodded. “Got it in one,” she said. “I thought you were supposed to be bad with names.”
Bobby didn’t like that. “What do you want?”
“I mentioned I might have a few follow-up questions, and you said-”
Just call. “I know what I said. But I didn’t expect to see you out here.”
“I’m a reporter, Bobby. Whither thou goest I shall go.”
Bobby felt a smile coming, despite how angry and pent-up he was. He took a close look at her face, and in it caught a glimpse, no more than that, of the world beyond baseball. Many people said there was such a world-Wald said so all the time-but it had never penetrated. A world beyond baseball, and this woman had a foot in it. “Let’s have ’em,” he said.
“Let’s have what?”
“Your questions.”
She glanced around. Primo said something in Spanish and the reporters laughed. “Why don’t we go somewhere?” Jewel said. “I’ll buy you a drink.”
Because I don’t socialize with reporters. That was the answer that popped up first in his mind, and the right one. But aloud Bobby said: “Why not?”
“No reason I know,” Jewel replied. “Got your ID?”
Bobby laughed. A minute or two before, he’d been ready to demolish the clubhouse, and now he was laughing. He stopped when he noticed Primo looking at him.
Jewel had a convertible. She wheeled up to the entrance at the players’ lot.
“Nice,” said Bobby, walking through the gate.
“Hertz.”
He got in.
“You disappoint me,” she said.
“How’s that?”
“I expected you to leap over the door, not open it.”
“I’ve already been to high school,” Bobby said.
She shot him a quick glance. “Not me,” Jewel said. “I’m still making up for it.” She stepped on the gas, hard enough to make the tires squeal, just a little.
“You didn’t go to high school?”
“Not what you mean by high school.”
“And what do you think that is?”
Jewel didn’t answer right away. She swung onto a ramp and accelerated onto a freeway. The night was warm and Jewel drove fast, her eyes on the road, her hands in proper ten-minutes-to-two position on the steering wheel, but relaxed. He noticed her hands: small, but strong-looking, the nails unpainted. Workmanlike, he thought;
