Burn (Songs of Submission #5)(16)

I rubbed the ball, scraping the fake pitcher’s mound under my cleat. Eddie stood in the batter’s box. Such a cocky f**k. Guy hit .209 on his best season.

“Come on, Drazen!”

I waved him off, getting ready for my pitch. Eddie’s stance was as comical as it had been at Penn. “Eddie! You constipated?”

“What?”

“You’re standing there with your ass out.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, f**k you.” I threw. He hit it to the left field, smacking a target marked SINGLE before it puckered the nylon mesh. A minor miracle. I caught a glimpse of the speed clock to my right. Sixty-five. My shit was rusty. Or I was distracted.

After his success connecting bat to ball the first time, Eddie was back in the box, looking triumphant.

I took another ball from the bucket. “I heard you met with Monica Faulkner.”

“She’s a hot number.” Eddie whipped the bat around before getting into constipation position. “You buy her song or you’re just keeping her from singing it?”

I fingered the ball. “Why?”

“We want it, and she’s not giving it up.”

“It’s her song.”

“It’s all about collaring and floor licking. Got you written all over it.” He pointed the bat at me. “I want it. It’s money. I think you’re keeping her from releasing it.”

I threw a strike. Seventy-five, but my elbow had snapped a little from the exertion. I wasn’t pulling from the shoulder. “You’re giving me a lot of credit.”

“You’re the master.”

I hated it. I hated knowing the undertone of what he meant, because someone like Eddie trivialized something I took seriously.

“Doesn’t work like that, douchebag,” I called out.

I threw another strike, well inside the zone. Clocked at seventy-seven, but it didn’t jerk my elbow.

“Then help me understand ‘the point.’”

“The point is you can’t trick her out like a whore and put her on stage.”

“Come on, man. Give the world a taste of what you got.”

When I threw the next pitch, he connected. Hard. I stuck my glove in front of me and caught it before it hit me in the nuts.

“Sorry, O’Drassen.” He used my great-grandfather’s name from the old country when he wanted to tease me. It bothered me in college, and he’d latched on to it. I was setting up the next pitch when Eddie stepped out of the box. “Seriously, I want her. We want her. She’s got that thing. You know the thing. The thing I can sell. Every man in the room will want to f**k her.”

“What?” I had it coming. I’d been the joker, the storyteller, the adventurer. I’d been the guy making cracks about who I f**ked, and where, and how many times, over beers. Meanwhile, I’d defended Jessica from every unkind word hurled behind her back. Why should anyone think I gave a shit? “She won’t f**k you, Ed.”

“Why not? I’m a record executive,” he joked.

Despite the fact that he was kidding, the images came to mind like a neighbor I avoided. Her eyes half closed. Eddie on top of her, pushing one of her legs up as he pumped into her, and her saying his name when she came. Over and over. Then the images came faster. Her laughing with him. Bending over for him. Holding his hand. Looking up at him with love, a smile spread across her face while he thought of using her and dumping her.

I shook it off. I was being an adolescent. “Get in the goddamn box.”

“All right. Sorry, man. I didn’t know she meant something to you.”

When I felt the ice in my chest and my mind went completely and utterly clear, I should have known. I’d spent a long time getting my temper under control, and I knew it well. My temper wasn’t a fire burning out in a confused jumble of thoughts; it was a frozen lucidity, a clarity of intention, whose sole purpose was to harm. I’d learned the warning signs, but on the mound, I fooled myself into thinking I was concentrating on the strike zone.

I threw a fastball, straight and hard. I coiled the power from my hips, up my back, and to my shoulder, pivoting my arm like a catapult. The ball landed right where I aimed: between Ed’s ear and eye.

He didn’t just fall. He spun around from the impact and landed on his back.

Fuck. I glanced at the speed clock. 91. That’s about what it had felt like as it left my fingers. I ran up to Eddie and kneeled beside him. He was unconscious.

God damn, what the f**k was on your mind?

Nothing. That was the problem.

A crowd rushed over just as Eddie opened his eyes. I got him to his feet. A pretty doctor had been at the pool, and she took a look at him. He was well enough to flirt with her. It was too late to have a gentlemanly conversation about Monica and her place in the musical lexicon, of course. I could hardly say, “Listen, Ed, take the BDSM shit down a notch, and she’ll sign with you.”

I had to go to plan B.

CHAPTER 12.

MONICA

I almost didn’t answer Kevin. Three days passed in a heat of songwriting and waitressing. When I realized I’d let the time pass, I thought that maybe I was doing the same thing I’d always done: turn my back on someone until it was too late to go back.

Kev,

I want you to know I got this, but I don’t know how to answer it right now.