Chapter 14: Dave

On Sunday I had another big day at the plate, going three-for-four in the close-out game against the Hillcats. They were all singles, but these weren't the "excuse me" dribblers through the infield that had been keeping my average above the Mendoza Line in recent weeks. All three hits were screaming line drives that allowed base runners (two) to take off at the crack of the bat. One of my teammates scored from second standing up -- the result of one of my singles. That one felt good.

Emmy was there and saw the whole thing.

There was no way that anything Rick Dempsey had told me was responsible for this sudden surge. He had said very little, really, about what I should do. Sure, he'd told me to relax, to be selective, to be patient, yada-yada-yada. With all due respect to Mr. Dempsey, nothing that he'd said had been the difference-maker here. I had hit well for two days running. And nothing in my baseball life had changed.

Just my home life.

It would be ridiculous -- wouldn't it? -- to attribute my hot bat to the fact that, after a long while, I had gotten laid? First off, I'd had a hot bat on Saturday, too, and on Saturday, I had not yet gotten laid -- unless you count getting laid -- by self-exile from my own bedroom -- on a too-short couch, for half of a too-short night. That night, I had been avoiding what I really most wanted to do, which was to jump the bones of my newfound girlfriend on just our second night together in all of human history!

So -- technically, at least -- it wasn't getting laid that was responsible for my good day at the plate on Saturday. And so what, if I went three-for-four on Sunday? Large deal! I had gone three-for-four before, in my life... Not often, God knows, but it had happened before.

Hell, I had gone four-for-four, even! OK, that was a while back, and maybe the competition in Little League hadn't always been stellar. But, still.

I knew that the one common thread between Friday night and Saturday night hadn't been getting laid, it had been getting loved -- by Emmy Shreve.

But, hey. Emmy Shreve wasn't going to raise my batting average to .750. Nobody hit .750. I would come back down to earth; no question about it. And it would be sooner, more likely than later.

OK. But something was helping me to break out of the season-long slump that had been threatening my future. Why not give Emmy the credit? I had never noticed any correlation, in the past, between my competence on the baseball field and my love life. Then again, I'd never had a sexual dry spell to equal the one I'd been experiencing this season.

Eddie, certainly, wasn't deliberately causing my drought. On the contrary, he was the head cheerleader for the Getting Dave Laid Squad. But the effect of the drought had maybe been there, all the same. When you're responsible for a kid, and there's nobody else around to share the responsibility, you're going to forgo some of the Good Things in Life, more often than not.

Last winter, back home in Ohio, I'd managed to get my ashes hauled a few times by some of the Usual Suspects -- two old girlfriends from high school, one of whom had been married and divorced already, since the last time we'd been in the sack together. Nice girls, both of them. I had warm feelings. But it was casual sex, and none of us had thought it was anything else.

And that girl back in rookie camp, down in Florida? That was when Eddie had still been farmed out to our Cousin Billy, back home. That one-nighter had been first week in March, m' man! My last dip in the pool, it turned out. When you're a (formerly) sexually active 22-year-old man, four months without rain is a long, long time!

So, yeah. I had needed to get laid, and, last night, I had gotten laid -- Goddamn!... I'd gotten laid like never before! So maybe it had cleared out all the pipes and let the sunshine in. Or something... Mix your own metaphor.

But I couldn't help believing that a little something extra had happened -- something that went a little beyond just my getting laid.

Emmy. Emmy was extra.

No illusions on my part. Even Emmy wasn't going to make me hit .750, or even half of that. What is half of .750, anyway?... Let's see -- half of .700 would be .350. So then -- .375. No, no, I wasn't going to hit .375; or .350, either. Not even if Emmy Shreve was right there in the dugout, boffing me between plate appearances!

But I felt a wonderful confidence that, now, I was going to hit. I was going to move up some in the batting order, when Stu Little eventually noticed that I was, reliably and consistently, pounding the be-Jesus out of the ball!

And it was all Emmy Shreve's doing. Nobody was going to convince me otherwise!

After the Sunday game, Eddie suddenly acquired a mystery neighborhood-kid friend who had asked him over for supper that night. So, by "coincidence," Emmy and I were left alone in the apartment. The club was leaving Frederick by bus extremely early on Monday morning -- even though that would get us into Wilmington, Delaware many hours before our Monday night game with the Blue Rocks. The bus charter company must have given the Keys' owners an early-bird discount, or something.

So, Emmy and I sort of renewed our vows, Sunday afternoon and early evening, before she finally showered, dressed and -- reluctantly, it seemed -- kissed me goodbye and headed back to Arlington around 9:30.

I would have just enough time for a good night's sleep before our bus was scheduled to leave. First, I had to find Eddie. It turned out he had long-since returned from his supper date with the kid down the street -- who maybe didn't even exist -- and he was hanging out next door with Ms. Washington, staying out of the way until Emmy left.

"Why didn't you come over and say good-bye to Emmy?" I asked him.

He just looked at me, and then at Ms. Washington.

So, OK, maybe it was a dumb question. I knew why he'd been making himself scarce. So did Ms. Washington. But she and Eddie had been sensitive enough not to raise the issue.

Eddie, of course, was heading for Wilmington, too, so I stressed to him the importance of getting a good night's sleep. He agreed, but all the time, while I was trying to get ready for bed, he was hanging by the bathroom door. He wanted to talk about Emmy.

"She was great, Dave!" he said. Yes, she was.

"We got along fantastic -- me 'n her," he said.

"Glad to hear it."

"You know when she'll be back?"

"We're going to be in Wilmington, and then in Salem, Virginia, and then Winston-Salem, before returning here in ten days."

"We'll be gone next weekend?"

"Eddie, you know that we're gone most every other weekend. You're a road warrior from way back. We've got three different towns to visit, before the next home stand."

"I'm gonna miss her," Eddie said, looking like his dog had just died.

For the first time, I wondered whether Emily was going to be a net plus, in the strange life of the Hooks brothers. Obviously, I was giddy with happiness about having met her. Eddie, too, clearly thought she was absolutely wonderful.

But, maybe that was the problem. Here he was, a fatherless and -- perhaps more importantly -- a motherless child, and along comes this Wonderful Woman. I knew Eddie didn't think of her in terms of motherhood; actually, the fact that she aroused his 13-year-old libido was sometimes painfully obvious.