Chapter 4

I slept like a baby on Josie's couch in her nicely furnished living room. I never touched her. Not even once.

Oh, sure, I thought about it, plenty. I had been genuinely sleepy when I'd finally persuaded her to let me stay overnight on her couch, but after we'd put sheets and blankets down, fluffed up a spare pillow from her hall closet, and, finally, bade each other goodnight, I found myself wide awake and more alert than was appropriate for the hour and the circumstances.

So I was awake for what seemed like hours, but was probably more like forty-five minutes, thinking about Josie, down the hallway there in her bedroom, preparing for bed. She was probably naked now, I thought, a few minutes after she'd left me on her couch.

Now she's taking a quick shower. Now she's brushing her teeth. I wonder if she sleeps in the nude? Probably not with me in the house. But -- other times?

At 7:30 the next morning, she shook me awake. My mouth was dry and I wondered whether she'd seen me, asleep there with my mouth hanging open, maybe snoring. "You've got to get up now and go back to Bowie," she said.

"Our game doesn't start until seven tonight," I said.

"That doesn't mean anything to me," Josie said. "All I know is, you've got to get out of here, pronto. You can go back to Bowie, or you can spend the morning at Ft. McHenry, or at the Aquarium, I don't care. But not here. You said you were sleepy, and I gave you a pillow. OK, now you've had time for a decent night's sleep, and I have a busy day ahead of me, and errands to run, and you've just gotta go."

"How about breakfast?" I said.

She looked exasperated. "I'm not a breakfast person!" she said. "There's cereal and milk. Make yourself a bowl of cold cereal, if you want."

"No, I meant, how about we -- you and I -- how about we go out for breakfast?"

"No, thanks."

"Josie. Even people who aren't breakfast people like to go out for breakfast... Or for coffee, at least. And a Danish. Or a bagel."

"Sorry."

"Josie! C'mon! You have -- what? -- nine, ten hours before you have to be at the game tonight. Right?"

"I have a production meeting at two o'clock!"

"OK, fine. So the cable TV biz is more complicated than I thought. But it's, like, not even eight in the morning yet! We could go have a cup of coffee! I'm buying!"

"Big spender."

"Hey, c'mon, we can't all be big-shot TV personalities."

"Don't give me that. I work for a half-assed cable TV network that does almost nothing except baseball games. I know I'm no big shot."

"Well, to me you are. I mean, you're the voice of the Orioles. C'mon, Josie!... I couldn't tell you the names of those guys who do the play-by-play. Well -- Jim Palmer, yeah. But that's because he was a player! A Hall of Famer, and all! But the other guys, on your crew there? Nobody. But I've known your name since the first time I watched a ballgame on BirdSports Network!"

"That's because I'm a female, and you're a letch," she said.

"Well. There's a grain of truth in that, so I won't just deny it outright... But it's also because your interviews and your pre-game comments -- they're really first-rate stuff, Josie! C'mon! You know you're good at it! Jeez! Don't give me that 'letch' bullshit... Sure, it helps that you're like, drop-dead gorgeous, but that's not it! Not at all! Hell, as a rule, I don't even -- y'know -- respond all that much to blondes. It's just that you're so... good with the baseball part. You sound like you really know..."

"What's wrong with blondes?" she said, interrupting my litany of praise for her unique professional skills.

"Nothing! Blondes are fine. I mean, after redheads, and brunettes, I like blondes best of all. I mean, I've met some bald chicks that were pretty hot, too, but, as a rule, blondes are... fine."

"Everybody thinks blondes are stupid!" Josie said. "We are not stupid!"

God, she really was high-strung, this girl! I didn't think blondes were stupid. At least, not any stupider, on average, than anyone else. I didn't really think that most people, even, thought blondes were stupid. That was just a stereotype. Like how all black guys supposedly have big schlongs.

Actually, most black guys I'd run into, in the locker rooms of America, really did have big schlongs. It seemed like way more of them did than could be explained by mere random chance. Sure, there were exceptions, but an awfully high percentage of black dudes... well, shit. I'm trying to persuade Josie to go with me for breakfast somewhere and now she's got me thinking about black guys' penis sizes!

Anyway, some stereotypes, I thought, were just truer than others. Blondes were probably as smart as other people, give or take.

Well, you may think that, while all this was going through my perverted mind, I had lost track entirely of Josie Fitzgerald and our little Breakfast Debate. But, not so! No, this whole locker-room fantasy came and went in mere seconds. I knew that, under the sheet, there, where I still lay on Josie's couch, I still had the same nondescript, unimpressive average-white-boy cock that I'd always had.

Unfortunately, however, right now it was rock-hard. And, unimpressive or not, it wasn't invisible, and I could not abandon Josie's couch unless and until she first left the room and gave me a little privacy.

"You suppose, before I leave, I could maybe take a shower?" I asked her. I had abandoned the breakfast campaign by that time.

She sighed. "... Sure," she said, finally. "Why not?"

"Thanks," I said.

"But, no kidding, you need to get a move on," Josie told me. "I really do have a slew of errands to run today, and I'd like to leave the house by... oh, by 8:30, anyway."

"OK."

"OK, then... It's... ahhh, listen,... it's already almost eight," she said.

"Right. I'm getting up. Don't worry, I'm wide-awake. I won't go back to sleep or anything."

Finally, she got it that I wanted her to leave the room before I got up. "Do you want me to, maybe make you a couple slices of toast, or something?" she said. "I don't have much in the way of breakfast supplies in the house. But I could... I have margarine, and maybe some grape jelly or something."

"I'll be fine," I said. "I like a real breakfast. If you can't come with me, I'll stop someplace for breakfast, alone, on the way back to Bowie. I'll be fine."

She still didn't get up and leave the room. "You're not... sleeping in the nude, are you?" she asked me.

"No."

"Where are your things? Your clothes?"

"I hung them up," I said. "In the coat closet, there. I knew I'd have to wear them again today so I hung them up."

"Oh... Good thinking."

Finally, I just took the bull by the horns. "Listen, Josie, I'll get up, as soon as you go into the kitchen."

"Right... Oh! I get it! You've got a hard-on, don't you?"

Of all the things I might have expected her to say to me that morning, in her own living room, what I had just heard would have ranked down in the bottom five.

But I answered her. "Umm, yes. That's right."

"Men!"

"Well, damn it, it's not caused by my having evil designs on your hot bod," I told her, a little indignant now. "If you knew anything -- anything at all -- about men, you'd understand that sometimes, in the morning? When they first wake up? And they have to urinate? They get hard."

She laughed. "Must make it pretty difficult, getting the job done."

"Normally, it's manageable," I told her. "A little awkward, maybe, but nothing that can't be... handled."

"So. Right now, you need to get up and pee, and you've got a hard-on, and you don't want to get up until I get out of here. Right?"

"You got it on the first try."

But Josie Fitzgerald, I was learning, was something of a tease. "Last night, when you wouldn't leave," she said, "you were only too eager to show me your penis. Now, here in the light of day, you've gotten all shy on me."

"I wasn't eager to show you anything, last night," I said. "I was merely hoping that the evening wouldn't end too soon. I was having fun. I was enjoying your company. I wasn't trying to... do anything."

"So, if I'd invited you back to sleep in my bedroom, you'd have refused, right?"

"No. No, of course not. But that's not what I expected to happen. I didn't even hope it would happen. It was far beyond any... expectations... that I might have had."

"But you wanted us to go out together. You kept telling me how you weren't a player who was covered by the rules against... fraternization."

"I really believed that!" I told her. "I still believe that."

"So, we should date, and then, when you make the Big Club again, we'd have to quit, right?"

"I don't know. I don't know whether I'll get called up again, anytime soon. Maybe, if we, you know, hit it off real well, maybe we could go to the brass and make a case for an exception to the rules. I don't know. I haven't thought it all through."

"I know what they'd say. They'd say the rules applied to you in the first place -- even when you were with the Bowie Baysox... They'd say we had deliberately violated the rules."

"Maybe so. Listen, Josie, I've really gotta go pee."

"Surely you don't still have your... erection, after all this time?"

"Not really, no. But I'm wearing boxers, and they're a little... drafty. You know?... Insecure."

"OK, OK, I'm leaving."

And she did, finally.

I took my clothes with me into Josie's bathroom, took a very quick shower, and was dressed and standing in her foyer inside of twenty minutes. If she really wanted to leave her house to perform multiple errands by 8:30 a.m., I wasn't going to be any kind of obstacle.

"Thanks, very much, for allowing me to sleep over," I told her.

"It's OK."

"What if I were to come up again, tonight, after the game?"

"You've got a game tonight, too," she said.

"Sure, but that's the point. We both have to be at our respective ballparks until late. Too late, when the games are over, for a decent date with a normal person. But since we're both baseball people, we could go out on a late date together, sleep in tomorrow, it would be great."

"And, of course, tonight, or in the wee hours of tomorrow morning, after this late date, you'd need to sleep over again, right? I mean, long drive back to Bowie, and you've had a couple of drinks. Dangerous to be out on the streets."

"I suppose that could happen," I said. "But, if you like, I'll just have one beer and quit drinking for the whole evening. I'm a coffee-lover, you know."

"Coffee!... Jesus, I didn't even offer you a cup of coffee, this morning!"

"It's OK," I told her. "I'm gonna stop someplace for breakfast."

"I could make you a pot of coffee, right now," she said. "God, I'm really sorry! That was inconsiderate, not even offering..."

"Hey, c'mon! It's not a biggie. I'm fine."

"OK. You check on the time, and if the games tonight end at reasonable times, and if you still want to drive all the way back up here, we could do it."

"Deal! That's great, Josie! You know the town a lot better than I do. Anyplace you want to go, it'll be fine."

"We'll keep it simple," she said. "I'm going to be available at this cell number. If something goes wrong -- if you have extra innings, or something, you can call and just tell me you're late or that you're not coming."

"I'll call, regardless," I said. "Give you a chance to back out, if you want. But don't worry, I'm going to be willing to come up again, if you still want me to."

"This is crazy," Josie said. "Pay attention to the streets today, as you leave here. Depending on the timing of the two games, it might make more sense for us to just meet here, afterward."

"Maybe I should just pick up a pizza," I suggested.

"Let's wait and play it by ear," she said.

When I got back to Bowie, the first thing I did was get on the computer and print out Orioles' and Baysox' schedules for the remainder of the season.

Just as I had suspected, the news wasn't particularly good. Our Baysox home games and the Baltimore home games weren't well-coordinated at all. The times when, as now, both clubs were playing at home were not all that frequent. We were going to be on the road in just three more days, and the Orioles were out of town for ten days, beginning only two days hence.

After that, I saw a four-day stretch, twelve days away, when both clubs would be at home again, simultaneously.

This wasn't going to be the easiest relationship I'd ever undertaken. I was going to have to work fast, get extremely lucky, and break down Josie's barriers over time. With two days before the Birds took flight, I knew I wasn't going to get that lucky, that soon. No matter. A foundation would get laid, even if Josie Fitzgerald wouldn't.

That night, at least, things worked out nicely. Our game ended at 9:45, and I was showered, dressed and out of there by 10:20. I heard the broadcast of the Orioles' game ending as I drove out of the Bowie parking lot.

I gave it a half hour, driving steadily northward, so that I wouldn't be interrupting Josie's post-game cable TV interviews. Then I called her on her cell and she picked up right away. "What's the situation?" she asked.

"I'm only about fifteen minutes away from Camden Yards," I told her. "I can meet you there or at your house."

"It was a long night," she said. "Why don't you get that pizza you talked about, and come to the house? I should be able to get there before you do."

"Wine?" I asked.

"Just the pizza. No anchovies, please."