Chapter 15

Boston was only a game and a half behind the Yankees in the AL East race, and since the league's wild card playoff team was looking more and more likely to come from the AL West, the Red Sox knew their only sure path to the post-season was through Yankee Stadium.

The same thing was technically true of the Orioles, but we were now five games back, and the likelihood of our overtaking both contenders was, in truth, very slender indeed.

So the always-frenzied Red Sox faithful were a few degrees more frenzied than usual as we began our final visit of the season to Boston.

I was in the starting lineup as the designated hitter. I knew Paul didn't like playing me on defense in Fenway because of the left field wall and my demonstrated mediocrity coping with it. Evidently, however, Paul's "book" had suggested that our usual DH, Omar Washington, wasn't very productive against that day's Red Sox starter.

So I was to fill in for Omar, probably for the first game of the series only.

We were down 6-3 in the eighth inning when I came up to hit with two runners in scoring position and nobody out. If Boston had gone to its bullpen by that time, Paul Warren likely would have pulled me for a pinch hitter -- namely Omar.

But the Red Sox starter was still in there, so I was, too. I didn't even have to get a hit to be helpful. If I could just make contact, move the runners, we could tighten up the game and turn over our batting order, maybe even have a big inning.

Eliot Harper was next up after me, and he was a bigger banjo hitter than I was, even. But Josh Brennan was next up after Harper, and he came as close to being a sure thing as any hitter in baseball.

So I was leaning over the plate and telling myself to be patient, to wait for something good to hit, and then, please God, let me fucking hit it!

Instead, the second pitch hit me -- squarely on my jaw, just below the earflap of my batting helmet. I went down like a sack of cement and stayed there until they came to get me.

Bases loaded now, and still nobody out. And, as they are wont to say in the announcer's booth, we had the "go-ahead run at the plate."

But the runner at first wouldn't be me. It was Freddie Brumbelow, the rookie pitcher two days away from his next starting assignment. Freddie had been an infielder in a previous life, so I guess Paul thought he might know how to run the bases.

Me, I was on my way to Mass. General for X-rays and observation.

I was at the hospital for two hours before they'd let Juniper in to see me. Franklin was with her too, and my roomy, Burkowitz.

"No fracture," I told them. My voice was muffled by all the stuffing that had been placed inside my mouth. "Some business with teeth, and cuts inside my cheek. I'm okay, but they're keeping me here overnight."

"I'm glad it's not worse," Franklin said.

"They've already told me I can leave in the morning," I said. "Hey, what happened at the game?"

Burkowitz grimaced. "They got Harper on a pop-up. But Brennan doubled and drove in all three to tie it," he said. "But we lost it in the ninth, 9-7."

"That should be in the cover of this year's Oriole Magazine," I said. "Lost it in the ninth, 9-7."

"We're fucked," Burkowitz agreed. And then, "Sorry, Juniper."

She waved off the apology and grabbed my hand from bedside. Leaning down close to my ear, she first stuck her tongue deep into that dubious passage and wetly flicked it a few times. Then she whispered, "I'm glad somebody is!"

Well, it really did seem to be becoming a pattern: Juniper and I could have hot sex on the first night of a road-trip reunion, but none thereafter.

But that's okay. We'd be in Boston for two more days (although for only one more night). Maybe I'd do better tomorrow night.

Maybe tomorrow afternoon, even.

After my trio of visitors had assured themselves that my injuries were minor and my brain was still functioning at least as well as it ever had, they said their goodnights and headed back to their respective hotels. Juniper promised to be back in the morning and to wait with me until my release.

She wasn't back in the morning, however. Phil Burkowitz showed up at 8:30 Tuesday and shot the breeze with me in my room until the hospital's red tape could be cleared away. Two hours later, we left by cab for the team's hotel.

"What happened to Juniper?" I had asked the moment Burkowitz arrived.

"She went home," he said. "She left Franklin and me messages saying she wasn't feeling well, and that she was taking an early flight back."

"I'd better call her," I said. And I tried, but there was no response on her cell. I left a couple of voicemail messages for her, and called Mary Jane at home, but Juniper's mom knew nothing. In fact, it was news to her that Juniper was headed back home.

She would make certain that Juniper called me, Mary Jane said, as soon as she arrived home.

My face looked as bad as my mouth and jaw felt, and Paul Warren took one look and told me to stay in the hotel for that night's game. I made a half-hearted protest about how I could still swing a bat, but he was adamant, and I gave up on it soon afterward. The truth was, I was woozy still and looking forward to a long nap.

I left instructions with the front desk to connect any calls from Baltimore to my room, and to hold all other calls until I checked back with them.

Mary Jane called at two-thirty on my cell to tell me that Juniper had phoned to let her know she was staying over with a friend -- a former co-worker from the Johns Hopkins Library -- and that she was all right. She was taking over-the-counter medication, Juniper had told her mother, for her as-yet undisclosed illness.

The message to Juniper to call me had been relayed, Mary Jane assured me. "I thought she would have already called you by now," she said.

"How long since you talked to her?"

"It was around lunch time. A little after. Less than two hours ago, though ... And she asked about you; about how you were doing."

That's nice.

"She hasn't called me," I said.

"I don't understand," Mary Jane said. "I just wish she'd have come straight home. If she hasn't called you, she must be pretty sick."

"How'd she sound?"

"She sounded ... I don't know. Vague. Out of it. Like she had a hangover or something."

"She leave you a number? Do you know this friend of hers?"

"I know the woman's name, but that's all. She works at the library, at Hopkins."

"This is all strange as hell," I said. "Last night she was concerned about me at the hospital, but she was teasing me, too, about our missing out on spending the night together. And she had planned to pick me up this morning and cab it back to the hotel with me."

"It is strange," Mary Jane agreed. "Maybe I ought to go and try to find her."

"I wish you would," I said. "Go to the library, and look for this friend of Juni's. Or ask around there for her. They probably won't tell you anything over the telephone."

"I will," she said.

My plans for a long afternoon's nap were thwarted by my new worries about Juniper. It didn't make sense for her to go back home because she was "sick" and then not to head for home when she got there.

It didn't make a lot of sense for her to leave like that in the first place. Not without at least seeing Franklin in person first.

And who was this "friend" in Baltimore who was evidently able to put her up on a weekday? And at an hour when the "friend" might be expected already to have been on the job?

But Mary Jane had said she knew the woman's name. The friend was a woman, or at least, the alleged friend was a woman.

Who knew where Juniper was, or who she was with, really?

I just hoped Mary Jane could get to the bottom of it.

Was Juniper already jumping ship? Was there something about meeting me in hotels in faraway cities that triggered something in her -- that made her revert to her old ways? Was she shacked up with some guy, right now?

I wanted to trust her. But this behavior was so peculiar.

And yet, so familiar.

I hated myself for thinking it, but I had to admit that the most logical explanation for her bizarre conduct was that she was off on another of her little sexual adventures.

Maybe she'd decided that I wasn't her Mr. Goodbar, after all. Maybe the search was back on.

We lost again that night, and we heard that the Yankees had won their game, too. By doing so, the Yankees had mathematically eliminated the Blue Jays.

Tampa, in fourth place, and the Orioles in third weren't close to mathematical elimination just yet, but both clubs were, in real-world terms, the walking dead at this point. It just wasn't happening for us, and it clearly wasn't going to.

There had been a few epic collapses of front-runners in pennant races: Witness the Mets back in 2007, when they had it all but sewed up and somehow let it get away.