Chapter 14

Dan and Susan spent Saturday and Sunday with the Stone family and Alissa, all of them enjoying Alissa's company right up until it was time for her to pack her bags and head for BWI.

They were all at the airport to see her off. Alissa quietly asked Susan on their way into the terminal to take the children off somewhere so that she could have a few minutes alone with Arlie outside the departure gate.

Susan was having some difficulty creating a diversion until Dan told Toby that he thought he'd just seen Dustin Pedroia, the Red Sox second baseman, in the main terminal corridor. Such a sighting was (barely) plausible, since the Sox were due in Baltimore for a three-game series beginning the next day.

The four of them, Toby, Christy, Susan and Dan, went on a lengthy trip against the current of pedestrian traffic down the corridor, searching in vain for Pedroia.

Alone back at the security checkpoint, Alissa rewarded her host for his week of hospitality with a few whispered terms of endearment and a truly memorable kiss. Then she gave him a little wave and disappeared into the mass of departing passengers.

Dan eventually guided the disappointed celebrity-seekers back to the gate, where they reunited with the suddenly somber Arlie and headed home.

The Orioles had taken two out of three from Washington, but then the Red Sox came to town and swept the Birds in three.

After losing Boston's getaway game on July 1, the Orioles flew to Los Angeles for four games with the Angels, followed by three more in Seattle: Seven road games in seven days.

As they headed west they were four games under .500 for the season and about to face the two clubs who had been tearing up the AL West.

The pitching staff was under severe strain and even Freddie and Shiggie seemed to be struggling. Dan saw all the signs of imminent collapse: too many consecutive losses, too many costly defensive mistakes, and a pitching staff that looked as if it were September 1, instead of only the beginning of July.

Some of the veteran players tried to rev up the others with closed-door clubhouse meetings and other well-intentioned attempts to promote esprit de corps. Streak Taylor and Tough Shit Williams locked the coaches out of the clubhouse on the last day of June, right after the club's second straight home loss to the Red Sox, and yelled at everyone to wake up.

There were juvenile practical jokes from misguided players trying to lighten the mood. Nothing, not even the time-honored hotfoot, proved effective. Thursday night in the series opener in Anaheim, they dropped their fifth straight game.

They won on Friday, 3-2, but it required fourteen innings, and they stumbled back to their hotel, exhausted, at 11:55 p.m. PDT. Back home in Baltimore, it was approaching 3:00 a.m.

It was Dan's turn to start Saturday. The game started early, around dusk, and for a while both team's pitchers benefited from the fading natural light before the stadium lights took hold.

After four innings, it was a scoreless tie. T.S. Williams was storming around in the Baltimore dugout, kicking other players' feet and slamming the concrete walls with an already-cracked baseball helmet. "Goddammit!" Williams screamed, "Let's get some fucking runs!"

Paul Warren let him rant for two trips up and down the dugout. Then he confronted the young outfielder at very close quarters and said, quietly, "Sit down, Teddy. You're not accomplishing anything."

Williams sat down.

In the seventh inning, Zeke tripled to the wall in left-center and came home on a squeeze bunt for the first run of the game for either club.

Dan's shutout continued in the Angels' seventh but when he came back to the dugout, he went straight to Paul Warren. "I got nothing, Paul. And I'm hurting some."

"You did good, Dan'el," Warren told him. "Take a shower. Have Kurt ice down your arm."

Cardonas came in for the eighth inning, loaded the bases and gave up a grand slam to Vladimir Guerrero.

Ballgame.

They lost another one Sunday afternoon before they left for Seattle.

Shiggie won the opener in Seattle on Monday, but the Mariners took the next two, and Baltimore limped home late Wednesday night with a record of 38-47.

Thursday, at long last, was an open date at home. There would now be three home games against the Blue Jays before the All-Star break —- which represented a mouthwatering four whole days of respite for the worn and weary travelers.

Three Orioles (none of them pitchers) had been selected for the all-star team and would have to show up in New York for the game in the Mets' new park. Everybody else looked forward to four luxurious days of downtime.

The arriving Blue Jays, no doubt, were worn-and-weary too, but they were also stoked, because they were on the verge of escaping the AL East cellar for the first time all season. All they had to do was sweep Baltimore at home. Lately, there had been a lot of that going around. The Orioles, World Champions just two seasons back, now seemed ready to settle into last place. And with the season more than half over.

Dan missed his start against Toronto because of the arm strain he'd suffered during the Angels' series. Toronto won two of three and left town for the All-Star Break in a flat-footed tie with Baltimore for the AL East cellar.

Arlie took his children to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Virginia during the break. Susan moved in with Dan for the duration.

They were sweaty and naked in Dan's bed on the morning of the first day of the four-day break. Susan was reading the morning paper. "Three games with the White Sox in Chicago next weekend after the all-star break," she said. "And then, guess what?"

"What?" Dan said.

"It'll be July 20! You told me back in April that I shouldn't worry about the team's chances until July 20."

"Well, I lied," he said. "You can start worrying now anytime."

"How's your sore arm?"

"It's not bad. This break in the season came at a real good time for me. I'll probably be okay for my next turn in the rotation."

"That was a pretty gruesome road trip out west, wasn't it?" Susan said.

"Your home state is a nasty, nasty place to play baseball," he told her. "And Seattle could use a little improvement, too."

"Do you think the Orioles can pull out of this?" she asked.

"No. No, I really don't. We're trying, and nobody has quit, but we're just not getting there. The best we can hope for, I think, is to just steady-up and win a few, try to get back to .500."

"That's got to be disappointing."

"Yeah, we've had a nice string of fat years. This looks to be Paul's worst season since his first year here as manager."

"I miss my mom!" Susan said.

"Yeah. So does Arlie."

"He's going out there. Arlie is. To California to see her."

"After the season, you mean?"

"Of course," she said. "When else could he possibly go?"

"Could have gone this week, during the break."

"He took the kids to Busch Gardens. That's what a good father ought to do."

"You think they're going to get together? Arlie and your mom?"

"I'd bet on it," Susan said.

"Hey! To quote the immortal words of Christy Stone, do you think they're doing it?"

"My mother, you mean? And Arlie?" She said it with a tone of utter incredulity, as if the very suggestion were ridiculous.

"No offense!" Dan said. "I just, you know, wondered about it. They seemed to be getting pretty tight, there. That weekend before she left?"

Susan put down the newspaper and crawled over to Dan. Throwing her left leg over his torso, she straddled him, his flaccid penis trapped pointing ineffectually downward with Susan's naked vagina unreachable despite being only inches away. She leaned over, held both his wrists against the mattress like a wrestler overpowering an opponent.

"Dan, Dan, Dan! What a sweet, naïve innocent you are!"

"I take it they're doing it," he said.

"Right there in Arlie Stone's master bedroom, no less," she said. "Only one door down and across the hallway from my own combination office-bedroom. Luckily for me, my mom's not a screamer."

"I kind of suspected," Dan said. "But ol' Arlie. He never said a word."

"Actions speak louder," Susan said.

"Well that's just great! I mean ... isn't it?" Dan looked at her. "I mean, how do you feel about it?"

"I think it's great, too," she said. "I hope to God they connect, and continue to connect. I hope they get married and live happily ever after!"

"I'm really kind of surprised, though," Dan said. "I wouldn't have ever thought Arlie would come on to her, right there in his own house. With you and his kids right down the hall."

"Arlie didn't come on to her," Susan said, taking great delight in finally clueing Dan in. "She seduced him! And it wasn't here in Baltimore. It was in their hotel in Wooster, Ohio!"

"Your mom did? Jeez! And you had me believing she was a man-hater. You had me almost afraid to come over to meet her when she got to town."

"Well, she surprised me a little, too."

But now Susan turned serious. "Listen, Dan, I know it's funny and makes for a great opportunity to tease Arlie. But there's quite a lot to this story. Arlie was head-over-heels for her before she even left California to go to Ohio. I could tell he was in love with her from the moment he came downstairs from my room with that photograph.

"And I was scared to death he'd go to Wooster to see her and find out that it was just a one-way street. That she'd have forgotten him entirely, or almost, and that he'd be hurt and maybe make some kind of fool of himself.

"And I worried about Mom, too. I thought she might be so upset at Arlie's deception about who he was that she'd just leave and go back home without even coming here at all. Arlie tried to tell me that she'd be thrilled to see him again, but I never really bought it."

Dan effortlessly lifted Susan off his pinned-down body. She'd forgotten that she'd been holding him down for the duration of their conversation. He smiled at her look of surprise. "All that worrying you were doing on their behalf, and they're out in Wide Spot, Ohio, fucking each other's brains out!"