The fever doesn't really start until May, but the symptoms always hit me in April, when the afternoon sun is just warm enough to feel a little uncomfortable and the breeze at the top of a ferris wheel would be just the thing. When the nights are still cool enough to give you a real chill, the kind you don't just shake off as you stand in line, but carry with you when you climb aboard the Scrambler and pull the sleeves of your hoodie down and wait for the hard clunk of the door being locked in place. The nights that could be October if it weren't for all of the pink and white blossoms speeding past your eyes, worn a little yellow by the dotted line of lights along the frame of a nearby ticket booth. The nights just before everything is ok again, before summer finally lights the fuse that can't be stopped by a late overnight freeze and burns recklessly through the minutes and days and weeks until it explodes and we look out across a field of pull-tabs and plastic cups and pretend we can't see the sunrise.
Prose
Between Innings
Prose, PhotographyComment
Somebody melted gold and poured it all over the sky, and now it's starting to seep through the holes of the chain-link walls of the batting cages.
Allison leans back and presses herself against the glowing fence, her mane of dark, wavy hair widening around her face. For a second she disappears from my sight, lost between the eclipse and my overtinted sunglasses. She pulls herself tighter into the hooded sweatshirt she's wearing and shakes away a brisk breeze. Behind me I hear competing grunts and metallic dings as the guys punt yellow balls in various directions.
"Yeah," Allison yells at them in mock praise, "Give it to them balls."
*Ding*
The cages sprawl around us on uneven ground, the result of decades of haphazard expansion. I think of the rambling hillside towns I saw in my semseter in Italy and I want wine and gelato.
*Ding*
I move over to Allison's side and burrow into her for warmth. The guys in the cage exchange words and laugh, go back to swinging. I can't remember why we came here but I don't want to leave.
*Ding*
I watch fallen balls roll around the the floor of the cages and wonder what will happen when the gold turns to purple around us and the batting cages close and everybody goes on with their lives until they don't go on anymore.
*Ding*
The speakers mounted around the place are playing Ke$ha or Katy Perry or somebody and Allison and I start swaying and pretending like we know what we're doing.
*Ding*
Boys from a junior high baseball team are taking whacks in a nearby cage and one of them turns and watches me and Allison and I think that kid wants to be cool someday and I hope he gets to be.
*Ding*
The guys run out of tokens and we start walking toward the parking lot, past the miniature golf course next to the cages. I turn back and see the kid still watching us and blow him a kiss.
*Ding*
A fake gorilla stands on all fours near the back corner of the golf course, its black fiberglass rump jutting out from the rear, prone.
Allison growls, "I can do dirty things to that gorilla," but everybody keeps walking and so we drift by it and out to the parking lot as the sun dies behind us.
A Decent Tip for a Long-Overdue Conversation
ProseCommentI can’t sleep so I think about emails and cemeteries and was the tip I left at that dive tonight enough? Do I need to go back and leave a fiver, and hope that it will get back to the girl who kindly served me two bottles of Busch I thought I’d never drink but of course I did? I can stop there on the way to the cemetery, maybe pick up a few more bottles to take with me and drink when I get to the gravesite because my grandpa probably would have drunk Busch and maybe then we’d finally have some common ground between us and could have a decent conversation. And then I could ask him what made him happy and why he didn’t try to put more of that in his life instead of worrying about all of the things that made him unhappy, making everyone around him unhappy in the process. But he probably wouldn’t have an answer for that. He would probably be silent again, as he’s been all these years, and I would have to drink his beer and be silent, too.