Page 3 of We Could Be So Good
“No, of course not. Look at me, forgetting my manners.” Andy takes a swig from his beer, his lips curling in a smile around the mouth of the bottle.
It’s a sunny day and they’re in the part of the stands that isn’t cast into shade by the bulk of the stadium. Nick has already taken off his coat, and now he begins rolling up his sleeves. Andy, of course, looks as cool as a cucumber. He always does.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Andy looking at him, watching as the fabric folds back to reveal Nick’s forearms—too thick, too hairy, and marred by a couple scars. He fights the urgeto push his sleeves back down. So what if Andy thinks he’s rough or coarse—plenty of people do. He thinks Andy is spoiled and out of touch. They’re both free to think all kinds of insulting things about one another. Nick doesn’t care. Besides, Nick has a mirror and knows that anyone who looks at him and doesn’t like what they see just has bad taste. What does it matter if Andy has bad taste? He’s wearing boat shoes and linen pants at Yankee Stadium—taste doesn’t get much worse than that.
“You know,” Andy says conversationally, “I don’t even care for the ballet.”
Nick spins around to face him, and sees Andy with that fifty percent sheepish, fifty percent smug expression he’s never seen on any face other than Andy Fleming’s. “Bullshit.”
The entire reason they’re at this godawful stadium watching this godawful team is that Nick won a bet. Andy bet that some reporting Nick did on a fire at the Museum of Modern Art would wind up above the fold on the front page; Nick—trying not to be pleased by this vote of confidence, however delusional, laughed in his face and bet that it wouldn’t. The deal was that if Andy won, then Nick had to go with Andy to the ballet. Otherwise, Andy would go with Nick to a baseball game. The only problem on Nick’s end is that baseball in New York now means only the Yankees.
“I picked something I thought you’d hate,” Andy says.
Nick feels a slow, reluctant smile spread across his face. “I probably wouldn’t have minded the ballet.” He knows what those male dancers wear. That would have kept his mind occupied for a couple hours, make no mistake, not that Andy needs to know about it. “I’d have probably liked the ballet a hell of a lot more than I’m enjoying this.”
“Not a fan?”
“Christ, no. I only picked this because I knew you’d hate it.Why do you root for the Red Sox, anyway? I thought you were from New York,” Nick says, as if he hadn’t spent half his life scanning theHerald Tribunefor Andy’s mother’s byline right before reading theChroniclefrom front to back.
“I went to boarding school in New England.” The way Andy says it gently closes a door on that topic, and Nick is the last person in the world to push on a closed door.
“I hate everything about them,” Nick says, gesturing toward the field with his beer. “I hate the stadium, I hate the fans, I hate the— Well, I’d probably like the players if they played on any other team.”
“I wouldn’t,” Andy says mildly. “I can’t stand any of them.”
Nick can’t imagine Andy hating anyone, can’t imagine him holding a grudge or being petty. “I wouldn’t have thought you had it in you.”
There’s the crack of wood against leather, then a whoosh of noise from the stands as the Yankees score a run. “Fuck that guy,” says Andy. Another runner crosses home. “And him, too.”
Nick laughs, half from the shock of hearing Andy swear, and half from the unfamiliar note of vehemence in his tone.
“Fuck him specifically,” Andy mutters when Mantle steps up to the plate.
The beer man comes along and Nick flags him down.
“Mostly, I hate that they aren’t the Dodgers,” Nick grumbles, passing one of the bottles to Andy. This is his third beer and he’s feeling honest, even though he knows he’s dangerously close to being a walking cliché—the Brooklyn boy who misses his team.
Andy wordlessly holds up his bottle and knocks it into Nick’s, almost solemnly.
“The only thing I don’t hate here is the beer. Well, the beer and the company,” Andy says a moment later, as if that’s the sort ofthing you can just come out andsay, Jesus Christ. “But even the beer is better at Fenway Park.”
“Fuck the Red Sox!” shouts someone in the row behind them.
Nick spins around. “Shut up, you,” he growls with as much menace as he can muster. The man sits down, and fast.
“You do that really well,” Andy murmurs.
“Do what?”
“Intimidate people, I suppose?”
“Gee, thanks.”
“Stop. I mean, I know it’s an act.” He puts his hand on Nick’s forearm, a glancing brush of soft fingertips across bare skin. “I know you aren’t going to hurt anybody at Yankee Stadium.”
“I’m not, am I? Let’s see about that.” He throws a glare over his shoulder just on principle.
“I might enjoy being thrown out of Yankee Stadium and sent to the drunk tank more than I’m enjoying the Yankees trouncing the Orioles,” Andy says. “Let’s keep that as a possibility for next time.”
