Lights Out Read online

  But things didn’t work out so well - or at least, they didn’t work out so well for Ryan.

  While Jake tore up the minor leagues from the get-go and got on the fast track to the majors, Ryan struggled in his first season in instructional ball at Winter Haven. He got blown out in his first two starts and was demoted to the bullpen. After a few solid outings, he made it back into the rotation and pitched well the rest of the year, including tossing a two-hit shutout. The next season he was promoted to A ball at Kinston. After a couple of rocky starts, he settled down and became the team’s number two starter. His career seemed to be moving along. His goal was to make it to double A the following season, or even triple A, and then make it to the majors within two to three years. He was pitching in his last game of the season, a Carolina League play-off game against Lynchburg, when it happened. The funny thing was, he never even felt it. He had just completed what was probably the best inning of his minor-league career. He had struck out the side on nine pitches and, although he wasn’t being clocked at the time, he felt like he was hitting the low to mid-nineties - a good five miles per hour faster than he’d ever thrown in his life. Then he took the mound for the next inning and he heard a pop. He was pulled from the game and taken to the hospital for an MRI, and it was determined that he had torn the ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow. The doctor explained that the injury could have happened that day, but more likely it was cumulative. Ryan realized that all of those curveballs he’d thrown in high school had finally caught up with him.

  Ryan was finished for the season and had Tommy John surgery about a week later. The procedure, which replaced the ligament in his left elbow with one from his right forearm, was considered a success, and the surgeon told Ryan that, assuming everything went well with his rehabilitation, there was no reason why he couldn’t pitch again next season.

  But a few weeks after the surgery, Ryan knew something was wrong. He felt tingling and numbness in his pitching arm that didn’t seem to be getting any better. His surgeon explained that he probably had some mild nerve impairment, which was normal, and told him to have patience, that most pitchers eventually returned to full strength. Ryan rehabbed over the winter at the Indians’ spring-training complex in Winter Haven, but by March he still felt weakness in his arm. He continued to work out vigorously and pitched in a few simulated games. Although he didn’t have any pain in his elbow, he had lost velocity on his fastball - velocity he couldn’t afford to lose. His top heater maxed out at eighty-one miles per hour. Even worse, his bread and butter, his great control, was gone. His fastball didn’t hit locations and his curveball didn’t break nearly as sharply. With the loss of speed and a lack of movement on his pitches, he wasn’t much more effective than your average batting-practice pitcher.

  In May he was sent back up to Kinston. In his first start he got rocked, giving up nine runs in one-and-two-thirds innings. He started developing another problem - stiffness in his shoulder -and was placed on the disabled list. When he came back he made a few more equally ineffective starts, then was demoted to the bullpen. Pitching in relief, he continued to get beaten up, his ERA ballooning to over ten, and in July he was released.

  Ryan returned to Brooklyn, where he worked out every day and paid out of pocket to receive treatment from a physical therapist. He hired a kid on the Canarsie High baseball team to catch for him every afternoon, but he couldn’t get his speed or control back. A year went by with no change in his performance, and it finally set in that his lifelong dream of pitching in the major leagues was dead.

  Ryan was crushed and disillusioned. He decided that what that gymnast had said was total bullshit. Nobody had worked harder or spent more time and energy chasing a dream than Ryan Rossetti. But in the end all those hours of dreaming and working his ass off had gotten him a big fat nothing.

  Broke, living in his old room in his parents’ house, Ryan had no idea what to do with the rest of his life. His mother pushed him to apply to college, but he had no interest. The only thing that had ever interested him was baseball and without that everything seemed pointless. His mother suggested that he could get a degree in physical education, and maybe coach a high school or college baseball team someday, but the idea of spending his life on a baseball field, being constantly reminded of how his dreams had gone to pot, seemed like torture.

  Ryan didn’t have the energy or the desire to look for a job. He spent most of his time at home, locked in his room, watching TV. He watched anything but baseball. Just the thought of baseball made him sick. He couldn’t even read the sports section of the newspaper anymore without getting depressed. The worst thing was hearing or seeing anything about Jake. Whenever the Pirates played the Mets, people would huddle around the big-screen TV at the Thomases’ house, like they were watching the fucking moon landing. It killed Ryan to see this guy who’d always had a take-it-or-leave-it attitude about baseball making it so big. Ryan knew that should be him on TV, and Jake should be the one stuck in Brooklyn.

  One day Ryan went into his backyard and burned all of his old baseball cards and baseball magazines and programs and year-books and anything else he could find in his house that had anything to do with baseball and was flammable. His mother wanted him to go to a shrink, talk to somebody, but he didn’t see the point. He started drinking beer and put on a gut. He also started listening to a lot of gangsta rap. He’d never paid much attention to music - especially rap - but he suddenly identified with the raw anger of rappers like Nas, 50 Cent, DMX, and Canibus.

  But even rap couldn’t get him out of the dumps. When he was bitter he spent his days snapping at people, or in his room alone, cranking his stereo, getting pissed off at the world. When he was depressed he couldn’t get out of bed. Sometimes he got so down that he thought about killing himself. He had several plans for how to do it and might have actually gone through with one of them if it hadn’t been for Christina.

  Ryan had had a crush on Christina for years. They went to kindergarten through sixth grade together at the Holy Family School, and then they went to the same junior high and high school. In eighth grade Christina was so beautiful that Ryan, like most of the boys in the school, was too intimidated even to talk to her anymore, but she was also his biggest masturbation fantasy. Practically every time Ryan jerked off- which meant about three times a day - he imagined that Christina was standing in front of him in her school uniform, unbuttoning her blouse, letting her short plaid skirt fall to her knees. Before he could imagine any more he’d start coming wildly all over his stomach.

  In high school, when Jake and Christina started going out, Ryan was jealous as hell. It just didn’t seem right to him that an asshole like Jake should get a great girl like Christina. From the very beginning Jake treated her like dirt, always bragging to guys on the baseball team about other girls he’d fingered or fucked. Ryan wanted to tell Christina the truth about Jake, but he didn’t want to upset her, and he didn’t think it was his place to get involved.

  After the Pirates selected Jake in the first round of the amateur draft and Jake got his five-million-dollar signing bonus, he bought Christina a huge rock and popped the question. Then he went off to play in the instructional league, and Christina stayed in Brooklyn and went to the New York City College of Technology and studied to become a dental hygienist. They saw each other a lot during the off-season, but most of the year they got together only once in a while, or just talked on the phone. Christina was upset that she couldn’t see Jake more often and that he kept putting off setting a wedding date, but it was hard to leave a guy she’d been with for so long, who was making millions of dollars a year, and was bound to make even more.

  One night Ryan decided that without baseball he had absolutely nothing to live for. He was about to swallow a handful of Advils and end his miserable, pointless, stupid life, when he realized that OD’ing on Advil might not kill him - it might just fry his brain, make him into a retard or something - so he decided to jump in front of a subway instead. He was in his car, driving toward the Rockaway Parkway station, imagining the great relief he’d experience as the subway wheels decapitated him, when he decided he was hungry; so he pulled over in front of Flatlands Bagels and ordered an everything with chive cream cheese and a cup of black coffee. He had no logical reason to do this, because in a few minutes he would be dead, his head severed by a speeding L train, and a bagel with cream cheese wasn’t much of a last supper. Later, he decided that stopping there must have been fate, or God must have stepped in and made him do it, because he knew that if he hadn’t pulled over at the bagel store he definitely would’ve killed himself.

  He took the bagel and coffee to go and headed back toward where he’d parked, around the corner on Ninety-second Street. It was starting to rain, a stiff wind coming in off Jamaica Bay. He was thinking about how he’d stand at the far end of the platform to catch the train at its fastest so the conductor wouldn’t have time to see him and brake, when he saw her. He felt like he was in one of those romantic scenes in movies, when the guy and the girl see each other in slow motion. She was walking toward him, starting to smile, those great eyes lighting up. She looked even more beautiful than the last time he’d seen her, at a party after high school graduation. As they started talking, Ryan discovered that he was as nervous around her as he had been when he was a teenager, his mouth getting dry and his heart beating out of control, as if he’d just run a forty-yard dash. When she asked him where he was going, he couldn’t say, ‘To jump in front of a subway,’ so he said, ‘Oh, no place - just back home.’ She told him how great it was to see him, and about how most of her old friends from high school had moved out of Brooklyn, and suggested that they get together sometime. Ryan said that sounded great to him, and they exchanged numbers.

 
Ryan returned to his car, suddenly realizing that for the first time since his baseball career ended he had a reason to live.

  He called Christina the next day, and they arranged to meet at the Arch Diner for dinner. Although it wasn’t a real date, because Christina was still with Jake, Ryan had never had a better time with a girl. They stayed at their table for over three hours, getting refills on their coffees and talking about people they knew from the neighborhood. Christina talked a little bit about her strained relationship with Jake, which made Ryan happy, and Ryan told her about how his baseball career had ended. She offered support, telling him that he just had to find something else he loved, and Ryan looked at her, smiling, because he knew he already had.

  Ryan and Christina started getting together all the time, going to diners or bars, or just watching TV at each other’s houses. Ryan became as absorbed in Christina as he used to be in baseball. He couldn’t stop thinking about her when they were apart, and he wanted her as badly as he used to want to be a major-league starter. Whenever she started complaining about how unhappy she was with Jake, Ryan prayed she’d announce she was going to break up with him so he could have his shot. Sometimes he watched Jake on TV, talking to a reporter after a game, acting like Mr Nice Guy, with that phony game-show-host smile, and it killed him inside that Christina was still with him. Ryan could have told Christina stories of how Jake had cheated on her and lied to her, but he didn’t see the point in telling her what she already knew but just didn’t want to admit. Obviously Christina liked the idea of being engaged to a famous baseball player - even if he was the world’s biggest dick - and Ryan knew that if he tried to convince her to break up with Jake it would only work against him. If she was going to leave Jake, she had to do it on her own.

  Ryan called her a lot, sometimes four or five times a day. He just liked to hear her voice and see what she was doing. Whenever she mentioned Jake’s name or said that they’d talked on the phone, he’d get jealous as hell. The times when she flew to Pittsburgh or some other city to be with him were unbearable. Ryan would lock himself in his room and listen to rap, trying to get hold of himself, but he couldn’t stop imagining Christina and Jake together.

  One night Ryan was at Christina’s, watching TV, and her father was out playing poker. Christina hadn’t heard from Jake in over two weeks and he wasn’t returning her calls, and Christina was more pissed off than Ryan had ever seen her. At some point there was a lull in the conversation, and they looked into each other’s eyes. A moment later Ryan was kissing her. At first she kept her lips tightly shut and Ryan thought, Fuck, I blew it, and then her mouth opened and she started kissing him back in full force. A few minutes later they were in her bed, making love. It would’ve been perfect, like a dream come true, if it weren’t for his damn control problem.

  Ryan had never had trouble lasting before, but he could hold out for only about ten seconds with Christina. He thought it was first-time jitters, but the next time it happened again. Sometimes he couldn’t last long enough to start making love to her, and he’d come while taking down her panties, unhooking her bra, or just kissing her. He thought it might have to do with her incredible beauty - maybe he was too attracted to her - but even thinking about disgusting things - a pile of shit in a toilet bowl, the gray hair that grew out of his father’s ears, or his ninth-grade algebra teacher, Mr Finklestein - didn’t help. He thought doing it outside might relax him, so he took her to Manhattan Beach one night. It was romantic under the stars, with the waves crashing, but he came all over the sand.

  Ryan decided that Christina and Jake’s engagement was stressing him out, affecting his ability to relax and be himself in bed. But after tonight that would all be history. Jake would be officially out of the picture, and Ryan would be able to make love to Christina the way he knew he could.

  The drivers behind Ryan were honking their horns and yelling out their windows, and Ryan realized he had caused a traffic jam. He stepped on the gas a little too hard, and the car sped forward. Then, as the light turned red at the next corner, he had to hit the brake and the car jerked to a stop.

  A white minivan pulled up alongside Ryan’s car. The driver-side window opened and the driver, a fat guy in a suit, screamed, ‘The fuck’s your problem, shithead?’

  Ryan, staring straight ahead, lost in thought again, didn’t bother answering. Then the light turned green and he drove on.

  Four

  After Jake got out of the Town Car, he grabbed the pen and baseball that one of the fans was thrusting in his face, and signed the ball, continuing to smile widely with his thirty-five-thousand-dollar choppers. As he made his way slowly toward the stoop leading to his parents’ house, the crowd kept cheering and chanting his name, and he tried to keep up the charm, saying ‘Hey,’ ‘Yo,’ and ‘How’s it goin’?’ and promising that everyone would get an autograph. It was hard to see far ahead with all the flashes, but he made out his mother’s proud, smiling face off to the side. As usual when he hadn’t seen her in a while, he was surprised at how old she looked. There was gray in her hair, and her face looked thinner and more wrinkled than he remembered. He was still pissed off as hell at her for planning this stupid block party, but he didn’t want to blow the great photo op. This shit always looked great in newspapers - the superstar baseball player who loved his mother. It would really kick up his heart-of-gold image.

  He kissed his mother on both cheeks, then hugged her tightly and whispered into her ear, ‘What the hell is this bullshit?’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Donna Thomas whispered back, concerned.

  ‘I told you I wanted this weekend to be low-key,’ Jake said.

  ‘Oh, don’t be a party pooper,’ Donna said.

  Smiling, with his arm around her waist, Jake said to the crowd, ‘I’ll be back in a few,’ and the crowd chanted, ‘Jake, Jake, Jake’ as if he were Rudy, that midget football player from Notre Dame.

  Jake and his mother reached the stoop where his father was waiting.

  Antowain Thomas was six-four, two-eighty, but he had more fat than muscle these days and receding, close-cropped, salt-and-pepper hair. He gave Jake a once-over, looking him up and down, and Jake knew the old man was thinking, Why you dressin’ like that? Just ‘cause you got it going on don’t mean you gotta show it off. Meanwhile, Antowain was wearing old brown corduroys and a yellow-and-red wool sweater he must’ve had for twenty years. He always wore mismatched outfits and kept his clothes until they ripped or moths ate holes into them.

  Jake shook his father’s hand, and then smiled and gave him an extra-warm hug because the flashes were still going off and he knew it was another prime photo op.

  Walking between his parents, with his arms around their waists, Jake headed up the stoop toward the front door.

  When they entered the house, Jake was ready to chew out his parents for planning this party behind his back, but the lights went on and people shouted, ‘Surprise!’

  The house was packed. Jake recognized a lot of his old friends and classmates, going back to elementary school at P.S. 276, and some of his parents’ friends and people his father worked with. Some of his relatives were there too, including his sister, Michelle, and her accountant-dork husband, Roger.

  Jake acted happy about the surprise and shook hands and gave people warm hugs. Then, with his usual charm, he gave the room a speech about how ‘unbelievable’ this was, and how great it was to see everybody again.

  After about fifteen minutes of pouring on the bull, he took his mother off to the side and said, ‘I can’t believe you did this.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘I told you I wanted a mellow weekend, and this is what you do? See? And you wanna know why I don’t come home to Brooklyn anymore?’

  ‘I’m just so proud of you, that’s all,’ Donna said, ‘And I want the whole world to know it.’

  ‘But you can’t do shit like this to me,’ Jake said. ‘I mean, I’m a major celebrity now. I can’t just be around a crowd of people without advance notice. I need security.’