CSI: Perfect
by ReverendKilljoy
April 2005.
The sun was shining but hadn't been for long enough to make the city start cooking. Catherine Willows tugged her LVPD ball cap down till it scrunched into her sunglasses. Boston can get hot, hot in a way that Las Vegas never could. Las Vegas was built for hot, and everything was air-conditioned, everything was shaded. At night, the heat wafted away into the desert night, and everything cooled until the dawn.
When Boston gets hot, the hot settles into the low places, the confined spaces, and builds in layers like a callus, heat on heat. Given the right sun and the wrong winds, Boston can heat till it smolders like a coal. But not today.
Today the winds were strong and sharp, with the slightest hint of summer over the tang of spring. The sun was shining through the high clouds and was just warm enough to keep the chill off you when you came out of the shade.
"God, I love the spring." It wasn't really true. Catherine was a summer, warm days and sunshine and her daughter home from school, a day off at the park, cheap watermelon at the grocery store. She was definitely a summer. She looked at her traveling companion, still sitting on a bench in the shade.
"Gil?" She waited. He was reading. What a shock.
"Gil?" He looked up at last. He was still reading about the Duck Tour.
"Did you know that General Motors built over 21,000 amphibious trucks during World War II? I didn't know that." He looked back at his book. "The Duck we rode in today was probably built in New York or Detroit in the late 1940s or early '50s."
"Gil, come out into the sun and enjoy the springtime, would ya?" She laughed. She had known he'd geek out over the Duck tour, the half-truck/half-boat amphibious car guided tour of Boston. It had been almost an hour and a half of trivia, both historical and mechanical, and had taken most of their morning. Their flight back to Las Vegas wasn't till almost 9:00 PM, so she had one more stop planned on her itinerary.
"You wouldn't see the bug race finals at Harvard," he pointed out, "so why should I have to see… what? Sunshine? We certainly don't have that in Las Vegas."
She saw the bus coming and motioned for him to follow. "Come on, this is our bus, Bug Boy. I've never been to Boston and we're not going to miss this."
He gathered his bag of notes and booklets and followed her, blinking, into the light.
"I really should be spending this time back at the hotel, Catherine, writing up our assessment of Doctor Cumming's new scope. Since MIT was nice enough to bring us out here to see it." He pursed his lips as the bus slowed in front of them.
"On the bus, Grissom!" She goaded him, and stepped onto the bus. She wondered if any of the other CSIs would have pushed ahead with her plan. Probably not. Warrick was too easy going, Nick too polite, and Greg was still too in awe of the eminent Doctor Grissom to give him a shove in the ass when he needed one. Then there was Sara. Catherine shook her head. Don't even go there, she warned herself.
Grissom stepped onto the bus just as the doors began to close.
"So where are we going, Catherine?" He looked tiredly resigned, with a vaguely long-suffering look he seemed to wear a lot the last year or so.
"The greatest architectural achievement of modern man, according to my sources." She reached into her purse and handed him a small envelope Warrick had obtained through unnamed sources at her request.
Grissom, looking into the envelope, frowned at her as the bus surged through traffic. He raised an eyebrow and asked, "Architecture?" He held up two tickets for the afternoon game, Red Sox versus Tigers. Right behind first base, on the aisle.
"Fenway Park, Gil. Cathedral of Baseball."
April 1969.
"Bertie, you coming?"
The slender young man looked up from his chemistry textbook and looked around for the source of the interruption. He blinked owlishly, his long hair hanging over his watery blue eyes, trying to focus in the bright Santa Barbara sunlight.
"Bertie," his friend Coop called again from the doorway behind him, "you coming? We're late again, Coach will have your ass."
Gilbert Grissom unfolded his lanky frame and carefully marked his place in his book. He grabbed his cap and his glove and quickly moved out the door after his friend. Unlike the heavyset Michael Cooper, a natural-born catcher, Grissom had entered an awkward stage, like many sixteen-year old boys, where his legs and arms were getting longer faster than his diet could put flesh on them. He loped after Coop, his legs pacing out the long stride that had contributed to his recent move from second base to pitcher.
They ran, the two boys so inseparable they were always "Bertie and Coop" as a unit, to the field, a few blocks from the Grissom's house. Across well-mannered yards and the vacant lot behind the auto garage where the bad kids went to smoke after school, they ran with the joy of children and the hustle of men. They arrived just as warm-ups were beginning, and tried without success to sneak past the baleful eye of their coach, Mr. Harding.
"Grissom, you're late. Do you want to start today, or what?" The coach was chewing a cigar butt. He didn't smoke, but the cigar gave him something to chew on, and something to do with his mouth and his hands instead of cursing. Every time he cursed the school principal docked his pay a dollar. Grissom's first start, a 12-2 shellacking at the hands of their perennial rivals from Oakley, had cost Coach Harding over ten dollars.
"Yes, sir," Grissom said, dropping his glove and crossing his ankles. He bent, almost touching his nose to his knee as he stretched.
Coop watched him, limbering up more traditionally by shifting from side to side, stretching his quads. Coop laughed, not bothering to hide his amusement.
"You look so stupid, Bertie. I mean all I can see from here is your feet and your bony old butt."
Grissom took a breath, held it, and let it out. He folded his long legs and squatted, all knees and elbows, into a passable lotus position.
"I've been reading a lot about yoga and how you can reduce injury and strain by relaxing muscles rather than winding them up. It's just another kind of warm up,"
Coop looked at Coach Harding, who was muttering and chewing his stogie.
"Well, nothing else has worked. You can throw hard but that's about all you got, Bertie. I sure hope you keep doing well in school, or the only way you'll see me playing ball at Cal State is to buy a ticket." Coop began rolling his neck, popping the muscles. He wind-milled his arms to loosen his shoulder.
"Hey, I taught you to throw from the crouch like Johnny Bench, didn't I?" Grissom twisted his torso from side to side, feeling the muscles of his back stretching. "And he was rookie of the year last year. Not having to jump up to throw out the runner makes you almost two tenths of a second faster. I tell you, science is going to revolutionize sports, Coop."
"Fine, you be the scientist. I'll win the MVP, and maybe go to the Hall of Fame too."
"That would be fine by me." Grissom thought about the chemistry homework waiting for him after the game. He hadn't told Coop yet, but if he did well on his next Chemistry exam, UCLA had told his mom they would admit him in the fall, skipping his senior year, to study organic chemistry. He grinned, and shook his head. Time to concentrate on the game, not on something that might never happen.
April 2005.
"How can you not like baseball?" Catherine was opening a bag of peanuts and watching the starting pitcher finish his warm-up throws. Grissom had been bemused, more lost than usual in his own head, since they had arrived at the park. The starter, Schilling, fired his first pitch in for a strike.
"I didn't say I disliked baseball, Catherine," he said patiently, looking through the program. "I said I couldn't remember the last time I saw a whole game. It's not a priority in my life."
She frowned, and looked around, taking in the atmosphere, the crowds, and the excitement of a Sox game against even a soft opponent like the Tigers. She'd seen the rare afternoon weekday game noted on the schedule when booking their visit, and had decided on a whim to spend some quality time with Grissom, doing something out of the routine. They had been close once, friends as well as colleagues, and that seemed to be slipping away.
"Why would you not adore baseball, Grissom?" She kept worrying at the thought, picking at it. "I mean, baseball is science. Ballistics, biology, mechanics, psychology, it's all here, and math? Odds, stats, averages, probabilities. I figured you'd live for this."
"Baseball is beautiful," Grissom allowed, applauding with the others as Schilling struck out his second batter to end the top of the first inning. "Contrary to opinion, I do appreciate beauty."
He nudged her with his elbow, and when she looked she realized he was paying her one of his rare compliments.
"Thanks." She wondered how long it had been since the two of them had spent this much time just sitting together, outside of work, doing anything.
"Thanks for getting the tickets. This is not something I would have thought to do."
April 1969.
"Two strikeouts, very nice Bertie." Coop was shrugging off his gear since he hit third today. "But pay attention, you got that last guy on your curve and I called the heater."
"Sorry, Coop," Grissom shrugged. His mind was still on a complicated chemistry problem he had been struggling with earlier. Not that he was about to admit that to his friend. He wondered if he would find time to play ball in college. Not on a team, just around school with the other boys. Well, men. College men. Probably no time for ball.
Still, UCLA was a great school, even if it did mean moving hours away from home. He saw all is teammates getting up to go back on the field and realized Coop had popped out to end the inning. He grabbed his glove and headed back to the mound.
April 2005.
With the popup, the inning ended and Catherine looked sidelong at Grissom. Although he seemed to have been paying little attention to the game, she saw he was keeping score in his program, with the cryptic shorthand of the official scorer describing each at-bat. He also had a column of dots and dashes in the margin of one page.
"Morse code?" She guessed, trying to make sense of it. "Are you so bored you're calling for help?"
"Scoring the game, sorry. Old habits." He folded the program over but kept his page marked with his thumb.
"Eddie used to score the games during the World Series. He didn't do the columns thing though."
"How long has it been since you said his name without grimacing, Catherine?" Grissom studied her face, hidden behind her glasses and under her hat, as best he could.
"Well, it's almost two years since-" she shrugged. "It's been almost two years. He was a liar and a cheat, but he loved me once, and he loved Lindsey. So sitting on the couch, biting his lip and scoring a ballgame on a piece of paper with one of Lindsey's pink pencils? Hard not to like the memory."
They sat for a while. She appreciated that he didn't try to say anything trite about her complicated history. He appreciated that she didn't start talking just because he wasn't. The pitcher was on the mound again for the next inning, and he flipped open his program.
"Charting pitches," he said suddenly, almost shyly. "What pitch, where, to each batter, and the counts."
"I don't think Eddie ever did that," she said, watching him work.
"It's esoteric," he admitted. The cleanup hitter smashed a line drive right up the middle, which the pitcher caught almost by reflex as he completed his delivery. The hitter stood, hands on his hips and shook his head at his misfortune.
April 1969.
Grissom looked at the ball in his hand, and felt his hand stinging at the force with which the ball had struck his glove. He looked back to the plate, to see the batter still standing, hands on his hips, shaking his head.
Coop bounced up and came to the mound to make sure Grissom was okay.
"Bertie, you still with me? He get a piece of ya?" Cooper had his mask pushed back into his unruly red hair.
"Yeah, fine." Grissom flicked the ball into his glove a few times experimentally. "No problem."
"Okay then," Coop said, heading back to the plate. "Let's go get 'em."
With a sense of detachment, Grissom rocked and fired a pitch in to the next batter. His delivery previously had been something awkward, nicknamed "The Monster" by Coach Harding because it was assembled from so many ill-fitting parts. Today, though, with his mind on other things and his body in good form thanks to some good pre-game stretching, the ball was rolling off his fingertips and into Coop's mitt with a rhythm like a metronome.
Batters rose and fell, and still he rolled on. Strikeout, fly ball, strikeout. Popup, grounder to second. Strikeout. The innings went by.
April 2005.
"Go! Go!" Catherine was chanting, watching the ball arcing towards the wall. She had her empty peanut bag crushed, forgotten, in one hand and half a beer in the other.
Grissom did a snap calculation, and watched the ball sailing towards Lansdowne Street. He marked 'home run' into his scorecard before Varitek, the catcher, had even started his homerun trot.
"Hey, that's only the Sox what, second hit?" Catherine was looking over his scorecard, trying to puzzle out the notations.
"Third. Kapler beat out that throw in the fifth." Grissom turned for a moment, his eyes closed and his face lifted towards the sun. He let it warm him, the light through the flesh of his eyelids a warm red glow, before he turned back to the game. The score was now one to nothing going to the top of the eighth inning, and both starting pitchers were working quickly.
"What about the Tigers? Has Schilling even given up a-" Catherine was interrupted by a fan behind her, a slender young woman, who punched her on the shoulder softly.
"Shhh! Geez, whatya trying to do?" The young woman scowled at Catherine incredulously. "What are you, a jinx?"
"What? Sorry?" Catherine looked at her, then back at Gil. Grissom scribbled something in the margins of his program.
"Curt Schilling- 0 hts 0 wlks 0 hpb 0 err thru 8 inngs."
"Oh!" Catherine looked around and noted the hush, the eagerness that had been building over the last few innings. She had been too caught up in the game and the event to notice the crowd's reactions.
"Have you ever seen a… game like this?" she whispered to Grissom.
"Once," he said softly.
April 1969.
"Fer Chrissakes Coop, keep everyone away from him!" Coach Harding had bits of cigar on his lips and in his teeth where he had bitten through his stogie when Coop had blasted a pitch over the left field wall for the game's only score. He motioned wildly to his team to leave Bertie alone on the end of the bench where he was sitting, lost in thought.
"Don't worry, Skipper," Coop told him. "He's in like some kind of trance today. We could belly dance nekkid and he'd probably not notice."
"Well, let's not test that, Mr. Cooper," said the coach, shaking his head. Ballplayers.
Grissom looked up, then, at the crack of a bat. The second baseman had broken his bat on a hard slider and was thrown out at first to end the eighth.
"Well, suppose we should finish this," Bertie noted to Coop as he headed towards the mound. He was still detached, almost catatonic. In his head, Grissom was weighing two possible solutions to his chemistry problem, and he knew the answer was there. All he had to do was clear his mind of distractions and let the answer come to him.
April 2005.
Bellhorn, the second baseman, throw his batting helmet to the first base coach and headed out to play defense. The third base umpire examined the shards of his bat briefly before handing them to the dugout for disposal. Even the umpires were nervous, wondering if they were going to be a footnote to baseball history.
Schilling, his face a blank mask, took the mound and peered in for the sign. Catherine and Gil watched him, and then looked up the first base line to the plate, watching the catcher go through the signs.
Grissom shook his head slightly.
April 1969.
"You believe this, Davis?" Coop muttered to the batter. "I'm calling a perfect game and he's shaking me off."
Knowing that Bertie must be tiring, he called again for the curve ball. Again, the slight shake of the head.
"Okay, here we go," sighed Coop, flashing the number one sign and looking for heat in on Davis' hands.
The pitch never made it to Coop's mitt. A line drive smash, right up the middle. The second baseman had been shift toward the middle, and he made a diving stab at the ball.
April 2005.
Catherine was on her feet, as was all of Fenway except her companion. The noise was tactile, pressure that was as tangible as a crowded subway. Bellhorn stood, dusted the reddish clay dirt from his uniform, and flipped the ball from his glove directly back to Schilling.
"Did you see that?" She was yelling to be heard, and even so she wasn't sure he'd heard her. "Can you believe it?" That was amazing!"
"I believe," Grissom said. He and Schilling settled back and looked for the next batter. One away.
April 1969.
Four pitches: a sweeping curve for a strike, fastball inside, slider popped back over the catcher, and a fastball down and away. Swing and a miss. Strikeout. Two away.
April 2005.
Even Grissom was standing now, and there was not so much cheering as raw shouting, screaming, keening from the stands. Flashbulbs popped with every motion of Schilling on the rubber. Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez, the Tiger's all-star catcher, seemed almost nonchalant as he dug in at the plate.
"Strike him out!" Catherine shouted, whooping like a teenager. "Mow him down!"
"Fastball inside," Grissom whispered.
April 1969.
Coop looked at he umpire. "That's been a strike all day, pops."
"Tend your own knitting, son," warned the umpire, crouching behind him at the plate.
"He crowds me now," muttered Cooper, firing the ball back to Bertie.
Okay Bertie, he thought grimly, one more out. Let's break off a curve. He flashed the signs.
Grissom nodded and rocked back, fired.
April 2005.
The crack of the bat was easily audible, as all 38,000 fans had been holding their breaths with the pitch. The ball flew like a dart towards the right field seats, seemingly lifting higher rather than falling.
"Oh no!" Catherine turned her shoulder away, as if unable to watch, but she could not tear her eyes from the ball as it flew.
"The wind," Grissom said to her, his voice drowned out by the gasping of the crowd as the ball hug up in the breeze, sliced off sharply as it slowed, landing four or five rows foul down the line.
The crowd sighed, a rustling sound like wind in the wheat all around the park.
Rodriguez returned grimly to the batter's box. Schilling stared in for the pitch.
Grissom closed his eyes for a moment. As he did, he thought about the sunshine and the crowd, and the feeling that some things are perfect for a boy, and others for men, but the best things perhaps transcend boys and men, and are simply perfect.
April 1969.
Grissom threw his pitch, a fastball that tailed away from the batter. The batter swung, and connected again.
The sound told him that the batter had completely missed the sweet spot, and had swatted away the pitch off the handle. The ball popped up into the air, hanging like a promise over the sun-drenched field.
Grissom closed his eyes and stood, head down, as Coop threw off his mask and waited under the ball.
Hiss of the crowd. Gasps. Sound of the ball on leather. A rush of air, and then the cheers.
Grissom opened his eyes.
April 2005.
Varitek had the ball in one hand and Schilling bear-hugged with his other arm, half lifted in the air. Teammates were shouting, the crowd was going crazy, and Catherine was hugging Grissom and jumping up and down.
She stopped and kissed him squarely on his cheek. He looked at her, and kissed her likewise. He folded his program and slid it into his bag carefully.
April 1969.
"Excuse me?" Coach Harding looked in shock at the young man standing silently in front of him. He drummed his fingers agitatedly on his desk, looking around his dimly lit office as if for witnesses to what he'd just heard. "You want what?"
"I'm leaving the team."
"But, you can't!" Harding shook his head. "I have scouts from Stanford coming this week to look at you, you know what that means, boy? College, maybe pro ball some day."
"Stanford's a great school, but they'd want me to play baseball."
Harding shook his head, near tears. "Of course they would. What's wrong with that?
"Last week was great coach. It was better than great."
"Great, it was perfect, son. How can you walk away from that?"
"I'll never be perfect again. Good maybe, great maybe even if I devote all my heart and soul to it. But I won't. I want to go to UCLA, and I'm going in the fall." He looked around. "Please don't tell Coop. I, I haven't told him yet."
"Every boy wants to be a ballplayer, don't you?"
Grissom closed his eyes for a moment. As he did, he thought about the sunshine and the crowd, and the feeling that some things are perfect for a boy, and others for men, but the best things perhaps transcend boys and men, and are simply perfect.
"No, sir. But thank you for the offer."
The longhaired, lanky youth turned and walked out. He never came back.
-fin-