Ch 6 – Interlude
"Have a safe trip!"
"Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"
"Bye, Angela, it was nice meeting you."
"See you next time!"
Tony and Angela waved and watched as Pam and Mike walked away from them and out of the main entrance. The valet had already brought their car around, and the bellhop had loaded their luggage into the trunk. Pam waved again, then she got in on the driver's side, and off they drove, back to Cincinnati.
In staying another night at the hotel, Tony and Angela were in the minority. Most attendees of the Old Timers' Weekend were booked on evening flights out of St. Louis, which was why they had spent the past half hour in the lobby, shaking hands, exchanging hugs, and saying their goodbyes. Prior to that, they had all had an early dinner together, rehashing this afternoon's ballgame.
Now the rest of the evening lay ahead of them.
"So," Tony said with a nervous clap of his hands while they made their way to the elevators. "And what are we going to do?" He didn't want to assume anything.
Angela gave him a sideways glance that he found difficult to interpret. "I was looking at the brochures earlier, and I saw that they have a pool. And a jacuzzi."
"Oh?"
"I seem to recall that you enjoyed that when you were living above the garage," she continued.
He nodded. That, but not much else. Those two weeks had been among the loneliest in his life. And more than once he had caught himself wishing that he didn't have to soak in the hot water all by himself.
"Maybe warm water would help you regenerate after the game?" she suggested.
The elevator doors closed behind them, the car began to rise, and Tony's stomach tingled. Angela was still wearing the same blouse as this morning, and he found that he wouldn't mind catching another glimpse of the spot where he had marked her last night, along with other parts of her that had been hidden under winter clothes all day. And if Angela was the one to suggest they take a bath together – who was he to refuse her?
"Sounds like just what the doctor ordered."
For emphasis, Tony rotated his shoulder in its socket. After the exertion of this afternoon's game, he really did feel some strain there.
But it had been worth it. The charity game was an all-around satisfying experience: standing out on the field again, going up to bat, hearing the roaring of the crowd behind him. It was also a powerful reminder of how much time had passed since he last wore the white-and-red Cardinals uniform. May 1978, that Sunday afternoon in Chicago.
Even more time had gone by since the woman cheering him on from up in the stands had been Marie. Today it had been Angela who waved at him as he ran out onto the field. Whose voice he thought he could make out in the cacophony of shouts and applause when he did make that hit into the bleachers. Who had come down to the field after the game and thrown her arms around him, not giving a Fig Newton about the sweat and dust.
ooooooooo
When Tony emerged from the changing room, it was only a little after eight, and he was surprised to find the pool area empty except for him and Angela. The water lay undisturbed, shimmering in a cerulean shade of blue in the halogen light.
"Looks like we've got this place to ourselves," he said, taking in her bathrobe-clad figure.
"Yeah." She fiddled with her terry cloth belt, and even though they were standing far apart, he could feel it again, the static between them, buzzing in the humid, chlorine-saturated air.
"Do you want to go for a swim first, or should we head straight for the tub?" he asked.
Angela stepped forward and dipped her toes into the water, causing a wave of ripples. Specks of light started dancing on the walls and ceiling.
"The jacuzzi will be better for your shoulder, won't it? Hot water?" she asked.
"Oh, yeah, definitely," he agreed.
Careful not to slip on the damp tiles, they padded over to the corner of the room where water was bubbling in a good-sized jacuzzi.
Tony took a deep breath and undid his bathrobe before placing it on one of the deck chairs that lined the walls. He registered Angela's look, her eyes moving up and down his body.
Objectively, there was no need to feel nervous. They had worn swimwear around each other many times, when they went to the beach together on vacation in Mexico, and on summer Sunday afternoons when they took the kids to the pool or to one of the beaches nearby.
But that was exactly it – the kids. They weren't around tonight, and neither was Mona, nor any other hotel guests.
"Need help with that?" he asked, looking at her robe, not quite sure if he was joking.
She gave him a coy smile. "No, thank you." Then she let the robe slide off her shoulders and slipped out of it.
Now it was Tony's turn to stare. Angela was wearing an orange bikini that he hadn't seen her in before. In fact, until now, he had only known her to wear one-piece bathing suits.
He swallowed as the sight burned itself into his retinas. She was perfect, with her long legs, shapely behind covered just-so by the bikini bottoms, her flat stomach, and small, full breasts underneath two orange fabric triangles. Tony's gaze came to a halt above her collarbone, where the purple bruise still bloomed, and it was all he could do not to walk over, draw her into his embrace, and eat her up.
"Is that- is that new?" he croaked.
"Pre-Thanksgiving sale at Bloomingdale's," she said with a lilt in her voice.
Did that mean she had gone and bought the bikini with him in mind? On the off chance that they might go swimming? Tony shifted his stance from one foot to the other.
"Nice bargain."
"Thank you. Shall we?" She gestured for him to get into the jacuzzi.
When he sat in the water and watched Angela climb into the tub, Tony briefly wished they had opted for a swim in the pool first. The cold would have provided some much-needed sensory distraction.
Angela lowered herself into the water vis-à-vis from him. "This feels nice."
"Yeah," he said, still a little distracted. "Good idea." He tried to keep his eyes trained on her face, or on her hair, which she wore in a messy bun at the top of her head.
Maybe sensing his momentary overwhelm, Angela started to make conversation.
"I enjoyed watching you play this afternoon."
"It wasn't too boring?"
"Oh, no. Pam explained a couple of things to me. I had a good time."
"That's great. I had a good time, too."
"I could tell."
"And it was real nice knowing you were there."
She smiled. "I tried to imagine what it must have been like. When you were on the team."
He shrugged modestly. "Not very different. Well, a little different. I had longer hair."
"Right," she laughed.
"You know, sometimes I think I should be sadder. That it's over. That it never really went anywhere for me. But I'm not."
"What about back then?"
Tony pondered this for a moment. "Right after it happened, it was a shock, of course." He looked down at his shoulder and the assortment of faded scars there.
"When I hit the ground, I felt something go 'snap', and it made an awful crunching sound. I knew right then that it was bad. Bones, cartilage, tendons – everything."
Angela pursed her lips in a pained expression of sympathy.
"The doctors tried," Tony continued. "Surgery, physical therapy, everything. But it became pretty clear pretty soon that I wasn't gonna play again. Not at that level, anyway. And I … I accepted it, you know? What was I gonna do. I guess my heart wasn't in it anymore. After Marie, and because of Sam."
Angela nodded.
"Before the injury, I tried keeping her here with me, and it didn't really work out. Then she stayed with Marie's mom for a while, and my dad took her when he could, but they all still had their jobs, and I didn't want Sam to get passed around like that. It was just too confusing. And I missed her too much."
"So, hurting your shoulder gave you permission to come home?"
"Maybe, yeah. The day after the Cards let me go, I was back out on Pitkin Avenue. A has-been with a high-school education and a bum shoulder. Perfect guy to drive a fish truck."
"That must have been difficult."
"It was, in a way," he admitted.
Tony remembered having to get up at the ass crack of dawn every morning except on Sundays, dropping off his sleepy little girl at Mrs. R's or at his dad's apartment across the street, and then making his rounds, delivering fish all over Brooklyn and parts of Queens. Sitting in early morning traffic day after day after day gave him plenty of time to ruminate.
No doubt, it had been a double whammy, grieving for Marie and for his lost baseball career at the same time.
"But I kind of knew that the only way out was through, you know? So … I just kept going. For Sam."
His newfound closeness with his daughter had been the only good thing to come out of the whole mess. Sam needed him, and Tony was glad to be there for her. He wasn't traveling all over the country anymore, and he got to play a role in his daughter's day-to-day life for the first time since her birth. He tried to make it all up to her, to be the mother she had lost, the father she hadn't had before, her best friend and confidante.
As the years passed, they settled into a comfortable routine. Tony continued to work his dead-end job to pay the bills, and when he wasn't behind the wheel of the fish truck, he coached Sam's Little League team and volunteered at the Y, he shot pool and played poker with the guys, and he dated beautiful but shallow girls none of whom could hold a candle to Marie. He wasn't unhappy. Sure, at 31 years old, he didn't have a whole lot to show for himself, but it didn't really matter.
He didn't really matter. Everything he did, he did for his little girl.
But then Sam started getting into fights, and he began to see their neighborhood with different eyes. The rats and the winos, the broken windows and the gaggles of teenagers that hung out on stoops and in front of convenience stores.
Tony lay awake at night, wondering what Marie would think if she could see them now.
Before Sam was born, he and Marie had fantasized about the kind of life they wanted for their baby. Their son or daughter should grow up somewhere nice and safe. They wanted the kid to go to a good school and to have a yard to play in. For a while there, it had looked as if all of that was within reach, while Marie was still alive, and Tony was still with the Cardinals.
But now … Samantha's school was falling apart, and her playground was Pitkin Avenue. Tony himself was still sleeping on the pullout sofa in the living room of their cramped apartment.
During those long, dark nights, when he listened to the clanging of the pipes and the shouting in the streets, it became clear to him that he had to do better than this. For both of his girls.
So he began to look for jobs outside of the City, thinking he could maybe become a janitor someplace, or a building manager of some sort.
Not long after he started his job hunt, he met Mona in the foyer of her old apartment building – and the rest was history.
Never in his wildest dreams would Tony have imagined himself ending up in an affluent Connecticut suburb, keeping house for a smart, beautiful woman and her family, a Harvard graduate with her own advertising agency, who quickly became his best friend, and who loved his daughter as if she were her own.
And who was now sharing a hot tub with him in a luxury hotel in St. Louis, wearing nothing but a bikini.
"I think you did a very, very good job," Angela said. She was looking at him earnestly, her brown eyes brimming with unshed tears. "With Sam. With everything. These terrible, tragic things happened to you, Tony. And you survived. You raised a little girl into a wonderful young woman. And now you're on the way to making even more of yourself. I don't know many other people who could have done what you did."
"Thank you, Angela," he said, deeply moved by her words. "I don't know what to say here. I just did what I had to do, you know? And hey, I've had some help." He nodded at her, wanting to acknowledge all that Angela had done for Sam over the years.
"I know. I just wasn't sure if I ever told you how remarkable I think this is. Meeting your friends this weekend, seeing the town, watching you play … Until now I never really knew what to imagine. You lost so much."
He nodded again. "It was tough. And believe me, I asked 'Why?' plenty of times, and there were days when I just wanted to quit. But I look at it now, and I see that at least all of the bad stuff wasn't for nothing."
"No?" she asked.
"No," he said firmly, realizing as he continued to speak where this might lead. "I lost Marie, and baseball, and Sam lost her mom. But we kept going, even when it was tough, and down the road we gained some very good things. Some very good people." At this, he made sure to look directly into her eyes, his heart now hammering in his chest.
"What do you mean?" Angela asked, but he could tell from the slight tremble in her voice that this was mostly a rhetorical question. She knew what he meant.
Still, she deserved to hear him say it. And he knew that he needed to say it, too. Put it out there, never to be retracted.
"What I mean is, I'm glad we met. You now, Sam and me, and Jonathan, Mona, and you. But especially … you. And me."
"Tony," she gasped.
"I know, I've kind of said it before. When I had my appendix out. And you kind of said it when you were sleep talking … And I think we also sort of said it when we watched those home movies. But if this weekend is going to teach us anything, it's that life is short, right? Stuff happens."
"It is," she confirmed. "And it does."
"So, I guess what I'm trying to say here, is that I-"
And then Tony's voice failed. At the back of his mind, he wondered if he was going to pass out. Sitting in the hot water, on the verge of saying the words, with his heart threatening to beat out of his chest, he began to feel lightheaded.
Angela stared at him.
He cleared his throat noisily.
"… uh, I look forward to taking you out," he finished lamely.
Angela blinked. She had clearly expected something else, and he wished that he had been able to give it to her tonight.
But a gentle smile curved her lips, and he knew that she understood. This was the dance they did, wasn't it? Two steps forward, one step back.
"And I look forward to sneaking around with you," she said, not missing a beat.
Before Tony could react in any way, Angela pushed herself off the opposite side of the tub. She came floating towards him as if in slow-motion. Then she was in front of him, and he gathered her in his arms.
ooooooooo
By the time they took their seats on the plane on Monday, Tony had a whole new stack of memories to play back in his mind whenever he wanted to.
Sliding his hands under the straps and then beneath the fabric of Angela's bikini top, risking public indecency by taking it off her in the jacuzzi. Feeling her pressed against his bare chest while she wrapped her legs around his waist.
Sleeping in the same bed that night, but making the conscious decision not to go too far. They agreed that they needed to have a better grasp on things first.
Still, it had been more than enough for him, kissing her senseless, caressing her, letting her explore his mouth and his body in return, and then holding her through the night, her buttocks nestled against his groin, his hand on her hip, his nose buried in her hair. The sweetest torture.
Now they sat next to each other in the second-to-last row, hands clasped tightly on the armrest. Outwardly, not much had changed since Saturday morning. But between them, everything was different.
Returning home after such a memorable weekend was bittersweet. Home was where they belonged, of course, but home was also complicated.
Under different circumstances, they would probably let things unfold naturally. Seek closeness when they wanted to, learn about each other as they went along, take next steps when it felt right. Instead, once they arrived in Fairfield, they would have to start looking over their shoulders, both in the house and outside of it.
In a way, Angela was right: Sneaking around was fun, last night had proven that. But already, Tony began to sense the burden that it might become. He didn't like to keep secrets from the people close to him, least of all Samantha.
It was a little funny that he was the one who was beginning to feel weird about it now, since it had been at his urging that they had even chosen this route. He suspected that Angela would have been comfortable announcing it to the family. Not in great detail, but to let them know that they were … taking a new approach.
Tony considered the alternative again. To start openly dating his boss, the woman who wrote his paycheck every week. With less than one semester of college under his belt and no clear path forward where his future was concerned.
No, he just wasn't there yet, he concluded with a sigh. If only his head could keep up with his heart.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Angela asked and turned to face him.
He chuckled and raised their joined hands to his mouth, pressing a small kiss against her knuckles.
"You got any plans for Friday night?"