The New York Read Free Page B

you again? You ain’t that good, not anymore.”
    â€œYou never complained.”
    â€œI don’t mean about that,” she giggled.
    â€œHe don’t pay me for that,” I said, sort of sly and giggly myself.
    â€œI miss you, honey.”
    â€œI miss you. Couple of days here, settle this contract up, and I’ll be heading home, Charlene. Come up that driveway, you better look out, girl.”
    â€œYou been good, Ryan?”
    â€œI been good.”
    â€œI know you’re lying when you say it.”
    â€œI ain’t lying, Charlene. I’m sittin’ here in my box in Fort Blessed Lee, New Jersey, dosing myself with Miller beer and taking cold showers morning and night.”
    Giggles.
    â€œI mean it, honey. You’re worth waitin’ for.”
    I did mean that and maybe it showed in my voice because her tone got cooey and soft. Actually, Charlene Cleaver was the first serious girlfriend I had had in some time.
    She was very pretty, which goes without saying, but she was very smart as well. I ain’t half-dumb, so I know smart. She studied to be a nutritionist at Houston West Community, said nutrition was a growth field in the years to come. Looks like she was right if you half-read
USA
Today
most mornings, all that stuff about B’s and C’s and E’s and bulk fiber, which is one of my favorites. She had a good job with Rice University Hospital working on improving the diet habits of Texans, which is a lifetime job in itself. It’s a lot like selling grizzly bears on a low-fat salad diet when they would much rather chomp on hikers and campers.
    Part of my loving her was letting her work on me. I still drank beer when watching the ball games. Every now and then, I fell over a rack of ribs, too, but I also partook of at least six servings daily of vegetables and fruit, and there were whole parts of weeks passing without me taking in any animal meat at all, not even a cheeseburger.
    We talked some cuddly talk that carried some explicit sexual language and hung up at last telling each other we loved each other and what we were going to do to each other when we saw each other again.
    Charlene is tall and leggy, but that doesn’t stop her from wearing slacks most of the time when you know her bare legs would send half of Houston into a catatonic state. I admire her for that. Also for letting me see her legs from time to time. And knowing all that shit about NAFTA and its effects on Latin American mutual funds. If you ask me, there is far too much book-judging by covers, especially when it comes to women. The cover is so pretty, you forget the words inside.
    I tried Sid, my agent, on the second day, partly because when Charlene makes an offhand hint the way she did about Sid, it works on me like an itch. She wanted me to talk to Sid and it was probably a good idea. But his office said he was in Hawaii with his newest best buddy, a quarterback named Bret Branson.
    Bret Branson. Why is it that football quarterbacks all have these soft and pretty names that make ugly-named linemen want to chew them up? It’s like taunting them.
    I left my number with Sid’s service, but I figured Sid would get the message and think I was calling him about shopping me around and he wasn’t ready yet to talk to me about how I was unsalable. The hell with him.
    On the third day, when Baltimore beat the Angels for a second time, George dumped Tommy Tradup. I knew he must have loved it because of the way he did it. Called Tommy into his office at the Stadium and said he wasn’t going to even niggle about a new contract, that Tommy was history with the Yankees.
    You have to understand something about baseball. For a player of Tommy’s caliber — if you trade him, you trade him for someone else. Tommy hit 321 that year with 34 homers and 102 ribbies. This is a solid performer and George was letting him go, not even waiting for the winter trades.
    George is not a dope.