Title: Down by the Schoolyard
Author: S.N. Kastle
Category: Sports
Night, Dan/Casey
Summary: "I'm on my way, I don't know where I'm going." During.
Rating: R. If that.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Aaron Sorkin's and Paul Simon's.
I just play here.
Distribution: Please link to my site. Originally posted
22 December 2001.
Notes: This can stand alone but fits best between the two
halves of Falling, Flying, Tumbling. There's more where
this came from.
Thanks: k, Jess and LE played H-O-R-S-E. It would've been
a draw, except LE was there on the corner of Hudson Street, so I think she wins.
Feedback: snk@wearemany.net
tall
grass
DOWN BY THE SCHOOLYARD
New York City, 2000.
THEY WERE DOING repairs at the David
Barton gym so Casey went to Chelsea Piers, and after he did weights and swam and
ran around a little and played half a game of handball he started to choke on
the recycled air and went outside. Late August and it was still really hot, dozens
of guys in shorts with t-shirts tucked in the back, racing on rollerblades down
the West Side Highway. Casey skipped the shower and cooled off as the sweat dried.
It was his day off. His day without Danny, without Charlie because it was
Thursday and anyway there was a school trip. Sometimes he thought he could
stand more days off, that maybe if Quo Vadimus didn't work he'd take a year off
or something and have a whole bunch of days off all in a row. Three hundred
sixty-five days off, no plan.
He'd be bored after a week, that was the
problem. There were only so many times he could watch The Godfather without going
insane and he was in pretty decent shape already, so he wouldn't spend it working
out. He could go to a movie every day, he guessed. Or a ballgame. But that might
be not different enough. Though at least it would be his own call, his time
would be his own.
He walked out toward the sunset where it dipped into
the Hudson and sat on a bench on the pier. He closed his eyes and listened to
the slap of diamond-backed waves against old wooden pilings. There were sirens
but they sounded far away and he almost forgot where he was, what he was still
doing in New York when everything was so unsure. He opened his eyes to the
orange glow of the sun on the river. The Circle Cruise boat swung down around
the curve of lower Manhattan and Casey thought maybe he'd just spend the next
three hundred days right there.
A dark-haired guy with Danny's build
bladed up and stopped himself with a hand on the concrete roadblock at the end
of the pier. He yanked his shirt over his head and wiped himself down, and then
he sat on the roadblock, one leg on either side, and leaned back. Extended
himself gracefully. Like he was on a balance beam, the blades stacked up
on each other toe to toe, long lean torso brown and still sweaty and arched a
few degrees so his back didn't meet the concrete. His eyes were closed.
Casey's eyes were pretty much open. Hey, it was a show, can't have a show without
an audience. Different name on the company letterhead but that much hadn't changed.
Casey got that part.
The sun fell behind the New Jersey skyline and it
was a little colder, already, even thought it was still August. Soon enough it
would be winter and they'd do the four o'clock with twilight seeping through the
bullpen windows.
Casey played with his thumbs and kicked his shoes together
and waited. Then the guy sat up, slow, letting one leg fall on each side
so he didn't lose his balance, like he'd done it before. He shook himself out,
made a pass at his chest again with the shirt before tucking a corner into his
waistband.
Casey stood up. The guy looked right at him.
"Great
sunset, huh," the guy said, and Casey agreed even though neither of them had been
watching. Casey took one step forward and reached out to lean his weight
on the blockade. He just wanted a day off.
"So," the guy said.
"So," Casey said.
The guy smiled a little, even white teeth on top with
one cracked on the bottom. His hair was dark brown, almost black and a little
spiky, poking up in a dozen different directions.
Casey smiled back.
"So," the guy said, "you wanna get out of here?"
BRANDON'S
APARTMENT WAS only a few blocks away and from the one big window you could see
a block-wide basketball court down below, a few dozen players in motion. Brandon
was still in the shower and Casey had a towel wrapped around his waist. He wondered
if any of the kids down there were any good. Probably not. It was the wrong
court for the really top-notch street players. You had to go over to Sixth Avenue
for that, onlookers crushed up against the chain-link fence, hooting and hollering
for their favorites. He and Danny had done a story about it their first year in
New York. Back when they went out and found the stories for real.
"Food," Brandon said from behind him. Brandon seemed to be a big fan of the declarative,
which worked out okay, because Casey thought he'd had enough snappy repartee to
last him at least till after the holidays. Brandon was thirty-two and from California
and sold clothes at some place in the Meatpacking district where rock stars paid
two thousand dollars for a pair of jeans. Casey thought all of that was just fine
for a day off.
He didn't want to be an ass, so he'd left his number and
said "Call me," as he walked out the door. Two weeks later, Brandon did.
"Wanna do something tonight?" he asked, and Casey said he didn't get
off work till late but that worked out okay because Brandon actually had dinner
plans already. So they fucked on Brandon's big metal-framed bed and that
was okay, too, and Casey even fell asleep for a little while after.
And
then it was like that for a while, an odd phone call and a decent lay and Casey
never told Danny about any of it. Cause at first it was, it was just weird, with
the whole piers thing, and he knew Danny'd make a joke. And then it was just too
late, then it was a thing and Danny would make a bigger thing out of it, and really
it wasn't anything at all.
BY DECEMBER THEY'D gained a whole point
in the right demographic and done a couple of special promotions and people seemed
happy about it. There were parties every night all over town and sometimes
before the show they'd run over to some bar in tuxes and make an appearance, just
him and Danny usually, put their pretty faces out there so people knew everything
was still solvent.
Danny wanted to walk back because they'd left early,
even though it was crisp and they could see their breath, but Casey'd had two
big glasses of eggnog and said yes anyway. They didn't need to be shuttled from
door to door. They used to walk all over the city, talking about stories, looking
for a decent burger, finding one at Corner Bistro where 12th Street inexplicably
crossed 4th Street and no one asked why. They'd drink cheap beer and ask the old
guys at the bar which team they'd lay money on come playoff season, just like
back in Texas.
"And then this girl, Casey, and I'm not being all pejorative
there with the calling her a girl, because she's like twenty, maybe, probably
not even, she puts her hand on my ass and says, I always wanted to fuck a baseball
player."
"You're not a baseball player," Casey said, stopping in the
middle of a row of Christmas trees set up on the street for sale. There
were big bulbs strung over the sidewalk and trees bundled in plastic wrap like
vegetables.
"Yeah, I don't think she got that part," Danny said, stopping
too. "You get a tree yet?"
"I wasn't sure," Casey said. There
was a gap where the trees leaned up against a fence, where someone had bought
one, probably, and through it he could see the Empire State Building twenty blocks
away, lit up all red and green. "You?"
"Casey?" Danny said, but he said
it soft and quiet and Casey looked back and Danny was right in front of him.
He said it like there was something more to be said, there, between them.
Casey blinked and looked over Danny's shoulder and realized that the basketball
court through the link fence was the one he'd seen from Brandon's apartment.
"Yeah?"
Danny sniffed and squinted. "Pretty much still being Jewish
at my house, remember?"
"Right," Casey said, "right. Right."
He was weird about it, he could tell, because Danny put a hand on his shoulder.
Danny wasn't declarative at all, but he looked good in a tux,
dots of red on his cheeks from the cold, bow tie peeking out from under the heavy
wool coat. Casey breathed deep and it was like being in a forest except
there was honking behind them and Danny kept staring like there was something
more to be said.
Casey swallowed the smell of fresh-cut wood and motor
oil all mixed up like a back porch in Dallas, and then he kissed Danny.
Danny tasted like rum punch.
There wasn't anywhere to go and they had
to get back for the show, so pretty much they just made out against some brick
building two blocks away, Danny's arms around Casey's waist and up under his shirt,
hands warm against Casey's back. Casey pushed Danny's head to the wall and
sucked on his throat, hands flat above Danny's shoulders on the cold stones, his
overcoat falling across both of their bodies like a tent.
And it was
like that, hot and harsh and nobody came. It was always like that at first,
when it had been so long. It had been a long time. It felt like longer than
it had actually been or maybe everything before he kissed Danny felt like a million
years ago. Finally Danny pushed Casey back and said, "For real this time,
we're gonna be late," and they caught a cab.
By the end of the show Casey
felt woozy and just wanted to go home. During the summer hiatus, he and Danny
had spent afternoons on the beach at Coney Island until it tanned away Danny's
lost and confused looks. Now Danny was starting to look like he had all
spring, pale and queasy and that was how Casey felt, so he left without saying
goodbye and laid on his bed listening to the couple next door have sex. The woman
always screamed in Russian when she came. His doorbell rang at three and
he didn't turn on any lights on his way to the door.
Casey didn't ask
until they were both naked, and then it wasn't a question any more. All
he said was, "It's late."
"I'm not working tomorrow," Danny said, teeth
against Casey's collarbone.
"You wanna do something?" Casey asked. His
hand was on Danny's ass, cupping it, pulling him closer.
Danny laughed
low in his throat. "This, man," he said. "I want to do this."
END.