Strike Zone of Memory

The baseball cap had seemed like a good idea when he bought it — a classic Brooklyn Dodgers lid to cover the thinning patches that puberty had promised would fill in but that middle age had simply erased.

Tom sat in the upper deck, stadium lights flickering as distant lightning fractured the sky like cracks in a dark foundation. He picked at his spinach salad, the wilted greens a cruel reminder of every health lecture Maria had delivered before moving out. "You're forty-five, not twenty-five," she'd said, pointing at the fast food bags. "You can't eat like a college kid forever."

The baseball game churned below him — strangers living their lives with healthy hearts and full heads of hair.

At the concession stand earlier, he'd noticed her: salt-and-pepper hair pulled back loosely, the kind of careless beauty that made his chest ache. She'd smiled when his change dropped, spinach stuck between her front teeth, and he'd said nothing because Maria would have wanted him to. Because Tom was the kind of man who let women walk away with spinach in their teeth, too polite, too passive, too everything.

Now thunder rumbled closer as the teams swapped innings.

Maria had left him two months ago. Not for another man, but for the man she'd thought he'd become instead of the one he actually was. "You're never going to be the person you keep telling yourself you're becoming," she'd said in that quiet way that hurt more than shouting.

His phone buzzed — her name on the screen.

Maybe this was it. Maybe she was coming back.

He answered, watching the batter swing, connect, send the baseball soaring toward the lights.

"Tom?" Her voice sounded small. "I'm sorry to call. I know we said no contact but —"

"It's okay," he said, though it wasn't.

"I found your old baseball card collection in the garage. The ones your grandmother gave you?"

"Yes?"

"I think you should come get them. Before they get lost in the move."

The lightning cracked closer now, bright as camera flashes.

"Are you seeing someone?" The question escaped before he could stop it.

Silence stretched between them like pulled taffy.

"Does it matter?"

He watched the baseball arc through the night air.

"No," he said. "I suppose not."

"Tom —"

"I'll come by tomorrow for the cards."

He hung up and pulled the hat brim low against the lightning that was rain now, something like tears, except Tom didn't cry anymore. He just ate his cold spinach and watched strangers play a game he'd stopped understanding years ago.