Strikeout in Paradise

The papaya sat untouched on the bar, its orange flesh slowly oxidizing in the stale air of O'Malley's Pool Hall. Marcus had ordered it on a whim—some midlife crisis attempt to recapture the tropical weekend he'd spent with Elena in Tulum three years ago, before everything went wrong. Before she told him she was leaving.

The baseball game flickered silently on the TV above the bottles of cheap whiskey. Bottom of the ninth, two outs, full count. Marcus watched without really seeing, his fingers wrapped around a sweating glass of scotch. He'd played in college. Third base. Good enough for the minors, maybe, if he hadn't blown out his knee sophomore year. Sometimes he wondered if that injury had been the first domino—the one that set everything else tumbling toward this moment, alone at a pool hall at forty-two, drinking while eating exotic fruit that tasted like nothing at all.

"You gonna break that rack or just stare at it all night?"

Marcus turned to find a woman leaning against the neighboring table. Maybe thirty-five, dark hair escaping a messy bun, eyes that had seen things. She gestured at the pool table behind him with her cue stick.

"Just thinking," he said.

"About?"

He shrugged. "Mistakes. Regrets. Whether to finish this papaya."

Her laugh was short, genuine. "Life's too short for bad decisions about fruit." She moved closer, and he saw the wedding ring on her left hand. "I'm Sarah. Been coming here since my husband died. Two years this August."

"Marcus." He gestured to the empty stool. "Sit. Unless you have somewhere better to be."

"Nowhere better," she said, sitting. "Nowhere at all."

The baseball game ended—someone must have won, though neither of them noticed. Sarah told him about her husband, a firefighter who'd died saving a family from a house fire. Marcus told her about Elena, about the tropical vacation that was supposed to save their marriage but ended it instead. About how she'd left him for someone who wasn't afraid of commitment.

"You're still bearing it," Sarah said softly, gesturing to the way he hunched slightly forward, as if protecting something fragile. "The weight of it."

"Is it that obvious?"

"Only to someone carrying the same thing," she said.

They played pool for hours. Marcus let her win the first game, but the second was close enough that he forgot to be gallant. When she finally beat him on the third game, sinking the eight ball with a clean, precise shot, he found himself smiling—really smiling—for the first time in months.

"Same time next week?" Sarah asked, gathering her coat.

"Only if you let me buy dinner first," Marcus said. "I know a place that makes incredible papaya."

She laughed. "You and that damn papaya."

"It's growing on me."

"Yeah," she said, and for a moment, her expression softened into something hopeful. "Me too."

Marcus watched her leave, then glanced at the TV. Another game was starting. Bottom of the first, fresh possibilities on the board. He took a bite of the papaya—sweet, complicated, unlike anything he'd expected. It wasn't bad. Not at all.