The Bottom of the Ninth

The cable had been out for three days when Marcus showed up with a six-pack and nowhere else to go. The silence between us stretched thin, like the coaxial cable that dangled uselessly from my wall—severed, dead, a reminder that even the connections we pay for can just stop working.

"Baseball's on," he said, setting the beers on my coffee table like an offering. "Radio's got the game."

I hadn't watched baseball since college, since the summer everything changed. But Marcus didn't remember that summer. Marcus never remembered the things that destroyed me.

We sat in the gathering dusk, listening to the crack of bats and roar of crowds through tinny speakers. The announcer's voice painted pictures we couldn't see: runners rounding bases, balls arcing toward fences, the rhythmic mathematics of innings and outs. Marcus talked about his promotion, his divorce, the way his daughter looked at him like he was a stranger who sometimes remembered to buy her ice cream.

"You're still my best friend," he said somewhere around the seventh inning stretch. The words landed heavy, like a ball hitting a glove with that dull thud that means someone's out.

I thought about telling him then—about the cable guy who'd come to fix the connection on the day I learned my wife was leaving, how I'd stared at his work boots while he explained splitters and amplifiers, anything to avoid looking at the empty spaces in my apartment where her photos used to hang. How Marcus had been at a baseball game that day, cheering while my life fell apart.

Instead I said, "The cable's not coming back on. I cancelled it."

Marcus looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time in years. The radio announcer described a home run sailing over the fence, the crowd rising to their feet, the kind of moment that makes people believe in miracles.

"Why?" Marcus asked.

"Because some connections," I said, opening my beer, "you're better off cutting yourself."