The Seventh Inning Stretch

The fluorescent lights of the office hummed at a frequency that made Marcus's teeth ache. He'd been moving through his days like a zombie for months now—since Elena left, since the promotion he'd worked toward for five years went to someone half his age with a quarter of the experience. His therapist called it dissociation. Marcus called it survival.

Tuesday nights were the exception. That's when he played in the adult baseball league, a ragtag collection of divorced dads, weary teachers, and guys like him who still heard the crack of the bat in their dreams. He played second base, the same position he'd played twenty years ago in college, before life had accumulated around him like sediment.

Tonight, the opposing pitcher was chewing tobacco with practiced aggression, his cap pulled low. Marcus stepped up to the plate, the bat feeling familiar in his hands—ash wood, thirty-two ounces, the weight of memory and regret. The first pitch came high and inside. He didn't flinch. The second, he watched sail past for a ball. Then came the third pitch, low and away, and Marcus's body remembered what his mind had forgotten. His swing connected, clean and perfect, sending the ball arcing toward the fence.

As he rounded second base, his left hamstring seized. He went down hard, his face pressed into the red clay, tasting earth and copper. Above him, the sky was that particular shade of bruised purple that comes just before rain.

After the game—his team lost, but Marcus had gotten his hit—he drove to the marina instead of home. The warehouse district was deserted at midnight. He sat on the edge of the dock, feet dangling over the black water of the harbor, and listened to the masts clinking like wind chimes.

He thought about Elena telling him he was emotionally unavailable, about his boss saying he lacked passion, about the way his mother still looked at him like he was a stranger. He thought about the Zen concept of the hungry ghost—always eating, never full. Maybe that's what he'd become.

A police cruiser cruised past slowly, its spotlight sweeping across the water. Marcus didn't move. He wasn't doing anything wrong. He was just sitting there, wanting something he couldn't name, feeling finally, painfully, beautifully alive. The water lapped against the pilings in a rhythm that reminded him of breathing. In and out. In and out. He stayed until the sky began to lighten, until the zombie haze lifted just enough for him to see the next step forward, even if he couldn't yet make himself take it.