The Art of Fielding: A Novel by Chad Harbach Page B

glasses seemed to miss nothing. In their subsequent meetings, Owen was self-assured and patient and sometimes teasing; Affenlight was rapt and eager to please. After nearly thirty years of student-teacher interactions, he’d found himself on the wrong end of a crush. After a few weeks the word crush no longer covered it.
    Affenlight drew another fry from the carton. Henry’s eyes were squeezed shut—he wasn’t asleep but seemed rather to be wincing, perhaps in memory of his errant throw. His face was ghostly pale, still dusted with infield dirt. He was in full uniform, except for his cap. His glove sat on one knee. “It’ll be okay,” Affenlight said. “He’ll be okay.”
    Henry nodded, unconvinced.
    “He’s a wonderful young man,” said Affenlight.
    Henry’s chin squinched, as if he might cry. “Schwartzy,” he said, “do you have a ball on you?”
    Schwartz, having finished his dinner, had pulled out his laptop and begun typing away, a stack of note cards at his elbow. Now he reached down into his backpack and flipped a baseball to Henry. Henry spun the ball in his right hand, slapped it into the glove. The gesture seemed to enable him to speak. “I keep seeing it over and over in my head,” he said miserably. “I’ve never made a throw like that. A throw that bad. I don’t know how it happened.”
    Schwartz stopped typing and looked up, his face bathed in the cool submarine glow of his laptop screen. “Not your fault, Skrimmer.”
    “I know.”
    “The Buddha’s going to be okay,” Schwartz said. “He’s already okay.”
    Henry nodded, unconvinced. “I know.”
    “Goddamn Dunne.” Coach Cox kept his eyes on the bikini-clad Catholic girls on TV, who were testing the novitiates’ faith with back rubs. “I’m going to wring his scrawny neck.”
    A door opened. “Guert Affenlight?” called a young woman in pale-blue scrubs, reading the name off her clipboard.
    “Yes.” Affenlight stood and straightened his Harpooner tie.
    “My name is Dr. Collins. Are you a relative of Owen Dunne?”
    “Oh, no,” Affenlight said. “His family, actually, is from, um…”
    “San Jose,” Henry said.
    “Right,” Affenlight said quickly. “San Jose.” He’d felt such stupid pride at having the doctor call his name, as if he were the person nearest to Owen. The doctor turned to address herself to Henry:
    “Your friend isn’t doing too badly, all in all. The CT showed no epidural bleeding, which is what we worry about in this kind of case. He has a severe concussion and a fractured zygomatic arch—that is, a cheekbone. His functions appear normal. The arch will require reconstructive surgery, which I imagine we’ll try to do right away, as long as we’ve got him here.” Dr. Collins, who despite the purple fatigue marks under her eyes looked no older than twenty-five, paused to pluck at the V of her scrub top, above which her skin was Irishly pink and mottled. Affenlight saw, or imagined he saw, her tired eyes settle on Henry in an interested way.
    “Can I see him?” Henry asked.
    Dr. Collins shook her head. “His concussion’s pretty severe, and we’re going to keep him in the ICU tonight. He seems to be suffering some short-term memory loss, which we assume will clear. Tomorrow you can see him all you like.” She patted Henry consolingly on the arm.
    Affenlight’s cell phone shivered against his thigh. The number was unfamiliar, with a 312 prefix, but he knew who it would be. He made an apologetic gesture toward the doctor, who didn’t notice, and walked into the hall. “Pella. Kiddo. Where are you?”
    “Chicago. I made my connection. We’re about to board, so I should be right on time.” Her voice sounded thin and crackly through the pay-phone static. “I thought maybe we could go to Bau Kitchen.”
    This was Pella’s favorite restaurant in Milwaukee, the place where they’d celebrated her sixteenth birthday. If Affenlight had been zipping down I-43 toward the airport, an Italian