The bat weighs heavy in my hand, palms stinging a little. The last one was a bad hit, bad angle, bad spot, and the reverberations traveled in a bad way. I don't shake out my hands, don't take the moment to rest and recenter myself. The next ball is already on the way, the nozzle already loaded and primed with another round.
So much fallout and haven't had to see a drop of it. All on the other side. We had to break into Hannah's old apartment to get her things and unfortunately her mug has been lost to the office. She didn't care. It was all bad memories anyway. I understand. Even her apartment didn't really have anything worth taking. Just the food so it wouldn't spoil, a friendly potted plant and her makeup. That's all she wanted. Then she broke a window, and I trashed the couch and everything else was broken down to splinters and ashes. She took the door off the hinges and I spray painted the windows.
The lights at the back shine and sparked and my little square plays a fun little ditty. A square on the net at the back, labeled 'Homerun,' starts dancing. One of the sides is missing a few bulbs. I think they just twined Christmas lights around it, and the inevitable happened. Either no one noticed, or no one cared. I don't mind, not really. I'm also pretty sure that hitting the tiny square wouldn't necessarily make a home run by the official standards. Probably just go left center field unless the wind decided to help out a smidge.
Getting her settled wasn't even that hard. I have space and she has just as much now. I offered her what I think was the break room once upon a time, but she chose to share the foreman's office with me. Said she was tired of having a tiny bed and even sharing it was still bigger than hers. Anything else that would happen would just be a coincidence, she assured me.
The balls are nice and slow. Not really feeling the whole ninth inning right now. I need the motions and the target. Power and precision. Each one hits that little homerun square and the lights never stop dancing. I don't even tap into my little gray world. I know the machines. I know how they work. It's the same pattern again and again and again. I get a good angle and my shoulder works wonderfully through the strength. The machine's running empty and I'm low on cash. One more round and it all can flow from there.
The good guys haven't come calling. No wasps swarming in their nest and swimming with the sharks. It's nothing and it's beautiful. Nice and quiet and calm. The building's on fire, but I'm down the block getting hammered. Hannah's dealing with none of it and I'm goofing off, just as we should be. It's nice to watch the world crash and burn, even if some of the wreckage is going to land in my backyard.
"And that's the game!" cheered the tinny voice from my little square, "Home team wins!"
I stretch and roll out the kinks in my back, my shoulder, my wrists. My palms still sting a little bit, but I can finally give them some attention. The pain fades and dims and my knuckles make a wonderful crack.
"God, I hate that you do that, Evan," says a wonderful voice from behind me. I smile. I can't help it. I love the voice, even when the words carry the slight suggestion of disgust. I grab the edge of the little square that holds me and twist, the pops rolling up my spine.
"Hey honey," I say, and she shudders. Hannah shudders.
"I hate you so much right now. Have fun?"
"Yeah. I'm all done. Did pretty well if I say so myself."
"Still haven't broken the record though?"
"One day. One day I will. I don't care that Bloody Sunday owns this place. He's going down."
She smiles and rolls her eyes, and my own grin shines back. I eye the heavy duffel she's got with her, slung over her shoulder. Hair's short, shorter than I've seen it before. I swear every other week, it loses an inch. Soon, she'll be rocking a bare scalp. But for now, it has the suggestion of the final shape, a proud jut breaking the sky, pulled up in a pompadour. She's expressed some interest in feathering it out, letting go wild and insane. Just a simple curl and bounce to it today though. Still trying to get her to consider full blown liberty spikes, but I think that's a way off. So, for now, it's all controlled and sleek.
She eyes the duffel too, a slight bit of trepidation sinking into her frame. Nervous, she's nervous. I'm nervous too. The same song and dance I've done for years and it still makes me a little nervous to actually go through with it. I've been on both sides of it, worked with people and gone alone, and still that little pull deep in my stomach works its way up into my mind.
"Are you ready, Beat Down," she asks. There's still that little trill of nerves in the question.
"Whenever you are, Riot Girl," I answer.
---
We wait on the roof of the Lemon Building. Not it's official name, and I don't care to learn it. It just looks like a lemon and if the sun hits it just right, then it turns yellow, kind of a sickly yellow, not a blinding beautiful gold or an ethereal pale of heaven glow, just kind of lemon yellow, but if the lemon had a bad day and was kicked around a bit. Chosen, not for the name or the style, but location. The mayoral mansion sits across the way and some of my friends have taken issue with his civic performance.
Full kit, green leather jacket, hair spiked and fanned up to the clouds, baseball bat sitting on my shoulders, that wonderful weight giving me something to focus on instead of the wind that bites and tells me to let go and fall. There will be time enough for that in a bit. Right now, though, we just sit and watch the whole thing go down. Riot Girl sits like a stone, the training and the regimen still baked into her. Back straight, arms folded, but ready, eyes dead set on the door. It's odd seeing something so stiff in ripped and patched denim, declaring beautiful anarchy to the whole world and reveling in the sheer power of untamed chaos. Still, so absolutely still, so beautifully still.
I reach out and pinch her ass.
She yelps and the stone melts and I feel a shock rip through my chest as a thunderclap pierces my skull. Through the mask, I see the playful anger burn.
"Relax," I say, "I know that saying that won't make you, but you need to relax. It's a different game on this side."
"I know," she says, "But you pinched me. How would you like it if I pinched you?"
"I'd like that very much I think."
