“See, I’m starting today, and I’m out of, well—I’m looking for some vikings. I’ve got plenty more back at the hotel, but I’m starting in thirty. I’ll get you back, plus some. Or cash. Whatever you need.”

Monterrey zips himself up and disappears with a scowl. Greg hears a locker open, the rattle of pills in a bottle, the locker closing. Monterrey returns with two tiny white pellets in his palm. “You know what you’re doing with these, man?”

“Yeah. Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.”

“Fifty bucks tomorrow,” he says, glancing at Greg’s scar. “And tomorrow’s cut day, so make sure you get me my money before you go.”

Greg wants to punch him, but someone else walks into the bathroom, clomping in his cleats. Jason Goodyear, unzipping as he walks. “Tomás, Carve,” he nods to both, giving Greg a quick look like he knows everything, Greg’s loose lips and the old broad and the half-abandoned house, the nerve damage that’ll end his career, the pills clutched in his fist. Greg might know about the gambling, but the scales are impossibly tipped. Greg throws the pills into his mouth, swallows hard. “Absolutely, Tomás. Of course.”

Sinking into the pill while pitching is a strange sensation. In the first inning the pain dulls. A guy gets on base but no damage is done. In the second the ache in his arm slips away and he begins to float above himself, like he’s a fan in the grandstand, watching the action on the field. Someone hits a ball to deep left, but Goodyear is there, waiting under it. He hardly has to step. And he throws back to the mound, a rocket. Greg feels that, the heat of the throw through the leather of his glove.

Two men out, a runner on first. The stadium is loud and the afternoon bright, but to Greg it’s all muffled sound and hazy gray. He nods at the signal, pulls his arm back and snaps it forward, letting the ball fly. That release, and, a half second later, the slap of the ball in Jimmy’s mitt: with that, Greg Carver is gone.

SIXTH