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The shortstop from Racine was on second base. Lupe shook off two of the three signs Carson sent her way, and nodded at the third. Curveball, low inside. Strike two.
Carson watched as Lupe stopped to stretch her arm. Bottom of the seventh, and she was getting tired. They were all getting really tired. Triple headers were monstrous in this weather. Humid, with no sign of a reprieve. Someone must’ve prayed the clouds away to keep from a rainout. She wanted a break. From playing, from coaching, from… whatever. Everything. Rain could’ve been a blessing.
Lupe nodded at the next sign; fastball, high outside. Carson could see the sweat on the back of her neck as she bent at the waist to touch her toes.
Across the diamond, she saw the shortstop from Racine flexing the fingers of her left hand at her hip. A circle, an ‘OK’ sign, three taps, and a cross on the seam of her skirt. Carson’s eyes flicked up to the player at bat, who nodded.
The pitch came in. The batter hammered a line drive between center and right field like Lupe had lobbed a watermelon across the plate, and kicked up a pile of dust into Carson’s eyes as she took off.
The out at first base was easy because Esti dove on it like it was her job (which it was), but Racine’s shortstop came hollering around third and inexplicably toward home and Carson took a cleat to the shins in the process. The throw came in a half second too late and they both hit the ground.
Safe.
What a pile of horseshit. High and outside was Lupe’s clincher. It should have been small potatoes. Carson couldn’t stop replaying that moment over and over in her mind on the ride home.
The rest of the game was demoralizing in the same way, like Racine had mastered the art of mind reading. Catching every stolen base, moving in when she’d told Maybelle to bunt, and those double plays. The double plays were statistically improbable.
She was amazed they even had a bottom of the ninth to go to, but they tied it up and everyone had to slug it out in the heat for fifteen more minutes, only to lose to a fly ball that pulled fair just shy of the back fence. If that wasn’t bad enough, the storm Carson hoped would break the humidity came roaring in on their walk to the bus. By the time they loaded in, they were all soaked.
The rain followed them all the way home and stayed there, preventing anyone from sneaking out to the bars after sunset to play pool, or from passing time on the front porch with cards and cigarettes, or from doing anything interesting out in the woods (or in that unremarkable shed) in the dark.
After a hot bath, Carson was ruminating in the kitchen in her pajamas, staring at her game cards and wondering how she was able to be robbed twice in one day. Once by Racine, and once by the rain. And then it hit her, just as Greta came around the bend.
“I got it,” Carson said, unaware that she was no longer alone, “it’s the signs.”
“What’s the signs?” Greta asked.
Carson looked up and jumped. Greta was in a long robe, red satin and looping bows hiding god knows what underneath. Her hair was in curlers. Nail file in hand. Carson had flashes of some unremarkable Sunday morning, posed just as they were now, reading the newspaper and making breakfast. Then it was gone.
Three times. She’d been robbed three times today.
“Wow, you look—”
“What are you up to, Shaw?” Greta asked, and shot her a look to shut her up.
She snapped out of it. “Look at this,” Carson said, and gestured for her to come sit; which Greta did, a little flick of her sash behind her.
“What am I looking at?”
“Right after the seventh inning stretch. Suddenly they’re one step ahead of us. I’m calling plays, and they’re countering them. It was way too good to be true. I think they figured out our hand signs sometime between yesterday and tonight, and in the seventh they started using it against us.”
“You think they cracked our code?”
“Mmhm. And we gotta fix it before tomorrow, or they’re gonna crush us in the third game.”
“We’ve got, what, twelve hours? You think that’s enough time to overhaul the whole system?”
“It’ll have to be. I don’t think it’ll be a fair game if they know everything we’re doing.”
Greta set her nail file down and picked up one of the cards. “They learned the sign for ‘swing away’?” She frowned. “I invented that one. I liked that one. Those fuckers are going down.”
Three hours later, Carson was yawning into her cup of coffee and they were both sitting on the floor of Carson’s bedroom reviewing their progress.
“I still think it’s too much to try and assign separate signs for each player,” Greta said, taking the last of the curlers out of her hair, “how will you learn all that by tomorrow?”
“It’s easy, it’s all about the tip-off.”
“Right.” Greta shook her hair out. Carson could smell all that tightly bound shampoo coming free.
“I’ve just got to change the tip-off sign for each player and the follow-up instruction is the same for everyone. I just fill everything before and after with junk. It’s fine. You’ll get it.”
“I might, but you have to get everyone else’s memorized in nine hours.”
“My brain is wired for this stuff, I’ve already got it in here,” Carson said, tapping a card against her temple. “Test me.”
“All right.” Greta stretched her arms over her head, cracked her neck, and started to yawn into her hand.
“That’s ‘intentional walk’ for Lupe. But you’re forgetting the scratch at the back of the—”
“Carson, I was just stretching. I haven’t done anything yet.”
“Oh.”
“I think you’ll need to change that one.”
“Hmm, yeah.” Carson scribbled a few notes down on the card. “Okay, give me another.”
“You mean give you the first one.”
“Whatever. Fire away.”
Greta shifted in her spot on the floor and squared off her shoulders at Carson. She touched both her ears, grabbed at the brim of an imaginary cap, touched her shoulders, dusted off her hands, and fired off a couple of finger guns and a wink.
Carson grinned. “Okay, I don’t know what you were doing there at the end, but that shoulder touch was the tip-off for Shirley and the dust-off means you’re telling her to sacrifice. Probably to bring in third base, but maybe just to advance.”
“Damn, I thought I could throw you.”
“I’m telling you, I’m really good at this. Another one.”
Greta looked at the cards again until she found something she wanted to try. She touched her nose twice, tapped a finger on her shoulder, crossed her arms in front of her chest and brushed her fingers across the invisible cap.
Carson was about to say ‘that’s base stealing for Jess,’ and then Greta started doing more filler signs. She touched her shoulder again. Started to drag the line across her collarbone.
This was a waste of time, she should never draw them out like that. She only had a second to communicate or the Belles were going to pick up on—
Greta started dragging her hand the other way, the edge of her robe falling off her shoulder. Then down diagonally across her torso.
That diagonal was supposed to be the tip-off for Jo; she shouldn’t be mixing it in the junk signs. And now Greta was ruining it in an even bigger way. She wasn’t going to be able to send this doozy down the third baseline without thinking of this, of Greta slowing her hand to a crawl to drag a finger under the curve of her breast as it went by.
“And this one?” Greta asked.
“What?” Carson’s head felt heavy. What were they doing again?
“What’s this sign for?”
Carson cleared her throat. “It’s uh—” her voice cracked, “it’s Jess. It’s for Jess.”
“To do what?”
“To steal your—” Carson had to close her eyes. “To steal second base.”
Carson wished she was stealing second base right exactly right now.
“Okay, I’m really impressed,” Greta said, and pulled the robe back onto her shoulders, “I shouldn’t have doubted you.” She started stacking the cards together and shuffling them. “I think I’ll give you a full scenario next—”
“Ah nope, no, I think I’m good.” Carson leapt to her feet and went to the window where the curtains were drawn. She peeked through them, looked out across the street at the solitary lamppost. She could no longer see rainfall in front of the light. The paved roads were pooling with pockets of water, rippling in the wind.
Then Greta was beside her, over her shoulder and looking past her. Her chest pressed against Carson’s back. “You haven’t shown me what my tip-off is yet.”
Carson pulled a breath in and held it, turned around so they were face-to-face. “You really wanna know?”
Greta nodded.
She dropped her hand to Greta’s side and linked the tips of their fingers together, for just a second. “Come with me.”
Carson left the cards behind for safe keeping, upstairs in her dresser drawer and tucked inside her hat, thinking they might saturate into the fibers and, thus, into her brain. Nobody was going to ask. That house was rife with superstition.
The shed was no respite from the moisture still in the air. The temperature drop from the rain and the dark made Carson’s skin feel sticky and clammy. Greta had a coat draped over her nightgown. They were leaning against the outside of the old car, with its passenger side door open like an unmade promise.
“You sure you don’t have ulterior motives for bringing me out here?” Greta asked, knowing damn well the answer, “I don’t feel like I’m in an environment for learning anymore.”
“Can’t a girl kill two doves with one ball?”
Greta wrinkled her nose. “I think I’d like to abandon this plan and spend some time teaching you how to flirt.”
“Are you ready for this or not?”
“Go on, coach.”
“Okay, I’m gonna do three junk signs, then your tip-off, and then the real play. Pay attention.”
Carson stood a couple steps in front of her and pushed her hair back, rolled her shoulders, and looked Greta straight in the eye.
She dusted her shoulders off, pulled at her ear, tugged at her imaginary belt, and took her closed left hand and dragged her thumb across the length of her jaw. She followed it up with a tap on her nose and curled her hair behind her ears. Greta was watching her, unblinking.
“Did you catch it?” Carson asked.
“No, do it again.”
Carson did it again. Shoulders, ear, belt, jaw, nose, hair. Greta shook her head. Shoulders, ear, belt, jaw, nose, hair.
“Do it slower.”
Carson broke it down. Shoulders, ear, belt. When she got to the tip-off, she slid her hand across the side of her face and watched Greta drinking her in. She wasn’t smiling.
Carson tapped her nose, curled her hair. “Got it?”
Greta nodded. “I think so.”
“So, what’s your tip-off?”
Greta pushed herself off the spot where she was leaning against the car, and strode up so close that Carson had to look up to watch her. She closed her hand and put it up to Carson’s ear. Dragged her thumb down her jaw. Her fingers caught on Carson’s skin in the damp air, skidding and tapping as they went.
“Was that it?” Greta asked.
The game was getting too enjoyable to stop. “One more time.”
Greta did it again. Her body was humming. This time, Greta didn’t take her hand off of Carson’s face. Carson reached up and tapped Greta’s nose. Pushed Greta’s hair behind her ears.
“And what does the follow-up tell you to do?” Carson asked.
Greta used two fingers on her free hand to tug at the waistband of Carson’s pants, pulling their hips together. She walked them back towards the open passenger door.
“Swing away.”
Carson’s murmur of, “good girl,” was caught against Greta’s mouth.
Carson’s hands were mussing up those phenomenal curls as they stumbled back together inside the car’s front cabin. They were used to slipping in this way, Greta’s foot pulling the door closed behind her. Most of the time they had to do it all by touch, eyes closed and other senses otherwise occupied.
The humidity was worse inside the car. Every sigh between them, every word exchanged was building it up, coating the windshield with condensation from the inside. Even if someone were to pull the heavy canvas off, they still couldn’t see in. Not today.
Carson could feel her hair getting bigger, and wilder, and then Greta was grabbing a thick fistful of it, right at the base of her skull and tugging. Then she’d let it go, and scrape her nails across her scalp while she kissed her. And then she’d do it again. They discovered how much she loved this little maneuver a few nights ago; it was like an overnight freight train straight to the center of her. It made the rest of the universe disappear.
Carson had a thought about what this revelation might have done for her days as a child on the playground, and then she was laughing and Greta was leaning back, taking her hand away.
“Am I tickling you?” Greta asked.
“God no, I’m just in my head.”
“Uh huh.” Greta narrowed her eyes. “Think this is funny, do you?” She rubbed her thumb across Carson’s bottom lip, and then over her teeth.
Carson shook her head and closed her mouth, nipped at her thumb, swirled her tongue. Sucked it in a little deeper. Took her lips and her teeth down the inside of Greta’s wrist til she got to the crease of her elbow, darted her tongue out and tasted the salt there. She watched Greta’s eyelids flutter, and the smirk disappeared. This was Greta’s freight train.
Carson tugged at the satin bow on Greta’s robe, underneath the coat, and helped her take them both off. She lined the cabin with their clothes, and pushed her back until she was comfortably reclined. Well, as comfortable as one could be in a metal box with a foot of headroom.
And there was the matter of undergarments. Not that Carson wanted to get too technical, but girdles were always difficult to manage. Most of the time they didn’t bother taking them off, preferring to wear open-bottom designs and perform enjoyable experiments with angles and pressure, sometimes with their knees, or the backs of their hands. But it was so humid. So very, very humid. Carson rolled the thing up along Greta’s waist until Greta could wriggle out of it.
It would’ve been awkward and embarrassing to watch if it weren’t for the fact that everything Greta did was sexy as hell. Instead, it made her impatient. It was all taking too long. Even the seductive little switch she did with her hips when she was down to her bra and panties made Carson drum her fingers on the dashboard.
If there was a piece of advice she got over and over again (mostly off the field but sometimes on it), it was to slow down. Carson rushed into everything. The looming threat of having happiness taken away from her, whether it was her mother, her husband going to war, her chance to go somewhere with this league, or this moment right now, in this rusty old car with the woman who turned her life upside down in the best way; it all gnawed at her conscience. It was hard to savour something that could be gone in an instant.
It sometimes made her spend money as soon as she earned it, or eat things before she could taste them, or read a book in two days instead of two weeks, or kiss Greta and then wheelbarrow her into bed, before she could change her mind, before one or both of them woke up and realized it was all a dream, just a hopeful dream, before it could disappear and never come back.
Greta nudged her with her knee. Carson had been unbuttoning her shirt, but she was miles away.
“Where’d you go, kid?” Greta asked.
Carson finished the task and leaned on her elbow against the back of the seat. “You know how you’re always saying I get carried away?”
“I wasn’t aware you were listening.”
“I mean, it’s hard to pay attention when—” and Carson gestured to this tousled, half-dressed dream girl; the woman in front of her, leveling her with a withering stare, laughing and dropping her thighs open just a fraction of an inch more, daring her to look.
“Touché, go on,” Greta said, tapping her finger on her knee.
“Do you think we should have our own system?”
“What kind of system?”
“Like the signs. I know you told me once that it’s hard for you to talk or vocalize when you’re—you know.”
“Mmhm.” Greta sat up and shifted her hips forward, sliding one long leg around each side of Carson. Wrapping her up. Kissing her bare shoulder while she listened.
“And I know I get—enthusiastic. Sometimes a little too enthusiastic.”
Greta pressed her forehead against Carson’s shoulder. “It’s very flattering,” she said, quietly.
“God, I love—” Carson caught the end of the sentence in her throat and rewrote it, “—that you’re trying to spare my feelings. But I’m a big girl. I can be better. I can do better. I had a thought—y’know, what if there’s a right way to send a sign? A shorthand that works for both of us?”
“Mm.” Greta reached one hand over to Carson’s far shoulder, and then dragged her fingers down to her elbow. Maybelle’s tip-off, Carson thought dumbly. Greta gave her a sweet and lazy kiss, and flicked her tongue into Carson’s mouth in a way that made her brain come out her ears. “What did you have in mind?”
Carson had a few ideas.
The storm returned, rain falling fast and hard on the tin roof, and they had to wait it out or risk getting caught. They had limited options for activities (not that they were going to do anything else), but they were happy to entertain themselves.
Carson showed her some moves. They reviewed and revised, then tried again. It was like practice for the game, in a way. In a very long way, like if you were squinting and caught it just right in the light.
One of the biggest advantages of a system like this was that anyone walking past this spot in the middle of the day might not hear so much as a chirp. If they could master it, they could steal a moment to themselves anywhere they wanted. Maybe the cellar, or the locker room showers. Or maybe the back row of the bus, in the middle of the night, when everyone was asleep…
She was getting ahead of herself. She needed to focus. It was the final field test, and they had veered past second and were rounding third and Greta was telling her something. Digging it, actually, into the side of her arm. Greta’s middle and ring fingers curled in.
Harder. That was the one for harder.
Carson pushed her mouth against Greta with more pressure. Carson was on the floor of the passenger seat, one arm wedged under the steering wheel, holding the elastic of Greta’s underwear aside and drinking deeply from her. Greta’s foot curled against Carson’s back.
Her index finger tapped three times. Higher. Carson tipped her head up a fraction. Three more taps. A fraction more. A squeeze on her shoulder. Right there.
She felt Greta arching above her. The rain was like a wall of noise now, keeping the outside out and the inside in. She could just hear the sound of her breathing overtop it; soft, and slow, and then sharp.
The sign for wait on her shoulder. Carson pulled back, but not away. She glanced up along the contours of her spectacular view and saw Greta looking up at the roof, like she was trying to think of something. Carson had given her the hardest job: try to remember what gestures go where, all while someone’s on a hot streak, or worse, high and outside.
(Carson would not put together for weeks why baseball always made her think of sex, and vice versa. She would be sitting in the dugout and she would see the way Greta’s number 9 was always perfectly in the center of her back, and Greta would turn around and lean on her bat and give her that look, and she would smell dirt and grass, and then and only then would it occur to her.)
The sign for slower, and then softer. Or was it softer and then slower? She was getting them mixed up. But it was both, so Carson’s luck was in.
She took her time. Dragged her tongue in little arcs and circles around her clit, took a journey down and then back up. She tried to think of the way she would eat stone fruit back home in Idaho, fresh off the trees in late summer: joyful and unladylike and with her whole mouth, careful not to waste it.
The sign for don’t stop.
She’d had some practice by now, and Greta told her her instincts were good, but this was better. This was a report, a scorecard. More than that, this was a live radio broadcast, crackling through the airwaves. And there was Carson on the other end of it, eyes closed, picturing it like she was there. Like she was really there.
Harder. Lower. Don’t stop.
This felt like a reflex she could hone and one day anticipate. This was a code, cracked.
Greta’s hips came off the seat. Her whole hand wrapped around Carson’s bicep.
The tip-off.
God, this had been such a good idea.
When Greta came, she made the first real noise in a quarter of an hour, a slow and sultry groan that made Carson’s skull buzz in the acoustics of the tight space. She felt a sensation rocket through her spine and into the pit of her stomach, like she was coming down from the highest point on a tire swing. She wanted to do it over and over.
The rain was fizzling out when Greta gathered her up, her lips cool and soothing as she pressed them against Carson’s cheek, her neck, her mouth. Someone’s heart was hammering in their chest. It was hard to tell whose it was. Neither one said anything for a whole minute, a private breathless smile between them, their eyes wide with newfound power.
When Greta spoke, she uttered two names from the holy trinity in quick succession and moved her hand from Carson’s arm to her hair and grabbed a fistful and held on. Let go. Held on. Carson felt a stirring in her thighs. That one wasn’t in the cipher, but Carson, at last, felt confident she could catch the context.
Top of the eighth in the last of the triple header against Racine. They were up by two, owing in part to Jo De Luca’s insatiable desire to make baseballs kiss fences, and in another part (a larger part, Carson was sure) because they’d come up with a masterful way to keep secrets in plain sight. The Belles looked even more downtrodden than she imagined the night before, when she dreamed in patterns of hand signs and indefatigable teamwork.
Two out, and Jess was on third when Carson came up to bat.
Carson was rubbing dirt into her palms when she saw Greta come out of the dugout and whisper something to Lupe on the third baseline. Lupe shrugged, and went down the stairs, and Greta took her place.
“All right, Shaw, give ‘em hell,” Greta said, clapping her hands. She nodded infield, and Carson nodded back. She stepped to the plate and waited for the sign.
Jess was bouncing her leg and staring, hoping, probably trying to communicate something telepathically. But behind Jess, one hip cocked and squinting into the sun, was her girl, doing one better than mind reading: telling her outright, exactly what she was thinking, with no opponent (no person) the wiser.
Greta grinned like the cat that ate the canary and sent the coded message. When Carson realized what Greta’s filler signs were, she felt like she’d touched a live wire. She almost missed the tip-off.
Harder. Faster. Right there. Don’t stop. This one’s for you, Carson. Swing away. Swing away. Swing away.