“Why have you started asking so many questions all at the same time? Is this going to be your thing now? Because I’m out if it is.”
I shrugged. “It’s timesaving, and I’m working against the clock.” I looked to Beulah for her response.
Her arms crossed over her chest. “Next week. No. Yes, okay, I can probably swing that.”
I grinned wide at Rafe. “See? Your girlfriend here, she gets time efficiency.”
Rafe’s eye roll was so deep I wondered if they’d get stuck, but he got up and headed over to the coffee machine - sight intact.
“Anyway, can you start right now and help us figure out how to get Marnie?”
“Who’s Marnie?”
“Jupiter’s rocket scientist,” yelled Rafe from the coffee machine at the other end of the room.
“Oh, okay. Well, what do you know?”
Cody did his thing and the screen changed back to Marnie’s image, but this time, it was split with some kind of intelsheet, which he’d clearly filled out himself because it had Rafe’s company logo on the top of it.
Beulah stood next to me and stared up at Marnie. “She’s a rocket scientist, and we have to get her here?”
“Yep.” I rocked back on my heels, side-eying her. “And Jupiter wanted me to create a foundation for girls, but what would that be? The Lions Baseball Space Academy for Girls?!”
Beulah chuckled under her breath.
“What does that even mean, anyway? Rocket scientist? Does anyone actually know what a rocket scientist is - except a handy idiom to throw the way of the local imbecile?”
“Well, I’ll hazard a guess, but I assume it means she figures out a way to get rockets into space,” she replied a little too sarcastically.
I scoffed.
Oh God, thiswasimpossible. And ridiculous. I was also under no illusion the spectrums we were talking about, and how they were at opposite ends. Beulah was either staring at the image on the screen, or she was reading the intel sheet Cody had pulled out.
“Maybe stop thinking about her as a rocket scientist. She’s a physicist according to the screen, so she must have transferable skills. Baseball is all about physics, right?” she said eventually, looking around for confirmation, and then pointing at me. “In fact, when we all went to the game Memorial Weekend, you went on and on about it. You said the coaches use it, that they use formulas for throwing and hitting. So… yeah… maybe she can come and create an equation for how to hit the ball harder or something. How to get the ball to fly faster, or whatever a ball does. Or, just pay her a shit load of money and make her Director of Baseball Science.”
Pinching the bridge of my nose wasn’t helping to calm me, though from the silence, clearly no one else was going to comeup with something better. I could feel my winning team slipping through my fingers.
“Let’s keep thinking.”
“No… hang on a minute.” Rafe’s feet thudded on his desk as he leaned back to sip his coffee. “That’s a good idea, Holmes is onto something. What was that thing you said about a girls’ foundation?”
“What thing?”
“The space academy?”
I sat my ass back on the desk, “It was a suggestion he had for getting Marnie to New York, something to entice her.”
I watched as Rafe unhooked his cufflinks then slowly rolled up his right sleeve, followed by the left. The tattoos covering both his forearms had a slightly menacing feel, like he really meant business, even though he’d gotten most of them when he’d been drunk.
“Does any other club have a foundation for girls?”
I shook my head. “Not that I know of, not like this anyway, and not like what Reeves is talking about.”
“Go and see her,” he nodded up to the screen. “Get her to help you build it. Explain to her what you’re trying to do with the club.”
“Which is what exactly?”
“You’re trying to build something new with longevity. Tell her you’re trying to get more women into the major leagues.”
