Page 63 of Checking Out the Librarian

“Good to see you again, Jonathan!” Even without the upright bass, Trixie was very large, and with her hands empty, she welcomed him with the type of handshake that comes with a bonus arm tap.

So even the women on the team, including one so incongruously named Trixie that he honestly had to assume it was the equivalent of a roller-derby name, were going to give him jock tests. Yay.

“Connor says you’re going to keep the book for us?”

“Did he?” Jonathan stared at Connor, who at least had the grace to blush with that combination of guilt and innocence that should not soften Jonathan’s spine; it should not, but it did. “I love being volunteered for new things.”

“Don’t we all.” Trixie laughed. “But seriously, my girlfriend Michelle records our stats online. The paper book is just a league formality. Don’t worry about it. And thank you.” There was some baseball chatter—softball chatter?—between Trixie and Connor, and Jonathan opted to ignore it and study the people milling about.

They were basically all looking at him but trying not to look, a ridiculous act that could have been lifted straight from a car crash scene.

As she started to walk away, Trixie turned back and said, “By the way, next time we can kit you out with a spare shirt.”

Connor’s face lit with triumph. “Yes!”

Jonathan tilted his head to indicate the man next to him. “Did he put you up to that?”

“No, why?” She looked back and forth between them. “Connor, dude, give him some space.”

“But why is it okay for you to offer him a shirt, and not for me? Why?”

Jonathan had never seen a man younger than sixty-five actually splutter, but he might be witnessing it now.

Trixie sighed. “Because I’m a team captain who is grateful to have a fan in the stands. You are a guy who has to learn to slow your roll and chill the fuck out. Remember what happened when you played for them?” She jerked her thumb toward the team across the dirt field.

Jonathan’s hat and sunglasses sufficiently shaded his eyes to permit examining the tight pants worn by the other team. Navy and white pinstripe, no less. While he approved of that pattern, and there were perhaps a few Parisian sidewalk-sized street sweepers being displayed in the far dugout, there were no so-called dump trucks.

If Connor used to play for that team of pinstripe-wearing men, not the one of mostly-lesbians, Jonathan could guess what went down.

Connor, probably.

This conversation should perhaps exclude him, so he drifted three steps to the side to give the illusion that he couldn’t hear and wasn’t listening.

If he’d been born with the capabilities of a bat or a horse, he’d swivel his ears to listen to every word. Luckily, neither Connor nor Trixie were quiet people, so having sadly unidirectional ears didn’t hinder his eavesdropping.

“That was a one-time mistake. A misunderstanding about⁠—”

“It was two of them! The Double Play Disaster!”

“It wasn’t at the same time!”

“On the same team!” Trixie could sound like she was yelling without raising her voice. Much.

“But Jonathan’s not⁠—”

“Chill. Out.” At the edge of his peripheral vision, he saw Trixie give Connor the type of look that made him close his mouth and stomp toward the dugout.

Jonathan was learning a lot before the game even started. So far, it was a tie between useless things like baseball terms and potentially life-changing things like, “Connor is supposed to chill more” and “Connor is simultaneously the most loveable person I’ve ever met and an utter cockslut.”

Before the game began, Trixie’s partner handed him a spiral-bound notebook and a pencil and they chatted. It was reassuring.

He also saw Ribby lounging in a blanket nest, tied in the shade under the bleachers next to a water bowl. They made eye contact, but Ribby wasn’t much into chat. He lumbered to his feet, stretched, showed Jonathan his teeth, tongue, and throat in an admirable yawn, and then sauntered out to nudge Jonathan’s knee. His dog nose was wet, or maybe the right word was damp, but at least it wasn’t slimy, so he didn’t have to wipe his skin.

People who liked dogs would pet the dog’s head now.

Trixie’s partner was looking, and Ribby was waiting. Jonathan set the book and pencil on the metal bleacher seat. Ribby couldn’t lick the top of his own skull, so Jonathan reached for that spot.

Ribby’s head was warm and covered with a velvet nap even shorter and softer than the nap of that vintage smoking jacket he’d wanted last year at the Brooklyn Flea but hadn’t bought. Was velvet inspired by animal fur? Ribby wiggled more of his head across Jonathan’s knee, inserting his ears under Jonathan’s hand.