Elias Voss, 52, has spent 18 years as a minor league baseball scout, logging 30,000 miles a year in his dented 2017 Ford F-150, sleeping in motel rooms that smell like old cigarette smoke and laundry detergent, eating more gas station burritos than he cares to admit. His biggest flaw? He hasn’t deviated from a single one of his self-imposed routines since his wife left him three years prior, fed up with coming home to an empty house and a fridge full of nothing but beer and protein bars. He doesn’t stop at new diners, doesn’t chat up strangers, doesn’t so much as take a different route to the ball field if the main road is under construction.
He’s sitting at the only bar in the tiny northwest Ohio town he’s passing through, 9:30 PM, post-high school showcase, a half-drunk lager sweating on the linoleum in front of him, his beat-up scouting notebook splayed open to a page covered in scribbled notes about a 17-year-old left-handed pitcher who hits 94 on the gun. The jukebox in the corner bleats Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried,” the air thick with the smell of fried pickles and vinegar-based coleslaw, a handful of regulars lingering at the other end of the bar yelling about the local high school football team’s upcoming season.
She slides onto the stool two down from him first, then shifts one closer, close enough that he catches a whiff of jasmine perfume over the greasy bar food stench. He glances up, recognizes her immediately from the campaign signs taped to every telephone pole and storefront in town: Clara Hale, wife of the current mayor, who’s running for state representative, his smile plastered next to hers on every sign that reads HALE FOR OHIO: FOR THE WORKING MAN. She orders a bourbon neat, no ice, and when the bartender slides it to her, she twists her wedding ring around her left finger twice before picking up the glass.
She catches him staring, smirks, one eyebrow lifted. “You’re the baseball scout everyone’s been talking about, right? The one who’s been camped out behind the backstop all day.”
“Word travels fast when someone shows up who isn’t related to half the county.” She takes a sip of her bourbon, shifts closer, her knee brushing his under the bar. He tenses up for half a second, then relaxes; her jeans are soft against the frayed cuff of his work pants, the heat of her leg seeping through the fabric. He’s not used to anyone being this close to him on purpose, not since the divorce. He keeps glancing at her wedding ring, and she laughs, low and warm, when she catches him looking. “Don’t worry. The only time my husband wears his ring is for campaign photos. We’ve slept in separate bedrooms for eight months. He cares more about donor calls and yard sign placements than he does about who I’m talking to at a bar.”
Elias knows he should leave. He knows messing with the mayor’s wife, even a mayor who’s barely ever home, is the kind of stupid risk he never takes, the kind of drama that could get him run out of town before he can file his scouting report. But she’s asking him about his notes, about what he looks for in a prospect, not just small talk about the weather or the election, and no one’s asked him about the actual work he does in longer than he can remember. She leans in when he talks, her elbow brushing his sunburnt forearm when she gestures at a scribbled note in the margin of his notebook, her hand lingering for half a second before she pulls it back. Her nails are painted deep red, chipped a little at the edges, and he finds himself staring at them instead of looking at her face.
The bar empties out slow, the regulars filing out one by one, the bartender wiping down the far end of the counter, not paying them any attention. The jukebox cuts out, the only sound the hum of the beer cooler and the distant chirp of crickets through the open front door. She reaches across the bar, runs her thumb along the thin scar across his knuckle, the one he got fixing a flat on his truck in the middle of a rainstorm last winter. “You staying at the motel off Route 7?” she asks, her voice low enough that only he can hear it.
Elias hesitates. He thinks about his routine: he’s supposed to be on the road by 7 AM tomorrow, headed to a showcase in Indiana, no detours, no distractions. He thinks about his ex-wife yelling at him the day she left, saying he’d rather be comfortable than happy, that he’d never take a single risk if it didn’t involve a 19-year-old kid with a good fastball. He nods, grabs a napkin, scrawls his room number on it, slides it across the bar to her.
She tucks the napkin into the pocket of her jeans, stands up, squeezes his shoulder lightly, her palm warm through the thin fabric of his ball cap. “I’ll be there in 20 minutes,” she says, and walks out, the bell above the door jingling behind her.
Elias finishes his beer, pays his tab, walks the three blocks to the motel, the night air warm and thick with the smell of cut grass. He unlocks his room, leaves the door cracked, sits on the edge of the bed, listening for her car. He hears it pull into the parking lot 18 minutes later, hears the click of her heels on the asphalt, and he stands up, opens the door before she can knock. She steps inside, the scent of jasmine wrapping around him, and he closes the door behind her, turning the deadbolt quiet.
