Manny Ruiz, 53, has spent 18 years as a minor league baseball scout, crisscrossing the East Coast every summer to spot unpolished pitching talent other teams sleep on. His biggest flaw, per his older sister’s biweekly lectures, is that he’s hidden behind his job since his wife died in a car crash seven years prior, turning down every blind date, every casual advance, every invitation to anything that doesn’t involve a stopwatch and a bleacher seat. This month, he’s camped out in a $900 a month studio in Hyannis, covering the Cape Cod League, and he’s fallen into a rigid Thursday routine: wrap up his post-game notes by 8, walk the three blocks to the waterfront tiki bar, order a rum and coke with extra lime, sit in the same scuffed vinyl booth by the door, and leave by 9:30 to prep for the next day’s doubleheader.
The salt air sticks to his forearms when he pushes through the bar’s screen door that Thursday, the hum of cornhole boards and Jimmy Buffett deep cuts wrapping around him. He’s halfway through his drink, scribbling a note about a left-hander’s loose wrist, when a body slams into the side of his booth, a cold beer can pressing a wet ring into the shoulder of his faded David Ortiz tee before a palm splays across his bicep to steady the impact. He looks up, and it’s the woman who runs the oyster pop-up 20 feet down the boardwalk, the one he’s glanced at every week for three weeks, the one he’s never spoken to because he knows she’s Lena Marlow, ex-wife of the Red Sox AA general manager who signs his paychecks. He’s heard the GM call her high maintenance, unhinged, a liability, a dozen other unflattering labels over the three years since their divorce, and he’d written her off as off-limits before he ever heard her voice.
“Shit, sorry,” she says, laughing, a rough, warm sound that says she’s spent all day yelling over ocean wind and the whir of her oyster shucker. Her wavy auburn hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail, strands stuck to her sunburned cheeks, her nail polish chipped pale blue, the exact same shade as the trim on the 17-foot Boston Whaler he keeps parked at the public ramp two miles from his rental. She’s still holding his bicep, her fingers calloused, dotted with a tiny, fading scar along the knuckle of her index finger, and he realizes he’s not pulling away.
He mumbles that it’s no problem, moves his notebook to the other side of the booth, and before he can think better of it, he nods at the empty seat across from him. She sits, sliding in so close her knee brushes his under the table, and the scent of coconut sunscreen and brine wraps around him, sharp and sweet and nothing like the sterile hotel soap and old baseball glove smell he’s surrounded himself with for years. She asks what he’s writing, he tells her he’s scouting, and they talk for 45 minutes, about how the Cape’s oyster crop is better this year than it’s been in a decade, about how the left-hander he was watching that afternoon has a fastball that could make the majors by 26, about how neither of them has found a decent lobster roll in Hyannis that doesn’t charge $32 for a side of chips.
He keeps waiting for the red flags the GM ranted about to pop up, for her to be rude, or entitled, or dramatic, but every time she laughs, every time she leans in to ask a question, her shoulder brushing his, every time she taps his wrist when she makes a joke, he feels the wall he’s built around himself for seven years crack a little more. The bar starts to empty out, the bartender flipping off the neon tiki sign above the back bar, and she leans in closer, her breath warm against his ear over the fading music, and asks if he wants to come back to her cottage a block away, try the smoked oyster pate she made that morning, maybe crack open a bottle of cold sauvignon blanc she has in the fridge.
His first instinct is to say no, to make an excuse about early morning practices, about the scouting reports he has to file by Friday, about how it’s not a good idea to mess with his boss’s ex-wife. He can already hear the gossip around the front office, the jokes, the questions, the risk of losing the job he’s poured his whole life into. But then she reaches over, tucks a stray strand of gray hair that fell over his forehead behind his ear, her calloused fingers brushing his skin for half a second, and he realizes he hasn’t felt this light, this seen, in years. He nods, slips his notebook into his jacket pocket, and stands up.
They walk out into the warm July dark, the boardwalk still holding heat from the day’s sun under his scuffed white sneakers. She links her arm through his, her hip pressed to his as they turn down the side street toward her cottage, and he doesn’t even remember that he left his stopwatch on the booth table.
