Rico Marquez, 53, is a minor league baseball scout for the Midwest League, 14 years into a career that has him logging 320-plus days a year on the road crisscrossing Iowa, Illinois and Indiana in a dented 2017 Ford F-150 with a sticker of his 1988 high school championship team slapped on the back window. His biggest, most self-sabotaging flaw: he hasn’t let anyone within arm’s length emotionally since his ex-wife cleared out their joint retirement account and ran off with a 28-year-old mortgage broker 12 years prior. He’d sworn off dating anyone over 30 after that, convinced every woman his age was sizing up his bank account before they even finished saying hello. He’s parked at a scuffed Formica bar in Clear Lake, Iowa, 9:37 PM on a Tuesday, fresh off scouting a left-handed pitcher from the local community college who can throw a 94 mph sinker that drops like a stone thrown off a barn roof. The bar smells like fried onion rings, cheap light beer, and the faint mildew of the 100-year-old building’s stone basement. Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues” hums low from the jukebox in the corner, and a group of farm hands are yelling over a game of eight-ball in the back.
She slides onto the stool two down from him without a word, setting a chipped ceramic travel mug on the counter. He glances over first, out of habit more than interest. She’s wearing a faded red flannel that’s a little too big, frayed hem of jeans tucked into scuffed work boots, a smudge of flour on her left wrist and a streak of dirt across her right cheek. She’s got a scar above her left eyebrow that curves like a half moon, and when she orders a root beer from the bartender, her voice is rough like she’s spent the day yelling over lawn mowers. He goes back to his notes, scribbling a line about the pitcher’s lazy pickoff move, until the bartender slides a plate of loaded nachos between them, says it’s on the house for the two people who sat through the entire cold, windy ball game that afternoon.
She reaches for the plate at the same time he does, her elbow brushing the bare skin of his forearm where his flannel sleeve is rolled up. The contact sends a little jolt up his arm, and he yanks his hand back like he touched a hot stove. She snorts, not unkindly, and pushes a handful of chips stacked with extra guac to his side of the plate. “Saw you scribbling notes the whole game,” she says, leaning forward a little, her knee brushing his under the counter when she shifts her weight. She doesn’t move it away. “You a scout?” He nods, wary, waiting for the follow up question about how much money he makes, if he can get her tickets to a Cubs game. Instead, she rolls her eyes. “That umpire’s call in the seventh was garbage. That kid didn’t hit the batter on purpose.”
They talk for an hour straight. He learns her name is Lila, she’s 48, used to own a pastry shop in Portland, moved back to Clear Lake three weeks prior to take care of her 82-year-old grandma who had a stroke. The flour on her wrist is from testing out her grandma’s famous peach pie recipe that morning, the dirt on her cheek is from weeding the grandma’s heirloom tomato patch before the game. She smells like peach filling and vanilla extract, faint under the beer and fried food scent of the bar. She doesn’t ask about his salary, his house, his marital status. She asks about the weirdest ballpark he’s ever been to, the best player he ever scouted, if he prefers fried or grilled wings. When his order of hot wings comes, she steals one without asking, licks buffalo sauce off her thumb, and he doesn’t even mind. He’s so used to being on guard that the looseness in his shoulders feels foreign, like he’s wearing someone else’s jacket.
The bartender calls last call at 11, and the rain that’s been threatening all night finally comes down in sheets, lashing against the windows so hard you can barely see the streetlights. Rico’s hotel is 20 minutes out of town, and Lila says she lives 10 blocks away, was gonna walk, but her boots have holes in the soles. He offers her a ride before he can think better of it, and she accepts, grabbing her travel mug off the counter. The cab of his pickup smells like old coffee and pine air freshener, the heat is stuck on high so it’s almost stifling, and the wipers are working so hard they make a rhythmic thwack against the windshield. He fumbles with the radio dial trying to find a station that isn’t playing bro country, and she reaches over, her hand wrapping around his wrist to stop him. Her palm is warm, calloused at the fingertips from kneading dough eight hours a day for 15 years, and he freezes, waiting for the familiar urge to pull away. It doesn’t come. “I like the sound of the rain,” she says, holding his gaze for three long seconds, her hazel eyes flecked with gold, the scar above her eyebrow crinkling when she smiles. “You don’t have to fill every quiet space with noise, you know.”
He’s spent 12 years filling every quiet space with work, with baseball games, with bad reality TV in cheap hotel rooms, specifically so he doesn’t have to think about how hollow his life feels when he stops moving. He’s spent 12 years assuming anyone who gets close to him wants something, wants to take something from him. But Lila’s hand is still on his wrist, soft and steady, and she’s not asking for anything. She’s just there.
He pulls up to her grandma’s small white bungalow five minutes later, the porch light glowing soft yellow through the rain. She doesn’t jump out immediately. She turns to him, her thumb brushing the back of his hand lightly, and asks if he wants to come in for coffee, says she still has half a peach pie left from that morning, still warm on the counter. He hesitates for half a second, the old bitter voice in his head warning him that this is a trick, that he’s gonna wake up tomorrow and his wallet will be gone, his truck will be stripped for parts. But then she grins, and he remembers how she laughed so hard at his story about the outfielder who ran into an outfield wall and lost his dentures mid-run that she snort-laughed root beer out of her nose. He nods. He follows her up the creaky wooden steps, the rain dripping off the brim of his scuffed team baseball cap, and for the first time in 12 years, he doesn’t reach for his wallet to calculate how much the night is gonna cost him.
