The Bird Boys

WHY IS IT you touch one woman she feels ordinary like a cousin or a nurse who checks your blood pressure or some lady at the bank who trips and you catch her elbow — but you touch another woman, and she’s live current? Phelan suspected the answer might have to do with him, but that avenue remained murky, and he let it stay that way.

OK, chemistry, what was that? Horniness, for sure. Partly her shape, the way the waist sets in, the lift of her breasts, if she smiles at you, how she smiles at you, what she means by it, not that you know, but sometimes you do.

The day he met Delpha, no smile until she understood she was hired.

He considered the idea intermittently while also drinking Miller High Life and watching the Braves. Game was broadcast from the climate-controlled Astrodome, subtracting fifteen degrees from this Saturday’s eighty-seven, and adding that shazam neon scoreboard Houston worshipped. Fans were warming up for rambunctious. Closeup of the bullpen and Dave Robert’s heater colliding with the mitt like a round from a bolt-action rifle.

The Braves went down 1-2-3 in the first inning. Second verse, same as the first. Astros had magnets in their gloves. Top of the third, all right!, Casanova homered, Garr singled and, little wings sewn onto his cleats, stole second. Died there. Phelan grumbled. He should be rooting for the Astros, home team ninety miles away, but they didn’t have Henry Lee Aaron.

April 1954, the year Tommy Phelan was ten, the year Joe DiMaggio married the goddess — Coach Peterson distributed uniforms after practice. Bobby Peterson got 6, which’d been Stan the Man’s number, and his twin Casey got 7, Mantle’s. Naturally. Their dad was coach. When Ron Whitaker got 3, the Babe’s number, he did about twenty somersaults across the field. Phelan, standing farthest from the coach, ended up with number 44. That was neither good nor bad — he’d seen the card of a player named Cavaretta, racked up some MVPs during the war — but Phelan was not kissing dirt over him.

There were things about Delpha that made contemplation complicated. That day when he’d touched her, a charge surged through him, belly, dick, thighs — just from the skin-to-skin. That was a complication. And the major thing was that they worked together and that was working out excellent as far as Phelan was concerned, so best there be no complications. He could make a mistake, their beneficial association could go south. This was one of the major things, anyway. That was it — his brain pinpointed the core problem — Delpha had several major things.