Second option: Razor, for reasons only clear to Razor, has decided to seriously mess with my head. It wasn’t just the hardhearted and resilient who survived the winnowing of the human race. A lot of sadistic assholes persisted, too. That’s the way of every human catastrophe. The douchebag is nearly indestructible.
Third option: All of it is entirely in my head. Chaseball is a silly game made up by a kid to take my mind off the fact that I may be dying. There’s no other point, no secret messages traced on a chessboard. My seeing letters where there are no letters is the human brain’s tendency to find patterns, even where there are no patterns.
And I hold my breath for another reason: What if it’s the squeaky-voiced kid again? What if Razor doesn’t come back, ever come back? There’s a real possibility that Razor is dead. If he was trying to secretly communicate with me and Vosch figured it out, I’m sure Vosch’s response would be one thing and only one thing.
I let out my breath slow and steady when he steps into the room. The beeping of the monitor kicks up a notch.
“What?” Razor asks, narrowing his eyes at me. He senses something’s up right away.
I say it. “Hi.”
His eyes cut right, cut left. “Hi.” Drawing the tiny word out slowly, as if he’s not sure if he’s with a lunatic. “Hungry?”
I shake my head. “Not really.”
“You should try to eat this. You look like my cousin Stacey. She was a meth addict. I don’t mean you literally look like a meth addict. Just . . .” Face turning red. “You know, like something is eating you from the inside.”
He pushes the button beside the bed. I rise. He says, “You know what I’m addicted to? Sour Patch Kids. Raspberry. Not so crazy about the lemon. I have a stash. I’ll bring you some if you want.”
He sets the tray in front of me. Cold scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, a blackened, crusty thing that may or may not be bacon. My stomach clenches. I look up at him.
“Try the eggs,” he suggests. “They’re fresh. Free range, organic, chemical free. We raise them right here in camp. The chickens, not the eggs.”
Dark, soulful eyes and that small, mysterious, beatific smile. What did his reaction mean when I said hi? Was he startled I offered him a halfway human greeting or was he startled because I had figured out the real point of chaseball? Or was he not startled at all and I’m picking up cues that aren’t there?
“I don’t see the box.”
“What box? Oh. It was kind of a stupid game.” He looks away and says softly to himself, “I miss baseball.”
He’s quiet for the next couple of minutes while I move the cold eggs around the plate. I miss baseball. A universe of loss in four syllables.
“No, I liked it,” I tell him. “It was fun.”
“Really?” A look: Are you serious? He doesn’t know that I am 99.99999 percent of the time. “You didn’t seem too down with it at the time.”
“I guess I’m just not feeling well lately.”
He laughs and then seems surprised at his own reaction. “Okay. Well, I left it in my quarters. I’ll bring it someday if nobody swipes it.”
The conversation meanders off the game. I discover Razor was the youngest of five kids, grew up in Ann Arbor, where his dad worked as an electrician and his mom as a middle school librarian, played baseball and soccer and loved Michigan football. Until he was twelve, his great ambition was to be the starting quarterback for the Wolverines. But he grew tall, not big, and baseball became his passion.
“Mom wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer, but the old man didn’t think I was smart enough . . .”
“Wait. Your dad didn’t think you were smart?”
“Smart enough. There’s a difference.” Defending his father even in death. People die; love endures. “He wanted me to be an electrician like him. Dad was a big union guy, president of his local, stuff like that. That was the real reason he didn’t want me to be a lawyer. Suits, he called them.”
“He had a problem with authority.”
Razor shrugs. “‘Be your own man,’ he always said. ‘Don’t be the Man’s man.’” He shuffles his feet, embarrassed, like he’s talking too much. “What about your old man?”
“He was an artist.”
“That’s cool.”
“He was also a drunk. Did more drinking than painting.” Though not always. Yellowed photographs of showings hanging crooked in dusty frames and the students buzzing in his studio nervously cleaning brushes and the cathedral hush that fell when he walked into a crowded room.
“What kind of shit did he paint?” Razor asks.