Diazepam

Diazepam

contributed by NeilT

I was leaving to surf the big waves at Trestles when my assistant, Ms. Leslie, called. I was going to ignore her, but I thought it might be a client. Rent was due, and money was tight. She was calling on her own phone because Ma Bell had cut of the office phone. I was lucky I didn’t pay Leslie.

“Yeah?”

“Brad,” man her voice was sexy, “you’ve got someone here in the office. It’s a guy named Luhnow. He says he wants to talk to you about Astrolina.”

I had heard of Luhnow, but hadn’t met him. Of course back in my day Biggio and Pam Gardner ran the team, now it’s this guy Luhnow. I knew exactly what he’d look like. All these young general managers look the same: hair combed, tie tight, pants creased, earnest. They all carry slide rules and IPads, and when I got to my office on the wrong side of Petco he didn’t disappoint. Me? I had put on a shirt, for once.

“Mr. Ausmus,” his handshake felt just the right degree of strong, like he practiced, “I know your history with Astrolina, and I . . . I mean the Organization . . . we need your help.” He paused, as if he were searching for the right words. “Mr. Ausmus . . . Brad, do you mind if I call you Brad?” Suddenly I did mind, but what the hell. I wanted to get this over and go surfing. “Astrolina is missing.”

It didn’t surprise me. Last time I’d seen Astrolina was June, when Angel brought muscle to town and left me and her cut up and bleeding down on the banks of the bayou. She lost and blamed me. I said to hell with it and came home to San Diego. It was summer, and there were waves.

But I had kept up with Astrolina. It had been a rough couple of months, with a lot more losses than wins. Let me say that again, a lot more losses. Starting pitching had been pretty good, there had been some hits, but the bullpen sucked and defense had been spotty. Those months were worse than rough, the worst I’d ever seen.

Now the Stros were going back to Anaheim, that damned Disney town, and they needed Astrolina. Luhnow told me that the ‘Stros had traded WW for cash considerations, just so he could afford my fee. I was going to be able to pay the rent.

I knew where to start, and I called Boss Rat, but Rat said he hadn’t seen Astrolina since that time in Houston. He said that Angel got paid the wins Astrolina owed her, and that as far as he was concerned, they were even. There was only one other place to look: the House Next to Limey’s.

It’s the place where you go when bottom has been hit and you’re still going, still spiraling down. It was a foul place with trash and weeds in the yard and where the paint has already peeled and now the Hardy Plank is rotting. The screen door was hanging on one hinge and the windows were broken by rocks. The door was ajar—who’d bother locking the House Next to Limey’s?—so I walked right in. The outside was bad, and the inside was worse. There was no electric and I pulled out a flashlight and my .45.

I found her in a back room on a rust-stained cotton-ticking mattress. There were no sheets on the bed, and it looked like a dust mite Sandals. Astrolina was always a beautiful woman, but I had never seen her look so bad. At first I thought she was dead, but she was just out, out as far as she could go and still be breathing. There were bottles on the floor, Gatorade, Vitamin Water, Excel, all the hard stuff, even coconut water. And there were bottles of pills. I picked up a pill bottle. Diazepam. She was overdosed on anti-depressants.

A slapped her a bit to get her talking and then I made her walk, back and forth, back and forth, in that foul wreck of a tract house. She kept mumbling that I should leave her alone, that she only wanted to go back to sleep, that she wouldn’t go to Anaheim, but I finally got her to the nearest Starbucks for a triple espresso and then got her on a plane at Hobby. I called Luhnow and he said he’d be there to meet the plane at Ontario.

***
It turned out all right, the third win in a week, which hadn’t happened since mid-June. It was the fifth straight Astros win in Anaheim, but of course there had been that June sweep by Angel back home in Houston. Peacock pitched into the seventh, giving up an unearned run in the 5th after an Altuve throwing error, and another in the 7th after a Villar fielding error and some weird stuff with Dominguez that I can’t figure out. Zeid replaced Peacock in the 7th and faced one batter for a Dominguez-Altuve-Wallace double play.

Chapman came in for one out in the 8th, and Lo shut it down in the 9th. The bullpen held.

There was some ugly offense, but what do you expect? In the 3rd, Villar walked and reached third on a throwing error. Then Grossman struck out. Then Wallace struck out. Then Altuve grounded out. A runner at 3rd with no outs, and no runs score. You could probably feel the despair in the Game Zone.

But with 8 runs, there was also some good stuff. Hoes led off the 5th with a double, then moved to 3rd on a Villar single, and scored on a Grossman single. Wallace grounded out, but moved Grossman to 2nd, and the bases loaded when Altuve walked. Castro walked scoring Villar, and Grossman scored on a Carter sac fly after Angels starting pitcher, Jerome Williams, was run.

Carter had a great night. He scored Wallace in the 7th on a single. And in the 9th hit a 3-run homer, that’s number 23, to score Altuve and Castro. That’s how it’s supposed to work in the American League, right? Dominguez followed back-to-back with his 15th homer.

This could have been a Wednesday. Shoot, this could have been Christmas.