The 33-56 Astros face the 35-54 Padres at Whale’s Vagina Park.  Ugly, ugly baseball will ensue.

***

The Engineer woke to a throbbing headache, bloodshot eyes and a taste that felt like he’d been sucking a dirty sock – ahh Saturday.  He found a cigarette on the bedside table and began to piece together his movements from the night before.  Water volleyball with the girls at the pool for happy hour.  Back to his apartment to fire up the grill.  Someone made a beer run.  Someone else made a bottle run.  He searched his pockets and found a crumpled receipt for cigarettes – looks like he made the smoke run.  He was mostly certain he didn’t go anywhere else, that the party continued in his apartment or someone else’s.  The Woodway Square management didn’t mind.  The complex had a Club downstairs that sold drink setups – they wanted people to party there.  One look at the pool on a Friday afternoon and the “No” on the vacancy sign lit up out front.  Didn’t matter what they charged.

He remembered the Roommate leaving at some point in the night, but he didn’t know where he went or if he came back.  The Roommate was a bit crazier than most, but that’s why the Engineer liked him – he made life more interesting.  The mirrorball and smoke machine in the living room; the limousine-driver high school friend; the pot connection.  All great resources for a 26-year-old Vietnam vet.

The Engineer wandered into the living room to search for more clues.  No sign of the Roommate.  He picked up the empties and rinsed the ashtrays.  Opened the window for ventilation.  Lit another cigarette and waited for life to start up again.

The front door slammed open.  The Roommate, still awake, still drunk, still crazy, emerged with a bottle of rum in his right hand and a covered animal cage in his left.

“What’s in the cage?” the Engineer asked.

“You’re never going to believe it,” the Roommate beamed.  “The girls are going to LOVE this!”

“What’s in the fucking cage?”

With a magician’s flair, the Roommate whipped the drape off and revealed his life’s proudest procurement.

A monkey.

Projected Starters

Monday – Happ (6-9, 5.14) vs Wells (1-2, 2.50)

Tuesday – Lyles (2-5, 5.08) vs Ohlendorf (2-0, 7.41)

Wednesday – Wandy (7-7, 3.51) vs Richard (6-10, 3.83)

Thursday – Harrell (7-6, 4.43) vs Volquez (5-7, 3.69)

***

The Engineer was asleep by the pool, the Flight Attendant dozing in the deck chair next to him.  They’d been seeing each other for a couple weeks, ever since she moved from Los Angeles.  He thought he liked her, knew she liked him, and for the most part enjoyed having somebody pretty to tag along for the ride.  He had spent most of his waking hours by the pool for the past week, determined to stay away from his apartment as much as possible.

The Engineer hated that fucking monkey.  Woodway Square had a No Pets policy, but the drunk St. Bernard who frequented the pool pretty much negated that.  They kept the monkey locked in its cage, but it was loud, it smelled, and it flung shit all over the apartment.  They living room had been newly decorated with electric-blue plastic tarps, and they were too scared to let the monkey out of its cage.  They didn’t even name it.

The Engineer woke to the sound of sobbing.

The Roommate stood above them, again drunk, again crazy, with a bottle of gin in his right hand and the monkey thrown over his left shoulder, dead.

Injuries

Astros – Castro and Lowrie newly placed on the DL.  Escalona and Weiland out for the season.

Padres – Bartlett, Bass, Blanks, Cashner, Darnell, Hermida, Luebke, Moseley, Stauffer, Stults, Wieland out for various periods of time.

***

They didn’t know how the monkey died.  The Engineer grew up with a love of all animals, and while he was happy to be rid of the thing, he was sad it died.  And he was adamant that the Roommate bury the animal.  As fair trade, the Engineer offered to perform the burial for the Roommate’s alligator-skin boots.

It was dark.  The Engineer (shirtless, swim trunks and alligator-skin boots), the Flight Attendant (bikini) and the Roommate (jeans, barefoot) walked slowly along the 610 feeder.  Every quarter-mile or so the Roommate would stop, take a swig from the bottle, then pour a drink in the dead monkey’s mouth.  He didn’t try to revive it when he found it (for fear the monkey would chew his face off during CPR), but he figured a little gin couldn’t hurt.

They found a grassy spot not far from the apartment, dug a three-foot grave and buried the animal.  They drank from the gin bottle, smoked cigarettes and watched the passing headlights in silence. When the moment passed, the Engineer simply said, “sorry,” and left.  The Flight Attendant and Roommate followed.

Promotions

Monday – nothing.

Tuesday – Dog Days of Summer (I assume bring your dog to the park?)

Wednesday – nothing.

Thursday – 10,000 Padres sunglasses.

***

Woodway Square burned to the ground seven years later (it turns out wood shingles and wood siding are flammable), but the parties ended years before.  The Roommate skipped town in a drunken fit a week after the burial and hadn’t been seen or heard from since.  The Engineer and the Flight Attendant married a year later.

They had a son.

***

Follow the action in the GZ!

Astros @ Giants Series Preview, July 13-15

I got green and I got blues
and everyday there’s a little less difference between the two.
So I belly-up and disappear.
Well I ain’t really drowning ’cause I see the beach from here.

It was one of those summer nights where the cicadas are griping at you like an angry mother-in-law. Blazing hot during the day, when the darkness finally crept across the sky and provided a slight relief the bugs went crazy, a pulsing, scraping, deafening call to arms.

Inside, dinner eaten, cool drinks were soothing us while we were watching TV. Nothing really worthwhile was on, but we let our souls recharge in the flicker of the electric campfire, half-dozing while the air conditioner kept up its fight, pushing back slowly against the heat in the house. It always took a while to cool the house in the summer. That 18-foot ceiling in the living room was a terrible idea when it came to air conditioning.

Probable pitchers:

Friday, July 13, 9:15 PM CT, AT&T Park
Jordan Lyles (2-5, 5.08) vs Madison Bumgarner (10-5, 3.27)

Lyles pitched one of his best games last time out. He’s gonna need every last bit of that mojo in this one though, because Bumgarner is a tough opponent for even the best teams and this gang of slumbering dwarves…well…O/U on no-hit innings to start the game is six. Maybe everyone’ll be frisky coming off the break.

Saturday, July 14, 8:05 PM CT, AT&T Park
Wandy Rodriguez (7-6, 3.37) vs Tim Lincecum (3-10, 6.42)

Second-half superstar Wandy will be showcasing his wares for interested bidders, if he hasn’t been dealt already by the time this one rolls around. The Freak will be searching for his mainline and he might just find it with this bunch. I don’t expect many of them to be taking ball four.

Sunday, July 15, 3:05 PM CT, AT&T Park
Lucas Harrell (7-6, 4.56) vs Matt Cain (9-3, 2.62)

Harrell has been the big surprise of the starters this season, but going up against Matt Cain will again prove to be more than the Astros are up to dealing with. I’m predicting that this extended slumber for the lumber will continue.

Well I ain’t really falling asleep; I’m fading to black.

I was lightly dozing in the recliner when the front door exploded in a thunder of noise. Loud, booming, frantic banging, a scrabbling and slapping and then the breathy screams. They were words but I couldn’t make them out, more like frenzied shrieks in all the knocking and thudding and noise, more screaming. The electricity crackled in my brain and I jolted up, ran to the door with my wife behind me, her eyes huge. What could this possibly be?

I opened the door and it was immediately slammed into me as the person on the other side rushed in, driving me backward in a rush of acrid metal, wet and noise like a freight train from Hell. It was our neighbor, Barbara. Naked except for panties, covered in blood. As she ran past I could see rivers of blood flowing down her back, her legs, all over the floor. Blood all over her hair, blood gushing and streaming dark red and I slammed the door shut. Barbara was shaking, convulsing, trying to catch her breath and beat back her hysteria long enough to tell us what happened.

Well the drifter, He holds on to his youth just like it was money in the bank.
And “Lord knows, I can’t change” sounds better in the song
than it does with hell to pay.
I might as well have slipped that ring on your finger from a window of a van
as it drove away.
Now she’s found herself, and I lost mine
and I’m just another guy who can’t give her anything.

My wife got towels and wrapped them around her, then called 911 while we heard the fragments of the story punctuated by heavy, racking breaths and sobs. She’d had a fight with her husband, who freaked out and started slashing her with a butcher knife. She didn’t know if he’d followed her to our house.

We’d been neighbors for a couple of years or so. We spoke a little, but we were certainly not what you’d call friends. More like acquantances, casual neighbors but that was about it. My wife knew Barbara a little better but not a lot better, they’d at least talk a little if both of them happened to be outside at the same time.

I made sure the door was locked, got my pistol and a flashlight, and went out the back door. My wife locked it after me. Hugged by the humidity, I circled around to the front, keeping our house between me and Barbara’s place. The cicadas were roaring, a massive insect chorus that blasted out all other noise, not necessarily to my advantage. Even though it was dark I didn’t dare turn on the flashlight yet, not until I had a better idea what was going on.

Promotions:

Friday night is Fireworks Night
Saturday, a pretty run-of-the-mill Matt Cain player t-shirt
Sunday, a sweet Madison Bumgarner bobblehead

Dreams are given to you when you’re young enough to dream them
before they can do you any harm.
They don’t start to hurt, until you try to hold on to them after seeing how they really are.
She used to dream them with me, every single crazy one,
until they started hurting her too, now she’s got some of her own
and outgrowing me, might be the best thing for her she’s ever done.

It was hard to see. I’m sure if Bob had been hiding, waiting for me, he’d have me but he wasn’t on that side of the house. I crouched and made my way to the driveway, staying close to the wall, pistol in my hand, round chambered. I reached our cars and still didn’t see him. Following down low I duckwalked almost to the street and looked back toward their yard, across ours.

The glow from the far streetlight was dim but Bob was in his front yard. He was moving, some kind of erratic twirl but it was hard to make out what was going on. He held the knife in one hand and a gun in the other, either a rifle or a shotgun. I could hear him talking but I couldn’t make out any of it, some kind of rapid muttering but he was too far off for me to make out any words.

The sirens sliced into the night, not close enough but getting closer. At least Bob didn’t appear to be intent on coming to our house. Whatever was going on in his mind, whatever hellish snap he’d suffered, it didn’t seem to involve tracking Barbara or assaulting us.

I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask Bob anything. My plan was to make sure he wasn’t going to attack us and keep an eye on him until the police showed up. The sirens were much closer now, not yet on our street but definitely in our neighborhood. The nearness of the sound seemed to affect Bob. He stopped talking and looked toward the direction from which the sirens were approaching. Slowly, he started to walk back towards his house, then he threw down the knife and turned around, facing the street.

I could see the lights of the police cars reflecting off of the houses at the end of the block. Their angry wail was the only sound now, the chorus overrun.

Bob balanced himself in a shaky dance and held the barrel of the gun against his forehead. There was a moment of steadiness, and then he pulled the trigger.

And I could find another dream,
one that keeps me warm and clean
but I ain’t dreamin’ anymore, I’m waking up.
So I’ll take two of what you’re having and I’ll take everything you got
to kill this goddamn lonely, goddamn lonely love.

Injuries:

Giants – Santiago Casilla is day to day with a blister; Huff’s expected back sometime in late July from a right knee sprain; Shane Loux due in late July or early August from his neck strain. Sanchez, Wilson and likely Surkamp are out for the year.

Astros – Marwin Gonzalez will be back soon from his bruised heel; Weiland might get back in late August, and Escalona is out for the year.

It was a month before Barbara went back to the house. She never spent a night in it before gutting it completely. She changed everything inside – the wallpaper, paint, furniture, even knocked down some walls to reconfigure it so that it wouldn’t be anything like the house had been before. Even so, after a few months she sold it and moved away. We never heard from her again.

We had to replace the tile in the entryway and the carpet in the living room, the stains were too large and too deep to ever be removed. There are still a couple of spots on the walkway and the porch that multiple applications of bleach won’t get out. Dark reminders of what can happen on a summer night, and how every neighbor and every knock will never be quite the same again.

***

We’re in the last stages of the tear-down now, the last remnants taken down to the bare floor and the studs. There’s already been some trips to the stores for carpet and wallpaper and trim. The easier layers of interest and affection and history have all been pried away and hauled off, leaving little but childlike dreams for those of us whose inertia has proven stronger than the attempts to derail it have been. I hope that whatever’s put into this clean house is better than what was before.

And I’m scared shitless of what’s coming next.
Scared shitless, these angels I see in the trees are waiting for me.
Waiting for me.

Friends in the swamp.
Friends on the ground, in the trees.
Angels and fuselage.

Take a ride in the Game Zone to see this from up close.