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said. “We just couldn’t make it work and we finally gave up.”
    Buddy was fidgeting in his chair.
    “So, Sunny,” he said. “You ready to start?”
    “I can’t wait,” I said.

5
    E RIN LIVED with Buddy Bollen at SeaChase, and while she was there she was protected by Buddy’s security people. When she left I went with her, and some of her staff joined us. It took a considerable staff to help her be Erin Flint. She had a personal assistant, a personal trainer, a personal nutritionist, a chef, a publicist, a hairdresser, a makeup artist, a nurse/EMT…and me. Everyone but me occupied a wing of SeaChase, next to the gym. Every day she went to Taft University and worked in the indoor cage with a hitting instructor Buddy had requisitioned from the Connecticut Nutmegs.
    Today, like most days, I sat in the stands near an indoor batting cage and watched Erin work with the hitting instructor. Erin’s personal assistant, Misty Tyler, was on one side of me. And her personal trainer, a woman named Robbie, sat on the other side of me. A kid who had pitched for Taft the previous season was pitching to her, and a lean, bald guy with big hands was standing outside the wire batting cage, watching. His name was Roy Linden.
    “Don’t pull off the inside pitch,” he said.
    Erin wore a tight-fitting black tank top and white short shorts and some sort of spiked baseball shoes. She had on gloves and a blue bandana folded and tied around her head as a sweatband.
    “Well, what the fuck am I supposed to do?” Erin said. “Tell him not to throw it inside, Roy.”
    “Remember what I told you about clearing your hips,” Roy said.
    “So how do I do that without bailing out?”
    “Don’t clear with your feet,” he said. “Look.”
    He stood outside the batting cage with a bat and showed her.
    “If you can’t turn on it without bailing,” Roy said, “don’t swing at it.”
    “You want me to strike out?”
    “If you’re doing it right,” he said, “a ball you have to pull off of will either be a ball, or a pitch you can’t hit anyway.”
    “Well, tell him to throw me something I can hit,” she said.
    “Buzz,” Roy said to the college kid. “On the plate but keep coming inside.”
    When the next pitch came, Erin took a big step and hit the ball very hard into the netting just to my left.
    “There,” Erin said. “See?”
    “’Bout forty feet foul,” Roy said.
    Erin was gazing respectfully at the way the netting still trembled from the force of her hit. Roy looked out at the kid pitching and pointed to the outside of the plate. The kid nodded. He threw the ball again and Erin took another big step and another big swing and missed.
    “That was outside,” she said to Roy.
    He nodded.
    “Waist-high,” he said.
    “You told him to throw inside.”
    “If you weren’t pulling off, you could have hit that thing out,” he said.
    “You said it was going to be inside.”
    Roy smiled faintly.
    “Buzz,” he said to the kid pitching. “Groove one for her.”
    The kid pitched and Erin hit the ball so hard I could hear it sort of hiss as it rocketed over the pitcher’s head and slammed into the netting.
    “Nice,” Roy said. “Good one to end on. Call it a day, Erin.”
    He looked at we three women in the stands.
    “Ladies,” he said.
    Then he turned and walked away down the length of the big indoor cage and pushed through the netting and disappeared toward the men’s locker room.
    I walked with Erin and Misty and Robbie to the women’s locker room. There was a private section for the coaches, which was made available to Erin so she wouldn’t have to disrobe in front of mortals. Robbie and Misty sat with me on an empty bench in front of some gray metal lockers while Erin showered. I am in pretty good shape, and I’m sort of proud of my body, but Erin, naked, made me feel like a toad. She was so smooth and muscular and proportional, so graceful and centered and entirely gorgeous, and so proud of herself. No