Blue Screen Read Online Free Page B

said.
    “Absolutely.”
    “Have you ever played baseball?”
    “Softball. I was a great softball player.”
    “But that’s a little different, isn’t it?”
    “I don’t appreciate negativity,” she said. “You better learn that quick if you want to stay around.”
    “Just trying to learn,” I said.
    Erin effortlessly insinuated herself into a pair of jeans that I would have thought undonnable.
    “I can do anything a man can do, and do it better,” she said.
    It sounded like something she’d said before. I smiled again in full accord. She put on some lizard-skin cowboy boots and stood and made sure that the jeans were neatly inside the boots. She checked herself in the mirror, liked what she saw, and started for the locker-room door. I went with her. Robbie got ahead to open the door. Misty collected Erin’s workout clothes and makeup, put them in a gym bag, and followed. As we walked through the gym and out across the Taft campus, there was no one we encountered, male or female, student or faculty, who didn’t stare at Erin Flint.

6
    T HAT ’ S BULLSHIT ,” Spike said.
    Rosie and I were having Sunday brunch with Spike in his restaurant near the rejuvenated waterfront, in the sunny aftermath of the Big Dig.
    “You don’t think a woman can do anything a man can do?”
    “Of course not,” Spike said.
    “Is that because you are a bigoted, woman-hating homosexual?” I said.
    “Yes,” Spike said, “but my bigotry is selective. I like you, for instance.”
    “Well, of course you do,” I said. “But you don’t think I’m your equal physically?”
    “If we had a fistfight,” Spike said, “I’d win.”
    “That’s true of most people,” I said. “Male or female.”
    “True,” Spike said.
    Spike was a bear in all senses. He was bearded, and massively shapeless, and strong and ferocious and very loving when he cared to be.
    “The equality thing gets a little tricky,” I said. “We’re not all equally smart, or equally gifted, or equally attractive, or…”
    I spread my hands.
    “I try not to think about it,” Spike said.
    He took a breadstick from the basket in the middle of the table and gave it to Rosie.
    “She’s not supposed to eat between meals,” I said.
    “Good thing,” Spike said. “Don’t want her getting fat.”
    The breadstick was long and crunchy, and Rosie treated it like a bone. She ate it very effectively and carefully licked up the crumbs from the tabletop when she was done.
    “It’s a little hard to see exactly how any of us is in fact equal,” I said.
    “Inequality is easier to spot,” Spike said.
    He gestured for the waitress to pour us more coffee. I knew he was bored with the subject. Spike didn’t spend much time in the sphere of abstraction.
    “Whatever it is,” I said, “it’s probably best to base it on individual performance.”
    “Probably is,” Spike said.
    “Buddy is using her,” I said.
    Two young men in expensive leisure wear came in and went to the bar. We both watched them. Then we looked at each other and grinned.
    “And Erin’s using Buddy,” Spike said. “Synergy.”
    “I wonder if he thinks she really can be a big-league player,” I said.
    “If she can play, so much the better. Either way, he juices his investment in her movie and the ball club.”
    “I wonder if she really thinks she can play.”
    Spike grinned.
    “If she can play, so much the better,” Spike said. “Either way, she juices her investment in her career.”
    “Do you think there will be a lot of opposition to her being on the team?”
    “Like when Jackie Robinson broke in?” Spike said.
    I nodded. Spike thought about it and shook his head.
    “People will know,” he said.
    “Know what?”
    “Know it’s a stunt,” he said. “They’re used to stuff like that.”
    “What if she were actually good enough?” I said.
    Spike gave Rosie another breadstick.
    “That would be trouble,” he said.

7
    I HAD BEEN out for a run late in the slow Sunday and