Odditorium: A Novel Read Online Free Page A

and around his waist, a canvas apron with his initials on it. As Vinnie made change he looked nervously to his left where his father was sitting. Nodding excitedly to himself, Sparn calculated the biorhythm cycles of the Cougarette players on a specialized, mail-order slide rule, and made notes on a pad.
    Dad just loves these unannounced visits, Vinnie thought. The bastard. Not much of a show; no wonder he isn’t paying attention.
    How Vinnie dreaded the arrival of the old man. It always came at the wrong time. Not last night, when they’d been up against a decent factory team and had pulled in close to a grand, but today, on a crappy Little League field across from a laundromat against a squad of local “All Stars” (a disheveled group Vinnie had recruited in bars and union halls at ten bucks a man). The uniforms they wore came out of a cardboard box in the back of the Cougarettes’ bus and fit badly. The crowd was sparse and abusive.
    Dad is going to shit a brick, Vinnie thought. I just know it.
    Sparn was motioning him over with emphatic swoops of the hand. Vinnie tried to hide under the brim of the sun helmet, but it was too late.
    “Good game, huh? A little dry, Dad? Want a brew?”
    “How we doing on them? What kind of deal are you getting?”
    Vinnie turned around to cheer through cupped hands. “Let’s bring another one home, Roxie. Show us some chili pepper up there.”
    Sparn rapped him on the top of the helmet with his ball-point. “I’m talking to you, Vincent. What I called you over here for is I got to know how many posters you put up last night?”
    “Well, see we’ve been running low on posters and I thought, you know, not to spread yourself too thin and all, so I …”
    “You’re low on posters? So for Christ’s sake tell Dolly about it and we’ll get some more printed up. What the hell do you think I have you call in for every night, if not so we can stay on top of this thing? Do you read me? Let’s communicate, okay?”
    “Right, Dad. I’ll let you know.”
    “Great. Beautiful. Let’s stay in goddamn touch on this stuff.”
    Vinnie kicked the dirt, but was inwardly relieved when Roxie Vasquez bounced into a double play to end the inning. Just one more to go, he thought, and we can get out of here.
    The room Tildy and Roxie shared was the only one with operational hot water. It was filling up with funky, gritty bodies.
    “You better watch your ass, girl.”
    “Turn your fuckin’ face around.”
    There was some scuffling going on in the shower line. After an eighty-mile bus ride, with windows open since the air conditioning was out, the Cougarettes’ collective mood was right nasty.
    “How’d you like to eat this shampoo bottle, Wanda?”
    Wrapped in a couple of towels, Tildy sat at the head end of the bed turning the pages of a newspaper. Roxie was cross-legged at the other end, searching for tunes on a transistor radio and wedging cotton between her toes before applying a fresh coat of nail polish.
    “You just sitting there, Frenchie. You want to use my hairbrush or something?”
    “I’d probably break it.” Tildy spoke without looking up from her paper. “Haven’t touched this hair in years. That’s the secret to these great curls.”
    “You ought to brush once in a while.” Roxie shook her head. “You could get spiders living in there.”
    According to the souvenir program, Roxie was a pearl diver from Corinto, Nicaragua. Actually she could not swim a stroke and came originally from Oakland. One night she had beaten Vinnie up outside a bowling alley and Pete Sparn, on one of his surprise visits at the time, had been so impressed that he fired his left fielder on the spot and gave Roxie the job.
    “I can handle a bat, no problem,” Roxie said. “I used to be a bouncer at the Hoja Roja in Modesto.”
    That’s-Mary, who was late for everything, came dancing through the door in slippers and a chenille robe. Beer from a paper cup sloshed on her hand as she shimmied to