He had to think of something else. Looking at the cardboard folding table littered with unpaid bills, he stared at the last remaining artifact from his former life that hadn’t been seized, the trophy given to him by the baseball commissioner himself when he hit 78 home runs. Bud had been so happy to present it to him, only to have the nerve to ask for it back when those steroid allegations started hitting the fan. Fuck him. He gave it away, and he couldn’t take it back. If he thought steroids were a problem, then he should have done something about it when Canseco and McGwire were juicing like crazy. He hadn’t done anything different than they did, except take a more potent version of the juice. One that still had crazy aftereffects.
Then the question re-emerged. What if his record was in danger? The record that he owned, the record that he earned. Juice or no juice, Roy had smashed ball after ball over outfield walls across America. He had to hit a flying sphere thrown anywhere between 80 to 100 miles an hour with a wooden cylinder. Making contact wasn’t easy. It’s even harder to hit the ball straight. And home runs, well, that was the hardest thing to do, and he had hit them. Seventy-eight of them in one season. And there ain’t no way in hell a Spanish-speaking second baseman was going to take that record away… if that rumor was true.
He heard his other neighbors, Carlos and Maria, shouting back and forth in Spanglish. Words like fuckhead, shit-for-brains, cunt, and several over English profanities always got mixed into their heated arguments. And if they weren’t arguing, they were doing the nasty, and everybody in the apartment complex and probably the entire block could hear them. Crazy mothers, to be sure, but maybe they knew about the Jose guy. He was one of their own, right?
Roy trudged back outside and knocked on their door. The couple kept arguing, so he knocked harder.
“Who’s that, your novio?” Carlos shouted inside the apartment.
“Fuck you, pendejo!” Maria responded as she opened the door. Roy looked down at this little Latina lady. Even though it was the middle of the morning, she was decked out to the nines from her hair done up down to her stiletto high heels and in between, a tight red dress showing off her immense curves. Roy wondered if he should get some tips from her if he was going to continue this cross-dressing business.
“Hello there, I was wondering if…”
Maria’s eyes widened. She turned back to Carlos, who wore a tight tank top displaying an arm full of tats.
“It’s the black lady next door. Why don’t you bang her too?”
“I just might. Her ta-tas are bigger than yours,” Carlos said with a laugh.
Maria’s face flushed. She yanked a picture of the Virgin Mary and child from the wall and flung it at Carlos. He ducked, and it smashed against an overturned chair. Bits of glass scattered on the messy carpet.
“You did not just throw that.” His eyes were wide in disbelief.
Roy noticed that it might have been the last unbroken object in the apartment until a few seconds ago.
Maria crossed herself. “You made me do it. I can’t help myself sometimes, Carlos.”
Roy cleared his voice. “Look, um. I was wondering if either of you might know of a Jose Morales. He plays baseball.”
Carlos turned and picked up the broken picture, holding it gingerly in his fingers. Maria walked over and put her arm around him. He looked over at her as if forgetting she was there. “Madre Santa Maria y bebé Jesús…”
Maria put her finger to his lips, stopping him from speaking. “I want your bebé, Carlos. Quiero tu bebé.”
He turned, wrapping his arms around her. “Really?”
“Absolutamente.”
Roy didn’t know what was going on, but they didn’t seem to know or care that he was there as they started making out. Carlos dropped the picture as he worked his hands all over Maria’s body. Roy had no idea what to do. He felt a stirring in his loins, something that had been absent for quite a while, as he watched Carlos manhandle Maria. Carlos began kissing Maria’s neck, working his way down to her cleavage, while Maria stepped on the picture, tearing a hole in it with the heel. Roy entered the room.
“You… wait…”
The couple didn’t notice him or the picture. Maria was busy working on Carlos’s belt while he was pulling the top of her dress down. Roy quietly took steps back.
“I think I’ll just come back another time.”
He couldn’t help himself and stole one more look. Carlos’s pants were around his ankles, and Maria had her legs wrapped around him, her mouth open and eyes closed, ready to belt out a powerful scream. Roy shut the door as she uttered her first, “Ooh yeah, baby!” There would be many more of these exclamations in the next several minutes.
Standing outside with his hand on the doorknob, Roy wanted to take another peak. They wouldn’t even know if he watched them the entire time, would they? He started to turn the handle.
“Ms. Brands.”
A yelp escaped Roy’s lips. He turned to see one of those dozen kids from upstairs who only wanted to jump up and down all day and night. Maria wailed, “Harder, harder.” Roy felt blood rising to face.
“What’d you want? You shouldn’t be hearing stuff like this.”
“Oh, I hear stuff all the time,” the boy said. “The walls are too thin.” He was an Asian kid, Pilipino, Roy thought he’d heard once. Probably first or second grade, but he didn’t know how to judge anything like that.
“Well there’s lots of things you shouldn’t be listening too.”
Maria grunted loud. Roy kicked the door.
“Keep it down, don’t you know there are children around,” he shouted. It sounded a lot like his grandmother. He turned back to the boy. “You run on upstairs and put in some earplugs or iPod headphones or whatever else it is that you kids do these days. Now get.”
Good Lord, he was becoming his grandmother. This was scary. Roy needed to go back inside in his apartment and figure out a way to get his identity back. The old Roy B. Brands who was a certain shoe-in for the Hall of Fame until he wasn’t. He was walking back to his apartment when the kid said something that stopped him cold.
“What was that, son?”
“Jose Morales, you were asking about him, right?”
“Do you know him?”
“Do I? He’s my favorite second baseman!”
Roy squinted, looking the kid up and down, making sure the squirt wasn’t putting him on. It seemed like everybody else was.
“What team does he play for?”
“The St. Louis Cardinals.”
“How many home runs does he have?”
“One hundred and three lifetime as of this morning.”
“How many this season?”
“So far he’s got seventy-five. Only three more to tie Roy Brands’ record,” the kid said, lowering his voice when he said Roy’s name as if it were dirty.
“You got a problem with Roy Brands?”
“Yea, he’s a… Hey, your name is Brands. Is he like a brother or something?”
“Or something.”
“Really?” The kid’s eyes widened.
“So you think the Jose character can break m… Roy’s record.”
“Of