The room was still mostly dark. Light peeked in around the edges of the curtains covering the windows. The red numerals on the digital clock read 6:05. If Smooth had been aware of his son's sleep schedule he would have known it was reveille time. Little Steve was like Old Faithful. He blew every morning at the same time.

"Read George!" he squawked. "Read George!" He had a softcover book in his hand and was smacking his father with it.

"It's too early. Go back to sleep." Smooth wanted his son, who felt wet and smelled faintly of piss in his red cotton sleeper, to cuddle with him under the covers, but Little Steve had his own plans for the morning and they did not include sleep. He sat up in bed, his engines revving. Blond and blue-eyed with chipmunk cheeks, he blasted out of bed like a fuel-injected dragster and really didn't slow down much from there.

"Stop, okay. Read George." Smooth clicked on a nightstand light and read the story. "Read again," Little Steve said after they finished. "We just read it. Aren't you tired? I'm tired." To which Little Steve roared: "Read again! Read again!" Arguing with a two-year-old, Smooth quickly realized, is like arguing with a home plate umpire over balls and strikes. It's going to be messy, and you're bound to lose.

They read George four or five more times. Or maybe it was eight or ten, Smooth lost track. Suffice to say he knew everything there was to know about that monkey and his damn camping trip. Yet reading served another purpose: it woke him up, shook the cobwebs loose. Over yelps of protest Smooth rolled out of bed and pulled the curtains open, sunlight streaming into the room.
He found some Advil in the bathroom and wolfed three tablets down. "I'm starved," he said, returning to the bedroom where his son was bouncing up and down on a chair. "How about something to eat?" Fortunately Little Steve changed gears as quickly as he got off the starting line. "Eat! Eat!" he said with the gusto of a college frat boy. When he fell off the chair, bonking his head, he did not cry.

Smooth thought food might slow his son down. He was wrong. When the room service cart arrived, Little Steve attacked it like he had never eaten in his life, wildly picking the warmers off the dishes and clutching tiny fistfuls of whatever he could reach. He lustily swallowed a whole strawberry, stem and all, while Smooth looked around for his wallet to tip the waiter.

"He's a big boy," the waiter said with a smirk. Smooth could not reply, he was too busy stopping Little Steve from stabbing himself with a fork.

Breakfast was scrambled eggs, toast, orange juice. Little Steve pitched most of it on the carpet, although some of it negotiated a successful voyage into his mouth. It was like he was having a food fight with himself. Smooth put some jam on a piece of toast for him.

"More yam."

"It's jam. With a j."

"Yam!" Little Steve began to wail, not pleased with the speed at which his father was applying the condiment. "More yam!"

"All right, you win. More yam."

After breakfast Smooth turned on the TV, God bless the TV, and found some peace. Little Steve sat perched on the bed while his father polished off his second cup of coffee--caffeinated, definitely caffeinated--and tried to get his head on straight. The tap-dancing in his skull had quieted, but he wished he had a cap to put on. He did his best thinking with a cap on. Scrunch it down, roll the brim, work it in. Get it dirty, sweat in it. As a ballplayer he had worn a cap for so long that it was almost a piece of him, like an arm or leg. When he was a kid not much older than Little Steve he went to bed with his Red Robins cap on. (The fleet Red Robins of Ernie McGee and Willie Bristol and Oscar Santiago were his favorite team growing up.) His parents would come into his room at night and lift it off his head. First thing in the morning, he'd jam it back on.

It was all coming back to him--the whole, lovely mess he was in. He felt bad. He felt bad about everything, Bobbie Sue in particular. The cut on his forehead throbbed, and he remembered its origins. She had every reason in the world to pitch a shoe at him, it was pure luck she wasn't packing heat. He would have dialed her up to tell her how sorry he was except that he wasn't sure what her cell phone number was or how to find her. She may have flown back home to Texas or gone on to that Boobies International Convention in Phoenix where, as president, she was scheduled to give opening remarks to the three hundred delegates in attendance. On the other hand maybe calling her to apologize wasn't the right message to send. They were finished. Hell, they were finished a long time ago. He had tried to break it off with her ninety-seven times but you didn't break it off with a woman like Bobbie Sue until she was good and ready. After hiding naked in a hotel closet listening to him send a mating call to his wife, she was probably ready. If he called her that might prolong the agony and make things worse. Maybe Chunky and Clubhouse Guy weren't just blowing smoke, he thought. Maybe his life truly was changing, and Bobbie Sue was part of that old life that was passing, and it was time to put all of it in the rearview mirror.

Thank God they couldn't pin that pecker picker-upper on him--Ramona what's-her-name. That was somebody else's doing, not Chunky Clark like he first thought but most likely Larree Cash. Sending a girl up to a teammate's room without telling him had the Money Man's fingerprints all over it. But Ramona turned out to be a good egg and at least that was one thing he could smile about. Close to noon Stevie emerged from the bedroom, looking no less groggy and sleep-deprived than she did earlier. "Can we go to Starbucks?" she asked.

"Starbucks?"

"I want a caramel frappacino."

"You just woke up and now you want a frappacino?"

"Yeah. Why not?"

Smooth couldn't think of any reason why not, although he was sure there had to be one. Stirring from his TV-induced glaze Little Steve put a wastebasket on his head and started walking around the room.

"He's wet," said Stevie, wrinkling her nose at the smell emanating from the sagging, lumpy diapers visible below the wastebasket. "I think he pooped too. Haven't you changed him?"

"Good thing you're up. You do it."

Stevie called out too late to save Little Steve from walking into a wall. "Ow," said a small voice from under the metal receptacle.

Married four years, Smooth and his wife had had an understanding, mainly unspoken. He made the dough in the family--$2.1 mill in his best year, $785,000 with incentives this season--while she (assisted by a paid staff that included a nanny, housekeeper, cook and gardener) tended to the homefront. Now with Crystal (only temporarily, he hoped) out of the picture, new arrangements had to be made. It wasn't that Smooth had never changed a diaper--although, if pressed, it would have been difficult to remember the last time he had--or that he was against it in principle. In fact, in this strange new volcanic creation of a life that was gurgling up around his toes like hot lava, he could even picture himself on diaper duty every now and then. It was just, well, why rush into things?

"Here's the deal. You change him, get him dressed. And I'll treat you to a chocolate frappacino."

"Caramel. Little Steve gets one too?"

"No, he's got plenty of natural caffeine in his system already. You, me and Bud. We'll all go together."

Stevie grunted assent, though Smooth knew she would not go down so easy next time and that he would quickly need to figure out some other diaper-changing arrangement or else he'd be the one getting down and dirty wiping Little Steve's crack.

In the lobby downstairs they checked for messages from Crystal. There was nothing. The California Street cable car stopped a few blocks from the hotel. Smooth pushed the stroller with Little Steve in it, Stevie walking alongside. He tried to get her to take over but she refused. To be honest, he was not entirely down with the concept of a guy pushing a stroller--this guy anyway. It was like changing diapers; he had never really done it, not enough to count anyway. It felt funny, like throwing a ball left-handed, and he wondered if anyone was going to recognize him. Luckily no one did, although two slick-looking chicks smiled at him as they passed and he liked that.

They almost missed the cable car because Smooth couldn't figure out how to fold up the stroller. A group of Atlanta tourists--probably Tomahawk choppers, he thought with no little disgust--rushed onto the car ahead of him. Stevie had a seat with Little Steve but when she got off to help him she lost it to a grabby older guy. With a deeply patronizing tone that would have been offensive were it not so welcome, Stevie showed him the secret--push the red button while twisting the handle--that magically collapsed the stroller. Not that things suddenly got easier for him. The stroller seemed in danger of bursting open like a parachute at any minute, while it was all he could do to keep Little Steve from flinging himself onto the street as they hurtled down the center of the steep hill, cars speeding by them on both sides. The boy loved the bell, and the cable car guy rang it extra times just for him.   

At the coffee place Stevie took about fifteen minutes to place her order, though she already knew what she wanted. There were so many choices, she said, she didn't want to miss anything.

"Decide," Smooth told her. "Now."

They left Little Steve buckled into his stroller when they sat down and as long as they shoved food products at him, he was content. He gobbled down a strawberry croissant, part of a scone and so much of Stevie's chocolate brownie that she refused to give him anymore. His squawking turned every head in the place (with a few evil eyes attached) and Smooth, choosing bribery, stood up to get him a brownie of his own. The customers in line voluntarily let him go to the front. When he returned to his seat an older woman--gray-haired, early sixties, with a Macy's bag on the floor at her feet--beamed with a broad, approving smile.

"It's beautiful, what you're doing," she said. "So many children today are hungry for a father."

"He's just hungry," said Smooth as his son went after the brownie like a lion tearing at raw meat. "All the time."  

Afterwards they wandered over to a park near the water. It was a surprisingly warm and sunny August day in the bayside city, which usually only saw the sun on special holidays at this time of year. A couple dozen people, mostly downtown office workers, lay on the grass catching some cherished noontime rays. In one corner of the green was a steel drum band playing for donations. Smooth relaxed a little about pushing the stroller, relaxed about everything, and when his kids went off to play, giving him a much needed break from the rigors of his parenthood, he closed his eyes and let the soothing Caribbean rhythms roll over him like a warm breeze.

What a difference a day makes. Here he was, Playground Pop. Out of a job, watching his kids play at the park. Sure he loved them. What kind of creep show parents don't love their kids? But this wasn't the way it was supposed to happen, not yet anyhow and perhaps not ever. He was too young, he still had some good years left, and he felt an emptiness in his gut every time he pictured a world in which he could not step onto a major league ballfield and make a living.

Baseball was all he had ever known. Well, almost all. Growing up in Las Vegas (where his mom worked on The Strip), there were basically two things on his mind: playing ball and girls. Advanced beyond his years in the former, the latter flowed to him in a steady, sweet stream. First at Jefferson High, then as he rapidly scaled the minor league ladder, females abounded. When came the big-time--he made his major league debut clad in pinstripes in a sold-out night game at The Stadium--the voluptuously flowing stream surged to flood levels. Girls, girls, girls. It was like an Elvis Presley movie: they were everywhere. Flat-out, jaw-dropping, super model stunners. In hotel lobbies, hotel pools, in the seats behind the dugout, outside in the parking lot after the game, in every room you walked into, on airplanes--a stewardess once tried to press her phone number into his hand with Crystal in the seat next to him--at the gym, waving from the next car as you drove on the freeway, even following you home. When you played professional ball you had to be a man of steel or a poofta to turn down every offer that draped itself over you or rubbed up against your body in a crowded bar and clearly, he was neither.

"Why do men call their sons Bud?"

Smooth opened his eyes, blinking in the sunlight. The sun was soaking into his bones, recharging vital substances in him. It was Stevie again, accompanied by her sweating little brother. They had been playing contentedly and now they were back in his face.

"What?"

"Why do men call their sons Bud? There's this dad over there. He's playing with his baby on a blanket, and he calls him Bud' little baby."

"Maybe that's his name."

"It's not his name. You say it too. Why?"

Smooth closed his eyes and lay back down in the grass. "Go away," he told them. "And take Bud with you."

"Can I have another frappacino?"

"No."

"Please."

"No!"

He wished Crystal would come back, he really did. He knew he had blown it, big-time, and deep in his heart though logic was telling him otherwise he felt they could straighten it out somehow. He halfway considered driving down to the leather bars South of Main to look for her, but that was ridiculous. Not with two kids in the back of a damn Honda Odyssey mini-van. Of course, she'd call. She'd come back. She had to. If he was going to start over she would to have to be there because he had no clue how to do it on his own.

If she called he would tell her that. All that and more. He'd listen, and they'd talk. In the old days they talked about everything. Talked and fucked and fucked and talked. Some days that's all they did, all day long until he crawled out of bed to go to the ballpark. Although it occurred to him that they hadn't done much fucking or talking lately.

When they got back to the hotel there were no messages for them. Smooth asked the manager to make sure they had the correct room number and that calls to their room were not being misdirected. No, the manager assured him, everything was being handled as it should. They went upstairs, had dinner, watched TV. Smooth and his daughter taking turns chasing Little Steve around the room and halls until finally his internal batteries gave out and he collapsed, sound asleep by the time his flushed red cheeks touched the carpet.

They spent the night in the hotel, Sunday night. It was Smooth's call. He figured they'd better stay put in case Crystal needed to see them quickly for some reason, though he doubted she would want to see him for any reason. Stevie slept by herself and Smooth, who had caught fish but had never slept with one before, brought Little Steve into bed with him. Little Steve flailed, he kicked--one time nailing his father in the balls--he thrashed, he rolled, he spun, all the while throwing off more BTUs than a space heater and being a total bed hog, turning left, right and sideways and splaying over far more acreage than his squat three-foot body needed, forcing his bed partner to lie uncomfortably (and for much of the night, sleeplessly) along one edge. Every time Smooth put him back on his side of the bed he would roll right back over again.

Monday's wake-up call came at 6:11 a.m--a late morning, by Little Steve's standards--and chaos again reigned. When Smooth called down for messages the perpetually grabbing and reaching little boy pushed the button on the phone and cut him off. It was like the last days of Pompeii and Little Steve, who could not keep his hands off the phones or anything else, was Vesuvius. After the fifth or sixth game of playing peekaboo behind the drapes Smooth snapped. His son's little tough guy façade shattered like glass and he dissolved into copious tears, repeating "Daddygome" over and over until it woke even the preteen in the next room slumbering like a  hibernating bear.

"What's wrong?" said Stevie when she came out.

"Nothing," said Smooth, though everything was.

"He need to be changed?"

"Daddygome. Daddygome."

"What's he saying?" said Smooth in irritation. He couldn¹t understand half the things the boy said and needed Stevie to act as translator. "He keeps saying that."  

Stevie rubbed her eyes. "He is saying he wants to go home." She paused: "Me too."

It was hard to talk or even think with the bawling in his ear, but for Smooth this was, at long last, a no-brainer. "Get dressed," he said. "Daddygome."

---

Next Chapter of Playground Pop: As Smooth tries to put his marriage and career back together while dealing with his two kids, a figure from the past makes a surprise appearance in Smooth's life: his own father. Coming soon on dadmag.com.





Content in DADMAG.com is meant to be distributed freely to interested parties. However, any excerpts from the stories in DADMAG.com must credit DADMAG.com. Copyright 2000, DADMAG.com, LLC. All rights reserved. Site Development - Andexler.com