Forty Days and Nights: Love Stories. 3. Balls

They threw the ball back and forth as they walked around trees and between buildings, negotiating the busy people. Catch was her favorite game and she was happy, easy, tossing the ball back and back to him as they went. He felt silly at first, self conscious, stiff, too old for this sort of thing. It felt like having a very private conversation in loud voices on a crowded bus, this game between the two of them played around, over and in spite of people who were going studiously to class or seriously to work or hungrily to meals or wherever they were going to whatever they were doing, none of whom, in any case, were playing. She just kept her eyes on him, threw the ball right to him, every time, and he never missed or looked stupid and after a half mile or so he relaxed.
Relaxed.
Got cocky.
Threw too hard and she missed. Rather, she didn't miss, the ball missed her by a good ten feet and she stood still to watch it go by. Looked at him, eyebrows raised, jogged over to the low bushes where it had disappeared.

He yelled at her, sudden and harsh.

She froze, her outstretched fingers barely brushing the leaves, fingers curved and spread, the familiar shape of the vanished ball visible in her empty hand.
What? she asked, her eyes fastened on him in fright.
Don't! he said, and said it in the cross and frightened tone of one forced to warn, and with barely enough time, against an obvious danger. Like this: Don't step blindly into the street, Don't play with fire, Don't walk barefoot in the trash lot, Don't drink anything marked poison or it is sure to disagree with you sooner or later.
Like that.
Don't what? she asked, hand still holding the space of the absent ball but wilting a little now, her eyes narrowing, all her focus on him. Don't what?
The first thrill of his sudden fear was fading and he could be irritated, put out. She shouldn't do silly things. She should know better.
You don't just do that, he said. And he meant, though he did not say it, that she knew the rest of what he meant very well.

She looked at him for a moment longer, straightened up and twisted her head just a little bit. That twist said that whether or not she took his meaning, she was not going to close the gap, was not going to fill in what he hadn't wanted to spell out for the two of them, she was going to make him say all of whatever he had to say.
Don't just do what, exactly? she asked in a neutral tone that also said lots and lots of things she didn't spell out.
He had walked over and was standing next to her now. You don't just stick your hand into bushes, he said in a quiet and private and grown up tone and he did not add that this was a thing every sane person knows. He didn't have to.
Why not? she asked in that same tone.
He sighed, making words had become a burden. Snakes, he said. Obviously, he added silently.
She looked from him to the bushes, quickly, then back at him as if he were crazy and then at the bushes as if he were crazy. The bushes were fine, the crazy was all his.
Snakes? No. You mean spiders? she asked, giving him a chance.
No, he said, snakes. Snakes. You don't just reach into a bush.
Her eyebrows were up and now her head was tilted again, a downward tilt that managed to cast into serious doubt his whole life experience. He stiffened, defensive. Look, where I come from we would never reach into a bush like that, he said, voice rising, because of snakes. Because that would be dangerous and stupid, he didn't say out loud.

She bent quickly, her whole arm going into the bushes, retrieving her ball. Well. You're not from around here, are you? she asked, and tossed her ball high into the air. She stepped away to catch her own toss, took another step to toss it again and then another to catch it. A stranger caught her eye as she caught the ball and she tossed it right to him, surely and easily. He took it out of the air and tossed it back, underhand, a low hard softball pitch. She took a step to catch it and a step to toss it back. A pitch to the stranger and another pitch back to her.

He stood, a thousand things passing through him. His hands stuck out a bit from his sides. They darted the smallest fraction of an inch toward every toss that did not come to him, and he watched her move a little and a little away.
Hey, he thought, hey. I want to play.
I just want to play.