dwindled to a white ash. Tendrils of smoke spiraling upward, the sweet wood smell mixing with a hint of gritty aroma from the coffee.
Sal had been right. The bones were unaffected by the fire, needing far more heat to burn than the surrounding wood. The skull was most intriguing, poking through the ash, crown first, sooty and slightly charred, somehow grizzly. A person at least 120 years dead laying out a puzzle of who and why.
“That’s just wrong,” Cookie’s soft voice interrupted as she stepped through the glass slider and parked in the accompanying chair. She, like Sal, had learned long ago not to say that miserable phrase Good morning. “The fire reminds me of something I’ve been meaning to ask ever since I got home.”
I turned and smiled at her. Her hair hadn’t been combed, hanging in dark brown waves to her shoulders, enough mussed to be enticing, not mussed enough to be scary. “Yes, my sweet, and what would that be?”
“What the hell did you do to your car?”
“Are you speaking ill of the flames or the side exhaust or the spoiler?”
“All of it, Nick. It looks like a pimp mobile.”
Laughing, “It was either that or go to Reno and chase women.”
She cocked her head and chuckled. “Did I tell you I love the flames?” She leaned across the table, kissed me on the ear, “And you.”
“Good answer.” I took a long pull of coffee. “When do you leave?” I could hear a tinge of sadness in my own voice even though I wasn’t intending it.
Cookie sat silent for a moment then, “The club would like it if I came back next week. Nick, it’s not like last time. I’d only be gone till the end of the season and hopefully, the way they’re playing, through the World Series and you know you’ve been invited to come along for all of the post-season games. You’d have a blast.”
Last time was a full year absence after Cookie won a trillion to one game of chance.
The Chicago Cubs started the previous season with what they thought was a gimmick promotion. Anyone who could guess the batting average each rostered player would have at All Star Break would win a full year with the team. Every game. Every flight. Every team meeting. Sit in the dugout during games and practices, home and away. Be part of the owners and general managers’ meetings. Be an observer in trade talks and player negotiations. In effect, a Cubs shadow with unlimited access.
In the off season, time with scouts in the Dominican Republic, Mexico and anywhere else a future “phenom” might be found. Then back to Mesa for Spring Training and the opening half of the new season up to the All Star break.
More than six million entries flooded the Cubs North Side offices. The Cubs figured there was no way anyone would win because the odds of guessing just the batting average for one player over the opening four months of a season would be difficult. Multiply that by 20-plus players and suddenly the odds were so miniscule it was all but assured the team wouldn’t be babysitting some fanatical sports-talk caller-dimwit from Staten Island for a year.
The problem: Cookie is an analyst, a baseball fan, a Cubs fanatic... and damn lucky.
When the Cubs finished inputting all the entries to a computer and matching it against player batting averages, no one was more surprised than Cubs management at the result. Someone had actually beaten the billion to one odds. Even worse, it was a woman from Oregon -- a state that didn’t even have a professional baseball team – who admitted she could barely hit a baseball.
Initial panic turned to the biggest public relations hype since the club’s cross-town rivals the Chicago White Sox had Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in 1979 when blowing up a crate of vinyl records turned into a near riot with fans surging onto the field to the shouts of “Kill Disco!”
Cookie wound up on talk shows, the cover of Sports Illustrated (she refused the swim suit edition) and in virtually every national and baseball-loving international newspaper. She quickly proved she knew the game to Cubs management and the team manager as well as the initially skeptical players. She became “Big Sis” to the 20-somethings who asked for advice both personal and professional.
She loved it.
And now the team wanted her back for the close of what would be the Cubs’ most successful season in more than 100 years if things continued on the track they were currently following. For players and management alike, Cookie had become a goat-killing good luck charm whose even temper and enthusiastic understanding and passion for the club and the game seemed to provide an emotional balance in a sport dominated by testosterone.
So successful was Cookie’s influence, other teams were scouring the planet for another female baseball fan who might do for them what she did for the Cubs.
We sat in silence for a few minutes.
“Sal tells me Tatiana is heading back to Moscow.”
“Yup.”
“And that she doesn’t want him to pull some strings to keep her in the States.”
“She really misses her family and home, Nick.”
Nodding, “Well, I guess with the two of you gone, Sal and I will have to revert to eating pizza and cruising the dark nasty streets of Bandon at night in my pimpmobile.”
Cookie snorted. “After 9 you’d be the only car in town. Even the cops go home at 7. Can’t get into too much trouble.”
The thrashing of Sal lumbering through the wooded area between our properties ended our conversation. He and Tatiana broke into the clearing and joined us at the patio table. The two women hugged while Sal settled into a plastic lawn chair and dropped his travel mug of coffee on the table.
He looked at the remnants of the fire and what I assumed was supposed to be a Shakespearean tenor, “Alas poor Euric, I knew thee well.”
“Close,” I said, “but don’t give up your day job.”
“You have no culture, Nick.” Looking around, “Where are the donuts?”
Cookie said, “Inside, big guy. Tatiana and I are going to Eugene today for kicks.”
A puzzled look crossed the tall, Eurasian-looking Russian’s face. “Kicks?” with her Russian accent making it sound like “keeks.”
“Fun,” Cookie explained. “And some shopping.” To Sal, “I’ll bring the donut box.”
Tatiana smiled. “Da. Keeks and shopping.”
The two went inside while Sal and I stared at the smoldering heap of white ash.
“Small skull,” he said.
“Small.”
“People weren’t as big then as they are today.”
“Small feet, too,” I said, pulling from my coffee mug.
Cookie returned with the box of donuts, put them on the table, kissed my cheek and went back through the slider.
“Got some bar-b-q tongs handy?” Sal asked
