Coming Around Again

By Jim Van Loozen

In the midst of writing a trilogy of murder mysteries (including his debut novel, "A Ghost of a Chance") Jim Van Loozen was inspired to take a turn at Romance with a story touching the bases on friendship, love, loyalty, attraction, and seduction. The result was the thought provoking "Coming Around Again."

After Shaun ORielly decides to end nine months of mourning the death of his wife Andrea to reconnect with his stockbroker friends and teammates on an amateur baseball team, he discovers that a new guy is playing his position at second base. Unknown to all, the interloper is his late wife whose tinkering with reincarnation has resulted in her coming around again as a man. Shaun finds himself strangely attracted to the new guy.

As Shaun's attraction and his confusion grow, new guy Andy Stock seeks to seduce Shaun into becoming lovers, much to the chagrin of their homophobic coach and best friend, Buddy Ross. Buddy attempts to "fix" Shaun by setting him up with an overnight date with an attractive woman. But as the new guy reveals the truth about his true identity, Shaun's conventions are shaken to their foundations. Which mate will he choose?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475996159

Jim Van Loozen

Jim Van Loozen was a celebrated newspaper reporter and editor in Houston before moving to Washington, D.C., to work for the U.S. Postal Service headquarters in a number of positions. He has won numerous awards and honors for his writing and now resides in Florida with his wife Diane. His novel A Ghost of a Chance also has been published by iUniverse.

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Copyright © 2013 by Jim Van Loozen.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4759-9614-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-9615-9 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013911125

iUniverse rev. date: 07/05/2013

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This book is dedicated to author Maribeth Fischer, founder and executive director of the Rehoboth Beach Writer’s Guild and my friend and mentor. As I have sought to make the transition from writer to author, her drive to see me through the process never flagged, not even when mine did. For this and all she has taught me, I am grateful. I also am indebted to RBWG’s Tom Hoyer for his encouragement and friendship.

To other aspiring writers in the Delmarva area, I strongly suggest you check out RBWG.com and its schedule of classes, free writes, writer’s pages, book club for writers, and open mike readings. I know of no finer community for the nurturing of writers and their writing.

 1

E very religion has its version of life after death, but no one on this Earth knows for certain how the process works. Certainly not Shaun O’Rielly who was about to experience an up close and personal brush with the afterlife.

He awakened on a crisp springtime Tuesday morning to the sounds of birds singing and the glare of sunlight pouring in the windows of his bedroom. For the majority of Baltimoreans, nothing about the day was special. For Shaun, everything about the day was different. He was emerging from a seemingly endless period of grief over the death of his wife Andie, short for Andrea Moss O’Rielly.

He yawned and stretched lion-like, shaking off the effects of his nightly Silenor and Zanax sleep cocktail. For a time, he had feared sleep and wondered how his dreams, little snatches of the brightest moments of their lives together, could feel so much like nightmares.

Last night, he had experienced the first dreamless sleep he could recall since her death. Instead of the hollow loneliness that had become his constant companion for nine months, he felt a surge of anticipation and new energy as though he and the sun were rising together.

The simultaneous arrival of his two favorite seasons, spring and baseball, was responsible for his change in attitude. He was curious about the friends he had brushed aside in his mad-at-the-world self-imposed separation from them. His teammates would be starting baseball practice, teammates he oddly felt he needed to help him get on with his life.

When his breakthrough occurred, he had been sitting on the divan, not a couch her decorator had insisted, but the centerpiece of a living room design that had pleased Andrea greatly but left him mostly unimpressed. She valued finery and a bit of flash; his taste was more casually traditional. To Shaun, the whole concept of the divan seemed pompous. But he knew in his heart that her differences and what they added to his sense of being had captured and charmed him from beginning to end of the greatest love story he ever had experienced.

After she died, he had become accustomed to sitting in this room drinking his morning coffee in darkness so familiar it seemed like an extension of the furnishings. Accustomed to the dark, he could make out memorized details of other designer touches. A mahogany wall unit housed a large-screen television, silent, gray and sullen. A matching cabinet held his stereo, on which he had played sad songs until they only made his misery more pronounced. Eclectic occasional tables of various shapes held collections of photos, carved wooden shorebirds or exotic seashells; and the étagères, their wood-and-glass monuments filled with wedding photographs and memorabilia from other special occasions, all stood in the gloom as shadowy sentinels of his most painful memories.

Not today, he said to himself.

Today would mark a new beginning.

W hen the sunrise turned on the lights this morning, he was just waking. Much later than usual. By the time he took his coffee, the reminders of the days and nights they had shared seemed less daunting, his pain more distant, and his resentment less vital.

Shaun resented Andrea’s death on two counts. First, she had been so painfully ill that, second, he awakened one morning to discover that she had taken a full bottle of her prescription medication as her means to suicide. Though secretly relieved, he felt abandoned, and it was hard to overcome that emotion. So was his sense of embarrassment. The suicide had caught him by surprise and heightened his frustration over being unable to help her. Almost as if by transference, he suddenly felt beyond help from others. He cut himself off from all social contacts with friends and any activity that promoted his tender memories.

Today though, something odd was in the air. A sudden chill caused him to shiver.

He retreated back to his bedroom and walked the few steps into his closet. The clothing bar that had held her considerable wardrobe was empty except for his robe, which he pulled on. He avoided reflecting on the total emptiness on her side of the closet. He was determined. No gloom, no doom, no morbid thoughts were going to spoil his day.

Turning to his side of the closet, he lifted down the worn leather duffle that held his glove, spikes and baseball cap. Slowly, he took each of these items out of the bag, savoring them, holding them like small treasures. He smelled the sickly-sweet tang of glove oil and the musky wool of the cap with the friendly smiling cartoon Oriole on its crown. His gleaming sharpened spikes seemed almost menacing. Satisfied his equipment was in top shape, he placed everything back in the duffel, which he secured and set out like a suitcase as he might if he were traveling a greater distance than just to a reunion with the team.

He showered, shaved, dressed.

He moved to the kitchen. Unused copper pots and utensils, more decorator’s touches gathering dust, hung from a curved rack suspended above an all-purpose island that divided the cooking area from a roomy dining alcove. He skirted the island and opened the refrigerator, but found nothing of interest. His stomach was jumpy with nervous energy. He thought about a bowl of oatmeal. At the pantry door he changed his mind and did not open it. He was brimming with eagerness and too keyed up for breakfast.

Instead he reached for a Pepcid Complete. He washed the tablet down with a swallow of coffee. The coffee would temporarily add to the churning, but the antacid would eventually even things out. Just as time at last seemed to be doing with his mourning.

Restless energy ushered him back into the living room. He admired the fine art prints on the walls. Adjacent to the entertainment center were prints of tall sailing ships sweeping past the Thomas Point Lighthouse and Fort McHenry into Baltimore Harbor. They harkened back to Baltimore’s seafaring heritage when sailors and slavers ruled the noisy squalor of the city docks the way brokers dominated the financial district before the crash.

Across the room, closer to a large picture window hung soft watercolors of native birds nestled into willow boughs. He admired them for a few seconds as he crossed to the window that overlooked a park sandwiched between his street and a distant freeway. Real birds were there, a flock of perhaps a hundred of them rising and swooping like a black cloud above the ground. He wondered what force of nature was driving their aimless flight. They seemed to be adrift, as he had been for too long. He shivered again.

The weather outside sparkled and brought him a vivid vision of The Stockyards, which they had nicknamed the diamond on which they practiced and played ball. He smiled warmly, visualizing the green grass and the brown infield dirt creating a sanctuary from the woes and sadness that had engulfed his friends as the economy soured.

He opened the window to invite a fresh breeze into his tomb-like private living space. With it came the faint odor of exhaust fumes and the cacophony of the birds, their chirping as erratic as their flight patterns. The sounds of traffic wafted to him on a light breeze, more rhythmic, more distant, and more purposeful than the cadence of the birds.

He lifted his cup and drained the rest of his coffee, adjusting to its bitter taste the way he finally seemed to be adjusting to the bitter blow of Andrea’s death.

A s the afternoon warmed to the welcome springtime sunshine, Shaun took the elevator down to the garage, picked up his car, and set his course for The Stockyards . Familiar landmarks filled his subliminal awareness as though he was driving on automatic pilot. He envisioned a scene in which grown men played at a classic kids’ game, laboring to work out the kinks of a winter’s inactivity. Though blocks away, in his mind he could hear their familiar chatter: Hey, Batter. Hey, Batter, Batter. Swing !

He turned the last corner, pulled into the parking lot, and the scene was almost exactly as he had envisioned. Men tossing baseballs around the yard. Bats and balls strewn on the ground where the equipment bag had been dumped. The backstop sounding like it was singing as it was ruffled by the breeze. The light towers ready to fend off the night and already buzzing with daytime insects.

Everything was instantly familiar and reassuring. Except for one significant detail he noticed. He held his breath an extra second as he observed an unfamiliar figure, a new man practicing at second base, Shaun’s position. Feeling strangely betrayed he gripped the steering wheel tightly with both hands. His face flashed red with irritation and embarrassment. His physical discomfort was equaled by the mental distress of second-guessing his unannounced decision to rejoin the team. He wondered aloud, What am I doing? What was I thinking? Why am I here?

For a moment, he toyed with forgetting the reunion and returning home. But he belonged here, not back in the gloominess of the past nine months. The Stockyards beckoned, almost as though it were seducing him. He got out of the car and slammed the door.

Rico Lopez, the slick fielding shortstop, stopped in mid-throw and called out, Look who it is.

Grady Foster, the brawny catcher, grunted, Damn, it’s Shaun.

Murmurs of surprise and excitement coursed through the others.

Buddy Ross, who was the team’s left fielder and coach and Shaun’s best friend, did a poor impression of Chuck Thompson, the Baltimore Orioles’ Hall of Fame broadcaster with whom they all had grown up.

"Now coming to the field is Shaun O’Rielly. Ain’t the beer cold!"

Warmed by their welcome, Shaun headed for the field. But along the way, he could not suppress a growing sense of frustration over the presence of the new guy. His emotions were still raw, making him abnormally sensitive.

B uddy called for the team to resume their warm-ups so he could have a few minutes alone with Shaun. He jogged across the field and intercepted Shaun. Head cocked to the side, a smile spread across his face, crinkling his nose and accentuating the crow’s feet at the edges of his eyes, Buddy stopped dramatically about a yard from Shaun. A glove on one hand, a ball in the other, both hands on his hips, back arched. He broke into an imitation Irish brogue as bad as his Chuck Thompson impression.

Well now, our fine Irish lad has come down from the hills. Saints be praised.

He closed the final yard between them and hugged Shaun, but the embrace was awkward. Shaun’s frustration trumped elation.

Who’s the new guy?

Well, if that doesn’t beat all, Buddy replied, his posture now rigid. Nine months, not so much as a word from you, nary a returned e-mail, nothing but the sound of your answering machine, and I don’t even rate a ‘Hello’, a ‘Good to see you’, or at least a ‘Fuck you, Buddy’?

Shaun was steely eyed, looking past Buddy to the would-be second baseman. He was fittingly standing to one side, a separate entity from the rest of the team, a newcomer obvious in his uneasiness under Shaun’s penetrating glare. But brazenly staring at Shaun. Sizing up the competition, Shaun thought.

Oh, sorry. Hello, Buddy. Good to see you. Fuck you. So, who’s the new guy?

Buddy looked over his shoulder, following Shaun’s stare.

He’s our insurance policy. We didn’t know if you’d be coming out this year. I think your specific instructions were, ‘Don’t bother me. I’ll call you when I’m ready.’ Isn’t that so?

Buddy was correct. Shaun shook his head, breaking off his stare and looking at the ground. He dug a toe into the dirt and tested the bite of his spikes. He was embarrassed now if not repentant.

A passing car honked its horn, its unknown driver shouting, Play ball!

They wore ironic smiles as they turned to look in that direction, then back to each other. Shaun gestured toward the gathered team and the waiting baseball diamond. They began to jog in that direction.

You should have known I’d be ready, Buddy. You and the guys on this field are about all the family I have left since Andie died. His voice broke at the mention of her name. That counts with me, you know?

It counts with me, too.

A palpable silence welled up between them, broken only by the sounds of their heavy breathing as the mixed emotions of the moment washed over them like heavy surf. Buddy was insulted. Shaun’s feelings were hurt.

They jogged on. Buddy broke the silence.

You shut me out. It’s like both of you were buried that day.

Shaun was rueful, knowing Buddy was right. He rubbed his chin and tilted his head towards the new man.

So, who is he? Am I on the team or off?

Asshole, of course you’re on the team.

Buddy shook his head, and offered a forced smile. He was quietly offended as he moved toward the team and gestured for Shaun to follow.

Shaun noticed that Buddy’s neck had a red patch, one that only appeared when its owner was riled up and ready for a fight. He’d seen it before, in barroom fights when they were younger, and he knew it was a danger sign. When it flared, shying away from Buddy was the prudent action. Shaun decided not to further push the issue of the new guy.

Buddy motioned for the other team members to gather. As they approached, he turned to Shaun.

"The new guy’s name is Andrew Stock. He’s an SEC attorney. Can you believe it; an SEC guy named Stock? I guess he heard we might need a player. He just sort of dropped out of the sky, like a Godsend, you know?"

An inner sense of caution gripped Shaun.

Yeah. Sure thing. Happens every day. Right?

S haun’s teammates surrounded him, offering welcoming pats on the back, hearty