Salted Cardboard

Mark and Ricky bought five-cent lemonade from a kid behind the backstop. Ricky tipped him a penny, told him to stay in the juice business if he wanted to make it in this economy. The kid rolled his eyes, slipped the penny into his tube sock.

They were at the park to see Angela play softball. Angela was a ten-year-old blue-eyed girl who lived down the block, in one of the new condos by the water. Her parents put in seventy-hour weeks at their respective law firms, so it was a relief when they saw Mark and Ricky's smiling faces under an "Experienced Babysitters for Hire" heading in the Village Voice seven months earlier. One more page and Angela could've been watched by a 300-pound escort girl named Sasquatch Sally.

"Do you suppose anyone sent scouts to this game?" Mark asked.
"With the U-13 League Draft coming up, they'd be crazy not to."
"Why can't it just be about having fun?"
"Competition is fun. Remember how much fun we had in the bracket challenge last year?"
"I still feel bad for that Hasidic boy."
"That boy stood between us and the bracket challenge trophy. Where would we be without that trophy? Where would we keep leftover soy sauce packets?"
"Do you think he remembers us?"
"Mark, you're too delicate. Why I bet that boy becomes president some day. I bet at his inauguration he'll thank those two guys in Brooklyn who showed him that there's more to success than being a nice person."
"You told him you were going to dump bacon grease over his head if he got on base."
"You just don't understand competition."

Angela stepped up to bat. She was thin, with a long brown ponytail and a small gap between her front teeth. She had bandages on both of her knees from sliding in last week's game.

"Yea Angela!" Mark stood from the bleachers. "Isn't she great?"
"To think she's made it this far when we've been feeding her cardboard for dinner."
"What?"
"Cardboard."

Angela lifted her back foot as she swung at the first pitch, twirled her body around in a circle. She looked at her coach, who mimed a swing and then pointed at his stationary foot.

"Scouts aren't gonna like that," Ricky said.
"Did you say that we feed her cardboard?"
"Since I stopped getting free poster board from work, yea."
"That's...How can you..."
"Look Marky, times are tough. I'd love to serve Angela potted meat and string cheese but there's rent, cable, electricity. How about those New Yorkers in the bathroom with your name on them?"
"That was a gift from my grandmother."
"Regardless."

Angela watched the second pitch sail past her at eye level. Grunts of "good eye" bellowed out of the dugout.

"Why does she eat the cardboard?," Mark asked.
"Because we're cool guys and that's what we give her. All her parents do is lecture her about pesticides and trans fats. It's a relief to sit down and enjoy a nice plate of salted cardboard."
"We salt it?"
"Have you ever tried unsalted cardboard?"
"I don't know. Have I?"
"Yes. You asked if I had bought the generic cereal by mistake."

Angela popped the third pitch high over her head. She squatted low and grasped the sides of her helmet. The ball bounced near her shoe.

"Ooh, be careful!," Mark said.
"Relax. She's got a helmet."
"Good thing it's not made of cardboard."
"Yea. She probably would've eaten it then."
"Ricky." Mark breathed in and out slowly. "I want us to stop feeding cardboard to Angela."
"I've been thinking of switching to packing peanuts. We've got so many at work, and it'd be a shame to just throw them away."

Angela smacked the fourth pitch, a slow hopper that bounced past the short stop into left field. She stopped at first and smoothed her hair behind her ears.

"Ricky! We need to buy food. Human food. I can cut back on things if that's what it takes."
"And what would she learn from that? I'm looking out for her future. There won't always be two nice guys down the block willing to feed her."
"We feed her cardboard!"
"Salted cardboard."

Mark trudged down the bleachers and bought two blue ices from a woman near the right field line. He held one out to Angela as he walked past, but the umpire told him to back up. Angela shrugged her shoulders and smiled.
She looked up at Ricky in the stands and blew him a kiss. He snatched it out of the air, held it as high as his arm could reach, then slid it gently into his shirt pocket.