Peter Abrahams - The Fan

Gil walked in, pulling out his card. The first thirty seconds were everything on a cold call. Hype, hype. “Gil Renard,” Gil said, laying the card on the desk: R. G. RENARD FINE KNIVES. He smiled a confident smile. The man at the desk didn’t look at the card. He sat behind a computer, fingers poised over the keys.

“You’re a rep?”

“Right. And I couldn’t help noticing that in this big beautiful store devoted to the outdoors, there isn’t a single knife.” He opened his briefcase.

“We’ll have scads of them in a few days,” said the manager.

“Excuse me?”

“The ship docked in San Francisco last night.”

“You’ve got a supplier?”

“Exactly.” The manager named a Japanese company, one of the best.

Gil smiled his confident smile. “If you’ll give me three minutes”-he’d stolen that line from Figgy-“I can prove to you that we’re competitive with them in quality, and better in price. In fact, we’ve got a new-”

“Not possible,” said the manager. “We’ve signed a three-year exclusive.”

There was no line to counter that. “Maybe I could leave our catalogue.”

“Just lay it there.” The manager’s fingers fluttered down to the keys.

Outside the snowflakes had grown fat, moist, silvery; almost rain. Gil walked around the Great Outdoors building and pissed against a packing case. Then he got in the car and drove south.

The phone buzzed.

“I’m looking at the Bluewater order.” Garrity. “What the hell’s going on?”

“He says it’s the economy.”

“I’m not talking about the size of the order, although that stinks too. I’m talking about why aren’t you pushing the goddamn Iwo Jima line?”

“I’m pushing it. The old guy knows his stuff, that’s all.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That it’s shit and he knows it.” Was he yelling? The woman in the next car was watching him.

There was a pause before Garrity spoke again. “You’d better do some thinking, Gil.”

“About what?”

“I don’t have to spell it out, boyo.” Click. Hum.

Gil tried to do some thinking. The first thought he had was about the time Boucicaut knocked himself out against the backstop, chasing a pop foul. Boucicaut. A rock. Odell, for all his strength and skill, wasn’t a rock like Boucicaut.

Gil turned on the radio.

Bottom of the fourth at Soxtown. Primo tripled. Lanz struck out. Washington came to the plate. Gil dialed FANLINE.

“Where’s Rayburn hitting?”

“Fanline’s closed,” a woman said. “We’re not taking calls till after the game.”

“I don’t care about that. Just where’s he hitting?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

Washington flied out, ending the inning. Gil listened hard, waiting for an explanation. None came. He called Cleats. Leon answered.

“Leon. This is Gil. Got the game on?”

“Gil?”

“Renard. You know.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Where’s Rayburn batting?”

“Huh?”

“In the order. Where’s he batting?”

Gil heard Leon call, “Any of you guys watching this?” Pause. Voices. “Where’s Rayburn batting?” More voices. Gil strained to hear what they were saying. Leon came back on. “He’s not in the lineup.”

“How come?”

“You’re asking me?”

“I just meant-”

“Kind of busy in here. Got to go.”

Goddamn rib cage. Those things took forever to heal, and by then you’d lost your timing. He could have killed Burrows.

Gil changed the station, tried to get into the music, think about something else. But he couldn’t. After a while, he called information, got the press-box number at Soxtown. He entered it on his speed dialer, then rang it.

“Yeah,” said a man at the other end.

What was her name? “Jewel,” Gil said. “Jewel Stern.”

Background noise. Gil thought he heard the crack of a bat. A woman was saying, “… bored out of my mind.” Then the same woman was on the phone. “Yeah?”

“Jewel Stern?” Gil said.

“Speaking.”

“What’s wrong with Rayburn?”

“Who’s this?”

Gil thought of giving his name, but what was the point? “Just a fan.”

“Listen, fan. This is a working press box, not twenty questions.”

“What’s your problem, lady? I’m asking one simple-”

Jewel Stern hung up the phone. “Getting crazy out there,” she said.

The Herald guy said, “Prodigious isn’t in my goddamn spellcheck.”

“Or in your readers’ vocabulary,” Jewel said, before spelling it for him.

By five o’clock, the snow had turned to rain. It soaked Gil’s hair as he stood outside the middle door of the rented South Shore triplex, waiting for someone to answer his knock. After a minute or two, Ellen opened the door. She was still in her office clothes, wore her hair in a new cut, had lost weight.

“You don’t have to pound like that,” she said. “I was in the john.”

“Where’s Richie?”

“With Tim.”

“What do you mean-with Tim?” Tim was the boyfriend. “I told you I was taking him to the movies.”

“Please don’t raise your voice in public.”

Gil lowered it. “What do you mean with Tim?”

“Little League tryouts are tonight. I couldn’t reach you.”

“They won’t have tryouts in this.”

“Wrong. It’s indoors, at the high school.”

“When did it start?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Please don’t raise your voice.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I tried. Didn’t I say that already?”

“The office can always get me. You know that.”

Ellen didn’t reply. She stared at him, eyes made small by the lenses of her glasses. He noticed she had new red frames, the kind that made a statement, although he didn’t know what it was. He didn’t say anything either, just walked back to his car and drove off.

The high school was three blocks away. Gil hurried into the gym, rain dripping down his face. A man with a whistle around his neck hit a ground ball to a boy standing at center court, the number twenty pinned to his chest. The ball bounced off the boy’s glove. He chased it down and threw a two-hopper to a teenager standing by the man with the whistle. “That’s the way,” said the man with the whistle. He tossed the boy three fly balls, two of which he caught. “Nice job. Off you go.” The boy ran off, joining a woman in the stands. The men on the sideline wrote on their clipboards.

“Twenty-one,” said the man with the whistle. Twenty-one emerged from a group of fifty or sixty kids waiting at the far end of the court.

“Hustle.”

Gil moved down the near side, his eyes on the numbered kids. He spotted Richie: twenty-six. He was chewing on the rawhide lace of his glove. Gil took a seat in the stands.

The drill: three grounders, three flies, six throws. Twenty-one missed them all, and threw poorly, but twenty-two fielded every ball cleanly and had a strong arm. Twenty-three’s arm was even stronger, and this time when the man with the whistle said, “Nice job,” his tone said it too. Twenty-three was a big kid, not possibly the same age as Richie.

Gil was aware of a man stepping down through the stands, sitting beside him. “Hi, Gil,” he said. “Aren’t they cute?”

Gil turned. Tim.

“Who?” Gil said.

“The kids. It’s the best age.” Tim held out his hand. “How’re you doing?”

Gil shook hands. “They’re not all nine, are they?”

“Supposed to be,” Tim said. “The tens are next, then the elevens and the twelves. The draft’s in a couple weeks, not that it matters where Richie’s concerned.”

“What do you mean?”