Stephen King - A Face in the Crowd

“You’re such a liar. That’s one thing I always hated about you. And fucking Martha, of course. I wasn’t a big fan of that either.”

What could he say to that? Nothing. So he sat silent.

“Did you think I didn’t know?” she said. “That’s another thing I hated about you, thinking I didn’t know what was going on. It was so obvious. A couple of times you came home still stinking of her perfume. Juicy Couture. Not the most subtle of scents. But then, you were never the most subtle guy, Dean.”

“I miss you, El.”

“Okay, yes, I miss you too. That’s not the point.”

“I love you.”

“Stop trying to press my buttons, all right? I need to do this. I didn’t say anything before because I needed to keep everything together and make everything work. That’s who I am. Or was, anyway. And I did. But you hurt me. You cut me.”

“I’m sorr—”

“Please , Dean. I only have a couple minutes left, so for once in your life shut up and listen. You hurt me, and it wasn’t just with Martha. And although I’m pretty sure Martha was the only one you slept with—”

That stung. “Of course she wa—”

“—don’t expect any brownie points for that. You didn’t have time to cheat on me with anyone outside the company because you were always there. Even when you were here you were there. I understood that, and maybe that was my fault for not sticking up for myself, but the one it really wasn’t fair to was Patrick. You wonder why you never see him, it’s because you were never there for him. You were always off in Denver or Seattle at some sales meeting or something. Selfishness is learned behavior, you know.”

This criticism Evers had heard many times before, in many forms, and his attention waned. Moore had gone 3–2 on Papi. Devoid, Staats had said. Was Matt Moore really throwing a perfect game?

“You were always too worried about what you were doing, and not enough about the rest of us. You thought bringing home the bacon was enough.”

I did, he almost told her. I did bring home the bacon. Just tonight.

“Dean? Are you hearing me? Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“Yes,” Evers said, just as the pitch from Moore caught the outside corner and the ump rang up Ortiz. “Yes!”

“I know that yes! God damn you, are you watching the stupid game?”

“Of course I’m watching the game.” Though now it was a truck commercial. A grinning man—one who undoubtedly knew how to get things done—was driving through mud at a suicidal speed.

“I don’t know why I called. You’re hopeless.”

“I’m not,” Evers said. “I miss you.”

“Jesus, why do I even bother? Forget it. Good-bye.”

“Don’t!” he said.

“I tried to be nice—that’s the story of my life. I tried to be nice and look where it got me. People like you eat nice. Good-bye, Dean.”

“I love you,” he repeated, but she was gone, and when the game came back on, the woman with the sparkly top was in Ellie’s seat. The woman with the sparkly top was a Tropicana Field regular. Sometimes the top was blue and sometimes it was green, but it was always sparkly. Probably so the folks at home could pick her out. As if she’d caught the thought, she waved. Evers waved back. “Yeah, bitch, I see you. You’re on TV, bitch, good fucking job.”

He got up and poured himself a scotch.

In the ninth Ellsbury snuck a seeing-eye single through the right side, and the crowd rose and applauded Moore for his effort. Evers turned the game off and sat before the dark screen, mulling what Ellie had said.

Unlike Soupy Embree’s accusation, Ellie’s was true. Mostly true, he amended, then changed it to at least partly true . She knew him better than anyone in the world—this world or any other—but she’d never been willing to give him the credit he deserved. He was, after all, the one who’d put groceries in the refrigerator all those years, some pretty high-grade bacon. He was also the one who’d paid for the refrigerator—a top-of-the-line Sub-Zero, thank you very much. He’d paid for her Audi. And her tennis club dues. And her massage therapist. And all the stuff she bought from the catalogs. And hey, let’s not forget Patrick’s college tuition! Evers had had to put together a jackleg combination of scholarships, loan packages, and shit summer jobs to get through school, but Patrick had gotten a full boat from his old man. The old man he was too busy to call these days.

She comes back from the dead, and why? To complain. And to do it on the goddamn iPhone I paid for.

He thought of an old saying and wished he’d quoted it to Ellie while he still had the chance: “Money can’t buy happiness, but it allows one to endure unhappiness in relative comfort.”

That might have shut her up.

The more he considered their life together—and there was nothing like talking to your dead spouse while you looked at her in a club seat to make you consider such things—the more he thought that while he hadn’t been perfect, he’d still been all right. He did love her and Patrick, and had always tried to be kind to them. He’d worked hard to give them everything he never had, thinking he was doing the right thing. If it wasn’t enough, there was nothing he could do about it now. As for the thing with Martha… some kinds of fucking were meaningless. Men understood that— Kaz certainly would have understood it—but women did not.

In bed, dropping into a blissful oblivion that was three parts Ambien and two parts scotch, it came to him that Ellie’s rant was strangely freeing. Who else could they (whoever they were) send to bedevil him? Who could make him feel any worse? His mother? His father? He’d loved them, but not as he’d loved Ellie. Miss Pritchett? His uncle Elmer who used to tickle him till he wet his pants?

Snuggling deeper into the covers, Evers actually snickered at that. No, the worst had happened. And although there would be another great match-up tomorrow night at the Trop—Josh Beckett squaring off against James Shields—he didn’t have to watch. His last thought was that from now on, he’d have more time to read. Lee Child, maybe. He’d been meaning to get to those Lee Child books.

But first he had the Harlan Coben to finish. He spent the afternoon lost in the green, pitiless suburbs. As the sun went down on another St. Petersburg Sunday, he was into the last fifty pages or so, and racing along. That was when his phone buzzed. He picked it up gingerly—the way a man might pick up a loaded mousetrap—and looked at the readout. What he saw there was a relief. The call was from Kaz, and unless his old pal had suffered a fatal heart attack (not entirely out of the question; he was a good thirty pounds overweight), he was calling from Punta Gorda rather than the afterlife.

Still, Evers was cautious; given recent events, he had every reason to be. “Kaz, is that you?”

“Who the hell else would it be?” Kaz boomed. Evers winced and held the phone away from his ear. “Barack fucking Obama?”

Evers laughed feebly. “No, I just—”

“Fuckin’ Dino Martino! You suck, buddy! Front-row seats, and you didn’t even call me?”

From far away, Evers heard himself say: “I only had one ticket.” He looked at his watch. Twenty past eight. It should have been the second inning by now--unless the Rays and Red Sox were the 8:00 Sunday-night game on ESPN.

He reached for the remote.

Kaz, meanwhile, was laughing. The way he’d laughed that day in the schoolyard. It had been higher-pitched then, but otherwise it was just the same. He was just the same. It was a depressing thought. “Yeah, yeah, I’m just yankin’ your ballsack. How’s the view from there?”