Stephen King - A Face in the Crowd

“Great,” Evers said, pushing the power button on the remote. Fox 13 was showing some old movie with Bruce Willis blowing things up. He punched 29 and ESPN came on. Shields was dealing to Dustin Pedroia, second in the Sox lineup. The game had just started.

I’m doomed to baseball, Evers thought.

“Dino? Earth to Dino Martino! You still there?”

“I’m here,” he said, and turned up the volume. Pedroia flailed and missed. The crowd roared; those irritating cowbells the Rays fans favored clanged with maniacal fervor. “Pedie just struck out.”

“No shit. I ain’t blind, Stevie Wonder. The Rays Rooters are pumped up, huh?”

“Totally pumped,” Evers said hollowly. “Great night for a ball game.”

Now Adrian Gonzalez was stepping in. And there, sitting in the first row right behind the screen, doing a fair impersonation of a craggy old snowbird playing out his golden years in the Sunshine State, was Dean Patrick Evers.

He was wearing a ridiculous foam finger, and although he couldn’t read it, not even in HD, he knew what it said: RAYS ARE #1. Evers at home stared at Evers behind home with the phone against his ear. Evers at the park stared back, holding the selfsame phone in the hand that wasn’t wearing the foam finger. With a sense of outrage that not even his stunned amazement could completely smother, he saw that Ballpark Evers was wearing a Rays jersey. Never, he thought. Those are traitor colors .

“There you are!” Kaz shouted exultantly. “Shake me a wave, buddy!”

Evers at the ballpark raised the foam finger and waved it solemnly, like an oversize windshield wiper. Evers at home, on autopilot, did the same with his free hand.

“Love the shirt, Dino,” Kaz said. “Seeing you in Rays colors is like seeing Doris Day topless.” He snickered.

“I had to wear it,” Evers said. “The guy who gave me the ticket insisted. Listen, I’ve gotta go. Want to grab a beer and a d—ohmygod, there it goes!”

Gonzo had launched a long drive, high and deep.

“Drink one for me!” Kaz shouted.

On Evers’s expensive TV, Gonzalez was lumbering around the bases. As he watched, Evers suddenly understood what he had to do. There was only one way to put an end to this cosmic joke. On a Sunday night, downtown St. Pete would be deserted. If he took a taxi, he could be at the Trop by the end of the second inning. Maybe even sooner.

“Kaz?”

“Yeah, buddy?”

“We should either have been nicer to Lester Embree, or left him alone.”

He pushed END before Kaz could reply. He turned off the TV. Then he went into his bedroom, rooted through the folded shirts in his bureau, and found his beloved Curt Schilling jersey, the one with the bloody sock on the front and WHY NOT US? on the back. Schilling had been The Man, afraid of nothing. When the Evers in the Rays shirt saw him in this one, he’d fade away like the bad dream he was and all of this would end.

Evers yanked the shirt on and called a cab. There was one nearby that had just dropped off a fare, and the streets were as deserted as Evers had expected. The cabbie had the game on the radio. The Sox were still batting in the top half of the second when he pulled up to the main gate.

“You’ll have to settle for nosebleeds,” the cabbie said. “Sox–Rays, that’s a hot ticket.”

“I’ve got one right behind home plate,” Evers said. “Stop somewhere they’ve got the game on, you might see me. Look for the shirt with the bloody sock on it.”

“I heard that fuckin’ hoser’s video game business went broke,” the cabbie said as Evers handed him a ten. He looked, saw Evers still sitting in the backseat with the door open, and reluctantly made change. From it, Evers handed him a single rumpled simoleon.

“Guy with a front-row seat should be able to do better’n that for a tip,” the cabbie grumbled.

“Guy with half a brain in his head should keep his mouth shut about the Big Schill,” Evers said. “If he wants a better tip, that is.” He slipped out, slammed the door and headed for the entrance.

“Fuck you, Boston!” the cabbie shouted.

Without turning around, Evers hoisted a middle finger—real, not foam.

The concourse with its palm trees lit like Christmas in Hawaii was all but empty, the sound of the crowd inside the stadium a hollow surf-boom. It was a sellout, the LED signs above the shuttered ticket windows bragged. There was only one window still open, all the way down at the end, the WILL CALL.

Yes, Evers thought, because they will call, won’t they? He headed for it like a man on rails.

“Help you, sir?” the pretty ticket agent asked, and was that Juicy Couture she was wearing? Surely not. He remembered Martha saying, It’s my slut perfume. I only wear it for you . She’d been willing to do things Ellie wouldn’t dream of, things he remembered at all the wrong times.

“ Help you, sir?”

“Sorry,” Evers said. “Had a little senior moment there.”

She smiled dutifully.

“Do you happen to have a ticket for Evers? Dean Evers?”

There was no hesitation, no thumbing through a whole box of envelopes, because there was only one left. It had his name on it. She slid it through the gap in the glass. “Enjoy the game.”

“We’ll see,” Evers said.

He made for Gate A, opening the envelope and taking out the ticket. A piece of paper was clipped to it, just four words below the Rays logo: COMPLIMENTS OF THE MANAGEMENT. He strode briskly up the ramp and handed the ticket to a crusty usher who was standing there and watching as Elliot Johnson dug in against Josh Beckett. At the very least, the geezer was a good half century older than his employers. Like so many of his kind, he was in no hurry. It was one reason Evers no longer drove.

“Nice seat,” the usher said, raising his eyebrows. “Just about the best in the house. And you show up late.” He gave a disapproving head shake.

“I would have been here sooner,” Evers said, “but my wife died.”

The usher froze in the act of turning away, Evers’s ticket in hand.

“Gotcha,” Evers said, smiling and pointing a playful finger-gun. “That one never fails.”

The usher didn’t look amused. “Follow me, sir.”

Down and down the steep steps they went. The usher was in worse shape than Evers, all wattle and liver spots, and by the time they reached the front row, Johnson was headed back to the dugout, a strikeout victim. Evers’s seat was the only empty one—or not quite empty. Leaning against the back was a large blue foam finger that blasphemed: RAYS ARE #1.

My seat, Evers thought, and as he picked the offending finger up and sat down he saw, with only the slightest surprise, that he was no longer wearing his treasured Schilling jersey. Somewhere between the cab and this ridiculous, padded Captain Kirk perch, it had been replaced by a turquoise Rays shirt. And although he couldn’t see the back, he knew what it said: MATT YOUNG.

“Young Matt Young,” he said, a crack that his neighbors—neither of whom he recognized—pointedly ignored. He craned around, searching the section for Ellie and Soupy Embree and Lennie Wheeler, but it was just a mix of anonymous Rays and Sox fans. He didn’t even see the sparkly-top lady.

Between pitches, as he was twisted around trying to see behind him, the guy on his right tapped Evers’s arm and pointed to the JumboTron just in time for him to catch a grotesquely magnified version of himself turning around.

“You missed yourself,” the guy said.

“That’s all right,” Evers said. “I’ve been on TV enough lately.”

Before Beckett could decide between his fastball and his slider, Evers’s phone buzzed in his pocket.