Don DeLillo - Underworld

He walks over to two men standing on line in front of one of the booths. Excuse me. Something here you might be interested in. He talks to them. He tells them about the baseball, this is the baseball that the guy hit into the stands, the home run that won the game, and the longer he talks the more unbelievable he sounds to himself. He can't even believe this is him talking. His voice sounds like something released from an air mattress when you pull out the nipple.

The two men seem to step back although it's probably not actual physical motion so much as a wishful maneuver he sees in their eyes.

"I'm talking what is a fact. Whatever it sounds," he says, "this is the thing that happened at the ballpark across the river," and he knows he is working now at restoring a certain self-respect-never mind making a sale.

One guy says, "I don't think so, no. Not interested. You interested?"

Other guy says, "Not interested."

Manx takes the ball out of his pocket. He's not sure why he's doing this since it proves nothing except the fact that he has a ball, at least he has a ball, and he holds it much the way his son Cotter had held it earlier in the evening, gripping it in one hand, spinning it with the other, hard-eyed and defiant.

Then he turns and walks away, feeling their looks, seeing smirks so clear he could draw them with a pencil, and going small, bristling a little at the back of the neck, and going smaller with every step.

He walks a little ways.

He always thought he'd like to get himself a flask, flat enough to pocket conveniently, with a cap on a chain.

He puts the ball back in his pocket and walks out past the wooden barricades near gate 4.

You got these guys come out here think they own the earth.

He remembers he's supposed to write a letter excusing his son from school because he's got a fever of a hundred and two, which is a secret they are keeping from the boy's mother. Not the fever but the letter. The fever is a made-up deal.

He stands and watches a while. Then he gets an idea. He watches, thinking there's crowds of people and I'm holding something every last one of them would like to own, but who's gonna believe a story that comes out of nowhere. Then he realizes what he ought to be doing. He gets an idea. He gets it from the crowd. He ought to be looking for fathers and sons.

Get the man to do it for the boy.

Appeal to the man's whatever, his rank as a father, his soft spot, his willingness to show off a little, impress the boy, make the night extra special.

And yes there are men who have brought their sons here tonight, as an adventure, you know, a fair number of sons on the scene, as a thing you want the boy to experience, staying up all night to buy World Series tickets.

See, even if the man doesn't believe it, the boy will. And Manx can imagine a little conspiracy in the making, the father and the hustler working as a team to make the boy believe the baseball's real.

It takes these turns of mind to work a deal.

He begins to prowl the lines, to scout the prospects standing on line along the high wall, he checks out faces and attitudes, he doesn't want to rush, he follows the wall in a westerly direction and sees what he thinks he might be looking for, finally, the kid's maybe eleven, the man's pulling a sandwich from a gym bag and they're standing there in total innocence of his approach.

He does his intro, which he takes to be the toughest part, making the details clear, and he looks from man to boy and back, trying to get them both involved, and it seems to be going well, and the man tears the sandwich and gives half to the kid, and they look at Manx and eat.

They are listening and chewing and he tries to read their looks. He is stymied, though, by the names involved, the players at the climax, he doesn't know their names, faces, numbers, all the things the fans know from childhood to the day they die, and this slows his narrative and muddies it up and he tries to compensate by taking out the baseball.

Now the man is talking, through a mouthful of food.

"So what you're saying is. You're telling me. In other words."

White meat and lettuce are showing behind his teeth.

"That's right. You got it," Manx says, hearing himself adopt a high pitch that's meant to be cheerful and optimistic.

But the man's not looking at the baseball. He's looking at Manx.

"And I'm supposed to stand here."

Manx begins to understand, close range, that this guy's a bus driver or sewer worker or bricklayer.

"And listen to this bullcrap."

The man is chewing and talking.

"I think you better haul ass out of here, buddy, before I call a cop."

Manx puts the ball back in his pocket.

"They put son of a bitches like you behind bars is where you belong."

Talking like that in front of his own kid.

The kid is hungry, he's going through the lettuce like a lawn mower.

They're standing there eating, both of them, looking at Manx, and the son resembles the father to such a degree, stocky and full-faced, that Manx wants to warn him against growing up.

Think they own the earth.

It takes him an hour, scouting the lines, doing three circuits of the stadium, talking to this and that person, getting a feel for the individual, seeing how it goes, and it's not going well, giving himself another five minutes by the clock on the wall at the southwest end, and then five more minutes, telling himself if he doesn't spot someone in five minutes, with a wholesome kid in tow, he will give up and go home, and then one more minute, and then one more, prowling the lines, making approaches that don't pan out, and about an hour later he is talking to a man and his son who are squatted down outside the bleacher section near the end of a very long line, camped out with a sleeping bag for the kid and a duffle coat for the man, and Manx is working his way into the names.

"Which I'm saying, in all honesty."

"Wait a minute. You're saying this baseball you claim to have in your possession."

"Right right right. But I don't know the player's name, y'under-stand, which I'm being honest with you."

"You mean Bobby Thomson?"

"That's the one. All right. I feel better now."

See, Manx believes he can be straight-up with this man. Expose his own shortcomings. He's not a fan and shouldn't pretend to be. And at the same time, only deeper, he thinks this is a strategy that can work, it's a scheme, a plot-show the man your weakness and he will swallow your story whole.

"I'm of the attitude where if you're doing a little business, you put all your cards on the table. And I'll tell you what I think. That tomorrow a wholesale rabble show themselves at the clubhouse entrance. Carrying a baseball, every one of them, and saying I got the ace."

"When in fact, according to your claim," the man says.

"When in fact the ace is in the hole," Manx says, and he reaches into his pocket and takes out the ball.

The man smiles. The man is on his haunches against the wall and Manx is in a squat himself, holding the ball slightly atremble for comic effect, staring hard at the man, showing the man a fake intensity, which they both know is fake, just for effect, and the man holds out his hand for the ball, amused but skeptical, meaning in other words that he'll play along for now.

But Manx doesn't give him the ball.

The boy is sitting up in the sleeping bag, trying to stay awake.

"Now see this tar spot," Manx says. And he shows the man and he shows the boy. "I think I ought to rub it off, being it has no business here."

And he wets his thumb with a flourish and tries to remove a scant trace of tar, because Cotter must have bounced the ball in the street, but he only succeeds in smudging the area and has to wonder why he is doctoring the ball at all.