A Face in the Crowd Read Online Free PDF Page B

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?”
    “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