The Fan Read Free Page A

or fertility treatments, or something.
    “I got you one month,” Garrity called after him. Gil kept going. Garrity raised his voice. “He had your replacement on the plane with the others. Flew him back this morning. At company expense. Hear what I’m saying to you?”
    Gil didn’t answer.
    “Make your quota, you son of a bitch.”
    Gil rode alone in the elevator. When was the last time he’d made quota? He couldn’t remember. But no one else was making it either. Maybe down in Texas, blade heaven, but not here. The reps saw each other’s numbers every month in
The Cutting Edge
, the company fact sheet. It never mentionedtwo facts: the product and the job—they both sucked. Gil slapped at the elevator buttons, as though he were slapping O’Meara’s face, lighting every floor. That got rid of some of what was building inside, made him wonder if he should feel grateful to Garrity. Garrity had saved his job, hell, given it to him in the first place. But that was all because of the old man, and what they’d done to him. He didn’t feel grateful.
    Outside the snow was falling harder, hard enough now to accumulate, rounding edges, muffling city sound. Gil brushed off the windshield of the 325i with his bare hand—left hand, not pitching hand, by long habit—got in, drove off. Car time. Was it Figgy who said he got his best ideas on the road? What was Figgy thinking now? Gil knew he should be thinking too, specifically about how to find another job. What were the jobs again?
    The amazing thing—like a magic trick—was that he’d stolen home on the very next pitch. No signal from the dugout, no sign from the third-base coach, no forethought at all, not even in his own mind. Just—zoom. Like that. Now he could scarcely believe it.
    Someone honked. Gil honked back, checked the time. 10:45. He always made an eleven o’clock call on Everest and Co. after a sales meeting. Everest and Co. was his biggest client: twenty-five outlets, eighty million in sales, excluding the catalogue. “Hit them while you’re still hyped from the meeting,” Garrity had advised long ago.
    “I’m hyped,” Gil said aloud. If he was going to make quota, Everest and Co. was where to start. Traffic wasn’t bad and Gil was making good time—he’d grown up driving in snow—so good he decided to swing by the ballpark on his way. The problem was that he’d promised Opening Day to Richie.
    Gil stopped in front of the box office, jumped out, left the car running. Only one ticket booth was open. An old man with watery eyes and a runny nose sat in it, staring into space. Gil knocked on the glass.
    “Two grandstand seats for the opener,” he said. “Reds if you got ’em.”
    The old man grinned savagely. “Reds if I got ’em? Opening Day?”
    “Anything in the grandstand, then.”
    “Grandstand? I got nuttin’ in the grandstand. Nuttin’ in the bleachers. Nuttin’ in the obstructed views. Nuttin’.” He leaned a little closer. “What’s more, I got nuttin’ in the grandstand till the twenty-first. Of August. And that’s last row.”
    “What about the bleachers?”
    The old man looked furious. “Opening Day?”
    Gil nodded.
    “Cripes. What did I just finish tellin’ you? Nuttin’. Can’t know much about baseball think you can just swan in here ’n get seats for Opening Day.”
    “I know baseball,” Gil said, maybe louder than he’d intended. The old man yanked down the shade.
    Gil turned away. A man in a watch cap was leaning against the brick wall near the GATE B sign.
    “Lookin’ for tickets?” he said.
    “Opening Day.”
    The man came forward. His nose was runny too; a silver drop of phlegm quivered from the tip. “How many?”
    “Two.”
    He pulled a fistful from his pocket, leafed through them. Snowflakes melted on his fingers. “Got a pair right behind home plate, three rows back.”
    “How much?”
    “One-fifty.”
    Gil thought: about his bank balance, near zero; his plastic, maxed out; his