A Face in the Crowd

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 Somewhere between the cab and this ridiculous, padded Captain Kirk perch, it had been replaced by a turquoise Rays shirt.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.

Can’t even watch the game in peace.

“Yello,” he said.

“Who’m I talkin’ to?” The voice of Chuckie Kazmierski was high and truculent, his I’m-ready-to-fight voice. Evers knew it well, had heard it often over the long arc of years stretching between Fairlawn Grammar and this seat at Tropicana Field, where the light was always dingy and the stars were never seen. “That you, Dino?”

“Who else? Bruce Willis?” Beckett missed low and away. The crowd rang their idiotic cowbells.

“Dino Martino, right?”

Jesus, Evers thought, next he’ll be saying who’s on first and I’ll be saying what’s on second.

“Yes, Kaz, the artist formerly known as Dean Patrick Evers. We ate paste together in the second grade, remember? Probably too much.”

“It is you!” Kaz shouted, making Evers jerk the phone away from his ear. “I told that cop he was full of shit! Detective Kelly, my ass.”

“What in hell are you talking about?”

“Some ass-knot pretending to be a cop’s what I’m talkin’ about. I knew it couldn’t be real, he sounded too fuckin’ official.”

“Huh,” Evers said. “An official official, imagine that.”

“Guy tells me you’re dead, so I go, if he’s dead, how come I just talked to him on the phone? And the cop— the so-called cop—he goes, I think you’re mistaken, sir. You must have talked to someone else. And I go, how come I just now saw him on TV at the Rays game? And this so-called cop goes, either you saw someone who looked like him or someone who looks like him is dead in his apartment. You believe this shit?”

Beckett bounced one off the plate. He was all over the place. The crowd was loving it. “If it wasn’t a prank, I guess someone made a big mistake.”

“Ya think?” Kaz gave his trademark laugh, low and raspy. “Especially since I’m talkin’ to you right fuckin’ now.”

“You called to make sure I was still alive, huh?”

“Yeah.” Now that he was settling down, Kaz seemed puzzled by this.

“Tell me something—if I’d turned out to be dead after all, would you have left a voice mail?”

“What? Jesus, I don’t know.” Kaz seemed more puzzled than ever, but that was nothing new. He’d always been puzzled. By events, by other people, probably by his own beating heart. Evers supposed that was part of why he’d so often been angry. Even when he wasn’t angry, he was ready to be angry.

I’m speaking of him in the past tense, Evers realized.

“The guy I talked to said they found you at your place. Said you’d been dead for a while too.”

The guy next to Evers nudged him again. “Lookin’ good, buddy,” he said.

On the JumboTron, shocking in its homely familiarity, was Evers’s darkened bedroom. In the middle of the bed he’d shared with Ellie, the pillowtop king that was now too big for him, Evers lay still and pale, his eyes half- lidded, his lips purplish, his mouth a stiff rictus. Foam had dried like old spiderwebs on his chin.

When Evers turned to his seatmate, wanting to confirm what he was seeing, the seat beside him—the row, the section, the whole Tropicana Dome—was empty. And yet the players kept playing.

“They said you killed yourself.”

“I didn’t kill myself,” Evers replied, and thought: That damn expired Ambien. And maybe putting it with the scotch wasn’t such a great idea. How long has it been? Since Friday night?

“I know, it didn’t sound like you.”

“So, are you watching the game?”

“I turned it off. Fuckin’ cop—that fuckin’ ass-knot—upset me.”

“Turn it on again,” Evers said.

“Okay,” Kaz said. “Lemme grab the remote.”

“You know, we should have been nicer to Lester Embree.”

“Water over the dam, old buddy. Or under the bridge. Or whatever the fuck it is.”

“Maybe not. From now on, don’t be so angry. Try to be nicer to people. Try to be nicer to everyone. Do that for me, will you, Kaz?”

“What the Christ is wrong with you? You sound like a fuckin’ Hallmark card on Mother’s Day.”

“I suppose I do,” Evers said. He found this a very sad idea, somehow. On the mound, Beckett was peering in for the sign.

“Hey, Dino! There you are! You sure don’t look dead.” Kaz gave out his old rusty cackle.

“I don’t feel it.”

“I was scared there for a minute,” Kaz said. “Fuckin’ crank yanker. Wonder how he got my number.”

“Dunno,” Evers said, surveying the empty park. Though of course he knew. After Ellie died, of the nine million people in Tampa–St. Pete, Kaz was the only person he could put down as an emergency contact. And that idea was