Dwight sighed and laid the hockey tickets on the
dresser. “I really am sorry, son.”
“It’s okay,” Cal said gamely. “Brind’Amour might
not even be playing tonight.”
“Don’t wait supper,” Dwight told me as he started
back down the hall. “This could take a while.”
“That’s all right,” I said. “And if you get home first,
you don’t have to wait up for
That stopped them both in their tracks and Cal looked
at me in sudden hope as he saw the tickets in my
hand.
I smiled back at him. “Well, I’ve got a driver’s license,
too, you know. And I know how to get to the RBC
Center. You just have to promise not to get embarrassed
if I yell ‘High sticking!’ at the wrong time, okay?”
“O
Home court for NC State’s basketball team and
home ice for the Carolina Hurricanes, the RBC Center
is named for the Royal Bank of Canada—part of the
global economy we keep hearing about. It’s less than
ten years old and sits on eighty acres that used to be
farms and woodlands, just west of Raleigh and easily
accessible by I-40. It was supposed to cost $66 mil-
lion and seat 23,000. It wound up costing $158 million
and seats only 20,000. Was there ever a public proj-
ect that didn’t cost at least twice as much as originally
estimated?
17
MARGARET MARON
When Dwight and Seth and I were figuring how
much it’d cost to add on a new master bedroom, we
actually overestimated by a thousand. Either we’re
smarter than those professional consultants who get
paid big money out of the state’s budget or else those
consultants maybe fudge the figures so that legislators
won’t panic and refuse to fund a project until it’s too
late to back out.
Even though I’m a Carolina fan, I don’t begrudge
the Wolfpack their new arena. I just wish it could’ve
been named for something a little less commercial than
a Canadian bank.
On the drive in, Cal tried to bring me up to speed on
the rules and logic of the game and I really did try to
concentrate, but it was so much gobbledygook.
When we got to the entrance, orange-colored plas-
tic cones divided the various lanes and he knew which
lane would get us to the parking lot closest to our seats.
Inside, we bought pizza and soft drinks, then found
our seats in the club section, which was sort of like first
balcony in a regular theater. Up above us, the retired
