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still sitting in the backseat with the door open, and reluctantly made change. From it, Evers handed him a single rumpled simoleon.
    “Guy with a front-row seat should be able to do better’n that for a tip,” the cabbie grumbled.
    “Guy with half a brain in his head should keep his mouth shut about the Big Schill,” Evers said. “If he wants a better tip, that is.” He slipped out, slammed the door and headed for the entrance.
    “Fuck you, Boston!” the cabbie shouted.
    Without turning around, Evers hoisted a middle finger—real, not foam.
    The concourse with its palm trees lit like Christmas in Hawaii was all but empty, the sound of the crowd inside the stadium a hollow surf-boom. It was a sellout, the LED signs above the shuttered ticket windows bragged. There was only one window still open, all the way down at the end, the WILL CALL.
    Yes, Evers thought, because they will call, won’t they? He headed for it like a man on rails.
    “Help you, sir?” the pretty ticket agent asked, and was that Juicy Couture she was wearing? Surely not. He 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