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general direction of the corner where Flora and M.J. loitered impassively. “You’ve misunderstood my point. Or maybe I failed to put it in quite the right words.”
    “We heard you,” Heidi said, heartened by the physical closeness of the others and by Tildy’s cool palm behind her neck. “Plain as the teats on a sow.”
    Ignoring her, Sparn kept edging away. He pressed his fingertips together, trying to appear casual but deliberate. “What I’m trying to get across to you, it’s not a physical thing. It’s an emotional thing. It’s not about moving from first to third on a single. It’s about moving your audience, getting them excited and getting them involved. Moving them. Making them care.”
    Several sets of eyes rolled toward the ceiling. With leering ceremony, That’s-Mary rolled two wads of a half-eaten chocolate cupcake and used them to plug her ears.
    “Drama. Suspense. That’s what’s missing. Because … because we think we’re unbeatable. Yes, that’s it! Enterprise. Imagination. Emotions. Theatrics. Just as tangible as that welt on Tildy’s leg. Let me tell you something. I review the statistics every day and you know what I see? I see dullness. That’s right. I see scores like four, zero; five, zero; six, one. Now where the hell is the drama in that? Dull. Cut and dried.”
    Sparn entered Flora’s corner as his speech reached its crescendo. He took her arm, the million-dollar arm, light and whippy, that could fire a fat, rubber-covered sphere at close to ninety miles an hour, and lifted it over his head.
    “The greatest,” he said solemnly. “Maybe the greatest ever. A young woman who has perfected her craft to such a fine degree that you and I, we can’t even understand it. Another realm altogether.” He let the arm drop and it bounced on Flora’s hip as though she were asleep. “But how do people, ordinary people, feel about that kind of excellence? Think about it. If I announced that tomorrow afternoon at the Knights of Columbus Hall there would be an exhibition by the world’s best diamond cutter, how many tickets do you suppose I would sell? Excellence has its drawbacks. It can really put people off.” He laid his hand on Flora’s cheek. “What you’ve got to do, honey, is let up just a little bit. Let those bozos on the other side score some runs once in a while.”
    She flicked away Sparn’s damp saurian claw and gazed at him with contempt, as though he had asked her to prepare and consume a melted goat turd sandwich before a gathering of cub scouts. This arrogant, yammering little troll wanted her to intentionally and bloodlessly betray her talent, her sense of professionalism and her love for Molly Joan—because for Flora all these things were bound inextricably together. If it came down to that, she would much rather eat the sandwich.
    There followed a long, uncomfortable pause, embroidered by the sound of M.J. chomping french fries. Finally, when Flora had it all worked out in her mind, she tightened the belt of her robe, walked halfway to the door, turned.
    “See you at tomorrow’s game, Mr. Sparn. Be there.”
    Carrying a large root beer in which the ice had melted, M.J. followed. Then, without a word or glance to one another, the Cougarettes stood and trooped out of the room past a thunderstruck Peter Sparn with the metered gait of a half-time band.
    Sparn’s face grew pink, as though he’d been slapped. When he had found his voice, he moved with such speed that Vinnie cringed as he came toward him.
    “Jesus fucking Christ, boy. When are you going to learn how to control these girls?”
    While his father raved on, Vinnie turned little by little to wax.
    Tildy was summoned the next morning to a private breakfast with Sparn at the Magnolia Diner. They sat at a sun-soaked booth next to a window box of plastic ivy. It was after nine o’clock and they were the only customers in the place.
    “What’ll you have?”
    “A large glass of water. Plenty of ice.”