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Flushing, and Pete from Seaford (who announced that he was a “longtime listener, first-time caller” to Andy’s incessant ringing of his “welcome bell”). Meanwhile, Morris inched through an intersection of gas stations on every corner and continued past a monotonous canyon of big-box retailers, the Costcos and Walmarts and Home Depots. The endless, rusted chain of America’s corroding chain stores: the same Blockbuster Videos and CVS drugstores, the same family restaurants with cheerful names and scrubbed brick facades and circus-themed canopies. The same fast-food franchises on Long Island, the land of franchise opportunity.
    â€œAlmost there!” he chirped, and it was as close as he’d ever come to singing (except during his High Holy Day visits to Temple Beth Torah, when he felt compelled to mumble a monotone and ambivalent drone). Finally, Morris eased his car into an intersection and waited to approach the Roslyn Plaza Medical Arts Building, listening to the rhythmic ticking of his turn signal.
    He had arrived.
    Morris slipped his car into a spot and turned off the ignition. He gathered his Celfex sales forms and promotional literature from the backseat. One glance at his paperwork told him that Dr. Kirleski needed resupplies of Celf-Assure (impotence), CalaFLO (incontinence), and CelaREM (insomnia). He walked across the parking lot, checking his shirt pocket for Victoria’s gift.
    Inside, Morris found Victoria sitting behind the glass partition, her head bowed toward some paperwork, her blond hair cascading forward. When she heard the door open, and saw that it was Morris, her lips curled into a smile and dimples implanted themselves in her cheeks and Morris thought, She looks like a young Doris Day. Doris Day in Pillow Talk. With Rock Hudson. I think she was nominated for Best Actress. Nineteen fifty-eight or fifty-nine .
    â€œHello Morris Feldstein!” For some reason, Victoria seemed to enjoy saying his full name.
    â€œHullo, Victoria.” His hands felt awkward and heavy at his sides.
    â€œWhat happened to our poor Mets this weekend?”
    That was an invitation to Morris. “Well, if you really think about it, they won three in Milwaukee. And in Saint Louie, on Friday, Glavine was scoreless most of the game. Just had a bad ninth. Then on Saturday it was a two-to-one game. That was close. And yesterday, you take those two bad innings out of the game and we would have won. So it wasn’t so bad.”
    â€œLet’s go Mets!” Victoria squealed. “So you wanna see the doc?”
    â€œYes. Actually, no. Not yet. I mean, I have something for you. From Celfex. The home office. I thought you would enjoy it. Hold on.” Morris felt his tongue stumble against the inside of his cheeks as he fumbled through his pocket. He produced the gift: two tickets to the Celfex Diamond View Suite at Shea Stadium. “These are for you. Mets versus Astros. Tomorrow night.”
    The tickets were “customer-relations incentives,” dispensed by the home office in Plattsburgh like bars of gold. There was no quid proquo involved in Celfex dispensing gifts to the doctors who dispensed Celfex products. That would be wrong, according to chapter four of the Celfex ethics manual. This gift was simply a matter of good customer relations. Celfex encouraged Morris to entertain doctors at the luxury suite. But Morris was uncomfortable with the entire concept of luxury-anything at a baseball game. Shea Stadium should not require jackets and ties; the sipping of white wine and eating of hors d’oeuvres he couldn’t pronounce; the making of small talk for nine innings. Especially when normal Mets fans in the cheap seats outside hurled curses and swilled beer and accumulated small piles of discarded peanut shells under the seats in front of them. So he didn’t mind giving away the tickets, and enjoying the game from the comfort of his RoyaLounger 8000. That