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to the autumn afternoons of the Midwest or the Atlantic seaboard, to the mud and shadows of the old Polo Grounds in New York with the wind sharp, the dusk coming fast, rain and snow both part of its element. It didn’t belong on AstroTurf under a plexiglass bubble or in a sun-drenched coliseum full of California sun freaks sitting shirtless in the stands, bellies to the skies, quaffing beer like kids at a rock concert.
    After Sunday’s Redskins loss, he’d remained in the basement rec room trying to finish the New York Times , all four pounds of it, while watching Sunbelt football with half an eye. Two teams in Day-Glo nylon uniforms scrambled over a vivid green plastic carpet under a Polynesian sky. Tired of reading news reminding him only of his own political isolation here in the Virginia suburbs, he’d wandered outside to rake the leaves, but shadows had come to the rear terrace, darkness to the woods. He’d stood in the eerie dusk like a TV cretin, still wired up to the California sunshine by electronic synapses and synthetic replay, like the rest of the country, persuaded that the great golden aurora from the Pacific had flooded eastward to relight the cold kilns of Youngstown, Lorain, and East Chicago, the artificial dawn reinvesting the continent, washing from silicon valley, the mercury lamps of television city, and the golf greens of Palm Springs where the Great Communicator’s transcendentalists gathered, or the tacky, all-night fast-food and drugstore emporiums of the West Coast where their entrepreneurship thrived.
    Sunbelt football was killing the game he’d once played and loved, the same way the Reaganites were trashing the country.
    â€œI thought you’d be home earlier,” Betsy called as he stood in the back hall, taking off his wet raincoat. “How was your meeting with Mr. Larabee?”
    â€œCrummy.”
    She sat on the orange sofa in the rear study, her legs drawn under her, a book on her lap. Twists of yarn from the half-completed Afghan had been pushed aside, like the knitting bag. Her once dark hair showed streaks of gray now, cut short. The sharp features were still as striking as ever, her skin as firm as porcelain. “Really? What sort of person was he?”
    â€œA nut.” He hung up his coat.
    â€œThen why are you so late?” she asked, disappointed.
    â€œI stopped by The Players to see if someone was there who knew Larabee. Then I watched the game. What time did you get home?”
    â€œJust a few minutes ago.” She hadn’t been to a teachers meeting but to a get-together of the Kennedy Center Subscription Club, a group of suburban music lovers who purchased blocks of tickets for the Kennedy Center music season. Once a month they gathered at a club member’s home to listen on stereo to the program for a particularly esoteric upcoming concert. “But I thought The Players was closing. You stopped to watch the football game?”
    â€œJust part of it.” He entered the study and pulled off his tie. The television set was turned on across the room.
    â€œI thought you had enough football yesterday.”
    â€œI did. Don’t remind me.”
    â€œYou really sit around too much. The Players is the last place I’d expect you to be. It makes you too negative. What did Larabee want to talk about?”
    â€œI’m not sure.”
    â€œYou mean you didn’t ask.”
    â€œI mean it didn’t interest me.”
    â€œReal estate law isn’t the answer to your restlessness. I should think you’d know that by now. In the meantime, you should take up jogging, like Dr. Mercer. Maybe that would get some of the hostility out. It’s therapeutic.”
    â€œSo is beating your kids and yelling at the Russians, like that Air Force family down the street. What are you watching?”
    â€œNothing right now; I’m waiting. Who was at The Players?”
    â€œA few people from the old days. I