Read The Spoiler for Free Online Page A

head: “After a frustrating evening, Rickey Sparks threw his pitching glove into the dirt,” but before he could get it right, he began to doze.
    He woke up in the early morning, before light. Standing in the clothes he had slept in, he typed out the story and drove to the Dispatch . He made deadline without any problem.
    Later that day he drove the back way out of Holyoke, past the tenements where laundry hung drying in the humid Massachusetts summer air. In another minute he was over the bridge, across the Connecticut River, driving past the rich colonial homes of South Hadley, a town that took its tone from Mount Holyoke College, a women’s school of stern brick buildings covered with dense ivy.
    He followed the road up over the Notch, past the gravel mill at the peak of the Holyoke Range. His car had trouble making the low, steeply sloping hill, but the downhill coast into Amherst was easy.
    When he reached Amherst, he was early for his meeting with Amanti, so he parked his car near the Commons, a large block of trees and grass nestled in the center of town. The University of Massachusetts, where both Lofton and Nancy had gone to school, was just a few blocks away. She had been a thin, sandy-haired Irish girl with a striking profile and the ability, when she wanted, to draw attention to herself. Only, when she received the attention, she seemed to withdraw. Under close scrutiny she became remote. When he courted her, she was elusive. He was stubborn. Maureen, now that he thought about it, had been more fun.
    It had been a long time since he’d been in Amherst. He felt unreasonably afraid someone might recognize him. The town had not changed much. Hastings Newsstand still stood in the middle of the block of buildings owned by old man Hastings, though, Lofton guessed, it must be his son who ran the business now. The tobacco store was still there, and the skid row bar, or the closest Amherst would ever have to such a thing, still existed under the same name: the Mongoose. Some of the other places had changed ownership, the bars had changed decor—polished butcher-block wood instead of Formica, men waiting tables instead of women. But Amherst had always been essentially a polished town, where the young people kept their hair in place even when they drank and had an innocent look about them, the attractive and soft air of polite, insecure children being groomed for the offices of New York and Boston. Lofton, who grew up in California, had never felt at home here. He was glad it was summer and the town given over to the locals.
    Amanti lived down a side street. He decided to walk. He did not want to drive up in his rusted car. Her place was an anomaly on this quiet street of older houses. She had the lower apartment in a wood-grained fourplex, a dwelling more like one in a West Coast suburb than a New England town.
    He knocked, but no one answered. He stood on her porch step, in the bright, muggy air, feeling conspicuous in his rolled-up shirtsleeves. He remembered feeling this way in college, once, when he had knocked on a coed’s door. He had suspected the girl was inside, refusing to answer. But there was no reason now for him to feel like an intruder or an unwanted suitor. He was only working on a story, tracing a lead, doing his job.
    He knocked again, but there was still no answer. He swore to himself, then turned to find Amanti coming up the walkway behind him.
    â€œSorry to make you wait. I just took a walk to the grocery.”
    â€œIt’s all right. I enjoyed standing here.” He tried to say the words as if they were true. If she had heard him cursing, she did not let on.
    Inside, the apartment was spacious, sparsely furnished. A wood-block table. A white rug. A couch with chrome armrests. And a high, arching roof, wide beams stretching from end to end. Several paintings hung on the wall, all contemporary, all similar: light-hearted colors patterned in elusive, meaningless