The Fan

2

Gil parked his 325i a block from the office, thinking too late of things he could have said to Bernie, or Norm, or whoever the hell it was. Order book and sample case in hand, he stepped out onto the icy sidewalk as the first snowflakes drifted down around him, hardly bigger than dust motes. It didn’t look like the start of a major storm, didn’t feel like the beginning of a bad day. Two teenaged boys slouched by, caps pulled low over their eyes. They noticed his license plate-WNSOX-and he heard one say, “Yeah, right.”

Gil bought a Lottabucks Kwikpik and the Sporting News at the ground-floor newsstand and skimmed the training-camp reports on the elevator. There was a photograph of Rayburn smiling beside the batting cage. The caption read, “Banking all those RBI’$.” Gil folded the paper and slid it into his coat pocket.

Ding. Five. Gil walked down the hall, the floor sticky under his feet. The company’s office was next to Prime National Mortage, which had been vacant all winter, and another suite, without lettering on the door, tenantless much longer. He went in. Bridgid was at her desk, unwrapping a bouquet of roses. She pricked her finger, said, “Ow,” and sucked on it.

“Hi,” Gil said. “Tickets in yet?”

The company had season tickets, two box seats halfway down the first baseline, eighteen rows back. The reps divided them according to a complicated formula that was revised every season and this year had alloted Opening Day to Gil.

“Have to ask Garrity,” said Bridgid. Was there something funny about the way she said it? Funny enough, anyway, to register with Gil in passing.

Gil entered the conference room. Sales meetings began at eight sharp, second Wednesday of the month. They were all sitting around the table-the eleven other Northeast reps, and Garrity, regional sales manager. The room smelled of aftershave. Garrity’s eyes went from Gil to the wall clock, as though he were willing him to look at it too. Gil looked. 8:04.

He sat down. Figuerido, area six, just west of his, rolled a tube of Lifesavers across the table; the kind with all the flavors. Gil took one-cherry-and rolled them back to Figgy. Breakfast.

“How’s the Beamer?” Figgy asked in a loud whisper; Figgy was stoked on Gil’s wheels.

Gil made a hand movement like a car speeding down a winding road and sucked on the Lifesaver, waiting for Garrity to get on with it. Garrity always began with a gloomy summation of how they were doing, followed by an uplifting anecdote from his past about how he’d come up off the canvas when all hope was gone and fought his way to victory, hawking vacuum cleaners in Southie or some shit. That was to inspire them before he handed out the new quotas. But Garrity wasn’t on commission now, he was management, and management had no idea what it was like out there. That was fact one.

Garrity’s phone buzzed. He picked it up, listened, said “Yup.” He turned to the door. O’Meara walked in. O’Meara was the national sales manager. He flew in from Cincinnati once a year, took them all to dinner. But a year wasn’t up since his last visit; and it wasn’t dinnertime.

“Welcome, Keith,” Garrity said, rising.

O’Meara ignored him. He made a little beckoning motion with his finger-at Waxman, at Larsen, at Figuerido. They followed him from the room. Figgy forgot his Lifesavers on the table.

“Bonus time already?” someone said. No one laughed. December was bonus time; besides, you had to make quota first, and who was doing that?

Silence until O’Meara returned, followed by three people-white males, like Waxman, Larsen, and Figuerido, dressed in $150 suits like Waxman, Larsen, and Figuerido, but not Waxman, Larsen, and Figuerido. O’Meara introduced them. They took their places in the empty chairs. The one who sat in Figgy’s glanced at the Lifesavers but didn’t touch them.

O’Meara moved to the head of the table. Garrity slid out of his seat. O’Meara could have been Garrity’s upwardly mobile son, better fed and better educated. He put his foot on Garrity’s chair and leaned over the table. “Guys,” he said. “I’ve seen the figures.” He paused. Gil smelled someone’s sweat. Not his: he was cool and dry, not sweating at all. In fact, Gil’s mind wasn’t even on whatever was about to go down. He was remembering an at bat he’d had against the Yankees, one he hadn’t thought of in years. Man on second-must have been Claymore, Gil could still see him, red hair, freckles-last ups, two strikes, two out, one run down, pitch on the way. He almost felt the sunshine.

O’Meara had brightened suddenly, as though struck by an idea. “Unless it’s a misprint,” he was saying. He turned to Garrity. “Any chance it’s a misprint?”

“Wish it was.”

“Me too,” said O’Meara. “Because these numbers suck.” He sat down; Garrity drew up another chair beside him. O’Meara paused again, and in that pause met their gazes one by one. He had small green eyes, set deep in crowfooted pink pouches. “Oh, I know what you’re thinking-what a prick, expecting us to sell into this manure-pile economy, expecting us to compete with those Japs gobbling up the whole fucking business. Am I right?”

Nods from the three new men, various facial expressions from the others, nothing from Gil.

“Hit it on the head or what?” said Garrity.

O’Meara didn’t respond. He held up his index finger. His hands were small and plump, not even big enough to grip a baseball properly, Gil thought with contempt. “Let’s take the economy first. Does the expression self-fulfilling prophecy mean anything to anybody?” His eyes fastened on Gil. “Renard?”

“Nope,” Gil said, almost adding, Maybe it means something to Figgy.

“You were going to say?”

“Nothing.”

O’Meara didn’t take his eyes off him. “The thing is, Renard, all the pissing and moaning about the economy swells up into one big pig of an excuse. Self. Fulfilling. Prophecy. If the economy sucks, well, hell, how can I be expected to beat my quota, or even meet it, for Christ’s sake? Not my fault, right? So you don’t even try anymore, and then the economy really is in the toilet. Like lemmings, right? Whoosh. Boom.” He gestured out the window. It needed washing. Beyond it gray flakes, fatter now, swirled out of a dark sky. “That’s the beauty of our system, curse and beauty at the same time. We control it. Us. Guys like you and me, the folks in this room, up to our elbows in the machinery. We’re the ones who can make the economy whatever we want.”

Gil watched the snowflakes. A fastball, it had been, low and away, but too close to take. He’d slapped it to right, past the diving second baseman, whose name he couldn’t recall. He remembered the pitcher though: Bouchard, the Yankee ace. And he remembered the roar of the crowd as Claymore scored the tying run and he himself went all the way to third when they overthrew the cutoff.

“Let me give you an example,” O’Meara said. “Would you stand up, Verrucci?”

The man who now presided over Figgy’s Lifesavers rose.

“Verrucci’s come up from Texas to lend a hand for a while in area six. Mind telling us your take for the month of Feb?”

“Feb just passed, Mr. O’Meara?”

“That’s right, Verrucci.”

Verrucci named a figure Gil had never touched, not even when things were steaming during the Reagan years.

“Pay much attention to the state of the economy, Verrucci?”

“Don’t have the time, Mr. O’Meara.”

O’Meara laughed. “Ignorance is bliss.” He studied his audience. “Still with us, Renard?”

Gil nodded, thinking, Texas, that explained everything.

Verrucci was still standing. “Thank you, Verrucci. Sit down.” Verrucci sat, picked up the Lifesavers, peeled back the wrapper, and popped one in his mouth.

“Enough philosophy,” O’Meara said. He raised a second finger. “Which brings us to the Japs.” He smiled. “I think we’ve finally got something that’ll help you with them.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a knife. It was a tanto, about eleven inches, with a six-inch blade and a red-white-and-blue-checkered polymer handle. He held it high, like a king leading his men into battle, then nodded to Verrucci.

Verrucci left the room. O’Meara took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeve, and passed the blade lightly down his forearm, shaving off an inch-wide strip of wiry, rust-colored hair. It fell on the open pages of Garrity’s appointment book.

Verrucci returned with a car door. Japanese? — Gil wondered. Verrucci laid it on the table. O’Meara opened his briefcase, took out a claw hammer, positioned the knife a few inches below the door handle, and began pounding on the pommel. Pounding hard; a sweat stain spread over his right armpit, and his face pinkened in pleasure. Ten blows-Gil counted them, too many-and the blade sank down to the choil. With a grunt, Verrucci stood the door on end, showing the tip of the blade protruding through a speaker grille inside. O’Meara jerked the knife free, extended his forearm, cut another swath. Garrity watched the wiry hairs falling on his appointment book.

O’Meara passed the knife around the table. “Say hello to the Survivor,” he said. “State-of-the-art workhorse of our new state-of-the-art line.”

“A new line?” someone said.

“The Iwo Jima Experience,” O’Meara replied. “Doesn’t that say it all?”

The reps hefted the Survivor, ran their thumbs across its edge, balanced it on their index fingers. All but Gil: he just handed it on to the next man. But that was enough to tell him that the Survivor wasn’t state of the art, or even an improvement on the rest of their product: two or three grades below that. Blade too thin-quarter inch, when similar Japanese models were all five-sixteenths; pommel too small; light in the handle, indicating a half tang hidden in there. The spec sheet followed: 440 steel, acceptable, if inferior to the Japanese, and hardened to 61 on the Rockwell scale, an impressive number, but much too hard for a survival knife. Better, though, than junk; and maybe some buyers would go for that flashy handle.

The Survivor came back around to O’Meara. “Who thinks they can sell this baby?”

“Banzai,” said Verrucci.

“That’s the ticket,” O’Meara said. “Renard?”

“Depends on the price,” Gil answered, thinking: why me today?

“Thirty-seven seventy-five.”

Wholesale. That kicked retail to $70, $75, even $80. Would the Survivor sell at that kind of price? Gil had no idea. He didn’t know why any of their stuff sold at any price.

“What’s the commission?” Gil said.

O’Meara made a face, as though he didn’t like talking about money. “Twelve and a half.”

“For a new line?”

“Cincinnati thinks it’s more than fair. Any objections?”

There were none.

“Then let’s get it done.”

O’Meara packed up his claw hammer and left for the airport. Garrity handed out new catalogues that included the Iwo Jima line, gave them each a Survivor for their sample cases, and wished them luck. The reps filed out, all except Gil.

Garrity blew O’Meara’s hairs off his appointment book.

“Tickets in yet?” Gil said.

“Tickets?”

“Sox.”

Garrity studied the ruined car door, still lying on the conference table. “What am I going to do with this fucking thing?”

“Bridgid said to ask you.”

Garrity looked up. “No tickets this year, boyo.”

“They didn’t come in?”

“They came in, all right. And we sold them off-to Marriott, Gillette, couple others.”

“Sold them?”

“At cost.”

“Why?”

“Orders.”

“Whose orders?”

“Cincinnati. Who else gives orders?”

“But I already promised all mine to clients.” Not entirely true, but he had promised some. “You’re making us look like assholes.”

“Boyo. You got other things to worry about.”

“Like?”

“I’ll let you in on a secret-you came this close.” Garrity held up his hand, thumb and index finger almost touching. “This close. To being out on the street. O’Meara had you on the list with the rest of them when he flew in last night. I talked him out of it. Don’t make me regret it.”

“Thanks, massa.”

“Fuck off.”

They glared at each other. Gil picked up the Survivor lying on the table in front of him, flipped it in his sample case, and walked out. Bridgid was crying at her desk. Right. She had a thing with Figgy. Saving for a down payment, or fertility treatments, or something.

“I got you one month,” Garrity called after him. Gil kept going. Garrity raised his voice. “He had your replacement on the plane with the others. Flew him back this morning. At company expense. Hear what I’m saying to you?”

Gil didn’t answer.

“Make your quota, you son of a bitch.”

Gil rode alone in the elevator. When was the last time he’d made quota? He couldn’t remember. But no one else was making it either. Maybe down in Texas, blade heaven, but not here. The reps saw each other’s numbers every month in The Cutting Edge, the company fact sheet. It never mentioned two facts: the product and the job-they both sucked. Gil slapped at the elevator buttons, as though he were slapping O’Meara’s face, lighting every floor. That got rid of some of what was building inside, made him wonder if he should feel grateful to Garrity. Garrity had saved his job, hell, given it to him in the first place. But that was all because of the old man, and what they’d done to him. He didn’t feel grateful.

Outside the snow was falling harder, hard enough now to accumulate, rounding edges, muffling city sound. Gil brushed off the windshield of the 325i with his bare hand-left hand, not pitching hand, by long habit-got in, drove off. Car time. Was it Figgy who said he got his best ideas on the road? What was Figgy thinking now? Gil knew he should be thinking too, specifically about how to find another job. What were the jobs again?

The amazing thing-like a magic trick-was that he’d stolen home on the very next pitch. No signal from the dugout, no sign from the third-base coach, no forethought at all, not even in his own mind. Just-zoom. Like that. Now he could scarcely believe it.

Someone honked. Gil honked back, checked the time. 10:45. He always made an eleven o’clock call on Everest and Co. after a sales meeting. Everest and Co. was his biggest client: twenty-five outlets, eighty million in sales, excluding the catalogue. “Hit them while you’re still hyped from the meeting,” Garrity had advised long ago.

“I’m hyped,” Gil said aloud. If he was going to make quota, Everest and Co. was where to start. Traffic wasn’t bad and Gil was making good time-he’d grown up driving in snow-so good he decided to swing by the ballpark on his way. The problem was that he’d promised Opening Day to Richie.

Gil stopped in front of the box office, jumped out, left the car running. Only one ticket booth was open. An old man with watery eyes and a runny nose sat in it, staring into space. Gil knocked on the glass.

“Two grandstand seats for the opener,” he said. “Reds if you got ’em.”

The old man grinned savagely. “Reds if I got ’em? Opening Day?”

“Anything in the grandstand, then.”

“Grandstand? I got nuttin’ in the grandstand. Nuttin’ in the bleachers. Nuttin’ in the obstructed views. Nuttin’.” He leaned a little closer. “What’s more, I got nuttin’ in the grandstand till the twenty-first. Of August. And that’s last row.”

“What about the bleachers?”

The old man looked furious. “Opening Day?”

Gil nodded.

“Cripes. What did I just finish tellin’ you? Nuttin’. Can’t know much about baseball think you can just swan in here ’n get seats for Opening Day.”

“I know baseball,” Gil said, maybe louder than he’d intended. The old man yanked down the shade.

Gil turned away. A man in a watch cap was leaning against the brick wall near the GATE B sign.

“Lookin’ for tickets?” he said.

“Opening Day.”

The man came forward. His nose was runny too; a silver drop of phlegm quivered from the tip. “How many?”

“Two.”

He pulled a fistful from his pocket, leafed through them. Snowflakes melted on his fingers. “Got a pair right behind home plate, three rows back.”

“How much?”

“One-fifty.”

Gil thought: about his bank balance, near zero; his plastic, maxed out; his child-support and car payments, due; then realized he probably didn’t even have one-fifty on him. While he was thinking, the man added:

“Each.”

Gil walked away. “Two seventy-five for the pair,” the man called after him. Gil got in his car, but slowly, giving the man time to lower the price again. The man didn’t say another word; he returned to his post near the GATE B sign, wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve.

Gil took out his wallet and counted the money inside. One twenty-three. Problem was he’d promised Richie. He slid down the window. “Take a check?”

“You nuts?”

Traffic thickened, and Gil didn’t arrive at Everest and Co. until 11:25. Took the sample case, the order book, the Iwo Jima catalogue, the Survivor, rode the elevator, said, “Hi, Angie,” to the purchasing VP’s secretary-know the names of the secretaries, that was basic-and handed her his card.

Angie handed it back. “He’s gone.”

“When’ll he be back?”

“For the day.”

“That’s funny. We had an appointment.”

“At eleven.”

Don’t ever fight with a client, Gil told himself. But he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Looked out the window today?”

“I suggest you call to reschedule.”

Gil sat in the 325i, parked outside Everest and Co. He liked sitting in his car, liked the smell, no longer a new smell, but a nice one of leather and wax. He liked the sound system, the phone, the light that came through the moon roof, now covered in snow. He just sat there, running the engine, staying warm, not thinking about where the next car payment was coming from-he already knew what the answer to that had to be-or about O’Meara, or Richie, or Opening Day. After a while a plow came up behind him, and he slipped the Beamer into gear. He didn’t have another call till three-The Cutler’s Corner, downtown. Only a few blocks from Cleats. He was hungry.

Gil had lunch at Cleats: potato skins and a draft. Leon was behind the bar and Sportswrap on the big screen. The commentator was going over Rayburn’s contract: $2.5 million signing bonus, half this year, half next, $5.05 million the first year, $5.45 million the next, $5.85 million the year after that, with an option year of $6.05 million if he reached five hundred at bats in the last year. There were also incentive bonuses, based on winning the MVP or any parts of the Triple Crown, and a separate $1 million fund to provide deferred payments starting in 2007.

Leon shook his head.

“Why not?” Gil said. “He’s going to take them all the way.”

Leon kept shaking his head. “What’s that oh-five million shit, anyway?”

“Fifty grand.”

Leon laughed. “I don’t even make that. Not close. Not close to his piddly little tacked-on oh-five. And I’m working three jobs, if you count that sanitation scam.”

Gil had another draft, then one more. He walked into The Cutler’s Corner at three on the dot. There was no one inside except the owner, smoking a cigarette at the back. He started to put it out, recognized Gil, kept smoking. Just one more thing Gil hated about his job.

The Cutler’s Corner wasn’t a big client, usually good for a two- or three-hundred-dollar order. Gil took out the sample case, showed the owner everything, including the Iwo Jima catalogue. The owner examined the Survivor. “Not a bad handle.” He ordered one.

“What else can I do for you?”

“Nothing else.”

“That’s it?”

“This time.”

“But what about reorders on our other lines? The Clip-its-you’ve always done well with them.”

“Not lately.” The owner waved at the display cases. “Nothing’s moving except the Jap stuff, and not enough of that.”

Gil wrote the order: one Survivor, gross $37.75, commission $4.72.

Four dollars and seventy-two cents. A day’s work. Less what he’d spent at Cleats, on parking, lottery ticket, Sporting News, gas. But you couldn’t think like that, couldn’t think minus, not in his business. You got in the car. You kept plugging.

Gil got in the car. He drove home. Snow was still falling, the roads jammed. It took him an hour.

Home was a studio at the back of the second floor of a peeling three-decker west of the ring road. He had a bed, a floor lamp, a chest of drawers with a photograph of Richie on top. He opened the bottom drawer, felt under the clothing, took out what was left of his inheritance.

Two knives, both from his father’s forge. The first was a Damascus-steel bowie, with a foot-long blade and an ivory handle, probably dating from the forties. The second, not quite as old, was a heavy, soft-steel thrower, almost as big as the bowie, with a double-edged blade and a leather leg sheath. Gil held them under the lamp. He hadn’t looked at them in a long time, had forgotten their beauty, especially the beauty of that Damascus steel: its patterns like waves on a shining sea. A work of art. But it would have to be the bowie. The thrower wasn’t worth much more than a few hundred; barely enough for the tickets.

Gil switched off the lamp and lay on the bed with the knives beside him. He gazed at his view, an alley backed by a brick wall. The light began to fail. He heard the front door open, heard footsteps on the stairs. Lenore. Would she come down the hall, knock on the door? She didn’t. The footsteps kept going, up the next flight, then overhead. Her shoes thumped on the floor above, one, two.

He’d stolen home, just like that. Hard to believe, but he could summon memories: the catcher, lunging at him through the dust raised by his slide, too late; the umpire, bent so close to the ground he brushed his leg making the safe sign; the batter, just standing there, mouth open. The game was over. They carried him off the field on their shoulders. The sun shone down from a clear blue sky. Absolute fact.

Or was that the game where he’d still had to come back and pitch the bottom of the last inning? He wasn’t sure. His mind flashed an image of himself on the mound, of the ball tracing a blurred path toward Boucicaut’s black mitt. He’d been able to put it anywhere he wanted, and he’d had a gun for an arm, especially when it wasn’t sore. But it had been sore almost all the time.

Gil was close to sleep when he heard a noise in the far corner of the room, near the dresser; so close that he almost incorporated it in his dream and did nothing. But he sat up, and saw something moving in the shadows. He switched the floor lamp back on.

A mouse. Scared by the light, or the sound of the switch, it ran toward the dresser, toward the darkness underneath, and safety. Distance fifteen feet, turning cycle about twice that: the thrower was in Gil’s hand. He hadn’t thrown a knife in a long time, but it all came back-the bent-back angle of the wrist, the acceleration, the snapless release. The knife made half a revolution as it flashed across the room and stuck deep in the floor, cutting the mouse in half. The tail end twitched for a moment, then went still.

Gil had a funny thought: there’s nothing wrong with my arm now. He turned off the light.