That’s where the story ends, Mr King – the part of it I know, at least. As far as the Titans go, you could look it up, as ol’ Casey used to say: all those games canceled out, and all the double-headers we played to make them up. How we ended up with old Hubie Rattner squatting behind the plate after all, and how he batted .185 – well below what they now call the Mendoza Line. How Danny Dusen was diagnosed with something called ‘an intercranial bleed’ and had to sit out the rest of the season. How he tried to come back in 1958 – that was sad. Five outings. In three of them he couldn’t get the ball over the plate. In the other two … do you remember the last Red Sox–Yankees playoff game in 2004? How Kevin Brown started for the Yankees, and the Sox scored six goddam runs off him in the first two innings? That’s how Danny Doo pitched in ’58 when he actually managed to get the ball over the dish. He had nothing. And still, after all that, we managed to finish ahead of the Senators and the Athletics. Only Jersey Joe DiPunno had a heart attack during the World Series that year. Might have been the same day the Russians put the Sputnik up. They took him out of County Stadium on a stretcher. He lived another five years, but he was a shadow of his former self and of course he never managed again.

He said the kid sucked luck, and he was more right than he knew. Mr King, that kid was a black hole for luck.

For himself, as well. I’m sure you know how his story ended – how he was taken to Essex County Jail and held there for extradition. How he swallowed a bar of soap and choked to death on it. I can’t think of a worse way to go. That was a nightmare season, no doubt, and still, telling you about it brought back some good memories. Mostly, I think, of how Old Swampy would flush orange when all those fans raised their signs: ROAD CLOSED BY ORDER OF BLOCKADE BILLY. Yep, I bet the fellow who thought those up made a goddam mint. But you know, the people who bought them got fair value. When they stood up with them held over their heads, they were part of something bigger than themselves. That can be a bad thing – just think of all the people who turned out to see Hitler at his rallies – but this was a good thing. Baseball is a good thing. Always was, always will be.

Bloh-KADE, bloh-KADE, bloh-KADE.

Still gives me a chill to think of it. Still echoes in my head. That kid was the real thing, crazy or not, luck-sucker or not.

Mr King, I think I’m all talked out. Do you have enough? Good. I’m glad. You come back anytime you want, but not on Wednesday afternoon; that’s when they have their goddam Virtual Bowling, and you can’t hear yourself think. Come on Saturday, why don’t you? There’s a bunch of us always watches the Game of the Week. We’re allowed a couple of beers, and we root like mad bastards. It ain’t like the old days, but it ain’t bad.

For Flip Thompson,

friend and high school catcher

Some stand-in for me in one of the early novels – I think it was Ben Mears in ’Salem’s Lot – says it’s a bad idea to talk about a story you’re planning to write. ‘It’s like pissing it out on the ground,’ is how he puts it. Sometimes, though, especially if I’m feeling enthusiastic, I find it hard to take my own advice. That was the case with ‘Mister Yummy.’

When I sketched out the rough idea of it to a friend, he listened carefully and then shook his head. ‘I don’t think you’ve got anything new to say about AIDS, Steve.’ He paused and added, ‘Especially as a straight man.’

No. And no. And especially: no.

I hate the assumption that you can’t write about something because you haven’t experienced it, and not just because it assumes a limit on the human imagination, which is basically limitless. It also suggests that some leaps of identification are impossible. I refuse to accept that, because it leads to the conclusion that real change is beyond us, and so is empathy. The idea is false on the evidence. Like shit, change happens. If the British and Irish can make peace, you gotta believe there’s a chance that someday the Jews and Palestinians will work things out. Change only occurs as a result of hard work, I think we’d all agree on that, but hard work isn’t enough. It also requires a strenuous leap of the imagination: what is it really like to be in the other guy or gal’s shoes?

And hey, I never wanted to write a story about AIDS or being gay, anyhow – those things were only the framing device. What I wanted to write about was the brute power of the human sex drive. That power, it seems to me, holds sway over those of every orientation, especially when young. At some point – on the right or wrong night, in a good place or a bad one – desire rises up and will not be denied. Caution is swept away. Cogent thought ceases. Risk no longer matters.

That’s what I wanted to write about.

Mister Yummy

I

Dave Calhoun was helping Olga Glukhov construct the Eiffel Tower. They had been at it for six mornings now, six early mornings, in the common room of the Lakeview Assisted Living Center. They were hardly alone in there; old people rise early. The giant flatscreen on the far side started blatting the usual rabble-rousing junk from Fox News at five thirty, and a number of residents were watching it with their mouths agape.

‘Ah,’ Olga said. ‘Here’s one I’ve been looking for.’ She tapped a piece of girder into place halfway down Gustave Eiffel’s masterpiece, created – according to the back of the box – from junk metal.

Dave heard the tap of a cane approaching from behind him, and greeted the newcomer without turning his head. ‘Good morning, Ollie. You’re up early.’ As a young man, Dave wouldn’t have believed you could ID someone simply by the sound of his cane, but as a young man he had never dreamed he would finish his time on earth in a place where so many people used them.

‘Good morning right back at you,’ Ollie Franklin said. ‘And to you, Olga.’

She looked up briefly, then back down at the puzzle – a thousand pieces, according to the box, and most now where they belonged. ‘These girders are a bugger. I see them floating in front of me every time I close my eyes. I believe I’ll go for a smoke and wake up my lungs.’

Smoking was supposedly verboten in Lakeview, but Olga and a few other diehards were allowed to slip through the kitchen to the loading dock, where there was a butt can. She rose, tottered, cursed in either Russian or Polish, caught her balance, and shuffled away. Then she stopped and looked back at Dave, eyebrows drawn together. ‘Leave some for me, Bob. Do you promise?’

He raised his hand, palm out. ‘So help me God.’

Satisfied, she shuffled on, digging in the pocket of her shapeless day dress for her butts and her Bic.

Ollie raised his own eyebrows. ‘Since when are you Bob?’

‘He was her husband. You remember. Came here with her, died two years ago.’

‘Ah. Right. And now she’s losing it. That’s too bad.’

Dave shrugged. ‘She’ll be ninety in the fall, if she makes it. She’s entitled to a few slipped cogs. And look at this.’ He gestured at the puzzle, which filled an entire card table. ‘She did most of it herself. I’m just her assistant.’

Ollie, who had been a graphic designer in what he called his real life, looked at the nearly completed puzzle gloomily. ‘La Tour Eiffel. Did you know there was an artists’ protest when it was under construction?’

‘No, but I’m not surprised. The French.’

‘The novelist Léon Bloy called it a truly tragic streetlamp.’

Calhoun looked at the puzzle, saw what Bloy had meant, and laughed. It did look like a streetlamp. Sort of.

‘Some other artist or writer – I can’t remember who – claimed that the best view of Paris was from the Eiffel Tower, because it was the only view of Paris without the Eiffel Tower in it.’ Ollie bent closer, one hand gripping his cane, the other pressed against the small of his back, as if to hold it together. His eyes moved from the puzzle to the scatter of remaining pieces, perhaps a hundred in all, then back to the puzzle. ‘Houston, you may have a problem here.’