Chapter One

For the rest of Red Sox Nation. I’d never make it through if I didn’t know you were going through it, too. And especially for my personal support group, including my grandfather, who never saw them win it but never stopped hoping. For that first trip to Fenway, I thank you. 2004 was for you and everyone else up there.

One 

October 16, 2003

At three o’clock p.m., Aubrey Thomas was in a spectacular mood.  She’d managed to duck out of the museum on time to make her flight, and she was giddy with the high anticipation of a good baseball game that night, and the fact that she would be in Boston to enjoy it.  Surrounded by people who felt as she did. She was sick of the Times.  She was sick of the Yankees.  She was sick of all their smug self-entitlement.

            At three-fifteen p.m., as the plane taxied into the air and she leaned back in the seat, ready to embark on her twenty-hour jaunt of triumph in Boston, she smiled and relaxed.  Imagine that, she thought.  A Red Sox fan.  Totally relaxed.  Life was good.  For the first time in her life, she was feeling good about a baseball game instead of sick to her stomach.  And she was going to be in Boston for the celebration.

            Life, she thought, couldn’t really get any better.

 ***

“No,” snapped Gray Delamonte.  “I’m out of here.  I should have been out of here twenty minutes ago.”  He glanced at his watch as the elevator doors swooshed open.  Late.  He was late, late, late.  He was going to miss his flight if he was much later.

            “But, Gray,” said Danny.

            He was holding something out.  Gray purposely avoided contact with whatever document was contained in the folder, stepped out of the elevator.  “No,” he said again.  “I’m only going to be gone twenty hours.  That can wait.  This can all wait, Danny.  Doug can handle things for twenty hours.”

            Danny looked doubtful of this.  Gray decided not to admit he was also a little dubious.  But his mother had said that the kid needed someone to believe in him.  Maybe she was right.  And Gray wanted to be in Boston, with people who understood.  Just this once, he was going to be selfish.  Doug could handle things.  And if Doug couldn’t handle things, then he didn’t know what to do with the kid.

            “Doug will handle this,” he said again, trying to duck out of the casino before anyone could recognize him.

            “Have fun, Mr. Delamonte!”  someone called to him.

            Gray looked up.  They were passing by the sports book, where he’d placed the bet he always placed in March.  Red Sox to win the World Series.  Good odds this year.  He might actually collect this year.  And then he’d placed even more money on them to win the A.L.C.S.  Looking pretty good to collect that, too.  “Get my money ready,” he grinned.

            “Feeling pretty confident?”

            Gray scoffed.  “Pedro will have those pretty boys crying for mercy.”

            “Did you place a bet?”  Danny frowned.

            Against house rules.  Gray had never really paid attention to that particular rule.  “Absolutely not.  Doug will handle things.”

            “Gray -”

            “You have my cell phone number.  And you know what I should hear when you call my cell phone and I pick it up?  I should hear you saying to me, ‘Gray, the hotel’s gone up in flames.’  Because that is the only thing that would justify you calling me tonight, right?”

            “Gray, the casino returns -”

            “Can wait twenty hours, Danny.  Oh, if you want you can call me to congratulate me, too, but I will be smoking this great cigar right here.”  Gray patted his coat, felt the cigar settled comfortably in his inside pocket.  “And celebrating with the rest of Red Sox Nation.  It will be, Daniel, a joyous occasion.  I might even weep.”

            “These will be tears of joy?”  Danny drawled, as they stepped outside into the glaring sunlight.

            Gray, out of habit, pulled out his sunglasses and put them on.  “Yes,” he said, sternly.  “Tears of joy.  Nothing’s going wrong tonight.  Not with the Red Sox.  Not with Doug.  And if something goes wrong with Doug . . . .  It doesn’t matter.  There’s nothing to running this casino, Danny.  You and I know that.  You can run it without me.  I give you carte blanche for the next twenty hours.  When I get back, we’ll deal with the casino returns, I promise.”  The limo came up.  Gray looked at his watch again.  “I really have to go, Danny.”

            “Alright.  Have a good time.  I hope.”

            “I will have a good time.  I’ll check in before the game.”  With that, Gray swung into the limo, slipping off the sunglasses as he did so.  Danny looked glum with his folder.  Well, folders could wait.  Gray Delamonte, eternal pessimist, was whistling.

 ***

She purposely took the T from the airport.  The whole point of coming to Boston was to be with the rest of Red Sox Nation.  And the best part of baseball in Boston was the all-encompassing nature of it.  The people on the T were talking baseball.  The city was abuzz, giddy with the taste of triumph, riding a sense of destiny.  She was so glad she’d come.

            The room was small, certainly not worth the money she’d paid for it, but it was in Kenmore Square.  Walking distance to Fenway.  Already Lansdowne Street was flooded with people staking out seats at the bars.  It was a bit too early for her to start drinking, so she bought the Globe and devoured the baseball news.  Lovely Boston spin.  Oh, she hated New York, she thought on a sigh.

            It began to be dusk.  She dug through her small bag for the vital item of her Yankees Suck shirt.  It was faded and battered from way too many years, but it was also lucky for the Red Sox.  The first time she’d worn it, to her first Red Sox-Yankee game, Manny Ramirez had tapped a game-winning single in the tenth off the invincible Mariano Rivera.  So what if it hadn’t seemed to bring any other special luck since then?  You never knew.  And, with the Red Sox, you took all the luck you could possibly get.

            She finished her outfit with the Red Sox hat, grabbed her leather coat, and headed out.

            The Citgo sign was glowing, making her think of all the gleeful nights she’d spent at Fenway, of all the other nights she’d spent in New York, watching the Citgo sign on television and wishing she was seeing it in person.  The crowd was already rowdy, natural exuberance.  They were randomly applauding each other, as if so thrilled with all of humanity that they had to express their thanks.  Grinning, she went to the Cask ‘n’ Flagon, perched on the corner of Lansdowne Street, right in the shadow of the Green Monster, famous as a meeting place for Red Sox fans.

She wanted to be absolutely surrounded by them.

*** 

He was jetlagged, and to shake himself out of it he stood for a few seconds under an ice cold shower.  And then he started the transformation from Chairman of the Board to Red Sox fan.  The jersey was Nixon’s.  Underappreciated player.  Gray preferred him to the better-known players.  Not that anyone was underappreciated anymore on this particular team.  Gray had been wearing Nixon’s jersey when he had hit the home run to keep them in the A.L.D.S.  That particular game had taken twenty years off his life.  He estimated that, altogether, this particular October had taken so many years off his life that he was due to die next year.  Which was fine by him, if the Red Sox won this year.

            He found the hat, tugged it over his hair, patted inside his suit jacket for the cigar and tucked it into the pocket of the leather coat he pulled on.  Then he left the presidential suite and went downstairs.  He’d done the obligatory looking-over of the hotel.  He was hoping that no one would recognize him without his Chairman of the Board costume.  No such luck.  The employees all smiled at him and told him to have a good time.

            Gray could have had a limo at a snap of his fingers.  Or he could have called a cab.  Or he could have gotten on the T at Arlington.  Instead, he walked, soaking in the atmosphere.  The cigar began to weigh more heavily in his pocket.  He was jinxing things, he thought, wildly.  He really was jinxing things.  He took the cigar and threw it away and felt immediately better.

            It was a long walk.  He probably should have taken the T.  There was too much time to think about all that could go wrong.  Pedro.  Yes.  Everyone thought Pedro was God.  He wasn’t so sure about that one.  But surely Pedro was better than David Wells?  Surely the baseball gods were smiling on them?  Of all the Yankee pitchers to have to face in the last game, David Wells was surely a blessing.  Gray was a Red Sox fan.  He was nervous.  But he couldn’t shake the idea that, on paper, they had this game won.  And that, in all those intangibles that weren’t statistics but that, in baseball at least, could be so much more important, they were simply the better team.  For maybe the first time in a long time, they were really the better team.

            They were the better team.  And he’d gotten rid of the cigar.  What more did the damn baseball gods want?

 

Aubrey was drinking Sam Adams and talking baseball with everyone around her.  So good to talk baseball with Bostonians, people who knew baseball, who breathed it, lived it, year-round.  She could say names like Pedro and Nomar and Manny and Trot and not have to explain which Pedro, Nomar, Manny, Trot.  Were there any others?  She could say they had no running game, and the constant backfiring of the hit-and-runs should be getting through to Grady by now, and the people nodded their heads, and then brought up Johnny Damon, their only running game, and, gosh, did you see him collide with Walker in that Oakland game?  Did you see him send the thumb’s up to the crowd?

            “When you watched him go down, did you think, Well, here we go.  Luck’s held far too long.”  The man next to her wasn’t really asking the question.  He was stating the fact.  Naturally she had thought that.  She was a Red Sox fan.  They had all been thinking that.

            So she didn’t bother to answer that particular question.  “But then you’ve got to think,” she remarked, philosophically, rolling the Sam Adams bottle in her hands.  “Why, why all this luck, if we aren’t meant for it this year?  I mean, look at the way this team’s been winning games.”

            “They’ve been doing it all year,” he pointed out.

            “Right.  I keep writing them off and writing them off.  For the first time since I became a Red Sox fan, I think I’m selling them short.”

            He chuckled.  “When did you become a Red Sox fan?”

            “When I was conceived.”

            “Ah.  You’ve never been happy in your life, then.”

            “Not truly, no,” she agreed.  “I’m a fourth-generation Red Sox fan.  You’re not?” she guessed.

            “No.  But I came to it as a boy.  My stepfather indoctrinated me.”

            “Ah.”  Her gaze flickered up to his cap, faded into gray.  If she didn’t know the font of the Boston Red Sox “B,” she might not have known it was a Red Sox cap.  “And did he give you that hat?”

            “As a matter of fact, it was his.  He’s dead now.  I thought he’d want his cap to be there the day the Red Sox get back into the World Series.”

            She uttered a squeak.  “You’re jinxing things.”

            “Sorry.  I’ve been doing it all night.  It’s my fault if Pedro self-destructs out there.”

            She leaned forward, intent on this question, because she’d been wanting to ask it all night.  “Do you trust Pedro?”

            He snorted.  “Not as far as I can throw him.”

            She held out her hand in approval.  “I’m Aubrey.”

            He smiled.  “Gray,” he said, shaking it.

            “That’s an unusual name.”

            “So is Aubrey.”

            “Fair enough.  Do you live in Boston?”

            He shook his head.  “Flew in for the game.”

            She looked delighted.  “Me, too.”

            “Where do you live?”

            “New York.”

            He choked on the sip of beer he’d been taking, then said, solemnly, “Wow.  I’m sorry.”

            “I know.  It’s hell.”

            “I can only imagine.  Jack,” he called to the bartender, who looked up.  “Bring the lady another beer.  She needs it.  She comes from New York.”

            There were boos through the bar. Aubrey ducked her head, feeling the blush.  “Shh!”

            “Oh, come on.  They’ll be buying you beers all night.”  He winked.

            She smiled.  She took the beer.  She took a sip.  And she suddenly felt awkward.  He was a Red Sox fan.  He was also handsome.  She hadn’t really noticed until he’d winked.  She’d been focused on the impending game, on the baseball buzz, and she’d just discovered that the man next to her had the sort of looks that usually meant she would never have approached him.

            She looked back at him.  He was watching the pre-game analysis, and she wondered if this meant their conversation was over.

            Then Gray said, “What do you think about Bret Boone commentating?  I mean, there were no baseball players available who weren’t related to a Yankee player?”

            She fell easily back into the flow of the conversation.  “What do you think about baseball players commentating in general?”

            “Totally not necessary,” he answered, firmly.

            “I miss Bob Costas.  Where are you from?”

            He blinked at the sudden change in subject.  “You mean originally?  Or where did I fly in from?”

            “Both.”  She sipped her beer.

            “Originally, Atlanta.”

            “And where did you fly in from?”

            “Uh . . . Better you not know.  You’ll laugh at me.”

            “Laugh at you?  For where you live?”

            “I live in Las Vegas.”  He said it with the air of a man admitting he also wore ladies’ lingerie in his free time.

            “Huh.  You don’t look like the type.”

            “What type is that?”

            “Well, you don’t look much like Elvis.”

            “Ha ha.”

            “Why do you live in Las Vegas?”

            “Business,” he said.  “It’s convenient for work.”

            Vaguely, she could hear the national anthem being sung on television.  Distracted, she looked away from him, watching the bald eagle flying over Yankee Stadium.

            “So here we go,” she said.

            “Here we go,” he agreed.

            “I’m going to be sick,” she decided.

*** 

The little pixie next to him was meeting him drink for drink.  Which meant he really ought to stop buying them for her.  Surely it was far too much for her to be drinking.  He’d give good odds that she weighed less than a hundred pounds.  But it was seventh inning stretch time.  Pedro was marching through the Yankees.  The Red Sox had chipped out a lead, against Mike Mussina instead of David Wells, who’d left after the first inning complaining of something.  Gray thought Mussina was the harder pitcher to face, but they were nine outs away from the World Series.  And the petite redhead next to him talked good baseball.

            He lifted his hand to gesture lazily at the bartender for another round, listening as Aubrey said, “Playing with the broken ribs.  That was my favorite Paul O’Neill story.  Playing with broken ribs.  And people really seriously believe that this team isn’t allied with the devil?”

            “You’re right about Paul O’Neill,” he allowed, handing her her beer.

            “Thanks,” she said, taking it from him.

            “But who would you pick now?”

            “Now?”

            “As the most evil member of the Yankees.”

            “Oh.  Hideki Matsui.”

            The answer was so unexpected that he laughed.

            She scowled at him.

            “Hideki Matsui?  That’s your pick for most evil Yankee?”

            “Yeah.  I hate Hideki Matsui.  I don’t think he’s even human.  He’s followed by Soriano.  Hideki Matsui and Soriano.”

            “Soriano’s not a bad choice, but Hideki Matsui is a horrible answer.  He’s not even close to being the most evil Yankee.”

            “Oh, who’s your choice?”

            “Derek Jeter.”

            “Derek Jeter?”

            “Yes.  And like every other female on the face of the earth, even the most self-respecting Red-Sox-loving ones of them, you’re going to tell me I’m mistaken.”

            She was amused.  He could tell.  ”Derek Jeter is just misguided.”

            “Uh-huh,” he drawled.

            “Just really misguided.  Derek Jeter’s soul can be saved.”

            “Yeah, be careful he’s not stealing yours while you’re trying to save his.”

            She leaned closer to him, in the manner of a woman making a confession.  A drunk woman making a confession.  He had to cut her off.  “I have a weakness for Derek Jeter, I do confess.  Also for Mike Mussina.  Not that I want him to win this game.  But I do have a weakness for him.”

            “From Baltimore days?”  he guessed.

            She nodded, straightening and glancing back up at the screen.  Pedro was still at work.  “I watched that game, you know.  That Derek Jeter -”

            “‘Home run,’” he finished.

            “Yes.  Screaming at the television.”

            “Me, too.”  He let a moment of silence pass.  Pedro threw a blistering fastball for a strike.  The bar could smell the win coming.  They were cheering raucously at every strike.  “I also have a weakness for Mike Mussina,” he confessed.  “I was at that Fenway Game -”

            “Where he made it two outs into the ninth with a perfect game?”  she realized.

            He nodded.

            “Was it awesome?  I was watching it at home.  It was so awesome.”

            “I felt bad for him when Carl Everett got the hit.  I knew he was a Yankee, I knew he was trying to pitch a perfect game at Fenway Park, but I wanted it for him.  Mike Mussina is too good a pitcher to go his whole career without a World Series ring.”

            “Right,” she agreed.  “It isn’t his fault the only team he can play for to get one is evil.”

            Shouts went up in the bar.  Pedro had finished the inning.  He walked off the field with his typical stare-down to home plate.  His come-and-get-me look.

            Aubrey took a deep breath.  “We bring in the bullpen.  Anyone in the bullpen.  They only have to get six outs.”

            “And you have Wakefield and Lowe in reserve.”

            “Right.  Six outs.”  She turned to him, smiling broadly.  “We could actually win this thing.”

            “We could.”

            “Do you think they sell champagne here?  Don’t you think we should have champagne?”

            “I have some at my hotel room.”  He hadn’t meant that to come out like a sleazy invitation.

            She didn’t take it that way.  “Good,” she said.  “But we can’t talk about celebrating.”

            “No, not yet.”

            “We’ll jinx it.”

            “Yes.”

            “We need a few more runs before I’ll feel safe.”

            “Ten or twelve more runs.”

            Behind them, a woman poured a pitcher of beer over her companion’s head, laughing uproariously.

            Aubrey frowned.  “She’s getting ahead of herself here.”

            “Want me to tell her to sit down and shut up?”

            Aubrey shook her head.  “I don’t want to miss the Red Sox win because you’ve instigated some sort of bar fight.”

            “Wouldn’t get that far.  The police are out in force.  Boston’s going to have a riot on its hands if they can pull this off.”

            “I know.”  She smiled a little.  “That’s why I wanted to be here.”

            “Affection for riots?”

            “No.  Wanted to be with people who were feeling exactly what I was feeling.  People who wouldn’t laugh at how seriously I was taking this.”

            “It’s baseball,” said Gray.  “You can’t take it seriously enough.”

            She smiled again, straight at him this time.  “Right,” she said.  “Six outs.  Timlin or Embree?”

            He decided she was the sexiest woman he had ever encountered in his life.  Not his typical definition of a knock-out, but absolutely perfect nonetheless.  He opened his mouth to answer, but she said, abruptly, “Pedro,” looking away from him, frowning at the television screen.

            She was right about that.  It was indeed Pedro making his way out to the mound.  There were general groans around the bar.

            “What the hell is he doing?”  she asked.  “Is he trying to lose?  Is that what he’s doing?”

            “He’s writing a story instead of managing a game,” said Gray, in disgust.  “Idiot.”  Red Sox fans had no patience for the Red Sox manager.  The general opinion about Red Sox fans was that they wouldn’t like any manager, because they all thought they ought to be the manager.  But, hey, if you wanted to manage in Boston, you had to deal with the world’s most well-informed fans.  They wanted to manage because, in Gray’s opinion, any one of them could.

            “Do you know what it is?  This team wins in spite of Grady Little.”

            “That’s -”  There was a hit.  The words strangled in Gray’s throat.  He stared open-mouthed at the television.

            Aubrey bit back on what may have been a full-fledged scream.  And, without knowing it, she also grabbed Gray’s hand, holding it so tightly that he was momentarily distracted from the unbelievable events of the game by the fear that she might break a few of his bones.  Who knew she’d turn out to have such a grip?

            “He’ll take him out, he’ll take him out.”  She was reciting it like a mantra.

            The bar was shouting it at the screen.

            Grady Little stood up, and there was a general round of relieved applause.

            Aubrey lessened her grip on his hand.  “He’s taking him out, he’s taking him out.  We have the best bullpen in baseball, right, and we - I mean, six outs - why isn’t he taking him out?”  Because, on the mound, Grady Little had walked back to the dugout, leaving Pedro Martinez in place.

            Gray swore.  He put his head briefly in his free hand and rubbed at his temple.  The jet lag was beginning to catch up with him.  Also the stress of being a Red Sox fan.  He was quitting them cold turkey after this.  He was just doing it.

            The bar was in an uproar.  The police, Gray thought, had better be worrying about a Red Sox loss and not a Red Sox victory at this point.

            He wasn’t watching the game but he felt the instant the next bat connected solidly with ball.  Aubrey flinched.  She had his hand in between both of hers now, clasping it tightly.

            Another hit.  The bar’s outrage was giving way to shock.  Silence was falling.  No one was touching a drink.  Even the bartender was standing in front of the television, head tilted back, staring at it slack-jawed.

            Gray lifted his head in time to see another hit, and felt it like a physical blow.  He put his head back down.  He had never been one to watch train wrecks.

            “Oh, God,” whispered Aubrey.  “Take him out.  Please take him out.”  She was actually talking to God, offering up the prayer, closing her eyes.  Please, please, take him out.  Now.  Please.

            Hit.  Then, finally, an out.

            But it didn’t matter.  The commercial they played in the inning break sounded in the deafening silence of the bar.

            “Tie game,” breathed Aubrey.  “Oh, God, tie game.  It’s over.”

            Behind them, the girl who had been gleefully wasting beer burst into tears.