The Vicar's Widow

He knew right then it was trouble.

Parker eased himself out of his Hummer and tried to smile. “Evening, Mrs. Frankel.”

“Don’t evening me!” she shrieked and came at him with the bat raised, blubbering something about how no one was paying her one hundred million dollars to hit a baseball, but she could damn sure hit a head as swollen as his.

Parker gently but firmly took the bat from her, at which point Mrs. Frankel dissolved into huge crocodile tears and sobbed how much she loved the Mets and just couldn’t stand to see what was happening to them.

“Neither can I, Mrs. Frankel,” he sighed, and pointed her in the direction of her house. As she teetered down the drive, he called out, “You’re sure you’ll be all right, Mrs. Frankel?”

“Don’t talk to me!” she screeched then paused and turned partially around to look at him, “May I have my bat? I got that in 1972.”

Parker winced and eased the bat around behind his back. “I don’t think so, Mrs. Frankel. Think I better hold on to it until you’re feeling better.”

That prompted her to make a derogatory remark that he heard quite clearly, but she continued to waddle down the drive, muttering to herself.

And still, that wasn’t the worst of it.

This morning, he was awakened by his radio alarm just like he was every morning, and surprise, surprise; it was Kelly O’Shay of Sports Day with Kelly O’Shay startling him from a fitful sleep. Just like she did every freakin’ morning.

“Wait, wait, wait, Guido,” she was saying to her sidekick, who was, ironically, actually named Guido, “Are you trying to say the coach didn’t signal him?”

“No, no, he signaled him. The Priceman either didn’t see it or didn’t read it right—but in either case, it’s inexcusable for a topflight professional ball player.”

Parker bolted upright, furious. Like some punk named Guido could possibly understand the split-second decision-making skills baseball required.

“You’re right, it’s inexcusable,” Kelly cheerfully agreed in that drop-dead sexy voice of hers, and someone played a tape of people booing loudly. “You expect base-running errors like that in Little League, but not the majors. The Mets can’t afford to pay some bozo from Texas that kind of scratch and then let him get away with those sorts of errors, right? I’ll tell you straight up, Guido—losing that game on the error last night was compounded by the fact that Price obviously can’t hit, has no glove, and is just wasting an otherwise perfectly good uniform.”

“I agree,” Guido said, and the sound of a loud cheering section filled the room for a moment.

“I have a suggestion for the Mets, however,” Kelly chirped, like she was about to impart a decorating tip, which frankly, to Parker’s way of thinking, she ought to be doing.

“Oh yeah?” Guido asked, already laughing. “What’s that?”

“Get some giant cue cards that say something like, ‘Hey, Parker, run this way and run now!”

Guido howled.

Parker groaned, sank back into the pillows, and threw an arm over his eyes.

She did this every morning, using that sexy voice that she once used to lull him to sleep with the sports scores every night. But then they moved her to mornings with her own radio talk show, and dammit, he was convinced that if she’d just stop, he’s probably play like he used to. That woman had jinxed him. He was firmly convinced that his slump was her fault. Her constant ridicule was killing him, because every day she rubbed it in, the worse his slump got.

“Hey, let’s go to the phones and see what New York has to say about the worst Mets ball player in the last hundred years!” she cried like a cheerleader with pom-poms. “Okay, we’ve got Paul from Jersey. Hello, Paul! You’re on the air at Sports Day with Kelly O’Shay. What’s up?”

“Yo, Kelly, I first want to say that I love your show,” a guy with a thick Jersey accent said.

“Thanks!”

“And second, I saw that base-running error in the seventh last night, and I gotta say, that was the sorriest excuse for baseball I have ever seen in my fifty-two years of following the Mets,” Paul shouted over the cheering section the show was playing behind him.

“Oh yeah, it was bad,” Kelly readily agreed.

“I mean, he looked like a damn freak. He can’t even run, you know what I’m saying? Dude, I could run faster than that, and I’m pushing three bills!”

“Paul, I hear exactly what you’re saying,” Kelly said.

“That piece of bleep ain’t worth no ten million!”

“No, he’s not worth ten million, so it’s like a double insult that the Mets paid him one hundred and ten million,” Kelly gleefully corrected him.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what I meant. One hundred ten million. It’s bleep obscene.”

“But, Paul . . . I know Parker Price is slow as Christmas, but frankly, I thought that was the most artistic steal I’ve ever seen.”

Parker uncovered his eyes and looked at the radio.