Tourist Season

"It wasn't all Skip's fault," Je

"Save your Sierra Club lecture for the first-graders, okay?"

"Skip is not a bad man, he has a vision of right and wrong. He's a principled person who took things too far, and maybe he paid for his mistakes. But he deserves credit for his courage, and for all his misery he deserves compassion, too."

"What he deserved," Keyes said, "was twenty-five-to-life at Raiford." Ten i

"I took the bus," Je

"No, I can't."

"But I really don't want to be alone, Brian. I just want to lie in a hot bath and think su

In the tub Je

He gave her ten bucks for a cab.

She looked at the money, then at Brian. Her little-girl-lost look, a pale version at that.

"If he's dead," she said softly, "what'll we do?"

"I'll varnish the coffin," Keyes said, "you spray for chinch bugs."

The a

Midway through the first quarter the rains came; stinging needles that sent a groan through the crowd and brought out a sea of umbrellas.

Brian Keyes huddled sullenly in the rain and wished he'd stayed home. He had decided to attend the game only because he couldn't reach Kara Ly

On the field Nebraska was humiliating Notre Dame; no real surprise, since the no-neck Cornhuskers outweighed their opponents by an average of thirty-two pounds apiece. Many of the fans, already sopped and now bored, wondered whose brilliant idea the four-point spread was. By half-time the score was 21-3.

The second-string ru

Which now seemed unlikely. During the first half of the Orange Bowl game, David Lee attempted to run with the football three times. The first effort resulted in a five-yard loss, the second a fumble. The third time he actually gained twelve yards and a first down. Unfortunately the only two pro football scouts in the stadium missed David Lee's big run because they spent the entire second quarter stuck in line at the men's room, fighting over the urinals with some Klansmen from Perrine.

David Lee's fortunes changed at halftime. As the two teams filed off the field and entered the tu

"Do you know who I am?"

"No, sir," David Lee replied politely, as even mediocre Notre Dame athletes were taught to do.

"I'm Viceroy Wilson." And Wilson it was, not at all dead.

"Naw!" Lee gri

The young man had obviously not been reading anything but the sports pages in Miami.

"Having a rough time tonight?" Wilson asked.

"You got that right," David Lee said. "Those honky farmboys are built like garbage trucks."

"Field looks pretty slippery, too. Hard to make your cuts."

"Damn right. Hey, what about my momma and daddy?"

"Oh, I lied about that. Lemme see your helmet, bro."

Lee handed it to him. "Fits you pretty good."

"Yeah," Viceroy Wilson said, squeezing it down over his ears. "Lemme buy it from you."

"Sheeiiit!" David Lee laughed. "You really sumthin."

"I'm serious, man." Viceroy Wilson pulled out a wad of cash. "A thousand bucks," he said, "For the whole uniform, 'cept for the cleats. I got my own fuckin' cleats."

The money was Skip Wiley's idea; Viceroy was just as amenable to punching the young man's lights out and stripping him clean.

David Lee fondled the crisp new bills and peered at the visage inside the gold Notre Dame helmet. He wondered if the Carrera sunglasses were some kind of gag.

"Is it a deal or not?" Wilson asked.

"Look, the coach is go

"This isafter the game. Believe me, son, the game is over." Viceroy Wilson nonchalantly handed the college halfback another one thousand dollars.

"Two grand for a football uniform!"

"That's right, bro."

"You want the jock strap, too?"

"Fuck no!"

When he finally made it back to the Notre Dame locker room, David Lee stood naked except for his spikes and athletic supporter. After apologizing for interrupting the team prayer, he soberly told the coach he had been robbed and molested by a gang of crazed Mariel refugees, and asked if he could sit out the rest of the game.

The Orange Bowl Football Classic is as famous for its prodigal halftime production as for its superior brand of collegiate football. The halftime show is unfailingly more extravagant and fanciful than the Orange Bowl parade of the previous evening because the Halftime Celebration Committee adopts its own theme, hires its own professional director, recruits its own fresh-faced talent, and performs for its own television crew. The effect is that of a wearisome Vegas floor show played out across ten acres of Prescription Athletic Turf by four hundred professional "young people" who all look like they just got scholarships at Brigham Young. In recent years the TV people realized that lip-synching by the New Christy Minstrels and clog-dancing by giant stuffed mice in tuxedos were not enough to prevent millions of football viewers from going to the toilet and missing all the important car commercials, so the halftime producers introduced fireworks and even lasers into the Orange Bowl show. This proved to be a big hit and new-car sales went up accordingly. Each year more and more spectacular effects were worked into the script, and themes were modernized with the 18-to-34-year-old consumer in mind (though a few minor Disney characters were tossed in for the children). In the minds of the Orange Bowl organizers, the ideal halftime production was conceptually "hip," visually thrilling, morally inoffensive, and unremittingly middle-class.