“Following their line of vision, he found the distraction. The damn tennis team, running the perimeter of the football field in some half-assed formation, following their fearless leader. They weren’t looking at the field, weren’t yelling or causing a scene. Just concentrating on keeping up with Chris.Having been a teenage boy himself, the draw was obvious. Teenage girls. Short shorts. No brainer. At thirty-four, he was past that.Except his eyes didn’t seem to get the “I’m Too Old For This” memo. They were tracking Chris like a hawk tracks a field mouse.”

“Try to keep up with me,” he said very slowly, like I was a candidate for the short bus. “De-mon. Demon. Me demon, you teenage girl.”

“I took off my sweatshirt and dropped it on the grass and set off around the track. As soon as I started running, the world changed. The bodies spread out across the green of the football field were parts of a scene remembered, not one real at this moment. The secret of effort is to keep on, I told myself. Not for the world would I have stopped then, and yet nothing- not even if I had been turned handsome as a reward for finishing- could have made up for the curious pain of the effort.”

“He kissed me as if we had all the time in the world, as if it weren’t cold outside, as if winter weren’t coming, or the dawn, or any of the dangers that waited for us outside this field. I kissed him back as if he were right, as if there were only the two of us, as if the only worry we had were my curfew.”

“Coach Smith poked his head into the dugout. “If you ladies are done with the warm and fuzzies, I’d like you to get your asses on the field with your team.”

“Not much of what he said was original. What made him unique was the factthat he had no sense of detachment at all. He was like the fanatical football fan whoruns onto the field and tackles a player. He saw life as the Big Game, and the wholeof mankind was divided into two teams -- Sala's Boys, and The Others. The stakeswere fantastic and every play was vital -- and although he watched with a nearlyobsessive interest, he was very much the fan, shouting unheard advice in a crowd ofunheard advisors and knowing all the while that nobody was paying any attention tohim because he was not running the team and never would be. And like all fans hewas frustrated by the knowledge that the best he could do, even in a pinch, would beto run onto the field and cause some kind of illegal trouble, then be hauled off byguards while the crowd laughed.”