My Ex-Fiancé's Memory Game novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: No Case in It

"Yes," I said. "I'd like that."

He looked up from the concrete.

"Yeah?"

"You sound surprised."

"I had a whole speech in case you said no," he said. "It was pretty good. Now I'll never get to use it."

He took me to a Phillies game.

It was the third Saturday in September, the last homestand of the year, and it rained for an hour and forty minutes.

We sat under the overhang in the upper deck with three thousand other wet people and a tarp on the field.

When the game started again, the Phillies gave up seven runs in the fourth inning.

"This is the worst date I've ever been on," I said.

"Wait till the cheesesteaks."

He'd bought me a red Phillies T-shirt in the concourse because mine was soaked through. It came to my knees.

The cheesesteak argument started in the sixth inning.

"Provolone," I said.

Sam put his hand on his chest.

"You grew up in this city."

"In Chestnut Hill."

"That explains it. Whiz. Wit. That's the sandwich."

"That's a cheese product. It comes out of a pump."

"So does beer," Sam said. "You going to tell me beer's not real?"

The man in front of us turned around and said, "She's right, pal. Provolone." His wife said, "Whiz," and they started fighting about it instead.

During the seventh-inning stretch, Sam asked about my test.

"The word list. The fifteen words. Do it on me."

"Here?"

"I want to know what you do all day."

So I read him fifteen words, slowly, while the organ played.

Drum. Curtain. Bell. Coffee. School. Parent. Moon. Garden. Hat. Farmer. Nose. Turkey. Color. House. River.

He closed his eyes and said them back.

He got eleven.

"Is that good?"

"That's very good for a man who's been rained on."

"What's perfect?"

"Fifteen."

"Who gets fifteen?"

"People who've studied the list," I said. "Or people who are really paying attention."

He opened his eyes and looked at me for a long moment.

"I'll work on it," he said.

The Phillies lost eleven to two.

We stayed for the whole thing anyway.

He drove me home to Fitler Square a little after eleven.

The street was quiet. The old woman across the way had her porch light on and her curtain moved once.

Sam walked me up to my door, the way he had the night of the bridge.

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