A Face in the Crowd

from his gut even now. “You controlling son of a bitch!” he shouted, and dropped his own adult beverage, which he’d just been bringing to his lips. The can fell into the tray balanced on his lap and knocked it to the floor between his feet, where the chicken, instant mashed potatoes, and Birds Eye string beans (also of a color not found in the natural world) lay on the carpet in a foaming puddle of beer.
    Evers didn’t notice, only stared at his new television, which was so state-of-the-art that he sometimes felt he could simply hoick up a leg, duck his head to keep from bumping the frame, and step right into the picture. It was Wheeler, all right: same gold-rimmed glasses, same jutting jaw and weirdly plump lips, same head of flamboyant snow-white hair that made him look like a soap opera star—the mature lead who plays either a saintly doctor or a tycoon cuckolded by his sleazy trophy wife. There was no mistaking the oversize flag pin in his lapel either. He’d always worn that damned thing like a jackleg congressman. Ellie once joked that Lennie (when it was just them, they always called him that) probably tucked it under his pillow before he went to sleep.
    Then the denial rushed in, swarming over his initial shock the way white blood cells swarm into a fresh cut. Evers closed his eyes, counted to five, then popped them wide, sure he’d see someone who just looked like Wheeler, or—perhaps worse—no one at all.
    The shot had changed. Instead of a new batter stepping in, the camera focused on the Mariners’ left fielder, who was doing a peculiar little dance.
    “Never seen that one before,” one of the Rays’ announcers said. “What the heck is Wells up to, Dewayne?”
    “Li’l crunk move, I ’spec,” Dewayne Staats vamped, and they both chuckled.
    Enough with the sparkling repartee, Evers thought. He shuffled his feet and managed to step on his beer-soaked chicken breast. Go back to the damn home plate shot .
    As if the producer in his gadget-loaded broadcast truck had heard him, the shot switched back, but only for a second. Luke Scott hit a bullet to the Mariners’ second baseman, and in the wink of an eye, the Trop was gone and Evers was left with the Aflac duck, who was plugging holes in a rowboat even as it plugged insurance.
    Evers got halfway up before his knees gave way and he collapsed back into his chair. The cushion made a tired wooshing sound. He took a deep breath, let it out, and felt a little stronger. This time he made it to his feet and trundled into the kitchen. He got the carpet cleaner from under the sink and read the instructions. Ellie wouldn’t have needed to read them. Ellie would have simply made some half-irritated, half-amused comment (“You can dress him up, but you can’t take him out” was a favorite) and gone to work making the mess disappear.
    “That was not Lennie Wheeler,” he told the empty living room as he came back. “No way it was.”
    The duck was gone, replaced by a man and his wife smooching on a patio. Soon they would go upstairs and make Viagra-aided love, because this was the age of knowing how to get things done. Evers, who also knew how to get things done (he’d read the instructions on the can, after all), fell on his knees, returned his sopping dinner to the tray in a series of plops, then sprayed a small cloud of Resolve on the remaining crud, knowing there’d probably be a stain anyway.
    “Lennie Wheeler is as dead as Jacob Marley. I went to his funeral.”
    Indeed he had, and although his face had remained appropriately grave and regretful throughout, he’d enjoyed it. Laughter might be the best medicine, but Dean Evers believed outliving your enemies was the best revenge.
    Evers and Wheeler had met in business school, and had started Speedy Truck Rental on a shoestring after Wheeler had found what he called “a gaping hole the size of the Sumner Tunnel” in the New England market. In those early days Evers hadn’t minded Wheeler’s overbearing manner, perfectly summed up by a plaque on the man’s office wall: WHEN I WANT MY OPINION, I’LL ASK YOU FOR IT. In those days, before Evers had begun to find his own way, he’d needed that kind of attitude. Wheeler, he sometimes thought, had been the steel in his spine. But young men grow up and develop their own ideas.
    After twenty years Speedy had become the biggest independent truck rental outfit in New England, one of the few untainted by either organized crime or IRS