The Last Inning

Arthur sat at the corner table of Maria's Diner, pushing the remnants of a spinach omelet around his plate. Sixty-two years old and still choking down vegetables because Martha had always said they'd keep him alive longer. She'd been dead eight months tomorrow. The irony wasn't lost on him.

The old fedora hung on the rack by the door — his father's hat, worn thin at the brim from decades of hopeful gestures toward women who never quite looked twice. Arthur had inherited it along with the bad posture and the tendency to fall for women who'd eventually leave him for men who didn't quote poetry at breakfast.

"You gonna finish that?" A woman slid into the booth across from him. Maybe forty. An orange scarf wrapped twice around her neck, bright against the gray February afternoon. She had the kind of eyes that had seen things she wasn't ready to talk about.

"Help yourself," Arthur said. "My wife's watching from somewhere. She'd want you to have it."

"Wife?"

"Dead. Cancer. She liked to see people eat."

The woman — she said her name was Elena — took the fork. They talked for two hours about nothing and everything. She was divorcing a man who'd never learned her middle name. He was learning to live in an apartment that felt too large for one person's silence.

"You ever play?" Elena pointed at the television above the counter. A baseball game, spring training, meaningless and perfect.

"Martha and I met at a game," Arthur said. "Fifth inning. She spilled mustard on my shirt. I told her I'd been wanting to ruin that tie anyway. We were married thirty-nine years."

Elena reached across the table and squeezed his hand. "You're going to survive this, Arthur."

"I know," he said. "Some days, that's the tragedy of it."

When she left, she took the hat from the rack and tried it on. "This suits you better than you think," she said, placing it on his head. Then she walked out into the cold, orange scarf trailing behind her like a flame.

Arthur sat for a long time. The spinach on his plate was cold. The baseball game continued, inning after endless inning. And for the first time since the funeral, he didn't feel entirely alone in the watching.