“Jim is here. I feel it.” My contribution to Christine Lee Zilka’s literary relay

Christine Lee Zilka, who gives the Internet a good name after helping my wife and me through a tough time without ever having met us, invited a bunch of writers to a literary blog relay. I couldn’t say no. The rules: one writer publishes a 250-word post on his or her web page and tags the next writer in the line-up. Each piece begins using the last line from the previous post linked to a central theme: “A Stranger Comes to Town.”

Post 1: Man and ghost stared at each other. (Wah-Ming Chang)
Post 2: The river, he noted, had darkened. (Jamey Hatley)
Post 3: I didn’t think you’d come. (Stephanie Denise Brown)
Post 4: Jim is here. I feel it. (Mine, below)

“Jim is here. I feel it would be good to go over the one ground rule before we bring him in,” one owner said to two fellow-owners. They stared through the skybox window at the morning shadows, down at two black crewman in khakis who raked the dirt behind second base. “The rule: No one agrees to anything he says. Serious. If he so much as says great day for a ballgame, you stare at him like he’s full of crap.”

The owner stepped back out. Ice cubes clinked in a pitcher. Outside, behind home plate, sprinklers marked the seconds with a thik-thik-thik.

The door opened.

“Ellison Jim, SuperFan Contest Winner,” the owner said through a half smile, “welcome to New York. These are my colleagues.”

They all shook hands, and the four sat down at an diamond-shaped table. Wearing torn jeans and—challenging his hosts’ very hospitality—a Red Sox windbreaker, Jim unfolded a doodle. He said it simply:

“My son and I had this idea, right? Instead of having $500 luxury seats behind home plate stay empty all game, what if you guys let fans show up half an hour before the first pitch and bid what they want to pay?”

The others stayed duly quiet. One finally sucked in through his teeth and said, “You want us to bid down our best seats so that a wholly-drunk, half-employed HVAC repairman can get his logo-painted gut on ESPN?”

Ellison Jim didn’t as much as blink.

“It’s this or nothing, am I right?” he said. “And while raking in another mil’, you’d get to be working class heroes to me and my kid.”

Next up is Heather McDonald.

The entire relay team in order of appearance:

1. Wah-Ming Chang http://wmcisnowhere.wordpress.com/
2. Jamey Hatley http://jameyhatley.wordpress.com/
3. Stephanie Brown http://scififanatic.livejournal.com/
4. Andrew Whitacre http://fungibleconvictions.com/
5. Heather McDonald http://heathersalphabet.wordpress.com/
6. Christine Lee Zilka http://czilka.wordpress.com/
7. Jackson Bliss http://bluemosaicme.blogspot.com/
8. Jennifer Derilo (to be posted on http://czilka.wordpress.com/)
9. Alexander Chee http://koreanish.com/
10. Nova Ren Suma http://novaren.wordpress.com/

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 and is filed under lit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.