Alana's book club friends have suggested that nocturnal pole-dancing—under the shield of a Dolly Parton wig—might be a faster way to fill the cookie jar. Meanwhile, waiting on tables at The Chadwick Grille is still Plan A for hanging onto the house, a 1786 saltbox with a historic plaque.

Working all those split shifts has flattened Alana's feet. But it's also stretched her peripheral vision. So when she emerges—on this her night off—from the dark of the Fenway concession arcade, third base side just back of the visitor's dugout, she finds she can look straight out at the players doing pregame sprints and still size up the guy two seats in from the aisle. She observes he's an overeater who's in from the sticks and a Red Sox fan—like many of the thousands milling and mooching, curled all the way from the Monster in left around to the Dunkin' Donuts sign high above the right field grandstand. The way he's wolfing the sausage and pepper sub tells her it's not going to be his last of the evening, and dustings of pulverized peanut shell already adorn his navy blue shorts.

Within moments she learns he's from the hills of Worcester, because she hears him say "Wister" in between chomps.

These are no ordinary seats Alana has. They're Yankee game seats, a pair of them, deep down in the field boxes. The kind Bruno used to get when he pitched for the Triple A PawSox and subbed now and then for injured Red Sox starters.

Unaffordable and unavailable, the seats come compliments of the handlers who are still betting on Alana's only daughter as maybe, just maybe, becoming the Twenty First Century's Twiggy: saintly skinny as opposed to cheeky skinny.

For a mother-daughter evening, more perfect you couldn't buy. Sky of velvet. Zephyrs tickling the flag. But Justina has never, ever joined Alana before Inning Four. With the schedule she has, how could she? The green eyes and golden cheekbones are busy moving the needle. Ditto the hands, the ankles. And starting this morning they were shooting her for a Nine West direct mail drop.

Alana's bones hurt from running with trays, so why be cramped? She plunks herself down on the aisle, leaving a one-seat space.

And the overeater leans her way and says, in a surprisingly sweet voice, "I'm not that fat, am I?"

Alana looks at the hamhock elbow pressing on the arm of the empty green chair and thinks, "yes you are." But what she says is, "oh no, I'm just saving that seat for my daughter."

Actually, the fellow, who wears a flag-red Jason Varitek tee shirt with man-tits, isn't obese fat so much as big-boy fat. One of those baby-skinned chunks who, even at two-hundred forty with stubble and a mustache, still hasn't outgrown the butterball he used to be in his kindergarten red jersey and navy blue shorts. Using her peripheral vision, Alana pegs this point in time as around 1977. Nine years or so before Justina was born.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees other things too. The round golden glint on that meaty hand of his holding the beer. Back in the sticks of Wister, there's a wife.

Right at Alana's back are a pair of Red Sox haters. It's not clear whether they're Yankee fans, or even fans at all. They wear no pinstripes, no caps. They never cheer, only jeer lewdly. One is a shrill, wiry girl. The other is a massive prehuman, a neckless creature whose head rises straight out of a tank-body, cylindrical like a cement mixer.

The crowd roars. A droplet hits the back of Alana's neck. It falls just as the second pitch of the game hits the mitt, far outside the strike zone. With the sky dry as a sapphire, Alana concludes it was beer spray. She hunches her shoulders and raises the collar of her crisp Italian polo, loot from a Justina shoot months ago. Just putting it on in front of the mirror stirred a reverie of all the years of Justina-building. The glossies, the cattle calls. Dragging Justina from this to that. Joining the long lines of pugnacious stage mommies and fearful, fidgeting children, crowded in some ragged field like chained prisoners, waiting forever to be called into the Winnebago. Before modeling days, the commercials. Some TV, mostly radio. Locked in the glass sound booth pushing the juiced-up cutesy voice, the sound of Disney on speed, the sprinkly sweet strains of child labor. Alana outside with the engineer at his console and the stacked bagels and moldering cantaloupe, schmoozing the clients.

After the session, Alana would don the home apron and bake cupcakes. For Justina. Just the two of them in the sun-striped buttercup kitchen, sheltered by the original 1786 beams. Justina licking the frosting bowl. Pressing her face to the apron and saying, "I love you, Mommie." Saying it in her true, unamplified voice.

Justina at work. She knows this cheeseball Nine West drop will run out of pages before they would deign grant space to her face. It's ankles they're after, the more per line of glossy stock the better. Yet the photographer, a hawk-faced huntress in a skull-print Japanese tunic and slouchy tie pants, makes head-on Leica assaults for a seeming eternity, chewing up film, grinding out the billable hours. Justina's eyes sting from staring into the white heat, and all the time there's this pathetic yelping from somewhere behind the backdrop. When they finally let her break for a swig of Fiji she heads straight towards it, trailed by this eel of a man, shiny as a black satin tie, who calls himself the photographer's producer and lets it be known he's the photographer's brother as well.

As she's done before, Justina yanks open the door of a storage room the size of an ample pantry. She bumps into the photographer's pocket dog, a silky-eared King Charles Spaniel, clawing so madly it's as though Justina's legs are a tree that must be climbed. One wall of the room is exposed brick, whitewashed a soothing linen. Lining the others are shelves with enough herbals and tree barks and organics to stock a small natural foods store, including books on yogic systems and the wheel of bliss.

But the stench of the place makes Justina palm her nostrils with one hand and clutch her throat with the other. She looks and finds what she knew she'd find. Over in the corner by a smeared, crusted window is a spiral of fresh dogshit in a puddle of dogpiss. And the toy dog's toenails scrape at her even faster, like a buzzsaw.

"Not your fault, Winnifred," she says, "not your fault. It's okay, Winny. Okay."

As though she were the photographer's maid and not the model, Justina pulls a fistful of Glad-baggies. Then she grabs a skull-print leash off a peg, hooks it on the dervish of fur and jogs for the elevator.

"A little late for that, wouldn't you say?" The eel-man's voice echoes over her shoulder, and eventually the voice stops her. She has to agree, the dog has messed—what's the point of going down to the alley now?

He folds his arms and watches, grinning, as she bends over the squish-pile with a roll of paper towels and the Glad-baggies, and sprays disinfectant until the chemical smell overpowers the shit smell.

They're all criminals here, she thinks. It's no different than if they crippled the animal. Broke its little legs.

"Since you're an animal lover," says the producer, "can I tell you a story?"

Without a doubt the story will be about animals but not about animals. Justina, back on her feet, reads this from the way the tanned and oiled head tilts lewdly at her and the facial jewelry gleams. She knows the dance, knows where it goes. But she takes Winny to her lap, strokes the silky ears and lets him get on with it, his ducks and drakes tale, as he puts it.

Right off the bat he informs her that among all the birds on earth, drakes are among the very few armed with penises. These they use like assault weapons on the ducks. "I'm talking aggressive," he says. "You have no idea…"

Justina strokes Winny and wishes they would call her back from the break. She'll take a Leica stuck in her face all day and all night. Anything but eel-man.

"The penises come in all shapes and sizes. They're elaborate, just like guns. It's like all the drakes are in an arms race with all the other drakes..."

At last they do call her and he has to stop. Or pause. But he starts again the instant he can, hitting on her with his story even after the shoot ends and she slips out of the building. Late in the cab and traffic, Justina plows through the Fenway turnstiles and heads for the seats and Alana. But the ringtone nails her and what can she do?—he's a player in the Twiggy plan. From behind their cotton candy towers the concessionaires peer at her, this leggy wonder, at her red-carpet gait and second-skin jeans and butterfly camisole. The platoon of shuffling men waiting for access to the green-doored men's room pivots en masse. They see the phone glued to Justina's bangled ear and the heel-spikes flashing past them and they think E! and People Magazine and Hall-of-Famer girlfriend.

"Ready for the duck part?" the eel-voice natters into her ear, and doesn't wait for an answer. "For every ingeniously armed penis there's an ingeniously defended vagina," he says. "Some have corkscrew turns, some have blind endings. Those duck vaginas make it tough for the drake, baby. Just like you..."

Absorbed as he is with Red Sox ace Beckett notching his fifth strikeout, the fan from the sticks nearly drops his beer when he catches Justina wriggling past Alana and sanctifying the space right next to him. In the tight Fenway seats, the two of them are so close that a strand of her flaxen hair falls across his left forearm as she reaches down to adjust a heel strap. She sees the wedding ring on the hefty, hairy hand, then she sees him slip the hand out of sight. This he keeps doing—either sitting on it, tucking it under his right arm, or hiding it under the greasy paper he's collected from the multiple hot dogs and subs he's put away.

"Sorry for the mess," he says, in a tone that has a wink in it, slightly flirtatious, and Justina catches it by the second syllable. But there's a second tone weaving in there as well, groveling and serf-like, as though he were addressing a Princess of the Realm. All of this is wrapped into a body language of sheepish, playful head nods, gestures that make Justina think of huge plush-toy dogs, those Newfies and St. Bernards when they've reached full size but still have their puppy ways. After eel-man, she's happier to be next to him, in his loutishness, than he could ever realize.

She watches him attempt to smile at her without leering—unsuccessfully. Then he reaches under his seat with the right hand, comes up with a red, white, and blue bag and slyly asks, "Peanut?"

Justina does an instant fat-gram calculation and takes one. Just one. As she cracks it she sees his left hand return to full view, like a gopher emerging from a burrow. It comes to rest on his lap. Abracadabra—no ring.

Meanwhile, the game has become five innings old, and for the last two of those innings Alana has endured a cascade of ugliness spewing from the pair of Red Sox haters right behind her. They opened fire after their third or so Budweiser round and pumped up the venom and the decibels with each succeeding brew. Now that Justina has joined her mother right in the battle zone, the outbursts rage around the back of her neck too. And she feels it like the hot breath of stalkers.

Up to the plate comes Julio Lugo, the Red Sox leadoff man.

And from the neckless throat of the tank-sized man, a sneering war cry. He calls out JULIA, JULIA. He keeps shrieking this through a nine-pitch at bat.

When the hitter Manny Ramirez stands in, he screams, MANDY, MANDY.

And when the catcher Jason Varitek draws a walk he roars at the umpire. HEY, BLUE, WHY DON'T YOU STICK YOUR HEAD UP YOUR ASS? AT LEAST YOU'LL BE ABLE TO SEE SOMETHING.

To Justina, this isn't heckling. The voice and the person are too big and too close, and the sound is too angry. She wants to be in a fetal position, trembling, huddled in a corner somewhere until the storm blows over. What she hears isn't a drunken bloke at a ballpark, but her father Bruno when she was seven, just before a court order sent him far away. She hears the sound of the deepest male rage erupting, breaking through the trap door of the brain. She sees Bruno shattering everything he can get his hands on, trashing the house. And she and Alana scampering out of any door they can reach. Grabbing barrettes and bobby pins. Fleeing to motels, bus stations, airports, anywhere to get away.

Alana knows what's happening to Justina. The fiery ball in the stomach, the panic attack. She would know it with her eyes closed. What surprises her, though, is that the fan from the sticks seems to know it too. Alana catches the new look in his sidelong glances: alarm, concern. No trace any more of the ogling, the clumsy banter.

The inning is a long one, with the Red Sox doing so well they bat all the way around, and Julio Lugo steps up to the plate again.

From behind Justina, the bull voice reaches its most ear-splitting level yet. To her, it comes out of the earth, or the loudspeaker. It drowns out the entire crowd:

JULIA, JULIA. YOU PUSSY. YOU CUNT.

She hears it with reverb. Thunder bouncing off the mountains. CU-U-UNT. And she cringes, shrinks into the green seat. If she were a turtle the green seat-back would be her shell, and her whole being would disappear into it.

At the very moment Justina slides down in her seat the fan from the sticks half-rises in his. He twists his girth around and locks eyes with the shouter.

"Hey, clean it up, will you."

The response is a snarl, then the loudest roar yet:

JULIA, JULIA. YOU PUSSY. YOU CUNT. CU-U-UNT.

"Watch your mouth, you watch it."

YOU WATCH YOURS, PUSSY-MAN.

And on the last word he launches a fist like a piledriver, straight and short—a direct hit on the mouth. Justina hears the gruesome mashing sound, the sound of skin ripping and teeth cracking. She smells something that cuts through the beery atmosphere. The rancid stench of two brutes in a death-lock. Relative to her, they could be bears, rhinos. They don't just hit, they collide. She sees the blood spray and gush as the bigger man seizes the head of the merely big man, pins it on the seat-back and hammers it without letup, hammers it long after it ceases to squirm out of the way. He keeps at it while the crowd retreats. He keeps hammering until the last, even when there's a security force of a half dozen swarming over him from the back.

They wrestle him away, the massive Red Sox hater, and somebody yells something about making room for paramedics. Justina is alone, the only remaining onlooker in the circle of cleared seats. Even Alana joined the stampede and cries to her from the sidelines, where the victim's comrades have retreated too. Splayed next to Justina, for all intents and purposes, is a butchered carcass in human clothing. A being that no longer moves and no longer has a face, only bloody, bubbly face-meat. With smashed shapes on it that once had been distinguishing features: nose, lips, eyes, cheekbones. Her butterfly cami is splattered red. She cradles the head and dabs at it with the hem, soaking up the gore. Alana stares at the scene, numb with too much feeling. She sees a small girl, the toddler of yesteryear, hovering over a pet that's been crushed by a speeding train.

The paramedics and their beefy cargo, strapped and swaddled like an enormous papoose, slowly disappear into the cave-mouth ramping down to the concession mall. Justina bolts to her feet and tries to trail along, but she bumps into a cop belly, blue as an umpire's chest protector. The policeman sits her down, produces paraphernalia and attempts an interview. But only Alana can speak. She acts as interpreter, translating her daughter's simpers and whimpers into police-log English. Tonight there will be no going their separate ways, no staying for the rest of the game and then Justina breezily taxiing off to her Back Bay one-bedroom with what has become her little signature, a self-mocking Twiggy air-kiss launched just before the yellow door shuts. The two of them stagger, arm in arm, to the parking lot and, for the whole ride back to Chadwick, Alana sits like a sentry at the wheel while Justina keeps the passenger seat in full recline. The sound of her daughter's fitful breathing fiddles with Alana's time sense. At least twice on the highway she gets lost in a warp, really believing it's one of those nights when she's driving, just driving, to let the rocking road lull her stricken newborn asleep.

Once inside the salt-box she draws Justina a tub, peels off the blood-splotched cami and finds her fleeciest robe. She excuses herself as soon as she can to get the stove going. In double-time she reclimbs the steps, scrubs Justina's back and lanky limbs, then towels her head to toe and wraps the robe around her. Justina maintains a dazed look, stone-silent, even when Alana stands on tiptoes to peer at some dot of linty fuzz on her scalp. Arm in arm, they descend to the buttercup kitchen, where the warm cakey smell rising from the oven registers a flash in Justina's eyes, restoring the emerald shimmer, if only for an instant. Alana feels as though a train, stopped dead on a broken track, has started up again. She warps out for the third time tonight, confusing this moment, this sense of a train back on track, with the very moment Bruno finally took a suitcase and stormed out for good.

Justina's hands are folded in her lap as Alana sets a cupcake in front of her, the chocolate glistening from the heat within.

Another flash of green in the eyes and then another.

"They're shooting again tomorrow," Justina says, radiant at last. "I can only have half. But I love you, Mommie."

When Justina wakes up the next day and turns again to her cell phone, she finds four messages blinking. Three are from eel-man and one is a voice she knows yet doesn't know, but the rumble of it makes her skin explode in violent blotches that even the stylist can't hide. The voice claims to be Bruno. He says he saw her in some mailer from Nordstroms. Page fourteen, tank tops.