We went to find something to eat and possibly drink and settled on a food stall that was (to put it politely) overstaffed by no less than fourteen attractive young co-eds. There were blondes and brunettes and they all had perfect tans and vivid eyes and brilliant smiles and an incomparable manner about them, these muelles en espiral del caliente¹. It was a bearing that spoke of private girls' schools and cotillions under a canopied dance floor and just hinted at the promise of certain talents that were extremely naughty indeed. I thought it a good thing after all that Elfskirt had decided not to come to the game.

Eight of them took our order.

"What's yours?" they all seemed to say.

"I don't know," Elfpants said. "What do you want to eat, Martini?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't know what I want to eat."

Elfpants ordered a hot dog and a Diet Coke and I ordered a sandwich and a beer and we both witnessed a scene of solicitude that fell somewhere between well-oiled machine and unadulterated carnage. One of them punched in the order while another opened a cardboard take-away food tray, and another pulled the tap and filmed my beer and gave it to still another to put the top on it while the rest of them, in a flurry to prepare our food, nearly caused a multi-co-ed pile-up. Eventually it all got straightened out and our food was presented to us. Elfpants treated and the one who punched in the order returned the change and we made our goodbyes and all of them smiled and waved goodbye in perfect synchronicity. We walked back to our seats and we thought it was a good thing that their demeanor hinted at extremely naughty things because it more than made up for their prowess in the food service industry.

We sat in our seats and ate and drank and the ball game started and it was good. The Mudcats looked good in their home whites and the pitcher was bringing some heat and the rain had tapered off to a delicate mist and there were a little over a hundred people there in the stands.

We sat and watched the game and after a bit the public-address announcer spoke.

"Attention, Ladies and Gentlemen. Would thirty-year-old Martini and thirty-one-year-old Elfpants please report to the customer service booth in the concourse..."

I looked up at the dark slick green tree line out in the distance beyond the center-field fence and tensed as the announcer finished the sentence.

"...for sumo wrestling!"

I turned to Elfpants and gave him a look that said something astoundingly unprintable and we got up and I took my drink and we went down the stairs into the concourse. There was no real way to go down the stairs casually at that point. If we were in a Pamplonan bull ring with thirty thousand other spectators screaming and heady from the annual running of the bulls into the dusty arena with faded whitewashed walls and sipping cervezas bought from comely señoritas then we might be able to slink unnoticed into the humid bowels of the stadium. But there were only a hundred or so spectators in the stands and we were alone in our section and conspicuous like two startled gazelles on the sun-baked desert scrubland. I drank my drink down all the way down the stairs and we got to the table where we filled out the forms and a young brunette in a bob haircut and a pop star's headset told us to meet at the third-base fence at the bottom of the second inning.

We met the young brunette a little while later and she led us over to the entrance to the field along the third base line. There were two large sumo suits on the ground and one of them had a pair of blue sumo trunks on them and the other had a pair of yellow trunks. She made us get into them and each of us took a suit. There was also a helmet for each one of us. The helmet was an old-fashioned crash helmet with a topknot on top that was supposed to complete the illusion of us looking like a pair of sumo wrestlers. Elfpants got into the blue suit and I got into the yellow one. I would have preferred another color as yellow didn't look very good on me because I was more of a winter but that was the color they had. I had never done sumo wrestling of any kind before, much less do sumo wrestling in the middle of an inning on a field in the rain but it was a bit late to complain about all of it. I figured that a couple of hard-drinking free-swearing two-fisted ultra-virile Grumble writers would be able to acquit ourselves properly on the field in the rain.

Elfpants said to the young brunette, "Do you have any salt?"

"Salt?"

"For the ring. To throw. To purify the ring in which we will be doing sumo wrestling."

She looked at Elfpants with a vacant look.

"We don't have any salt," she said. She said it in a tone of voice that knew she had a pair of live ones here.

"Will there be pictures?" I said.

"Pictures?" she said.

"Pictures of the match. To show people."

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "The photographer isn't here tonight."

"He isn't here?" I said.

"No."

"Not at all?"

"No. Sorry," she said.

"That's a shame," I said. "We would have liked to have some pictures."

"I understand," she said.

I toyed with the idea of giving the young brunette some money to go to the gift shop and buy a disposable camera to take pictures of us on the field doing sumo wrestling but thought better of it. My wallet was in my back hip pocket where I always kept it and to get it meant that I would have to take the suit off and that would be an inconvenience.

The young brunette with the bob haircut and the pop star's headset told us that we would go down a short flight of stairs and out onto the field at the end of the top of the inning that was third in the order of the game that they played in the rain. She led us to the stairs and we followed her. The mascot of the Carolina Mudcats was waiting for us there. His name was Muddy and he was a large gray mudcat which is neither mud nor a cat but a fish although not a fish like a great blue marlin but a smaller and less majestic gray affair.

We stood there on the short flight of stairs and waited for the top of the inning that was third in the order of the game to end. The Mudcats got two quick outs on the visiting team that was from Jacksonville in Florida that was in the northern part of the state and nowhere near the Keys.

We stood there and tried to limber up to do the sumo wrestling. It was difficult. I had never done the sumo wrestling before but I had seen other people do it on television and occasionally at bars on warm summer Friday nights. I had always thought that the suits were light and just great big inflated bags but in fact they were made of heavy naugahyde and padded and weighed about sixty pounds each. I thought about the fortitude of those hard and lean and upright men with broad shoulders and ice-cold stares who had gone to Africa and braved the merciless elements and danger to shoot and shoot well and kill all of those naugas to obtain their hydes to be made into suits that we could wear on the field in the rain. I thought about them as Elfpants and I waited.

I thought about them rather a lot because the pitcher for the Mudcats was having a bear of a time getting the team from Jacksonville to get the third out. The pitcher gave up a couple of quick singles and then there was a hit batsman and possibly a throwing error and before anyone knew it five runs had scored. The Mudcats were not playing like the great DiMaggio at all and I was a bit put out about that because I was standing there in a fat suit perspiring like a man in a fat suit waiting for the infernal pitcher to get the third out.

I turned to Elfpants.

"This is slow going, isn't it?"

"Slow going," he said.

"I am going to ask you a question."

"All right."

"I am going to ask you a personal question. I am going to ask you a personal question because we have known each other for quite a long time. We have known each other for quite a long time and I think therefore that I can ask you a question like this and you will give me a straight and honest and manly answer."

"Go ahead and ask, then. Ask your question."

I looked my friend and fellow Grumble writer in the eye and asked the question.

"Do these yellow trunks make my ass look big?"

Elfpants looked at the yellow trunks that I wore on the fat suit.

He said, "No. No they do not."

"Really?"

"Really. Those yellow trunks do not make your ass look big."

"I see."

He said, "That fat suit makes your ass look big."

"The proper term is an empathy suit."

Elfpants looked at me.

"An empathy suit?"

"Yes, you unfeeling bastard, an empathy suit."

"I see," he said. "All right then. That empathy suit makes your ass look big."

"Fine."

"Fine."

I was ready to argue more but I figured that I would take out my aggression on him on the field. In the rain.

Someone sitting in the stands made a comment about our girth and I was about to retort back that we were not fat but in fact had a glandular problem when the pitcher finally threw hard and well and manly and got the third out and the young brunette opened the gate led us out onto the field.