No one offered to buy him a cheer-up beer afterward, so he got drunk alone in his hotel room. 30 years old and sneaking bottles of Natural Ice up to his room like a frat boy home for Thanksgiving break, watching sportscenter with the sound low, the light from the TV and his laptop the only things breaking up the warm middle-of-the-night dark. The beers got warm quickly, but after the first few he didn't taste them anymore, couldn't taste anything except chalk dust and sunflower seeds and five runs over six and two-thirds, an era hovering somewhere around the shoulders of the heavy mountains to the east, somewhere high above his heart.