There is no ballplayer named Ptolemy Beans Doogan-Beans

There is no ballplayer named Ptolemy Beans Doogan-Beans.

The urchin will sell no more newspapers.

The gentleman, otherwise fulfilled in his life and work, will soon be known to all as “patient zero.”

The archbishop now doubts his own certainties.

The wife looks up from the dishes and knows at once she cherishes nothing.

The man sits at the formica table and stares. He is waiting for the gloaming to advance across the yard.

What else is he to do?

She attributes the awful thing the boy said to the caprices of youth. He will say it to her again in 20 years.

The man rises for work each morning in the same way that the tides are yoked to the moon.

At this one moment, all across what was Gaul no one is making love. Not even her.

The wine has turned.

At the market, he thought for a moment he saw his dead father. He knew then he would not mail the letter.

He maintains the affair because it is a different drudgery.

She decides to tell her grandfather that she’s heard all his stories before.

Look at your own face: Are you not a Walker Evans subject?

At the tavern, it is late, and all the glasses are empty.

For there is no ballplayer named Ptolemy Beans Doogan-Beans.

Alive or dead, there is no Ptolemy Beans Doogan-Beans.