Ripper arrives with their drinks. Almost immediately the loudspeaker announces him as being in the next foursome to tee off. He downs his drink and heads for the door. A small man, barely five three, maybe 100 pounds, hustles after him. “Ripper,” the man shouts out. “Wait up. They got us in the same foursome.”

“Don’t tell me. Some pro’s using you for a putter,” Ripper jokes, giving the man as much of the openhanded, arm raised greeting as the closely packed crowd allows. The two head for the door together.

“My goodness,” Sarah says, watching them go, “the man who came up to the one you call Ripper. He’s so tiny. Does he play a sport?”

“That’s Dale Slade. He plays football for the Fort Worth Devils.”

Her lips purse and her eyes widen in mild surprise. “Admittedly, I’m not very familiar with athletics,” she puffs rapidly on her pipe, her cloying tobacco drawing unappreciative stares from the athletes around her, “but he seems awfully small to be a football player.”

T.K. shakes his head. “Not at all. He’s probably the most important man on the team, even though he never takes part in the plays. He’s the Devils’ mediman. He gives on-street medical aid to injured players.”

She removes the pipe from her mouth and holds it by the bowl, twisting tiny corkscrews in the air with the stem. “Surely if a player’s injured badly enough to require medical help, he’s taken off the street. Brought to a hospital.”

Taking pity on her for her naïveté, T.K. patiently explains the most basic rule of football. “There are no substitutions in a street football game. The players who start a game are required to stay in until they finish it. Either that or until the game finishes them. Nobody comes out, not for anything, injuries included.”

“That’s unbelievable. Football games last a whole day. Are you saying that a man who’s incapacitated early on in the game can’t be taken off the street until it’s over?”

“It’s not quite that harsh. An injured man can be removed during one of the quarter timeouts. That means the longest a wounded man would ever have to stay on the street is five and a half hours.”

“What if he dies?”

“That’s what the mediman tries to prevent. He puts a big red cross on an injured player. That makes it illegal for the opposition to attack him. It also makes it illegal for the injured man to take part in a play. When, and if, the mediman gets the injured player patched up, the red cross comes off, and he’s back in the game.”

“What if everybody on a team gets red-crossed?”