Homecourt Advantage (21 page)

“I don’t think so. But thank you just the same.”

Paul noticed the look of disappointment on the woman’s face as she turned to walk away. She had the expression of someone who was just one number short of winning the lottery.

“All right, Jake. What’s so important that you dragged us out tonight?” Paul asked, feeling antsy.

He wanted to call the hospital and check on Lorraine to make sure she wasn’t volunteering to work any extra hours. She had been so exhausted lately. Maybe those terrible dreams would dissipate if she could get some uninterrupted sleep.

“Yeah, I feel beat down. My lower back is killing me,” Brent said, stretching in his seat.

“I know a good masseuse. She could come to your hotel room,” Jake offered.

“I’ll pass. What gives, Jake?” Brent said.

Jake took a deep puff of his cigar and looked back and forth between the two men before speaking.

“I know I don’t need to tell you guys this, but that was not good losing to the Heat in New York. It’s one thing to lose down here, but the team can’t really afford any home losses.”

“We know that, but that’s why we’re gonna return the favor. We’re heading back to New York to win game number five. No doubt about it,” said Brent with conviction.

“How can you be so sure? Eddie Jones is eating Steve Tucker alive, and I don’t see any signs of things getting any better. It’s embarrassing.”

“That’s why we have the other guys to take up the slack,” Paul began.

“You guys have got to deliver. I shouldn’t tell you this, but Hirshfield is threatening to stop holding off Hightower Enterprises.”

“Because of one loss … Thanks, Hal, we really appreciate the vote of confidence,” Brent said, making a toasting gesture with his beer mug.

“No, not because of that exactly. Although the Flyers have been known to choke down the stretch. Leonard Hightower just keeps sweetening the deal. Word is, he may even try to pressure Hal into signing an agreement to sell before the end of the play-offs.”

“How can he do that?” Paul asked.

“Because he’s Leonard Hightower, and he’s no fool. He wants the Flyers, and he usually gets what he wants. He knows that if the Flyers actually do win the championship this year, New York City is going to absorb the bulk of Hirshfield’s costs to run the team. Hightower has no intention of taking a chance of that happening.”

“I bet he’s up under Hal like white on rice,” Brent said in disgust.

“And then some,” Jake added.

“Greedy bastard. He thinks he can just buy up anything or anyone that he wants,” Paul said.

“So far he’s had a damn near perfect track record,” Jake said. “Andfrom what I hear, Hightower’s close to making Hal an offer he can’t refuse. They’re already offering thirty percent more than any other NBA team is valued.”

“Jake, obviously you don’t understand Hal. It’s more than money to him. He wants to die owning this team. I just can’t believe he’d give up on us during the championship. It doesn’t ring true to me,” Brent said, shaking his head.

“Brent, I’ve been around this league long enough to know that it’s a business. It’s not about family or sentiment or history—not anymore, and anybody that tries to convince you otherwise is lying to you,” Jake said.

“You mean you don’t love me like family, Jake?” Paul said, pretending to be crushed.

“Aww, that’s different, Paul. We’re on the same team. I’m always trying to do what’s in your best interest. With both of you guys, with all of my clients,” Jake said quickly.

“Really, Jake. I’m glad you cleared that up for us, ‘cause my feelings were about to be hurt,” said Brent.

“Listen, all I’m trying to get you guys to understand is that you’re under the gun. And I don’t know what you have to pull out of your arsenal to win, but whatever it is, you need to do it. Every game counts. You need to sweep every round of the play-offs to ensure that Hal doesn’t sell the team.”

Paul and Brent looked at each other. They had played together long enough to read each other well without words.

Coach was putting Jake on their asses just to crank them up some more—get the brain chemistry moving the body into overdrive. And it probably wasn’t a bad idea, not for the agent and the coach, that is. But for the players, it was total stress-out time. Paul felt the pain in his knees signal an SOS just to remind him how much it could hurt playing his heart out on the court.

“Have either of you seen Blondie? I need a drink,” Jake said, indicating the meeting had ended.

Paul looked around the room and saw the waitress standing by the bar. She caught his eye as he spotted her. “There she is,” he said.

“Jake, on that note, I’m going back to the hotel to get some shut-eye. I wanna make sure we do sweep the rest of this series,” Brent said, standing up. “How much do I owe?” He began to reach into his pocket.

“It’s on me, but are you sure you don’t want to join Michael and me for another round?”

“Hey, Jake, do you want us to win or you just trying to make us crazy?” Paul was confused at Jake’s mixed signals.

“Nope, thanks anyway,” was all Brent said as he leaned down to shake Jake’s hand.

Paul stood and, not really feeling like shaking Jake’s hand, patted Michael on the back. “Michael, save some for the game tomorrow.”

“Aw, man, I’m getting out of here in a few minutes myself,” Michael said, grinning from ear to ear.

“Yeah, I know, just one more lap dance. Peace out, man,” Paul said as he followed Brent toward the exit through the crowd of the club.

As soon as Paul and Brent got in the back of the hotel courtesy sedan, Paul pulled out his cellular phone to call Lorraine. He wanted to make sure she was only going to work one shift, but more than anything, he was aching to hear her voice. But with each ring of the telephone, Paul became increasingly worried. Someone in her unit should have answered it already.

Over the last two weeks, she had experienced two more nightmares that he knew about. It troubled him that he couldn’t figure out the source of her dreams. Nor would she talk about them.

“Paul … Paul?” Brent said, sitting up in the back of the car.

“What’s up, man?”

“I don’t get Jake sometimes. He talks out the side of his mouth,” Brent said pensively.

“You’re just now figuring that out?” Paul said.

“I know he’s full of shit about that ‘we are family’ crap. That’s not what I was talking about. Don’t you think he’d want us back at the hotel getting our rest if we’re trying to sweep the rest of the series?”

“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. You would think that, butyou know how Jake gets off on being seen out in public with his clients.”

“Man, it just irks me that he talked to us about how important it is for us to win, then in the same breath invites—no, encourages us to keep on drinking all night.”

“You know how Jake is. He thinks he’s on the road with us, just like he’s one of the players. He’s trying to get his partying in before he goes back home to his wife.”

“You just never know with Jake. Maybe his former clients don’t call him ‘Shaky Jake’ for nothin’.”

“Code blue! Emergency room! Code blue! Emergency
room!” the loud robotic voice of Harlem Hospital’s main operator roared through every speaker of the hospital’s seventeen floors. This was followed by a screeching electronic wail that swept through the doors and walls on each ward.

Lorraine Thomas took a deep breath and sharply exhaled. She prayed for the patient being coded in the ER and hoped whoever it was would not be the hospital’s latest mortality statistic. Lorraine was exhausted. She had forty-five minutes left in her twelve-hour graveyard shift, and she needed to go home and try to sleep. Maybe she’d even have a few minutes to talk to Paul on the phone. Lately that was all she had to spare him—a growing sore spot in their marriage. She knew it would be early to call him, but he insisted that she call him when she got home in the morning, no matter what time.

Paul had been putting more and more pressure on her to quit her job. He insisted she didn’t need to work and recently had become increasingly annoying by constantly reminding her of the fact that he made over four million dollars a year playing for the New York Flyers. Lorraine was tired of explaining to her husband that her career meant more to her than finances.

Paul desperately wanted her to fit his perception of other NBA wives: always available. He would have been content for her to sit at home and do volunteer work for their church in between hair and manicure appointments along with shopping for the latest designer fashions. Paul expected her to plan her schedule around his practices and pregame naps and meals while regularly attending all of his home games.

But Lorraine could never relegate her life to being the trophy wife of a professional athlete. She absolutely thrived on being a nurse—even when she was dead tired. Sometimes she couldn’t believe that Paul, who shared so many of her values, wasn’t condoning her work at Harlem Receiving Hospital, considering what a difference it made to the people in the community where she’d grown up. This was something Paul did not fully comprehend, and she wondered if he ever would, having come from a small town in Alabama himself where the only community crisis was having to raise enough money to buy new uniforms for the high-school basketball team. Whenever they had an argument about her working, they both remained fiercely devoted to their positions. He incorrectly assumed her desire to give back to the community could be fulfilled by delivering food baskets to the sick and elderly, followed by being at home for dinner every night the Flyers happened to be in town—with a smile on her face, of course. She wanted more out of life, had to have more. Lorraine needed to save lives.

“Lorraine! Lorraine!” the head nurse on duty yelled at the top of her lungs.

She ran out of her patient’s room and rushed over to the unit’s charge station expectantly. “A new patient?”

“Yes,” Francine answered. “And this one sounds like he’s in really bad shape. They just coded him in ER, a nineteen-year-old Hispanic male suffering from gunshot wounds. It sounds like he’s going to needplenty of blood just to get him stabilized, not to mention a new lung and half his face replaced. Then he’ll be in perfect critical condition,” she said sarcastically.

“Well, at least he’s not in the morgue,” Lorraine said, silently praying for strength.

“Lorraine,” Francine said, glancing over at the unit’s assignment board, “your shift’s about over. Sign this admission over to the nurse coming on duty. Why don’t you do yourself a favor and get your butt home; you look beat. The only thing that’s gonna help him now anyway is prayer.”

“I’m praying for him … praying that God gives me the strength to help him. What happened to the kid anyway?”

The charge nurse rolled her eyes before answering. “Typical drive-by shooting over in Spanish Harlem. Witnesses say this one took three bullets before he stopped staring at the commotion on the street and fell to the ground. What else?”

Lorraine cringed at Francine’s callousness. She always had a flippant remark as if urban teenagers somehow deserved to be gunned down or clubbed to death. She knew she held higher standards than most of her co-workers, but the hollow look of utter despair in a mother’s eyes after being told she would never see her child alive again gained one a sobering sense of reality.

Lorraine glanced at the scratched Swatch watch with the big, clear dial that she had worn throughout nursing school. She rarely found an occasion to wear the expensive watch Paul had given her for her twenty-fifth birthday. She felt it was too pretentious for the halls of the hospital, and her Swatch had served her well for years. She saw no reason to change now, though there had been many changes in her life.

She had grown up only ten blocks south of Harlem Receiving Hospital on Martin Luther King Boulevard. Her neighborhood had been plagued with gangs, drugs, and weapons. She understood firsthand that this violence had a very real effect on very real people.

By the time Lorraine was twelve, she had seen enough violence to last her several lifetimes. One day she witnessed the paperboy down the street being stabbed to death. Another day she saw the bag-checklady from Safeway fatally hit by a car. Lorraine knew only too well that these were real people with real families.

But even though she and Paul had money now, they weren’t immune to problems. Paul had clearly been distraught right before the play-offs began over two weeks ago when he told Lorraine about the possibility of the team being sold and moved to Albany. Paul feared the politics of Leonard Hightower and Hightower Enterprises. Lorraine also was distraught, but for a different reason than Paul. She was not prepared to work as a nurse anyplace except Harlem, and the relocation of the Flyers could separate them. Although she had not told him she would not move, the question floated dangerously between them.

She loved Paul desperately, and if nursing was like breathing for her, Paul was the lifeline in their relationship. He was the rock and the stabilizer, with a strong spiritual base that held them together. Lorraine was willing to have a commuter marriage if Hal Hirshfield actually moved forward with the sale of the team. Unlike many of the other NBA wives and girlfriends, Lorraine did not have a problem trusting Paul when he was out of her sight. They enjoyed an honest, loving relationship. In fact, Lorraine suspected that Paul was far too traditional to ever agree to them living in two different cities, even if they were only a few hours drive from each other. That type of arrangement would be at odds with everything Paul represented. He was a man of honor and convention. She only prayed that it didn’t come to that. She didn’t want to be forced to choose.

Lorraine was oblivious to the sheets of rain beating
down on her head. Her bangs were now plastered to her forehead as she stood before the old storefront. The front window of what used to be a Jamaican carry-out restaurant was replaced with layers of plywood, as if that thin shield could protect her from the memories that had begun to haunt her.