Middle Men (3 page)

“I'm really proud of you guys,” said Coach Boyd.

When we got back to Long Beach, he pulled into a Jack in the Box and announced that he was treating us to milkshakes. In the drive-through, he realized he didn't have enough money. “Keep making them,” he told the guy at the window. “I'll be right back.” He drove across the street to a bank. For a while we all watched as he hunched over the ATM, pushing buttons. Then he tried to go inside, but the bank was closed. He pressed his face against the glass door, trying to see if there was anyone still inside. After a while he came back out and got in the van, but instead of going to Jack in the Box, we drove back to St. Polycarp in silence.

•  •  •

K-Mart paid in cash. On Fridays, I went to the cashier window, showed my ID, and they handed me an envelope with three twenties, a ten, a five, two quarters, a dime, and three pennies. My mom took her royal fifth for groceries and tuition, and I set aside the rest for getting my braces off. I was ruled by vanity. Our neighbors across the street had a pool, and before work I would sneak into their backyard, get down on my stomach, and dip my face in the water. The chlorine, I had discovered, dried out my acne, making it seem less rosy and bulbous. On my breaks I walked by Layaway, hoping to find Jessica, alone, but Tully always seemed to be there, leaning on his hand truck. One afternoon they walked by the employee lounge and saw me reading
The Call of the Wild
.

“Don't take your breaks in here,” said Tully. “It's a graveyard.”

“One of the greeters slit his wrists in the bathroom,” said Jessica. “Security had to smash the lock to get him out of there.”

“Where am I supposed to go?”

I followed them out to the loading dock. There were some plastic chairs set up behind a stack of pallets. “You can read your little doggy book out here,” said Tully, patting me on the head, and they walked away.

•  •  •

After we lost by thirty to St. Callistus of Gardena, my dad found Coach Boyd in the parking lot and got in his face.

“You don't have a fucking clue what you're doing,” he said.

My mom grabbed him, apologized to Coach Boyd, and
guided my dad back to the minivan. She drove home. My dad sat in the back, bouncing my youngest brother on his knee. “They're pressing full court,” he said, “and Pat's stranded out there.”

“If you were worried about
Pat
,” she said, “you wouldn't embarrass him in front of everybody.”

“Who hired that fucking clown?”

“
Language
,” my mom hissed.

The next day at practice Coach Boyd asked if my dad was “okay.”

“He just thinks we should put in a press break,” I said. “That's all.”

“Are you sure?”

“Trinity presses,” I said. “We need outlets, and we have to keep someone behind the ball. I know how to set it up . . .”

“If you ever need to talk, about
anything
,” said Coach Boyd, with a hand on my shoulder, “I'm always here.”

•  •  •

I suppose my best friend on the team was Weaver, but all we did was hang around the gym together, killing time between our afternoon practices and evening games. We'd shoot around for two hours straight and not say a word to each other. Most guys ate lunch at Overton's house, which was close to school. Weaver and I only went there once. Overton's grandma made us grilled cheese sandwiches and we watched
Return of the Jedi
. The tape was warped from so many viewings.

“Imagine Princess Leia taking Jabba's dick,” said Tully. “I mean, just
imagine
it. Seriously. Use your imaginations.”

“Is she the only human girl in the whole movie?” said Pham.

“No, there's an English lady,” said Overton, his sleepy eyes fixed on the screen. “She tells the rebels what to do.”

“What was Trinity like, Higginbottom? You probably got all kinds of crazy South County ass.”

I shrugged rakishly. As soon as Overton's grandma went down for her nap, Tully produced a joint, and so Weaver and I, the squares, retreated to the gym. During a game of 21, I ripped a fingernail on his jersey and it started bleeding.

“You got some nasty nails,” Weaver said. “You should get them done.”

“What?”

He showed me his pristine cuticles. “I heard Michael Jordan gets manicures. So I started going with my mom.”

“Is it expensive?”

A couple days later his mom drove us to a salon on PCH. On the way over she kept asking where my family went to church, and if we liked it.

“I guess.”

“Well,” she said, looking at me in the rearview mirror, “maybe we could have a conversation . . .”

“Don't,” said Weaver.

“Don't
don't
me,” said his mom, as we pulled into the strip mall. She turned around and smiled. “We can have a conversation, right . . . what's your name again?”

“Pat,” I said.

She dropped us off and went to run errands. Weaver told me to go first. He sat down in the waiting area and flipped through a glossy fashion magazine. My manicurist was a short blond woman named Michelle. She wore tight jeans and her heels clicked on the linoleum floor. The second she touched
my hand, I got an erection. She asked if I was a Michael Jordan fan, like Weaver.

“No,” I said.

“What do you mean,
no
?” said Weaver from across the room.

“I like John Williams,” I told Michelle, but she had already drifted out of the conversation.

“John Williams?” said Weaver.

“He played at Crenshaw,” I said. “He took LSU to the Final Four.”

“Wait,
John Williams
,” said Weaver, putting down his magazine. “You mean the fat dude on the Clippers?”

“Yeah,” I said, and Weaver started cracking up. Williams, as a pro, had been a total bust. After putting on a ton of weight, he became known around the league as John “Hot Plate” Williams. I thought of my other two favorite players—Len Bias, who had died of a cocaine overdose, and Pearl Washington, who had washed out of the NBA after two seasons. Why did I care more about these guys than Michael Jordan? My erection was gone.

While Weaver got his manicure, I looked through the glossies. All the fashion models looked rich and angry. I had brought ten dollars—two and a half hours at K-Mart—but when Weaver's mom got back, she said it was her treat and invited me to dinner. I worried that she might want to have a “conversation” about the intricacies of their faith, but I was also sick of lasagna. They lived in a duplex on the bottom edge of Signal Hill. Weaver's mom cooked hot links on a grill, tongs in one hand, cigarette in the other. At some point Weaver's little cousin came by, wanting to play
Madden
. Lance was about ten or eleven. “Show Pat your chest,” said Weaver, poking his cousin.

Without hesitation, Lance peeled off his T-shirt and showed me his weird concave chest. He didn't believe I had the same thing, so I had to show him. Lance looked confused and upset. “My mama said it would go away.”

“It will,” I said, and until this moment, I actually believed it
would
go away; but as soon as I said it out loud, I realized it wouldn't. Lance was quiet all through dinner. Mrs. Weaver had to work a late shift at Kaiser, but before she left she called Weaver into the kitchen. I heard them arguing in hushed voices, and then Weaver came out, with tears in his eyes, and locked himself in his bedroom. I played
Madden
with Lance, who kept running up the score. I think he knew some kind of secret code, because all his players were suddenly twice as fast as mine. Later, I called my mom and she picked me up. Before I went out the front door, Weaver came out of his room and handed me a pamphlet about his church.

“You can come to services with us if you want,” he said, without zeal. “But you don't have to.”

When I got in the minivan, my mom saw the pamphlet and freaked out.

“Those people
act
nice,” she said, “but they just want to get their hooks in you. They're worse than the goddamn Mormons.”

•  •  •

The week before the Ventura tournament, we managed to win a couple games. Even though I played well, I kept having nightmares about Trinity. Their guys would run past me as my feet sank into the quicksand floor, and then I would wake up.

On Friday night, after closing out my register, thirty dollars short, I escorted Jessica to the bus stop. Because of the payday
cash situation, K-Mart employees were always getting mugged in the parking lot, usually by disgruntled ex-employees. Our supervisors encouraged a “buddy system” when leaving the premises. As we walked down to Bellflower Boulevard, she asked me how things were going at St. Polycarp. I began telling her about all the colleges who were recruiting me, but then we passed the Cal Worthington Ford dealership.

“I want a Mustang,” she said suddenly, more to herself than me. “Black with a big-ass woofer in the trunk. Once I save enough for a down payment, I'm gonna go see Cal.”

Just as we got to the bus stop, Tully rolled up in his Chevette.

“There you are,” he said to Jessica. He was wearing a blue blazer with a light blue turtleneck. Overton, in the passenger seat, was wearing an Air Force flight suit.

“Get in,” Tully said. “We're going on TV.”

“What the fuck?” she said, laughing.

“Wally George!” said Overton, slapping the side of the car. “Come on, Pat. You too.”

My mom was on her way to pick me up, but now all I could see was Jessica's ass, bobbing in front of me as she climbed inside. I followed and Overton handed me a forty. Jessica seemed to know I wasn't going to drink it. She grabbed the bottle from me and started chugging.

“Damn,” said Overton, nudging Tully. “You were right about her.”

Wally George was the host of
Hot Seat
, a conservative talk show on the local UHF station. A tall, cadaverous Reaganite with a platinum-blond comb-over, he interviewed pornographers, pacifists, socialists, homosexuals, dopers, punks,
rappers, minorities, and all manner of human scum. His audience consisted mainly of drunken high school kids from Orange County, who were less concerned with ideological purity than with getting on TV and doing the pantomime for cunnilingus. The exception, tonight, would be Chris Pham, who, as Overton explained, was going with the sincere intention of throwing shit at Wally's guest, a Vietnamese merchant in Garden Grove who had recently hung a Communist flag in the window of his donut shop. It made the local papers and Pham's family had helped organize a boycott of his business.

By the time we got to Anaheim, Jessica had finished another forty, and now she and Overton were drinking a jug of Sunny Delight spiked with gin. Pham was standing in line outside the studio with a bunch of family and friends. He handed us each a button with an American flag on it and, underneath, something written in Vietnamese.

“Thanks for coming,” said Pham. “It means a lot to me.”

“I'm already fucked up,” said Overton.

The parking lot was full of giant trucks, your basic OC Panzer division. A linebacker descended from the majestic heights of his Toyota 4-Runner. He saw some of his bros getting out of another truck and they all started broing out. The linebacker looked at everyone in line and said, “Go home, you fucking gooks!”

Pham's crew started screaming at him and giving him the finger.

“This is America!” said the linebacker.

“You dumb fuck!” said Tully. “Those gooks are on your side!”

The linebacker and his bros stepped toward us.

“Shut up,” said Overton, kicking Tully's leg. “They'll kill us.”

I just stood there. I was everybody's favorite guy—the
passive sober observer. A couple security guards appeared. I thought they were going to break up the race riot, but instead they ushered everyone inside.

Wally George's set consisted of a desk, an American flag, a picture of the space shuttle, and an oil painting of John Wayne. Jessica walked to the top of the bleachers and puked. It was all foam. Next to her, a guy in a rainbow Afro wig turned away in disgust. “I need Gatorade,” she said, tugging at my red smock, which I had forgotten to take off, and I promised to get her some. When I got down the bleachers, I saw Overton chatting up a ponytailed cameraman, who kept pushing him away. I ran across the street to the 7-Eleven, but by the time I got back, the studio door was locked and the security guys wouldn't let me in.

I found a pay phone and called home for a ride. When my mom got there, she grounded me for a month, a purely symbolic act, because, with the exception of tonight, I never went out. We stopped for gas. As I pumped, she stood next to me and lit up.

“I have a question for you,” she said. “Can you please tell me why you've been drinking out of the Lowrys' pool? Carol keeps seeing you back there. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I'm not
drinking
it,” I said, and I had to explain my acne situation. I saw relief in her eyes. She extinguished her Winston in the squeegee bucket and threw the butt in the trash.

“We can't afford a dermatologist,” she said. “Not right now.”

The show aired at midnight. The donut shop owner was clearly insane but that didn't stop Wally George from denouncing him as an enemy of the American people. Every time he slapped his desk in exhortation, the camera turned to the audience. I couldn't see Jessica or Overton, but there was Pham,
his face red from nonstop booing, and there was Tully, posing in his blazer and turtleneck. He had brought an old-fashioned pipe. As everyone around him jumped and screamed and made lewd gestures, he just stood there, taking imaginary puffs, in the plummy style of Thurston Howell III.