Playing Without the Ball (12 page)

I
go with Alan to the Sturbridge Holiday Tournament on Tuesday evening. Sturbridge has won this thing like ten years in a row, but it’s kind of shameful the way they stack the field. Tonight we’re playing West Sullivan, New York, for example, which couldn’t beat our freshman team. I mean no disrespect, because this is a school with like twenty-five kids in their graduating class every year. We’ve got ten times that many.

The “championship” game tomorrow night will be against either Forest City or Montrose, which are both small and not exactly powerhouses. While other teams look for tough early season opponents to prime the pump, our school just looks for easy wins.

Brian Kaipo scores eight points in the first quarter, and the lead quickly reaches double digits. Early in the second, he makes a nice steal and races upcourt, two strides ahead of everybody else. He can’t quite dunk, but he makes a spectacular reverse layup that gets the crowd on its feet. I notice Coach stand up, too, but he doesn’t look pleased. He stands there with his arms folded, glaring at Brian.

Brian steals another pass and goes the length of the court again. He could easily make another layup, but he swings a behind-the-back pass toward Jared Hall. Jared’s not expecting it. The ball glances off his fingers and winds up in the third row of the bleachers.

Ricky gets up from the bench, takes off his warm-up top, and goes over to the scorer’s table. He goes in for Brian, who gets a huge cheer from the crowd. Coach makes him sit next to him, and you can see him chewing him out, although he doesn’t raise his voice enough that you can hear it.

Brian’s arguing back. Eventually, he gets up and goes to the other end of the bench, shaking his head. He doesn’t play at all the rest of the night.

After the game, Alan and I walk down Main Street to hang out by Turkey Hill, which is something I wouldn’t normally do, and never would do alone. You have to have a certain credential to hang out here, a certain level of rebellion or machismo.

There’s not a whole lot of things that are less cool than being president of a Methodist youth group, but Alan seems to thrive on it. Which in a way makes him extra cool, because he’s accepted in most circles in spite of that.

He starts talking to a guy named Gary who’s wearing a long Army-type coat. The guy glances at me and nods.

“Weasel been around?” Alan asks.

“I seen him before,” Gary says. He looks back at me, not sure if I can be trusted. “Down in front of O’Hara’s.”

“He got stuff?”

“He’s always got stuff.”

“Maybe I’ll walk down that way.”

Weasel is a drug dealer; Spit buys from him sometimes. He’s about a year older than I am, but he dropped out of school a while back.

Gary walks away.

“More research, huh?” I say.

Alan gives a short laugh. “I just want to get a couple of joints. I’m not big into it.” He bumps my arm lightly. “You up for this?”

“No,” I say. “I know what would happen if I ever got started with that shit. My family’s got a history.”

“So you’ve never gotten high?”

“Depends how you look at it,” I say. “Basketball’s my high. I’m not kidding.”

So we walk a few blocks toward the center of town. “I’ve only bought from this guy once,” Alan says. “He may act a little paranoid.”

Nothing is open down this way except for a couple of bars and the Chinese take-out place, so nearly all the storefronts are dark. We find Weasel sitting in the doorway of a jewelry shop with his back to the glass. He stands up as we approach.

“Men,” he says.

“Hey,” Alan says. “How’s it going?”

“No complaints,” he says. “Have a seat.”

We sit on the stoop. “You know Jay?” Alan asks.

“Jay,” he says, sticking out his hand. The hand is cold and dry, sort of bony, even though the rest of him is puffy. “So what are you boys doing?”

“Hanging out,” Alan says. “How’s business?”

“What business would that be?”

“Whatever business you’re up to.”

“Well,” Weasel says, looking around. “I ain’t ready to retire.”

“Hey, you’re young.”

Alan asks him how his sister’s doing, and Weasel just says she’s all right. A guy—an adult—comes walking briskly by, carrying an unopened umbrella. All three of us watch until he’s about a block away. Nobody says anything for a minute.

“I could use a couple of joints,” Alan says.

Weasel stares out at the street. “That’s easy,” he says.

“Same deal as last time?”

“Yeah. Same price.” He looks past Alan at me. “You?”

“No.” I shake my head. “I’m with him.”

“Congratulations. Well, Alan, I believe I can fill your order on the spot.” He pulls open his jacket and pokes around in an inside pocket. He takes out three joints, looks them over, and sets two of them on Alan’s thigh.

Alan hands him some bills, and puts the joints in his shirt pocket.

“Now
I can retire,” Weasel says.

The championship is closer than the first-round game. Montrose has a big man inside, but overall they’re slower and weaker. Ricky starts and plays well. There are intermittent chants of “Kai-po, Kai-po,” but Brian doesn’t get off the bench. At halftime we’re ahead 29-22.

“This is bullshit,” Alan says during the third quarter as Montrose pulls to within a point. “What’s he trying to prove?”

The Kai-po chant starts again in earnest, and it seems to stir up our team. Brian stays planted on the bench, but Ricky leads a 12-0 burst, and suddenly we’re comfortably ahead.

Coach pulls all the starters except Ricky with three minutes
left and a seventeen-point lead. Then he calls Brian over. Brian looks around at the bleachers, then at Coach. He shrugs and walks over to the scorer’s table. There’s a foul a few seconds later, and Brian goes in.

The Kai-po chant stopped a long time ago. People cheer, but the excitement has worn off. In fact, I’ll bet that if the chant hadn’t stopped, Brian wouldn’t have got in at all. This just looks like a chance for the coach to embarrass him.

First time upcourt he nails a three. Second time, too. And the third. Then he gets a steal and dribbles the length of the court, scoring a layup and finishing with eleven points in two-and-a-half minutes.

The announcer asks that everyone stay for the presentation of the all-tournament team and the championship trophy. Most of the crowd leaves anyway, but me and Alan go over to the side of the court, where Brian is leaning against the wall with a small group around him. He’s got a half smile on his face, slowly shaking his head.

Jared Hall and Billy Monahan make the all-tournament team, and Ricky gets the Most Valuable Player trophy. Brian sort of shrugs when Ricky gets the award, but he claps politely. Somebody says, “Should’ve been you, Brian,” and he smirks like he knows damn well it should’ve.

S
pit comes to the back door the following evening when I’m eating. I open the door and hold the hamburger up to her face, like I’m going to force her to take a bite. Big joke.

She’s got a light frosting of snow in her hair. Most of the orange has faded out. I ask her the obvious question about whether it’s snowing, and she says it is, a little. Her cheeks are red. She looks nice.

“It’s great out,” she says. “There’s no wind, so it feels really warm.”

“Maybe we can go out in it later.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Hey, I went before the magistrate today.”

“And they didn’t lock you up?”

She swipes at me. “Just a fine, like Stanley said. And community service. Fifty hours.”

“Yeah? So what are you going to do? Carry groceries for old ladies?”

“Right. She said I should call that Y where you play basket
ball. I could paint the women’s locker room or something. Maybe I could do a mural.”

“Sounds like a good idea.”

“It might even be fun.”

“So what’d she say? The judge.”

Spit gives a kind of pouty face, like she’s thinking. “Just that I should know better. That I need to think before taking chances with my life. That’s a little extreme, wouldn’t you say?”

“Maybe. But it sounds like she let you off easy.”

“Probably. Then Stanley tried to tell me the exact same thing. ‘Think about what she said,’ he keeps saying.” She rolls her eyes.

She sticks her hands in her back pockets and looks out the kitchen door toward the bar. Patsy Cline is singing from the jukebox. Spit looks back at me and flicks up her eyebrows. “Four people out there.”

“It’s Thursday. And it’s early.”

“Tomorrow night, man. We rock.”

“New Year’s Eve.”

“We’ll kick ass.” She winks at me. “You bringing in another date?”

I laugh and shake my head, blushing. “I wish.”

“She was sweet. Too bad you drove her away.”

I smirk. “Yeah, it is.”

“Poor Jay. One fleeting moment of love.”

“Two. But that’s life.”

She runs a finger down my face. I lean toward her, like I might kiss her, but she gives me a squinty look and backs away. “Hamburger breath,” she says.

“That’s life, too.”

She sticks to her chop-busting tone, in my face but flirty. “What do you know about life?”

“I’m learnin’ fast.”

“It’s a hell of a ride,” she says.

“Isn’t it?”

She starts drumming on her stomach. “I love my life. I do. Maybe not everything about the way I’m living it, but I love that I have the chance to do it. I cherish every second.”

She picks up a dish towel and starts wrapping it around her hand, just playing. I like these discussions we have, these little pools of calm where she talks about her songs or her past or whatever.

“Really,” she asks, “she gone for good?”

“I’d say yes. I mean, she ain’t coming back. I don’t even know her last name. That was a … I don’t know. Just a thing that happened.”

“Things do.”

“All the time,” I say.

“You just gotta be there to catch ’em.”

“I plan to.”

We look at each other for a couple of seconds. I always smile when I look at her. I can’t help it. She can’t either. And no matter what I say, however stupid or offensive, she lets me get away with it.

“Things happen,” I say, crossing my arms.

She crosses her arms, too. “Some things,” she says.

“Surprising things, sometimes.”

“Yeah,” she says. “But certain things just don’t.”

“Certain things do.”

“Unlikely things usually don’t.”

“You never know,” I say.

“You never know.”

She leans into me, her chest pressing into mine, and gets her face about two inches from me. Her eyebrows are soft, the color of a Labrador retriever. Her expression shifts almost to seriousness, and she steps on my right foot. She’s shorter than I am, maybe by two inches.

And then she does kiss me, not romantically or with her tongue, but on the lips, just briefly.

She draws her face away and locks onto my eyes again. “Maybe someday,” she says.

And she looks vulnerable for once. Up close, she doesn’t look any older than me. She puts her hand up to the corner of my mouth and sweeps her fingers slowly down to my chin, over the soft stubble. I kiss her thumb.

She steps back and recrosses her arms, then laughs. “Ooh,” she says. “You almost had me there for a second.”

I like fresh parsley, but the bunches they sell it in are too big for my needs, and most of it would go bad in my refrigerator. So I pick it up and shut my eyes for a second, breathing it in, then place it back in the pile.

The supermarket greenery is in neat, tilted rows, gardenlike, with a mirrored area behind it, and they spray the stuff with water every now and then so it stays moist and fragrant. The brussels sprouts are tight little globes with delicate outer layers.

What I take is stuff I can just rinse and eat, like bell peppers and cucumbers, the smaller, pickling kind. Carrots I buy already bagged, the tiny ones already peeled.

I linger here longer than the average customer, probably
longer than anybody. I always come here first, and sometimes I come back again after getting juice and canned stuff and cold cuts in other parts of the store. It has the feel of a jungle maybe. Or a nursery.

The bar is packed for the New Year’s Eve party, and Shorty’s brought in a third bartender, an older guy named Roy who’s helping out in the kitchen some. Mostly he’s just running the food out to the bar for me.

Spit opened with an entire set of fast, old rock songs like “Seven Days” and “Midnight Confession.” We’re jumping. I haven’t left the stove, but the music permeates the whole building. Shorty wants me to bring out trays of wings and egg rolls just after midnight, and I can shut down the grill once that’s done.

Spit comes in and puts her arms around me from behind.

“Good tunes,” I say.

“Sarita’s all-night dance party,” she says. “I’ll change the pace a little later. But tonight is pure entertainment.”

I turn to face her. She’s looking wiry in a man’s white tank top, clearly with nothing under it, and the jeans with the ripped knees. She’s put crayon-red highlights in her hair.

There’s a knock on the doorframe, and the attorney is standing there in a grayish blue sweater. “Hello,” he says.

“Hey,” she says, in a tone about as neutral as I’ve ever heard from her.

“Taking a break?” he asks.

“A short one,” she says. She looks at her wrist, which happens to be bare, and says, “Ooh, it’s getting late. Better get out there.”

She punches my shoulder and squeezes past him. He takes a half step into the kitchen and just stands there for a few minutes, watching me turn hamburgers. Then he clears his throat. “Do you sense that she’s settling down at all?” he asks me. “I mean, I think she’s starting to mellow.”

I try not to smirk too much. “Maybe some,” I say, although I don’t know what he’s talking about.

“I think so,” he says. He raises his hand in a kind of wave or salute. “Well,” he says, “have a good night.”

Bo stops in a little later. I’ve never seen Bo dance or anything; he just sort of makes his way around the room, looking like he’s confiding in the guys he stops to talk to. “Everything under control here?” he asks me, taking on a mock-managerial role.