Winners (3 page)

“You got me, Sam. Day like today, I can’t hold you.”

“Yeah.” Sam frowned, mildly embarrassed. “Ai-ight.”

“My turn next time.” I just got back here, after all, he thought, I been hurt, although he didn’t say it. As if time were going to make anything better instead of worse.

“Yeah.” Sam nodded, looked down at his watch. Time was waiting for him too, and Shane watched Sam’s shoulders drop and sag, the soul of basketball leaving his body. “I gotta run.” He turned quickly and jogged off the court, disappearing down the stairs into the world below.

“Good riddance,” Jimmy said, as they watched him go. “Man, he ate your ass up. Mmmm. Yummy yummy ass.”

“I’ll let you check him next time.”

“Someone better. He made you his bitch.”

Everyone was gone except for Dragon. The three of them lingered on the sideline: Shane stretching and pretending, Jimmy worn-out dissatisfied, Dragon smoking his occasional little victory lap of dope.

“You want?” Dragon said, holding out the pipe.

“Naw, thanks.”

Jimmy reached out for it and took a big semi-professional hit, passed it back, frowning, thinking, still in the game. They talked for a little bit about all the things they did wrong and then reluctantly got up, starting off their separate ways. At the edge of the fence Dragon called out.

“Hey Shane.” Shane turned expecting some brief final salutation, a strange Dragon word of wisdom, but instead the Dragon was pointing to a small green gym bag on the sideline, left behind. “Whose that?”

It wasn’t unusual. At game time, most days, the sidelines become a jumble of belongings: spare shirts and sweats and keys and water bottles and phones and pagers. Things get left behind. There’s an animal state of mind that comes when hard play drives the real and practical from everyone’s mind. You forget if your rent is due, if your parents are alive or dead, you forget your nice or lousy yesterday as well as who or what you came with: a brother, a basketball, a small green gym bag. You forget to think. You can try to remember, but the game starts and the inside of your head gets damp with sweat and nothing will stick. Thought after thought unpeels itself and teeters in the sprinting wind and falls away, until all that’s left is action and reaction. And sometimes when the game ends and the guys leave right away, they walk back out into the world still stripped down, animal, feeling nothing, slack-jawed, comfortably numb.

So they forget the things they come with, but they never lose them. There’s always that last someone to leave who grabs the orphaned ball or shirt or brother or hat. There’s always Shane.

“Not mine,” he told the Dragon, jogging back to get it. From the bag’s open mouth flashed the familiar pair of red sweatpants with the white reflective stripes down the side. He tossed Sam’s bag in the back of his van where it sat through Wednesday Thursday Friday and then a week and then another until they finally took a peek inside, wondering where the hell the kid had got to.

Paragon, Jimmy says. Paragon’s a start.

Shane has always believed that the court is separate, a universe in itself. Church and state. He expects people to respect the clean white lines, to keep their wives and weekends and business to themselves. He doesn’t want to ring their doorbells. He doesn’t want to look for Sam. But Jimmy is another story.

His brother doesn’t work, doesn’t do much of anything, fancies himself a writer, still lives at home with Ma. His brother has time and believes in a different universe and different rules. Ever since the day they opened up Sam’s bag and found too much, Jimmy’s come to life. Sam’s trademark sweats; a tight-rolled plain gray T-shirt that smelled like soap; short clean white socks; a pale blue spiral notebook; a brown canvas toiletries bag, stuffed; silver CD Walkman; mini plastic sleeve with four discs; black cell phone. A couple hundred dollars. Neither of them said a word. It was not the kind of bag you breezily leave behind.

If he’s not back by Tuesday, I’ll find him, Jimmy’d said.

Tuesday is gone. His brother has sifted through the details for an address, a phone number, a convincing piece of evidence, but the notebook’s filled with scribbles and the cell phone has no charge. Now Jimmy sits there grinning, giddy with success.

“Paragon,” he says again.

“I have to work,” Shane says.

“Yeah well you don’t give a shit I’ll go alone.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Then pick me up,” his brother says. “Tomorrow.”

H
E DROPS JIMMY
off at Ma’s house, cleans two chimneys in the Haight, and heads home to wait for his wife.

Lou is five feet tall, with straight black hair, green eyes, Spanish lips, good skin. Big breasts, no butt, no hips—I tend to flip on curves, she says. She talks a lot, fierce in her pursuit of conversation, willing to attack herself and others for sport. A small woman aware of all the obstacles. A reader, once: her undergraduate thesis involved urban planning and the nineteenth-century novel. She was an English major when he met her. She still smokes cigarettes sometimes when she’s drunk. As a child she lived in Connecticut, where her parents are messily divorced. She brushes her teeth too many times a day despite the dentist’s complaints. Everyone remembers her laugh.

On weekdays, Lou wakes up around seven o’clock, maybe nine or even ten on Saturday. She doesn’t do well in the mornings, and takes her showers very hot and very, very long. She does not share Shane’s childhood training of the California drought years, when lawns faded to wispy gold and the toilet had its old-wives’ cautionary refrain: if it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down. As a hygienic girl from the wet and verdant East, Lou knows that’s disgusting and she’ll have none of it. Well poached, she races naked from the bathroom to the bedroom to play her frantic morning round of outfit roulette, opening drawers, rattling hangers to the floor, emptying half her closet until she hits some voodoo winning combination and sweeps through the kitchen for the coffee Shane’s left brewing there. Seldom eats. She hops in her brand-new car and drives down through brutal traffic to Menlo Park where she drops cleanly off his radar.

In the evenings Shane gets home first and reconstructs the morning from the evidence: the stained and empty coffee pot, the kitchen lights left on, the dresser drawers ajar and crumpled clean-clothes rejects on the bed. He likes taking care of her, maybe that’s a little wussy of him but he always has. He doesn’t mind coming home to clutter he can quickly tidy up. He rinses dishes, makes piles. It might be hours before she gets home. During his broken-footed days she developed the habit of going straight to the gym in the evenings after work. She doesn’t like it. Exercising is a chore, but you have to do your chores. Fat would be a disaster. The gym is part of the job. By now her schedule seems powerful, supreme, and permanent: work, gym, sleep, with Shane sprinkled in between. Her company has devoured weekends too. The company’s taking off, everyone says so, but Shane pictures a bloated cargo plane trolling down a desert runway, not some lithe and silver rocket.

Sometimes in the mornings he invents a thin excuse to linger, shadowing her around the house as she gets ready. They have a cup of coffee and sit at the little table looking out across the city. She’s mildly unhappy when she’s tired and it makes her like him more. She kisses him on the lips and puts her head against his chest and moans sadly with fatigue. She takes his hands and loops his arms around her and asks him if he loves her.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure.”

“I can’t imagine why.”

“You’re lovable. You crack me up.”

“No.”

“Because you’re cute?”

“Am I? That must be it, then.”

Or they sit quietly drinking coffee, skimming the morning paper until both their clocks strike something and they kiss and run.

Shane is amazed at how hard she works now. He tries to work hard too. He tries to get home later than she does every now and then but he can rarely manage it. There’s always one more thing she can do there at the office, but he has to go home eventually. The people he works for want their houses back. They kick him out, send him home to cook dinner. He usually makes something simple, but he also loves that moment when she comes walking in the door to a minor feast and sips wine barefoot in the kitchen while he finishes up. Other nights he fills with sport: watching it on TV, going to the gym, bundling up for a night game out at Candlestick. He visits his Ma and brother or has a drink with high school friends. Occasionally he reads. The days seem temporary, caught between. Behind them hang their effortless beginnings and in the distance up ahead loom children and a continuing decent chance that they’ll be rich.

Let’s have kids now, he says.

Hold your horses, grandpa, she says. This part of life is when you work.

You can work and have kids.

She laughs. Most people never even get one shot, she says. Rich. I’m serious. It could happen.

He parks at home and walks down to his local grocery store in the vein of shops and restaurants that run through the valley, west to east. There’s everything you could want down there if you have the money. They pretend they do. The people who live up there with them among the Escher-tilted streets certainly do. Slightly stinky in his dirty clothes, he browses beside fit mothers and natty fathers picking out plump tomatoes and fresh halibut and entry-level pinot noir. Lou still doesn’t eat much but has fast recovered from a bout of vegetarianism, and he’s been having a good time making up for lost meat: poking pork chops, squeezing chickens, massaging marbled beef.

On his way home she drives past him, angling up the street in her sleek new car. She’s talking sternly to herself or holding one last communiqué via hands-free phone. The car is particularly shiny tonight, recently washed and buffed like a leather evening shoe. She doesn’t see him. He stares after her and watches her pull in ahead of him and park on the ridiculous hill. She steps out of the car and he hides behind a tree like a comic book villain. She marches toward the door with her red leather bag and laptop, her hair perfect, sunglasses giving away nothing, her face serious. She looks like a real person. She looks like the word mature. She pins her possessions against the door with thighs as she unlocks and disappears inside. His pulse syncopates. He doesn’t move. He is stalking his wife. He watches their living room window up above and pictures her first strides through the house alone, sunglasses coming off, her face relaxing. In the kitchen she attacks the refrigerator with niggling, fasting hunger; moves to the bedroom to pry herself free of shoes and hose; hits the living room and cranks the stereo to blast her way back to their other life. He waits. There’s the music, not Bach or Mozart but good ol’ rock ’n’ roll. He lingers, hoping to see the glass doors slide open and his wife step out onto the little porch with a glass of cold white wine. After a few minutes he goes inside.

Lou is sitting on the couch, staring at silent images on TV while listening to her own soundtrack of three-chord din. She never watches television. She’s still in her work clothes but everything is untucked and unbuttoned, her edges flapping loose as she comes undone. She looks better now, an adult halfway defrocked.

He leans over to kiss her head and she recoils slightly, like a suspicious cat. She’s in a work coma, work has reared back its wooden bat and beaten her half to death.

“I get you anything?”

“No.”

“Drink? Heroin?”

“No.”

He comes back with two beers and puts one in front of her and the other to his lips. She leaves hers frosting smoke.

“It’s Friday.”

“Is it?” She tries to sigh but yawns instead, covering her face with her hands.

He takes a long pull on his beer. It’s cold and perfect, the best thing he’s ever tasted in his life. “Did you eat?” This is his solution. “You didn’t eat.”

“You know, I just got home, give me a couple minutes, all right?”

He leaves her there and shucks his clothes and takes his beer with him to shower and blast the day into the drain. He decides not to masturbate and shaves instead, nicking himself twice on the hinge between his throat and chin where he always nicks himself. He waits without hurry for the blood to stop, watching it seep and bead, blotting it dry. She likes him better when he’s bloody and smooth. He changes into light cotton pants and a pale blue shirt and finds her where he left her but more upright, doing the crossword puzzle, pen flicking across the page.

“Look at you,” she says. She sounds improved.

“Here I am.” He tries again and this time gets her, an entirely good kiss. “I was gonna figure something out, foodwise. You must be hungry.”

“No way can I be hungry. I have like lunch three times a day.”

“Something light.”

“All I do is lunch. God, I feel so gross. Like I’m wearing a fat suit.”

“You’re not wearing a fat suit.”

“Maybe I’ll go to the gym.”

Paragon, he thinks. Sam. Stay on target. “You gym. I’ll make us something.”

“No. I loathe the gym. When I die, they’ll send me to the gym for all eternity.” She flops back against the sofa. “Man, I am such a bitch. Don’t you just want to slap me? I want to slap me. I want to slap me silly.” She tilts her head back and laughs wickedly, the low throaty staccato bursting out of her like ground birds startled from a bush.

“Come on.” He has her by the arm, pulls gently. “Let’s go out to dinner.” If he can get her out in public she will change, correct herself. She always does.

“No. Gym. Plastic surgeon.”

“Come on.” He holds her there, half suspended off the sofa, her eyes still glued to the television, until slowly, slowly, he feels her body giving in. He lifts her to her feet and puts his arms around her and finally she looks up steeply at him.

“You like me, don’t you.”

“Yep. But I’ll slap you if you really want.”

“I would not blame you. I would not blame you at all.” She puts both hands to her face and smears phantom tears back across her cheeks. “All right. I’ll be out in a sec.”

They end up in their neighborhood at a little restaurant where Dragon is a cook. It’s not far from home but he’s never eaten there before. There has always been a reason not to, and one of those reasons is he doesn’t want the magic Dragon turned mundane, chopping onions and busting butt, grinding out a living. He wants to keep his b-ball buddies suspended in a jobless state, free from death and taxes and mortgage rates. Maybe that’s stupid. Maybe it’s too late. Already he’s thinking about Sam, Sam rolling down a sidewalk in the Mission, checking out new kicks at Footlocker. Dragon has a job, big fat deal. D-One writes about the Warriors, for chrissake, Alex teaches elementary, Skeletor’s in grad school. What’s the big deal. Why not eat at Dragon’s place, now and then.

They stand in the doorway, Lou suddenly alert as he knew she would be. She looks around quickly at the people in the restaurant, deciding something. Across the room, behind the counter, Dragon appears, grinning as he catches sight of Shane, giving him an excellent nod before bending to his work. It’s going to be all right. The hostess seats them at a table near the back, places small manila menus in their hands. The menu says sea bass, rolled beef loin, something involving quail. He orders a bottle of pinot grigio, Lou’s wine of choice.

“My guy’s here,” he tells her. “Lemme go say hi.”

He catches Dragon putting the finishing touches on a dish, flecking moist basil and thyme from his fingers and setting the plate on the loading deck with a little spin. He looks handsome in his bloodied white smock, his blue eyes and the small goatee making his face look dark. The Dragon pantomimes a handshake in the air, the whole thing, the court shake: slap, clench, snap, fist, bump. As an exclamation point he grabs the heel end of an unfamiliar-looking root, turns, fires for a trash can.

“Still got it,” Shane tells him.

“Always.”

“Smells great in here.”

“Smells is an odd sounding word, isn’t it,” Dragon says. “Smells.” It’s a relief to know that Dragon in the restaurant is not a bit different from Dragon on the court. “Smells,” he says again, and laughs.

“Like a beef-flavored cologne,” Shane says.

“So my prep man says we should go with the Chinese Flame Tree.” He nods at a small guy chopping things, who nods back in support.

“For the court?”

“Yeah. Grows fast. Says maybe we’ll get some shade before we die.” Dragon’s eyes skip sideways back to his grill. Their time’s up.

“What should we have?”

“What’s this we, white man?”

“My wife.”

He goes up on toes to examine her. “Ooh la la fi fi,” he says. “For a lovely young couple like yourselves, I would suggest whatever I feel like making. You guys like fish, right, scallops?”

“We like it all. I gotta warn you, though, she eats like a bug, you can go on the small side. And if you can make it look low-fat and healthy? Big points for me.”

“All need big points. I got you.”

Lou is sipping her wine when he gets back to the table. “My man’s going to hook us up, unless you have something special in mind.”

“Your man.”

“That’s right. I’m connected.” The waitress swoops by the table, smiles at them approvingly, whisks away their menus. “Your day got crappy?” he says.

“Crappy! And you?”

He tells her about his morning, slowly, trying to get the specifics right. She’s not listening completely but she’s trying. He describes the gimpy guy in flannel and his big brick chimney and the motorcycle carcasses and the black dog that let him keep his balls.

“You’re making that up,” she says, trying not to smile.

“I swear.”

“You forget names of people you’ve met five times but you remember what this guy was wearing. You’ve always got the details. Sometimes I’ll be down there in some awful meeting and I’ll think, what would Shane do right now, what would he notice? What would be the story he’d tell me later. Kinda like what would Jesus do, only super California Zen Master Flash style. Or maybe you make it all up. Like that earthquake this morning.”

“I made that up?”

“Didn’t see anything online.”

“Hmm. Good move on my part, though.”

She smiles. “But who’s to say you’re not inventing all these weird characters you meet at work?”

“I’ll take you with me sometime.”

“Oh I’d make a great chimney sweep assistant.”

“You might even fit.”

“Are there any women in the chimney industry?”

“No. Not one in the whole entire world.”