Pick-Up Game

by Marc Aronson

  “Hey. Irene. Get in.”

  I take my time getting over to the car.

  “Hurry up. Traffic’s gonna be a mess. That concert is letting out now.”

  “You know I can’t rush. My —”

  “Don’t say it,” Marques says, getting out and opening the door for me. “I don’t want to hear no girl stuff.”

  I sit behind Ly-nette. She asks me how it went. I start to tell her, but then a big one hits and I lie across the backseat holding my belly.

  Ly-nette’s so excited. She wants to hear everything. I tell her the story, only not the way it really happened. I tell her the story the way it coulda happened, with him kissing me. And me kissing him back.

  Ly-nette asks if I lost my mind. “Kissing him ten minutes after you met.” She smacks Marques’s arm. “I knew I shoulda stayed.”

  He asks if she’s the crazy one. “You wanted her to meet him, didn’t you?”

  “You pushed my shirtsleeve down. Told me to advertise. Let him know I was a virgin.”

  Ly-nette’s shaking her head, asking if I remember what she told me about sales and advertising. “Don’t give away the product. Know your customer. And make your move at the right time — not too fast, not too slow.”

  I ask for Midol and a swig of Marques’s water. Then I tell them both the truth.

  “You think he’s a virgin?” she asks Marques. “I mean, maybe he . . .”

  Marques says he doesn’t know him like that and he don’t care one way or the other. “But you,” he says, looking back at me in the mirror, “I’ma give you your props. Some girls be so happy to get our numbers — they do anything.”

  Ly-nette starts naming names. “I guess we need to slow your roll,” she says. “Find you someone else.”

  The car stops to let someone pass. I repeat Chester’s phone number to myself, but then I see his lips on that girl’s mouth, his tongue wiping off her gloss. I wanna be kissed. I want somebody to call me and not just hand off their number to me like a chest pass.

  “Do boys like virgins?” I ask. “And not just because they think they can get them . . . you know what I mean.”

  Marques moans.

  “Well, it’s not like I really care what he thinks. I’m just wondering, you know?” I sit up, holding on to the back of my cousin’s seat. “When I’m twenty, I still plan on being a virgin.”

  Marques shakes his head. “I don’t think he’ll make it that long.”

  Ly-nette starts talking, but Marques’s words step all over hers. “I’ma keep it real, Irene. Every dude wants to date a virgin,” he says, turning the music down, “and they all want a new ride too. Not to watch it sit, though. But so they can drive it fast, get me?”

  That makes me feel worse. “I’ll be all by myself forever, then.”

  He pats my hand. “Maybe. It’s your call.” He sits through a green light, even though people honk. “But you’re particular . . . special. Don’t be changing now. Stay that way,” he says, pulling off.

  Ly-nette gives him a big one on the lips. “I told you he was a keeper,” she says.

  Marques turns up the music full blast, and starts singing. It’s Ly-nette’s favorite song, so she’s going at it too. I text my best friends, Whitney and Monique.

  met chester. cute . . . fine!!!!! But . . . . . . talk 2u later.

  Ly-nette asks if I want to go to the movies. I go with them a lot, always a third wheel. “No.”

  Whitney hits me up. did u get his #? tlk to him yet?

  I type Chester’s number into my phone.

  Ly-nette says if he wasn’t such a jerk, he could go to the movies with us too.

  I write him a little something. hey it’s me. what’s up?

  I go to hit send, but then I delete the message and sit back and text Whitney and Monique instead. They’re both virgins, like me. They always say I’ll be the first one to get a boyfriend, or a call from a boy, or maybe even a text. Not today. Not tomorrow, either. But no worries. Like Marques said, I’m particular. Special. Lucky, too, I guess.

  Escuchame,

  listen,

  school’s in session,

  sit down and take notes

  as I begin the lesson.

  Number one —

  don’t reach,

  you reach,

  I’ll teach

  and show you how sweet

  I am with the peach.

  Mira Mira

  my feet

  on the concrete,

  as I swerve and spin

  with my b-ball drumbeat,

  pound

  pound-pound

  pound-pounding the ball

  with hypnotic rhythm

  bouncing off walls.

  Running and gunning

  and crossing you too,

  I stutter-step and score

  as you learn lesson two:

  first you see the ball

  then you only see my shoe

  then you only feel the breeze

  as I blow right past you.

  Where you at,

  what happened,

  you see what I did?

  Mira Mira my skills,

  you ain’t ready for me, Kid!

  1.

  “Got it!”

  “Whoa, sucker!”

  “Not in my house, you don’t.”

  “Pick right.”

  “Green it, baby.”

  Shout-outs and grunts merge with crowd calls and sideline chatter.

  One pair of eyes watches, yet doesn’t watch. In the July heat, a boy squats, his back to the fence, slapping a basketball between his open hands, left-right, left-right.

  “Yo, Kid, we up next. Ready?”

  The boy nods without looking up. Readiness is everything. Isn’t that what Geronimo said once? But where is the old man? Ruben’s eyes scan the wire fence, crowded with outside eyes looking in through a maze of wire Xs. No Geronimo. He looks to the one area of the Cage where spectators can jam inside, under the far basket. No Geronimo.

  Ruben gazes out at the court just as ESPN launches a too-long, next-to-impossible sky hook from the corner that swishes through the chain-link net. The crowd roars, even as the silliness of the shot makes Ruben wince.

  But the boy’s main attention is focused somewhere else: on Caesar, dribbling upcourt, smooth Caesar, dribbling with the confident showboat style that Ruben knows so well. All too well . . .

  Saturday, three months ago: in the Cage. One-on-one with Caesar. The score rising: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 — to 2. Caesar’s wide gotcha grin. Mocking and careless as he bounces and weaves to the hoop, leaving the boy flailing and stumbling. Ruben’s awkward attempts to drive. Shame rising in his throat.

  “Enough school for you, Kid?” That Saturday, his lip bleeding, and Caesar’s sneer. “Come back when you’re ready for prime time. If ever.”

  Ruben glances up as the tide of the game flows past him. He watches as Caesar backs inside, spins, drops a short jumper, then points a mocking finger at ESPN’s lazy attempt to block.

  That day again. Ruben turning, walking away, wanting to hide. Then hopelessly glancing at Geronimo in his battered canvas chair. The old man’s usual station, beneath and behind the backboard. Geronimo. Always there. Watching. Steel-eyed. Silent. Smiling. Is he laughing at me, too? Does the boy dare ask? No way. No. Yes. What the hell. Yes.

  “Help make me the best.”

  “They all say that. You don’t mean it.”

  “Try me.”

  “They come and they go. You don’t have the stay-with.”

  “Try me.”

  “You won’t last two days.”

  “Try me.”

  Geronimo, wondering at this strangely intense boy-man. Athletic, yes, but raw, unformed, one more round-trip rider on basketball’s Dream Express. For a long time saying nothing, then —

  “Tomorrow morning — six sharp. Bring a ball — if you mean it and if you have the guts.”

  “Try me.” Ruben, walking off beneath a hail o
f mocking laughter coming from Caesar’s direction . . .

  Still squatting, Ruben begins to bounce the ball between his legs, three inches off the ground, his wrist vibrating to the tat-tat-tat, nothing touching but ball and fingertips.

  No palm, Kid, fingertips. Geronimo’s hard-edged voice, coming from somewhere deep inside the boy’s head. Geronimo. Where did that name come from? Was it the red bandana headband over the old man’s twisting gray hair? His intense, dark eyes?

  And where do nicknames come from, anyway? They arrive, and then they’re yours forever, like a scar. Ruben hates his: Kid. Dumb. Young-sounding. He’s sixteen in a month. So what?

  The crowd noise bubbles up. For a moment, Ruben bristles at the oohs and aahs: sounds like hundreds of voices spilling from the bright-colored uniforms, loud shirts, and garish hats. What are they all doing here, anyway? Isn’t this his Cage? Isn’t this the same Cage where, day after day, morning after early morning, he alone — and Geronimo — broke the quiet with the echo of a single basketball hitting the pavement and one man’s insistent voice?

  Late April. Behind them, only the occasional dog-walker and sometimes the wavelike whish of passing cars. Ruben leans against the fence, waiting. The ball pinned to his hip by his dangling arm. The old man in his faded canvas chair, squinting as if seeing something far off, speaking slowly.

  “There was this famous violinist, see, who had all the chops. He goes to a teacher. And get this. He asks the teacher to start him again, from the beginning, from zero, from zilch, from nothing! How to curl your hand, how to finger, how to breathe, how to become the music itself.”

  Then, pausing before gazing sideways and up at Ruben: “That’s how it’s got to be, Kid. Nothing less. Let’s roll.”

  So another morning begins.

  Blind Man

  Ruben at the end line. Geronimo at half court. Ruben dribbling toward him, looking up and ahead as Geronimo flashes a rapidly changing number of fingers. Ruben calling out the number: three, five, two . . .

  Grenade

  Ruben, dancing just beyond the three line. Geronimo, under the basket, flinging the outlet pass. Ruben firing without pause.

  Touches

  Ruben leaping, tapping the ball lightly against the backboard. Tapping, twenty-five off his right foot, twenty-five left. Then both. Putting the last tap in.

  Geronimo’s voice, staccato as the steady thump of the ball, punctuating the stillness:

  Jab and Attack

  “Don’t precook anything. Keep possible to the last moment.”

  Crossover, Juke, and Shoot

  “Eyes on the rim, not on the ball in the air.”

  Figure Eight

  “No showtime. Dribbling’s supposed take you somewhere.”

  Hops

  “The court’s a stage, and you’re the director.”

  When Ruben starts to laze, to drift — the old broken record returning: “The great ones never practice, Kid. They always play.”

  Time. You’re streaming sweat. Here. Wipe off with this. Keep it. It’s yours.

  Ruben feels in his hip pocket for the bandana. Why keep this piece of — ? But interrupted by a sudden flurry of claps and screams, he blinks and looks up. Someone has just canned a long trey. Joyous fists stab the air. Caesar’s team has taken the lead. Good, Ruben thinks. That’s how I want it. We’ll see.

  He looks down to the far basket, where a few of his teammates are shooting each time the game races the other way. There is Gene the Machine with his old-fashioned one-hand set shot, Ronnie the Bull, Baby Z.

  He lets the ball drop and thump lightly into his hands. The feel of it! The invisible thread!

  There are days when everything he sees or senses becomes a piece of the game. When he sidesteps across a busy street corner, he slips inside. When he zigzags down subway steps, he bounces off bodies. When he stands upright in the front car of a rocking train, he stays on his feet and highs to the waiting rim. Did anyone ever love the game more? Well . . .

  The old man laughing. His open laugh. “An itinerant philosopher — that’s what I am, Kid, a loser who loves this game. A drifter. Halfway from and halfway to: today the Big Apple, tomorrow — who knows?”

  Ruben, back to the wall, letting his long legs stretch out across the diner’s leather booth while sipping a Coke through a straw.

  Geronimo pointing at Ruben’s half-filled glass on the table. “Havlicek didn’t even drink Coke, to say nothing of beer, his first ten years with the Celtics.”

  Ruben saying nothing, but later, when Geronimo looks away to call for the check, the boy pushes his unfinished glass aside.

  A dark-skinned young man wearing thick glasses dribbles a basketball past the diner window. Glancing up, Geronimo waves. He turns back to Ruben, eyebrows raised exaggeratedly, like a clown.

  “Peepers Wilson — he’s at the Cage every day, and know what? He never gets better.”

  Ruben laughing. “How’s that?”

  “Easy. He’s a living example of the fact that practice don’t make perfect. Only perfect practice does that.”

  Practice don’t make perfect. Ruben delights in the old man’s way of turning things on their head. He wants more.

  “Who’s the MVP in the Cage?”

  “Says here it’s that dead-eyed white boy.”

  “Hunh?”

  “Don’t look surprised. It’s ’cause he gets his team the ball and he doesn’t want it back. These days, that’s as rare as a dodo bird. Think Dennis Rodman. A nut case maybe, but he’s got a ring for each finger.”

  Ruben again. “Who’s overrated?”

  “No contest. ESPN. Ask me why. Because he makes some lucky, half-ass shot now and then and can’t stop from trying it again and again. There’s an expression for jerks like that: ‘Good enough to lose.’ ”

  Tidbits tumble out, wiggy shit that bounces around in Ruben’s brain for days.

  Geronimo, waving for more coffee, forking more eggs, goes on.

  “You have to learn everything, Kid — and forget it. Don’t keep what you know in your head. Keep it in your kneecap. Your game is you; it shows who the hell you really are: you’re soft, you’re scared, you’re me-me-me, you’re 50 percent, you’re plain stupid, whatever — it’s all there in your game, plain as day, and you can’t escape it.”

  They sit for a moment, the nearby chatter mixing with the distant clatter of dishes. Ruben rolling his paper napkin into a tight ball, flipping it into the air, and catching it coming down.

  “I’m ready now, Geronimo. I am. I want Caesar again. Head-to-head, one-on-one.”

  Geronimo, looking across the table and slowly stirring his cold coffee with a fork. “Patience, Kid. A pinch of it’s worth a bushel of brains. Guy I knew in Chicago used to say, ‘You ain’t home till the invisible laws of the body meet the invisible laws of the game.’ Get it? Philosophers call it pure form.”

  The old man snorts and high-fives the boy. Then, pointing to the big clock above the counter: “Meanwhile, don’t drop your day job. You’ll be late for school.”

  Ruben checks the score with someone standing near him. With three to go, it’s Caesar up by two. He begins to focus. He watches how Caesar backs into the paint from the right side, how Caesar dribbles slightly higher with his left hand, how Caesar transitions too quickly when the other team shoots.

  His skin prickles with a kind of odd intensity. “It’s a game of inches. Know where your man wants to go, and get there first. Be so ‘there,’ you make him want to give up.”

  He looks around once more. No one is looking. No one cares. No one knows. And the one person he once thought was there is gone.

  “Halfway from and halfway to, Kid: today the Big Apple, tomorrow . . .” It had sounded so cool to him then, one more sign of Geronimo’s magic.

  Gone for a week now. For good? Probably. Ruben feels like a tiny speck in a vast sea of faces and bodies, like an insignificant mote in a sky of endless blue. Kid. Kid. Was that then? Now?

  H
is hand accidentally touches the bandana scrunched in his pocket. He yanks it out, almost angrily.

  Slowly, he wipes his already damp forehead. Will it fit? He starts to twist it around his head in a thin circle. But no. Not that way. His own way. He smooths out the bandana and one-folds it point to point. He lays it lightly on his head, takes the two dangling corners and, tightening, ties a small, hard knot at the back of his neck. Didn’t Geronimo say the bandana was his now? So — prove it. Make it yours!

  An even louder roar goes up. Game.

  Baby Z is standing beside him now, shaking his shoulder.

  “Yo, Kid. You stylin’ with that red rag? We’re up. Ready?”

  “Ready,” is all Ruben says, staring straight ahead.

  2.

  A Saturday pick-up game on a hot and hazy morning. A Saturday pick-up game — ten players battling for nothing but one more win in an endless and instantly forgotten scroll of victories and defeats. A Saturday pick-up game, like thousands of others before it and still to come.

  But inside this game, another game is playing out — with only two players. Caesar, alert and serious now, a slight frown between his eyebrows, eyes Ruben as the boy dribbles, backpedaling to the far side before blasting down the baseline. A half step late, Caesar follows, but walled off by the rim itself, can only watch as Ruben floats under and beyond for a reverse layup: 4–3.

  Who is this? A game that began with cool and confident trash talk (“Schooltime again, Kid?”) becomes a game for real. Ruben, at the point, glimpses Caesar out of the corner of his eye. His swagger gone? And something else. Respect?

  At 8 all, a quick crossover leaves Caesar clutching air. Ruben drives the lane, but jammed by two defenders, flips a behind-the-back pass to Geno in the corner, who lofts a rainbow that drops through the chains with just the faintest ting: up one. . . .

  10–10: game time.

  Watching. Waiting. Remembering. At the exact moment the dribble leaves Caesar’s left hand, Ruben pounces — and taps the ball into the clear.