Playing Without the Ball

by Rich Wallace

  Spit comes over and takes my arm. “I’m freezing,” she says, a little more under control.

  “Yeah, well, it’s cold out,” I say sharply. I let out a heavy sigh, more like a snort.

  “Yeah, it is,” she says, just as sharply. “Hey, listen, Mr. Innocence. You finally get me turned around into thinking maybe we could have something, then you start groping some little bitch you don’t even know.”

  “I know her,” I say. We stand there staring at each other for half a minute, frozen. “When did I do that?” I say.

  “Do what?”

  “Get you thinking.”

  She looks away, pulls her arms real tight around her body, frowning. “I don’t know. That thing about … unlikely things, I guess. The way you said it. The way you looked at me.”

  I look at the sidewalk. “I thought you said that.”

  She puts her hand under my chin, makes me look up. “You’re kind of a whore,” she says.

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Well, you act like you’re on this great crusade for the perfect love, but you take it where you can get it.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “No, I do. But I don’t kid myself about it.”

  I shake my head. “Shorty’s going to lock that door in a minute, and my keys are inside,” I say.

  “Well, I’m freezing my ass off,” she says. “I need to get under some blankets.”

  All right, I’ll share my bed, but the magic moment passed a long time ago. I mean, I’m not planning any trips to the vending machine.

  We go upstairs. She uses my toothbrush, which makes three of us now. I stay in the bathroom longer than I need to, staring at my reflection. I can’t believe I blew it with Julie. And now the one who screwed it up is lying on my mattress.

  I climb into bed. She leans up on her elbow and looks at me sort of sorrowfully, but then she kind of drops herself on me and puts her tongue in my mouth. And we start groping, and of course I get aroused, but it’s nothing like it was downstairs a little while ago.

  We do have sex, rather horribly, and I almost feel as if I’m being attacked. I can’t help thinking about Julie—not imagining that I’m with her, but just distracted because I’m wondering if I could have been. I don’t have any idea what Spit’s thinking about, but it sure doesn’t seem to be me.

  When it’s over, I get up and go to the bathroom. I turn on the light and look in the mirror again, and I can’t help frowning at myself. Or maybe just at the situation. I brush my teeth again and pull on some sweatpants, and go back and sit on the radiator, staring at the ceiling.

  “Sorry,” Spit says softly.

  “It’s okay. You got nothing to be sorry about.”

  “Don’t I?”

  I look at her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” She sits up on the mattress and leans against the wall. “I guess it was my turn to be jealous.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know. Something about that girl you were with.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” she says again. “Like maybe she was going to take you away.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Why shouldn’t she?”

  “Well, I hardly know her.”

  “Looked like you were getting to know her.”

  “I guess I was.”

  She lies down on her stomach with her face in the pillow and looks up at me.

  “You’ve seen me with girls before,” I say. “Once, anyway.”

  “Yeah. I know. This one seemed different. I’ve just been feeling vulnerable the past few days. I got a late Christmas card from James.”

  “Him again?”

  “It’s not him. It just made me feel alone. I get that way sometimes.”

  “Everybody does.”

  “I know.” She sits up and hugs her knees. She gives me a shy smile. “Sorry about the sex,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “I mean I’m sorry it wasn’t any good.”

  I huff. “I guess I share the blame.”

  She stands up and goes to the closet to get another shirt. “I think I’ll go home,” she says. “Okay?”

  “Sure. I’ll walk you.”

  “That’d be nice.”

  She stands there naked, clutching a T-shirt to her chest. She looks fragile for a second, or scared maybe. “Sorry I screwed things up with that girl,” she says. “I’ll explain it next time I see her.”

  I give a halfhearted laugh. “You think she’ll ever come here again?”

  She thinks about it a second. “Yeah, I do,” she says. She bites on her lip, nodding slowly. “If she’s got any fight in her, she will.”

  Lockers

  We stay unbeaten with a win over New Covenant, the most polite team in the league. They’ve got purple shirts with no numbers, just a white cross in the center. They’re Fundamentalists, and most of their players go to Wayne Christian Academy, a tiny school outside of town. I heard that their minister was actually the driving force behind the league. They draw more spectators than any other team—most of their congregation shows up for the games.

  Anyway, they’re not a bad team and they keep it close for three quarters. Alan finally wears them down inside and we pull away.

  I’m surprised to see Spit when I walk off the court, sitting on the edge of the bleachers near the door.

  “What’s up?” I say.

  “Wanted to see you play. Great performance …. I wanna show you something.”

  “Okay.”

  “Downstairs.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah, I started the mural.” We head down the stairs toward the locker rooms. “I had to paint the room for real first, but they said I could do some artwork if I keep it tasteful. I’ve got most of it sketched out.”

  I have to wait in the hallway for a few minutes because there are some women in there. Beth and Robin come out and say nice game, and I say so, too.

  “Trying to get a peek inside?” Beth says.

  “I was,” I say. “But I guess I missed you.”

  “Too bad,” she says.

  “Some other time, maybe.”

  They both laugh and keep walking.

  An older woman in a blue sweat suit comes out of the locker room and Spit waves me in. “All clear,” she says.

  The paint smell is noticeable and the walls are covered in fresh pale yellow. There are rows of lockers on the two longer walls, and a horizontal mirror on the half wall that separates the changing area from the showers. The back wall is open, and you can see where Spit’s roughed out some figures with a pencil.

  “This is Patsy Cline,” she says, pointing to a woman with a kind of cowboy jacket. “Diana Ross. Billie Holiday. Carole King. Margo Timmins.”

  I recognize most of the names.

  “They’re pioneers, you know. I still have to add a few. But they’re my musical heroes. Pure guts, the way I see it.”

  “You putting yourself in there?”

  “No way,” she says with a laugh. “I’m no legend.”

  One of the employees sticks her head in the doorway and does a double take when she sees me. “We’re closing,” she says.

  Spit smiles at her. “I was just showing my friend the artwork,” she says.

  “No problem.”

  It’s snowing lightly when we get outside. My hair is damp from the game, so I pull up the hood of my jacket.

  “Get some pizza or something?” she asks.

  “Sure.”

  She’s sort of quiet as we walk up toward Main Street. I am, too. This is the first I’ve seen her since the other night, when things broke the wrong way. It’s kind of hanging in the air between us.

  So we stare at each other over the pizza—not hard stares or blank ones, just studious.

  She breaks a piece of crust off the pizza and turns it over in her fingers. Then she takes a nibble from it, keeping her eyes on me. “My father,” she says, “would
like this place. He’s the type of guy who likes to sit and eat pizza, listening to lost-love songs. Wishing he was a better man, I think. It broke his heart when my mother finally left him. Even though he knew he deserved it.”

  “He did?”

  “Yes. He’s a good man, as good as a man who hurts his wife can be, anyway.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “Oh,” she says, glancing at the ceiling, tightening her lips for a second, “like he knows he always hurt us, but he was desperate to keep us anyway. Like he can’t allow himself to depend on anything to last.”

  She looks away again, toward the front of the restaurant, but her gaze slowly settles toward the floor. “It infected me, too.” She looks up again, fixing her eyes on me. “I have trouble trusting. So I screw up, trying to drain everything I can from a moment or a connection … before it slips through my fingers and I lose it.”

  She starts to fight back a smile, then gives me that scrunched-up look again. “Then I overanalyze the hell out of everything.” Her whole faces brightens and she laughs. “I get hung up on making everything right, every relationship. And it never happens. I’m estranged from my father, I can’t cut loose emotionally from James. Shit, I even feel guilty about Stanley. The guy can’t figure out why I iced up all of a sudden. I don’t have the heart to tell him I never cared. That he was just in the right place for a while.”

  She giggles again.

  “Painful, huh?” I ask.

  “Nah. Just dysfunctional.”

  “Join the club.”

  “Oh, I joined a long time ago, bud.” She shakes her head with that half smile and her eyes get a little wider. “My body tends to get ahead of my brain.”

  “Me too, I guess.” There’s a light constellation of freckles across the bridge of her nose, almost golden in color. Her eyes are pale brown, and there’s only the slightest change in color from her lips to the skin surrounding them. These are the sorts of details that never register with me. I usually take a whole picture. I couldn’t tell you the eye color of a single person if I wasn’t staring at their face.

  I don’t know much about trust either, I suppose. “Seems to me if you trust somebody, you usually get burned,” I say. “I mean, I’m way the hell removed from being nine years old, but, you know, I can see how badly my mother could have screwed me up. Leaving like that. Could have screwed me up bad. ’Cause you know, when you’re nine, like, you’re supposed to be able to trust your parents at least.”

  She gives me a look, sort of a smile, but one of those looks that says I’m full of shit.

  “What?” I say.

  “She could have screwed you up, Jay?”

  “Yeah, well … okay. But I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on it.”

  “All things considered, yeah. I guess you do. But don’t go telling yourself you’re uninjured, buddy. Don’t go thinking you’re okay.”

  I’m more okay than she thinks I am. I mean, I only mentioned my mother because she brought up her father. Yeah, I think about it sometimes, being the only seventeen-year-old around who’s living alone. But I’m more together than either of my parents ever was. I can take care of myself pretty good.

  “So how do I put you right?” Spit asks, jolting me out of my thoughts.

  “Huh?”

  “I feel like I need to erase the other night somehow.”

  I give her a little frown. “It’s okay. I don’t think you can do that.”

  “Oh,” she says, rubbing her foot against my shin, “I think I can.”

  I dwell on that a moment, crossing my arms and feeling my face start to flush.

  She narrows her eyes, parts her lips. “I can’t let that little episode just sit there and fester.”

  I try to look at this objectively, but it isn’t easy. Things go through my head, like two wrongs don’t make a right, but I’m not sure that applies in this case. I’m hoping not.

  I motion with my head toward the door and we get up, leaving half the pizza. I’ll sort this out later.

  At least I’ll try.

  We’re tender this time, slower and involved with each other. We undress each other as we go, stroking and mouthing and whispering. We’re two screwed-up individuals, but when I sink into her I feel cushioned and understood and like I’m floating in a warm, gentle sea in the darkness.

  It’s enough to make me forget about Julie almost entirely.

  The New Bishop

  I can tell something’s up when I get to the Y on Thursday. There’s already a crowd, and three of our players are standing under the basket, looking down the court.

  “What’s going on?” I say to Peter.

  He just points. Brian Kaipo is down at the other end, shooting jumpers, in the same blue T-shirt as the other guys from the Bishops.

  I raise my eyebrows. “What’s the deal?” I ask.

  “They say he’s eligible,” Danny says.

  Alan enters the gym, and I wave him over.

  “I know about it,” he says. “It’s legitimate. He quit the varsity today.”

  Okay. We’re undefeated and these guys are 4-3, so they’ve got some work to do if they’re going to catch us. But suddenly the whole picture has changed.

  “Can they add a guy this late in the season?” I ask.

  “The rules say until the eighth game,” Alan answers. “So, yeah.”

  Right from the start it looks like a long night. I get burned on a give-and-go, then they steal the ball from Danny, and Kaipo hits a three-pointer. They go into a full-court press and Danny gets trapped in the corner again.

  I race toward that sideline and catch an elbow in the cheek. But I get to Peter and he gets me the ball with a weak bounce pass.

  I break the press by myself, sprinting upcourt. Alan sets a screen and I drive underneath, but Kaipo cuts off the lane and I’m stuck. I shoot anyway and he gets a hand on it, tipping it to Robinson. He scoots downcourt with Kaipo trailing, and then dishes it to Brian, and it’s 7-0 after about forty-five seconds.

  Alan calls time-out and jogs to the bench. The rest of us are stunned, and we stand on the court for five seconds before walking over.

  “They can’t keep that up,” Alan says.

  “Don’t be too sure,” I say. “He’s on.”

  “Everybody just settle down,” he says. “When they score, I’ll inbound the ball. Jay, I’ll be looking for you. If we let them play up-tempo, they’ll run us out of the gym. So let’s play smart and make them work. They wanna run all night.”

  And they do. I miss a jumper next time up and Robinson gets the rebound inside. He tosses an outlet pass to Brian, who dribbles to the key, makes one pass, gets to the corner for a return pass, and hits another three-pointer. It’s 10-0 and he’s got all of them. Everyone in the bleachers—maybe thirty-five people—is standing up and applauding.

  Alan gives me the ball. No press this time. I dribble slowly across the midcourt line. Nobody’s open. Kaipo is crouched low, hands up, eyes on my waist.

  I get the ball to Robin; she’s covered by a short, slow guy with glasses. She makes a nice move and gets a step on him, driving to the lane. Robinson comes out on her and she bounces it to Alan, who lays it in, and we’re finally on the board.

  I slap hands with Robin as we hustle back. “Sweet,” I say.

  Alan yells, “Defense, now!” I concentrate harder.

  They get it inside to Robinson, and Alan fouls him on the shot. He makes the first free throw, but misses the second.

  I get the rebound and start to run, but pull back because all of my teammates are behind me. I dribble a long time past the three-point arc, waiting for somebody to get open.

  Finally I pass it to Robin again and make a quick cut inside. She gives me a nice feed, and I hit a short running jumper in the lane.

  We go back and forth the rest of the half, holding their lead down to six or eight points, never getting closer but keeping it within reach. Kaipo keeps scoring, but they don’t get any more big runs l
ike that opening minute.

  They start out hot in the second half. Kaipo hits three straight three-pointers and they build the lead to fourteen. Alan takes another time-out. “Let’s go to a triangle-two,” he says. “Kaipo and Robinson are the only ones handling the ball, and Robinson’s staying inside. You three,” he says, addressing Peter, Robin, and Beth, “play that triangle out front and help Jay with Kaipo. Just get in his face. I’ll stay home with Robinson.”

  It works, some. Kaipo sees the situation and makes a few good passes to the open players, but that mostly results in missed shots. We chip away at the lead and bring it down to nine by the end of the third quarter.

  “Go back to a man-to-man,” Alan says between quarters. “Kaipo’s gonna start shooting again, I guarantee it. Jay, the man is gonna score. But if you stop him a few times we’ll get back in it.”

  A few times, yeah. Maybe one out of five. But we do trim the lead—Alan gets a couple of layups, I hit a three, even Danny nails a fifteen-footer. Two minutes left and we’re within five points.

  Kaipo’s dribbling with his left hand, slowly pushing his right hand out and back. He’s signaling to his teammates to clear out of the lane, wanting to go one-on-one with me.

  He steps back, gives me a head fake, and drives left. I stay with him, hands up, bumping him with my body. He stops his dribble, leans toward the basket, then eases back and lofts a fallaway jumper over my outstretched hands. It swishes.

  I bring it up quick. Alan’s got position inside and I give him a hard bounce pass. He pivots and lays it over Robinson. The margin is back to five.

  Kaipo dribbles for half a minute, staying outside, not risking a pass. There’s no shot clock, of course, so he can dribble out the game if he wants.

  “Pressure!” Alan yells, and I go for a steal. He easily gets around me, but Peter comes up and gets a hand on the ball. It’s loose and I scramble after it, grabbing it at midcourt. I call time-out.

  “How much time?” Alan yells to the scorer’s table.