The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

by Jonathan Lethem

  So it went for the first half. We kept Dunk frustrated with our hectoring defense, and I took my game straight to Flynnan, however bruising. McFront’s hand wasn’t as hot as the night before. Elwood was hyperkinetic on defense.

  And on offense, we were making Early look like the star the fans back in Florida had always hoped he would be. All he had was a handful of one-on-one moves, but if you kept him from having to think about anything but the basket, he was sensational.

  We ended the half with a 22-point lead. The Knicks nibbled away in the second half, Otis shining like the Otis of old for a few minutes, but it was our night. We dug in on defense and finished fourteen points up. The crowd drained out of the Garden in silence. We were taking the series back to Florida tied at a game apiece. There were two games on our homecourt, then back to New York.

  Unless somebody won two in a row.

  For the third game the Knicks just looked tired. They weren’t adjusting to our defensive pressure. Vanilla Dunk was wearing his cynical sneer, but you could see it drove him crazy not to be able to cut loose. The Miami crowd gave Flynnan, their ex-hero, a hard time, and he responded by getting sheepish—for the first time I felt I could actually push him around a little.

  This one was Early’s game. He played to the crowd, and the slams just kept getting showier. Elwood poured in a few himself, but Early was the star that night. We led all the way, and the game was over by the third quarter. Both teams pulled their regulars and started thinking about the next game.

  Elwood was glowing on the bench. We all were. We had a chance to take it from them. They had to beat us tomorrow to even stay alive. This was supposed to be their year of destiny, the Vanilla Dunk Victory Tour, and we had them down 2–1. The wild card team.

  Flynnan woke up. Dunk was still moribund, but Flynnan woke up; I knew because he started punishing me. I was taking down some rebounds, but I was paying in flesh. I looked for help, but who was going to help me? That’s the horror of the center: there’s just two of you seven-foot monsters out there, and you’re enemies. If the other guy’s a little bigger and meaner, who’s going to tell him to leave you alone? Some shrimpy 6'5" guard? The Tokyo army? The ref? Your mother?

  This one wasn’t a game. It was a trench battle. Elwood and I were working together, stripping balls away, bottling up the middle, but there was no communication between us. Just sweat and grunts. We had to keep our eyes peeled or we’d be flattened. McFront and Dunk were both fighting to open the lanes, throwing elbows, double-faking to make sure we got our faces in the way. Where were the whistles? I’m sure the Knicks were asking the same question at their end. The refs were letting us duke it out.

  It was Knicks 34, Heat 30 late in the second quarter: a defensive struggle. We’d forced the Knicks into our game, and they were playing it. Every time Early touched the ball he was mobbed. He’d dump it back out and our guards would chuck it up from the outside and hope for the best. Most of our points belonged to Elwood, who was scoring by grabbing rebounds and muscling back up for the layup.

  We were holding on until two minutes before the half, when Dunk broke loose for a couple in a row, and we went to the lockers down eight points.

  Elwood stood to one side, a wild look in his eyes. He wasn’t playing coach anymore; he was too far inside himself. He and Dunk had been in each other’s faces every minute of the first half, and I could feel the hate burning off Elwood’s skin, like gasoline vapor. I could almost imagine that Elwood would rather lose this one and take it back to New York, just to maximize his crazed masochistic war with Dunk, just to push it to the very edge.

  I personally had a strong preference for ending it here.

  Coach Wilder, seeing that Elwood wasn’t receiving, looked over at me. I shrugged. The rest of the team milled nervously, waiting for someone to break the silence.

  “Okay boys,” said Coach Wilder courageously. “Let this get away and it’s just another tied series going back to New York. That’s handing it to them.”

  No one spoke. Elwood’s foot was tapping out accompaniment to some internal rhythm.

  “You’re only eight points back,” said the coach. “Just keep tying them up on defense. They’ll turn it over when they get tired.”

  With his voice trailing away, he sounded like he didn’t believe himself. I felt like patting him on the head and sending him to the showers. The fact was it was Elwood’s team now, and Elwood didn’t give halftime pep talks. We would all have to feed off his energy on the floor; it would happen there or it wouldn’t happen at all.

  We drifted apart, and what seemed like seconds later we were back on the court. The ball was ours; Elwood hit from midway out and we fell back on defense. We stuck to our one plan, of course: I caged Vanilla Dunk with my long arms, and Elwood harassed the ball from underneath. This time the gamble worked, and we forced a bad pass, which one of our guards picked up. He found Early and Early found the net. We’d closed the gap to four points.

  And that’s where it stayed. Everyone gritted their teeth and went back to the trenches; even Vanilla Dunk and Early were playing defense. Both sides would have fouled out if the refs hadn’t been squelching the whistle. We forced turnovers, then turned it over ourselves, rolled our eyes, and fell back for defense again. Elwood was a maniac on rebounds, but he’d pass it up to Early and Early would disappear in a cloud of Knick uniforms. Otis stripped the ball from him with two seconds left in the third quarter and chucked up an improbable three-point shot from midcourt which only hit net, putting them up seven points as the buzzer for the fourth sounded.

  At the start of the fourth Elwood began trying to do it all, to outrebound everybody at both ends of the court, to steal the ball, pass it to Early, then run up and set a pick for Early and rebound Early’s shot if he missed. I watched in amazement, near total exhaustion myself just from our frantic play on the defensive end. In frustration with the Knicks’ defensive adjustments he started going up himself, with his usual too-powerful stuff moves, scoring some points but committing fouls the refs couldn’t ignore. Still, he bulled us to three points back, then doubled over with a leg cramp.

  Coach Wilder called a time out. Elwood limped back to the bench.

  “Okay, Elwood, you got us close. Now you better sit.”

  “Uh-uh,” said Elwood. “I’m stayin’ in. Listen, Early—”

  Early leaned in, his eyes wide.

  “You gotta figure out one new trick, ’cause they’re bumping you off, man.”

  “What?” said Early in his high, frightened voice.

  “Pass off when you go up now. Don’t shoot. Find the big man here.” Elwood jerked his thumb at me. “He’s big and white, you can’t miss him, man. Just throw it up to him every time you get a clean line.”

  “Elwood,” I began to complain, “I’m not like you. I can’t go back and forth. I won’t make it back on defense if I’m up fighting with Flynnan under their basket.”

  “Don’t go up under their basket,” he said. “Shoot from wherever you are when you get the ball, man.”

  “What?”

  “I seen your jumpshot, Lassner. Just shoot.”

  The time out was over. Elwood hobbled out, massaging his own thigh, and we took the ball up. We fed it in to Early and he drew three men. He spun out and five hands went up between him and the basket.

  He didn’t try and shoot over the hands. Instead he turned and lobbed a clumsy pass high in the air to me, halfway back to our end of the court.

  “Shoot!” hissed Elwood.

  I tossed it up, not even noticing which side of the three-point line I was on. It went in.

  I panted a thank-you prayer and zeroed in on the ball, which was in Flynnan’s hands. I threw myself in his path and forced him to give it up, miraculously avoiding destruction in the process. Elwood followed the ball out to Vanilla Dunk, who pumped, pivoted, pumped, head-faked, shrugged, anything to try to get out of Elwood’s cage. He lifted the ball up and I batted it out of bounds.

  El
wood stole the inbound pass and scored on a solo drive for a layup.

  The Knicks brought it up and Otis, looking frustrated with Dunk, shot from outside. He missed. Elwood directed the ball to Early, who drove to the basket and was surrounded there. He threw it out to me where I stood at the top of the key. “Shoot!” said Elwood again. The ball floated up out of my hands, and hit.

  Tie game, four minutes left.

  Elwood got too excited and fouled McFront on the next possession. McFront, ever-solid, hit both from the line, putting the Knicks up two. Elwood brought the ball up to midcourt then passed it directly to me, and nodded.

  Swish. My jumpshot was on. Practice, I guess.

  We traded turnovers again, and then the Knicks called time-out with just over two minutes left. Their season was getting very, very small. We only went halfway to the bench and then just hovered there, waiting for the Knicks to come back out. There wasn’t anything to say. We were too pumped up to huddle and trade homilies. Too much in the zone.

  The Knicks brought it up and Flynnan staked out prime real estate under the net. I sighed and went in to try and box him out. He got the ball and I went up with him, tipped the shot away. Elwood took it and charged upcourt, slamming it home at the other end.

  Since he was all the way up there anyway he decided to steal the inbound pass and do it again, and we suddenly had a four-point lead.

  But Elwood was tired, and at the wrong end of the floor. They sent Vanilla Dunk up. I tried to stop him alone; we both jumped. I landed what seemed like a couple of years before he did. His jam was a poster-shot, I heard later. I sure didn’t see it.

  We came up again and sent Early in to try and answer. He got caught in traffic and bailed it out to me, and I shot from where I stood all alone, in three-point territory.

  That made four in a row for me, and a five-point lead for the team.

  They answered with a quick basket. So quick that I glanced at the clock; we were in a position to run the clock out. I brought it up slow, dribbling with my big body curled protectively around the ball.

  “Nobody foul!” I heard Coach Wilder yell from the sidelines. Thanks, Coach. I passed it to Elwood. He passed it to one of our guards, who passed it back to me. Flynnan lunged for the ball, and I passed it away again. It got passed around the circuit, everybody touching it except Early, who wouldn’t have known what to do with it. He only existed in two dimensions: up and down. Time was beyond him.

  The ball came back to me with a two seconds on the shot clock. What the hell, I thought, and chucked it up.

  Swish.

  We’d won. Five points up with 16 seconds. No way for them to come back. The Knicks milked it, of course, using two time-outs, scoring once, but two commercials later we got official confirmation. When the final buzzer sounded, we had a nice healthy three-point edge.

  The locker room was mayhem. All the Disney executive people I’d managed never to meet wanted to shake my hand. The media swarmed, media-like. Some beer company exec gave Early Natt an award for series MVP and they stuck a mike in his face and Early just grinned and made this sort of bubbling sound with his lips, ignoring the questions. Another bunch of TV people isolated me and Elwood by our lockers, and I readied myself to do the talking once again.

  “Well, Elwood, care to break your media silence for once?”

  Elwood paused, then grinned. “Sure, asshole, let’s break some silence. What you wanna know?”

  The reporter clung to his pasted-on smile. “Uh, you were a real leader out there, Elwood. Some would say the MVP belongs to you. You took an unconventional mix of talents and made them work together—”

  Elwood stuck his big finger against the reporter’s chest. “You wanna know who the star of this team is?”

  “Uh—”

  “This dude here, man. He’s taught himself to play without sampling, man, ’cause the skills they gave him sucked, and he didn’t even tell anybody. Me, Early, Vanilla Fucking Dunk, all them other dudes are playing with exosuits, but not my man Lassner, man. He’s a defensive star. He can hang with the exosuits, man, and that’s a rare thing.” He laughed. “He’s also got this funny jumpshot ain’t too bad. Big white elbows stickin’ out all over the place, but it ain’t too bad. No suit for that either.”

  They turned to me. I nodded and shrugged and looked back to Elwood.

  “How does it feel beating Michael Jordan?” The question was directed at either one of us, but Elwood picked it up again.

  “Didn’t beat Michael Jordan,” he said angrily. “Beat Vanilla Dunk. If that was Jordan we wouldn’t have beat him.”

  “What’s going to become of your feud?”

  Elwood’s face went through a quick series of expressions; angry, then sarcastic, then sealed-up, like he wasn’t going to talk anymore. Then he went past that, smiling at himself for a minute before answering the question.

  What came out was a strangely heartfelt jumble of sports cliches. I don’t mean to be insulting when I say that I don’t think I ever saw Elwood speak from a deeper place within himself than at that moment. I really do think he was the last modernist in a sport gone completely postmodern.

  “Ain’t no feud. Alan Gorman is a rookie, man, and you got to give him time to put it together. I was honored to play alongside the man in New York and I’m honored to face him now. I hope we meet again—after the Heat wins this championship, that is. I’m sure he’ll grow into the suit. Ain’t no feud. I plan to beat the man every time I can, but when he beats me it ain’t gonna be Michael Jordan then, neither, man. It’s gonna be Gorman, or Dunk or whatever he wants to call his ass, and when he does I’ll shake the dude’s hand. Here, you oughta ask the big white dufus some questions now.”

  That should be the end of the story, but it isn’t. Elwood and I were in a bar two hours later when the sports channel switched to a live broadcast of Vanilla Dunk’s press conference, his last with the big Knicks logo on the wall behind him.

  His agent spoke first. “Mr. Gornan has reached an agreement with United Artists Tokyo, regarding his motion picture and recording career—”

  “What about the Knicks?”

  “UA Tokyo has purchased Mr. Gorman’s contract from Gulf and Western. This is a binding, five-year agreement which guarantees Mr. Gorman eight million a year before box-office—”

  “I wanted to wait till the end of the season to make this announcement,” said Dunk. “Didn’t think it would come this quick, but hey—” he paused to sneer “—that’s the way it goes. Look out America, we’re gonna make some movies!”

  “Dunk—what about basketball?”

  He smirked. “That’s a little rough for me, y’know? Gotta stay pretty.” He rubbed his face exaggeratedly. “You’ll see plenty of action on the screen, anyway. Might even dunk a few.” He winked.

  Elwood and I sat watching, silently transfixed. The implications sank in gradually. The Jordan skills were gone; league rules stated that they were retired with the player. The occasion that Elwood had so slowly and painfully risen to had vanished, been whisked away, in an instant.

  “Tell us about the films,” said a reporter.

  “Ahh, we’re still working out my character. Called Vanilla Dunk, of course. Gonna do some fightin’, some rappin’, some other stuff. Not like anything you’ve ever seen before, so you’ll just have to wait.”

  “The contract includes album and video production,” added the agent. “You’ll be seeing Vanilla Dunk on the charts as well as on the screen.”

  “Your whole sports career is over, then? No championships?”

  He snorted. “This is bigger than a sports career, my friend. I’m bigger. Besides, sports is just entertainment. I’m still in the entertainment business.”

  “Your decision anything to do with Elwood Fossett?” He cocked his head. “Who?”

  I turned away from the television. I started to speak, but stopped when I saw Elwood’s expression, which was completely hollow.

  And that is the end of the s
tory.

  I’d like to say we went on to win the championship, but life doesn’t work that way. The Hyundai Celtics beat us in the next round of the playoffs. They were completely ready for our trapping defense, and we were lucky to win one game. Elwood faded in and out, tantalizingly brilliant and then godawful in the space of five minutes. The Celtics went on to lose to the Coors Suns in the final.

  I myself did win a ring, later, after I was traded to the Lakers. That led indirectly to a fancy Hollywood party where I got to drunkenly tell Alan Gornan what I thought of him. I garbled my lines, but it was still pretty satisfying.

  Elwood I mostly lost touch with after my trade. We partied whenever the Lakers went to Miami, and when the Heat came to L.A. I had him over for dinner with my second wife—an awkward scene, but we played it a few times.

  When I think about what happened with him and Vanilla Dunk, I always come around to the same question. Assuming that it’s right to view the whole episode as a personal battle between the two of them—who won? Sometimes I drive myself crazy with it. I mean, who came out on top, really?

  Other times I conclude that there’s something really pretty fundamentally stupid about the question.

  LIGHT AND THE SUFFERER

  My brother showed me the gun. I’d never seen one up close before. He kept it in a knapsack under his bed at the Y. He held it out and I looked at the black metal.

  “You want me to hold it?” I said.

  “What, at the place?”

  “No, I mean now. I mean, do you want me to touch it or something. Now. I mean like, get comfortable with it.”

  He stared.

  “Don’t look at me like I’m crazy. What do you want me to do with the gun?”

  “Nothing. I’m just showing it to you, like ‘Look, I got it.’ Like, ‘Here’s the gun.’ ”