“Sweet kid,” Lester says afterward.
“Cutie pie,” Ruth agrees. And now she remembers why she feels more annoyed with Lester than usual, why she can’t stop hating his tie. “Did you tell Ariana you’re going to her graduation?”
“I have every intention of going to her graduation.”
“Game Seven?”
“Come on. The Cats won’t take the Sonics to seven. This is a safe bet.”
“If you’re wrong about that, you’re on your own, my friend. I’m not doing your dirty work.”
Of course she will do his dirty work. How else can she ensure the news is broken to Ariana gently, strategically? Ruth’s impassive expression does not waver, even as she endures the physically painful sensation of needing to do two things at once. She needs to tell Ariana she loves her—did she say it during their call, or did she forget?—and she also needs to review her notes before filming her first segment. Lester has robbed her of time to do either. If NBA players are forbidden to check their phones in the minutes before a game, Ruth should be forbidden from talking to her ex-husband.
Lester clamps a coach’s hand on her shoulder. “Stop by my room tonight. Don’t bring your millennial boyfriend. I want to talk to you.”
“Joel is not a millennial,” Ruth says. (He is.) “And he’s not in town.” She should refuse the invitation outright, but instead she squeezes Lester’s arm and moves past him. It’s nearly game time. What happens in the NBA finals becomes history on a seven-second delay.
For the rest of the night Lester will be the illustrious Lester Devon: beloved former coach, analyst with a bone to pick. The superior whom Ruth may never succeed. For now, she forgets him. She steps onto the floor and waves to Julian, the long-tenured cameraman waiting to film her segment. She catches an errant basketball and chest-passes it to the nearest Sonic still in his forest-green warm-ups. The player winks. The anticipation of the crowd washes over her, steadies her, propels her heels across the court.
But in the earliest hours of the morning, with her face wiped clean and her hair reponytailed, she will leave her hotel room for Lester’s. In the back of her mind, she already knows this.
CHAPTER FIVE
After the Supersonics are introduced—each player’s name boomed in the stadium announcer’s most menacing, warmongering baritone—artificial fog hangs over the court. Preserved in the vapor is the crowd’s anticipation, the remains of their “Star-Spangled Banner” feelings. For Ruth, the fog evokes the NBA games of her father’s childhood, when teams would play through a film of cigarette smoke. Ruth likes the effect. Excitement cinches her throat—maybe incongruously, as the first few minutes of the game are ugly. Over the initial turnovers and whistles and missed foul shots, Jay Thomas—audible through a discrete, flesh-toned piece of technology lodged in Ruth’s left ear—says, “I guess we should acknowledge the elephant in the room.”
Lester: That’s a rude way to refer to our friend Anthony Moore.
Jay (chuckling): This is one of your last games as an announcer—oh! Lake gets a good look from the corner and . . . misses it—you’re retiring.
Lester: Yeah, yeah, I sure am.
Jay: And what’s next for you?
Lester: Oh, I might go back to coaching. Probably not immediately and probably not the NBA. Maybe college.
Jay: Turner drives into the paint, gets to the rim, and that’s his first bucket of the night. You like the kids?
Lester: I love the kids. And speaking of coaching, I’m not the only golden-ager in the building. I’m assuming you caught the press release about this being Rick Bellantoni’s last season.
Jay: That’s right. The Cats won’t be the same without him, will they?
Lester: The league won’t be the same without him.
Jay: KP draws the foul and Cincinnati calls their first time-out. Nor you.
Lester could be bullshitting, Ruth thinks. It wouldn’t be the first time he has explored his career options on-air. (A common refrain: “This might get me fired, but . . .”) He could just as easily be for real. It’s unusual, if not unprecedented, for an NBA coach to return to college basketball. But what Lester wants, ardently or on a lark, he will get. The man was the assistant coach of American University’s men’s team for a mere two years before he was promoted to head coach. Two years after that, the Washington Wizards brought him on and Lester ascended the same ranks in, roughly, the same time frame.
During each of Lester’s six seasons with the Wizards, the team made the playoffs but never advanced past the second round. In Lester’s last game as a coach, Detroit’s bruising, seven-foot center threw a punch at the Wizards’ best player, an equally enormous power forward. It happened in front of the Wizards’ bench; Lester could not let his star retaliate and risk suspension. Diminutive at five-eleven and some one hundred and sixty pounds, Lester clung to the calf of the NBA All-Star who dragged him indifferently across the floor and, in the end, threw a suspension-worthy punch anyway. The Wizards’ brain trust, frustrated and frazzled and, perhaps, as Ruth was, haunted by the footage of Lester wrapped around his player’s leg like a shy child, turned on him. Lester was fired in June.
So concluded the year during which Ruth, age thirty-six, had called the Knicks-Lakers game at the Garden. She and Lester had long ceased to be spouses or even casual competitors; she took no pleasure—none!—in his disgrace coinciding with her professional breakthrough. Besides, coaches were fired the way players were traded: no hard feelings, management only wanted to mix things up. Lester would find another coaching gig. Ruth had no doubt they would both come out on top.
The following season, when the network whimsically gave Lester a spot in the booth as a guest analyst, then swiftly extended a full-time offer, Ruth was livid, unable to shake the conviction that Lester had stolen something from her. Never had he expressed an interest in broadcasting. Not once had he conceded that Ruth’s field required any special skill set or natural talent. Worse, Ruth already knew he would be a fan favorite, with his instantly formed opinions, his encyclopedic knowledge dating back to the seventies. His ties loud yet tasteful, his picket-fence teeth.
Lester did not deserve the job, but the job deserved him. Buzzed on two margaritas from a TGI Fridays in Newark’s most desolate terminal—her flight twice delayed—Ruth called him with congratulations.
“Thanks, Ruthie.” He sounded cheerful but over-indulged, bloated with other people’s praise. “Not my usual beat, but I’m planning to have fun with it. No reason for everything to be so high stakes all the time, right?”
Ruth felt herself go rigid. “Broadcasting comes with its own challenges. The pressure might surprise you.”
“You’re jealous.”
“Sure,” Ruth admitted easily. “Full-time color analyst? I’ve wanted that since . . . since I was in my twenties. Since we were together. I’m happy for you, Les, but I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t hurt.”
“You’re hurt.”
“Yes. I’ll get over it.” She would not. “But it does sting.”
“Let me ask you something, Ruth. Was I supposed to turn down the job because I’m your ex-husband, or because I’m a man?”
“I don’t know. Maybe both, maybe neither. I don’t begrudge you taking the job, but did you ever wonder whether it’s really yours to take? If maybe there are people out there who have trained for that position, set their sights on it, busted ass to get it—only to lose it to someone who thinks it will be fun? A little hobby? It’s not as if you’re hurting for cash, Lester. You could have taken a breath. Another coaching offer would have come in. Any small market team would be lucky to have you.”
Lester let silence swell between them. The silence, because it was under his command, imbued Lester with authority while rendering Ruth long-winded and difficult to parse. “I suppose,” Lester said finally, “that in my shoes you’d have insisted the job go to s
omeone more deserving?”
Ruth was quick to respond, “I think I might have, yeah.”
“I see. But as things stand, no one is more qualified to do Ruth Devon’s job than Ruth Devon herself.”
Back then, he was still pronouncing her last name with a barely perceptible emphasis on the first syllable to remind Ruth the name was not hers. That she had borrowed it like a sweater and neglected to give it back.
At the time, she was still the only woman who had ever called an NBA game on national TV. Journalists writing their long-form profiles on Ruth, featuring her airbrushed headshot alongside grainy stills of her college games, loved to note that Ruth had lucked into her celebrity. What they never noted was that the kind of luck on which her career depended did not seem to exist for Black women, not even in basketball.
Supposedly, Ruth’s field favors professionals. If you played professionally, if you coached professionally, you should have a leg up in sports media. And yet no former WNBA players or female coaches have managed to dethrone Ruth, college player from Virginia with the busted knee. Ruth might have chosen any sport—as a kid she had dominated at tennis and softball and soccer. Even golf. But she had chosen basketball, the sport that least belonged to her. To apologize would be disingenuous; Ruth has no regrets. What she could not admit to Lester then, but admits freely now, is that he was right: She would not hand over her microphone to someone more deserving. Not willingly. She could collapse courtside and, she is sure, retain her white-knuckled grip on the mic. Ruth loves her work. She is grateful for her so-called luck. Does it hurt to admit this? Does it help?
Ruth has no idea. But she remembers how desperate she was for Lester to admit the job was not his to take and he was taking it anyway. That Ruth had earned the contract, and Lester was ecstatic to be signing his name.
To his credit, Lester did seem to consider self-deprecation. At least he hesitated, oscillating between possible tactics before landing on maximum defensiveness.
“No one could ever deny that you work like a dog”—this was not a compliment—“but, truth be told, you’re just not a great analyst. You’re good, okay? You’re professional and knowledgeable. But you’re too withholding. You never give the fans your raw, uncensored opinion, and that lack of transparency, it gets to people.”
Ruth wanted to hang up. She was about to sob in an airport TGI Fridays. Fat, hot tears rolling down her cheeks, smacking against her fries. Fuming at Lester had turned her margarita buzz into a premature hangover—and wasn’t the buzz yet another thing he had stolen from her?
Did Lester truly not understand why Ruth could never give her uncensored opinion on air? Did he not know that to be a woman was to censor, to measure, to calibrate? If he wanted her opinion, he could have it free of charge.
“You’re a smug, condescending bastard. I hope you don’t turn our daughter into the kind of person who feels entitled to everything she’s ever wanted.”
Lester was the one who hung up, laughing at a high and wheezy pitch.
Every former couple has the fight that follows, sometimes by years or whole decades, what they took to be the last fight. Like the kernel of corn that pops as you’re tearing into the bag, the final spat bursts without warning. It comes closest to addressing the crux of all previous fights but still falls short. (Precision would mean progress, would mean hope, and Ruth never had any.) In the end, this fight served only one purpose: it allowed Ruth to hurl insults at Lester from a TGI Fridays booth. Looking back, she considers it a win.
Ruth and Lester’s fame, by now, exists wholly independent of their defunct marriage. The newest generation of reporters and interns don’t even register Ruth and Lester as exes. Last season, Ruth’s audio assistant learned the truth of their shared surname, then shrugged and confessed, “I always figured Lester was your dad.”
At the end of the first quarter the Wildcats are down twelve, and if anyone asked Ruth to account for the deficit, she would do so in defensive rotations made and missed, in fouls called or missed, in fractions of inches and seconds. Pick-and-rolls, elevator doors, box and one, give and go. Switch everything! Switch nothing! Isolation, run it back again. Glance at your popcorn and you may miss the turning point of the game. Ruth does not look away.
Of course, no one asks.
Ruth leaves her seat to meet her crew at the away team’s bench. She passes beneath Cincinnati’s basket, skirting the assembly of photographers sitting cross-legged on the floor. She comes close to brushing against the bony knees of Taylor Swift and her supermodel friend. With beery urgency, Taylor gestures from her black turtleneck to Ruth’s: “We’re twinning!” she mouths, or shouts—there’s too much noise to be sure. Ruth nods and beams at Taylor, same as she would at anyone. Later, her indifference toward the pop star will make her laugh, will make Ariana intone “OhmygodMom” in exasperation. But in this moment Taylor is the fan and Ruth is Ruth. She joins Julian, who sticks up a meaty thumb. Her A2, Simone—of the winged eyeliner, cleavage, and deadpan sense of humor—fiddles with Ruth’s mic and passes it back to her.
The interview, between fifteen and twenty seconds long, will air after the next commercial break. Coach’s back is turned, hands on his hips creasing his oversized suit jacket—a bad sign. You’re fine, Ruth tells herself. Nerves can’t show. Every word she speaks into a mic tonight is an audition. By the start of next season, she could be the analyst, free to comment on lineups, matchups, schemes, and plays from the safety of the booth.
Or she could be right here, steeling herself as she taps a famously cantankerous coach on the shoulder.
He gives his clipboard to an assistant and hunches in Ruth’s direction. The question she has prepared pertains to an odd substitution Bell made midquarter: the steady veteran Anthony Moore—playing well in the opening minutes—for the inexperienced yet electric rookie Willie Glass. In her seat she tilted her head; through her IFB earpiece, she listened to Lester and Jay exchange network-friendly versions of what the fuck. But now she is inches from Bell’s bloodshot eyes and mouth clamped lipless, and she knows the question is wrong. The man is in a mood.
Truthfully, Ruth is unbothered by Bell’s frequent Grandpa-ish mourning of the league’s good ole days, before defense and post play were rendered otiose by the vulgar three-point shot. Long before coaches were subjected to the in-game interview. Personally, Ruth loves the three-point shot. The collectively held breath of the arena as the ball arcs over the court, fate uncertain—she lives for that.
The coach interviews she could live without.
It should be noted that Rick Bellantoni is among the most effective coaches in the league. Head coach for almost three decades, Bell has led the Wildcats to the playoffs season after season—whether their roster has been star-studded or starved for talent. Though it makes for a less salacious narrative than the Darius Lake revenge plot, Ruth knows Bell deserves as much if not more credit for Cincinnati’s success. His reputation is that of “a good man” in ways both old-school and contemporary. A veteran of the United States Army, a devoted husband and father. A humanitarian, according to the New Yorker, “with a big heart and deep pockets.” Ruth has seen the viral pictures of him at Black Lives Matter protests. She’s gotten him on the record saying he supports any player’s decision to kneel during the anthem. She’s moved by his solidarity with the guys on his team, which she believes is genuine.
It must also be noted that Rick Bellantoni is a loose cannon. A quick search will yield video compilations of the man hemorrhaging rage in front of referees, assistant coaches, his own players. To Ruth’s knowledge, he has never howled at a reporter, but he does nothing to hide his resentment of the network’s contractual right to ask him two questions per game. At best, Bell is standoffish and annoyed, tucking in his white-stubbled chin, staring courtward and deploying as few words as possible. At worst, he looks up at you with slow-burning malice, the way a father regards a teenage daughter who
has backed the family car into a telephone pole.
At the last second, Ruth changes her strategy. She abandons her question about the substitution.
“I know you have a lot on your plate tonight, Bell, so I’m only going to ask you one question. In the first quarter, what happened for your team offensively?”
The question is a freebie. From another coach, Ruth would expect an innocuous call for better execution and ball movement, plus a polite nod at the camera. But there is a reason Bell makes frequent cameos in Ruth’s stress dreams. He is the TSA agent looking between Ruth’s ID and her face and asking, “Is this a joke?” He is the ER doctor refusing to tell Ruth if her daughter will be okay. Or he is himself and Ruth is late to meet Joel, late to her father’s funeral, late to pick her mother up from the airport because she cannot convince the man to answer a single goddamn question.
Bell takes his time peeling his gaze from the floor. With one finger he scratches his jowl. Though the arena pulses with the beat of a pop song, to which Seattle’s dancers fling their limbs and spin, Ruth can hear the nail scrape against stubble. A childhood feeling washes over her: that of a Virginia Beach roller coaster lifting Ruth and her brother high above sand, sea, and their parents. Dreading the forthcoming free fall, Ruth turned to her brother and said, “I’m ready to get off now.”
Bell scratches, stares. To preserve her smile, she pictures him with a martini in hand, sleeves rolled, elbows on the table. Pressure mounts behind Ruth’s eyes. She won’t cry. She is smiling and she won’t stop until Bell relents.
Time yawns its jaws and swallows her hope. To Bell, these seconds are already a waste: might as well throw a silent fit, stage an in-game protest.
The Second Season Page 5