The Second Season

by The Second Season (epub)

  Ruth has reason to root for a Seattle victory tonight. If Cincinnati wins, Ruth will preside, mic in hand, over the trophy presentation. She’s done it six years in a row and her preference is for the champions to close it out at home. With the confetti raining down from the rafters, clinging to her glasses and her hair. With the arena’s own employees embracing in the tunnel. The presentation is less daunting when the fans aren’t grumbling, prematurely shuffling toward the parking lot. She wants them euphoric, their blistered screams buoying her as she ascends the stage assembled at center court and delivers the trophy to men who are, yes, happier than on their wedding days, children’s birthdays, new Ferrari days. Technically, Ruth is prepared. Since Game Four she has met with her producers, with Wildcats officials and Seattle Center staff. She has memorized the list of people with whom she must speak in the immediate aftermath of a Cincinnati win. Phillip will be in her ear, guiding her, soothing her, the whole time.

  Still, she would rather not.

  Her preference is shameful. Ruth should want to fly home to DC and call her boyfriend from the rumpled sheets of her own bed. Then to make an appointment with her gynecologist of ten years, a woman who expressed no reservations at the removal of Ruth’s IUD. Above all else Ruth should want to be in the front row at Ariana’s graduation ceremony—because it matters to Ariana. Ruth herself matters enough to Ariana that she’s compelled to invoke pomp and circumstance as a way of saying: come home. After six weeks on the road Ruth should want, should long, to go home.

  Ruth wants Peter Cheng to hit another shot.

  She wants to put her arm around him during a walkout interview and ask, on national television, “How’s your night been?”

  She wants to remember the kid’s blue tongue, Darius Lake scratching his cheek and—see, he’s not invulnerable to the magic, the miracle—smirking in disbelief.

  She wants two more games.

  The media will say that, prior to the fourth quarter, Cincinnati was preserving their strength. In hindsight, Peter Cheng’s explosion will seem like a juvenile outburst kindly indulged by the benevolent Darius Lake—Darius, who one year ago was traded on a whim, dismissed by a Sonics franchise desperate for a championship.

  Sorry, Seattle. Ninety seconds left, and Cincinnati enjoys a nine-point cushion. Darius has either scored or assisted on every Wildcats basket of the fourth quarter. On the final possession, the Sonics back off. Darius drops the ball and lets it roll across the court as his teammates mob him with their arms flung wide.

  Jay, relishing his annual responsibility: “That’s it! It’s over! The Cincinnati Wildcats have won the championship!” He bellows the last syllable of each sentence, choo-chooing like a train pulling into the station.

  Lester, mildly: “That was fun.”

  A pause while Jay wheezes.

  Lester: “I like basketball.”

  The buzzer has silenced the crowd, though a smattering of displaced Cincinnati fans scream continuously, incongruously, as if celebrating a funeral. More conspicuous is the engine-purr of excuses, regrets, threats: “If only . . .” and “If Emory . . .” and “Next year, motherfuckers.” Ruth’s nervous system is in crisis but her legs are in charge; she rises, she steps onto the court. Though Ruth aches for Emory she believes the Wildcats deserve this win, and as she pivots from one interview to the next, absorbing collisions and hip-checks, ducking from errant elbows and expertly avoiding the camera cords snaking around her ankles, she does the players the courtesy of not asking about Turner’s injury—though most of them take a second to express regrets and wish him well. She fires off fifteen questions in ten minutes. She stutters twice and watches drops of saliva fly from her tongue and land on the mic. Over and over she’s aware of almost falling; but these same waves could pummel her on a hundred different courts, and no matter the series or matchup or outcome, Ruth would not go under. It means too much to her to stay afloat.

  No confetti. No streamers. No house music with a bass line you can feel in your fingertips. The jumbotron looming over the court displays a feed of the US Bank Arena in Cincinnati, which is packed with fans who couldn’t be here but wanted to be together. Thinking of the Ohioans who filed in by the thousands to watch their home team win on a screen nearly causes Ruth to tear up—but there’s no time. The stage has been assembled. Ruth climbs the steps. In her ear, Phillip says, “If you can hear me, touch the back of your head.”

  Her mic is already open; even a sigh would be audible to the entire bowl. Ruth reaches up and pats her hair, which Angie has teased into her signature waves.

  “Good,” Phillip says. “It’s time.”

  As always, the physical symptoms of Ruth’s fear vanish the moment she hears her voice surreally projected across the stadium. First she introduces the commissioner, an underweight white man in his fifties, bald and rigid and, for no reason other than tradition, consistently booed whenever fans see his face. It’s the commissioner who places the trophy in the hands of the team owner, a protocol Ruth resents. She asks the team owner—loose-lipped, bug-eyed, flushed with the kind of power available for purchase—how he feels. (He feels fantastic.) With obvious reluctance the owner transfers the trophy to Darius Lake, and Ruth can’t resist commenting: “The trophy has found its rightful home.”

  While Darius gazes at the trophy with controlled satisfaction, his teammates lean in to kiss the globe of it, hoisting their children high enough to grab the handles of it, and Ruth interviews Rick Bellantoni.

  She puts a hand on his back, not hating him. Maybe it’s her reverence for the game, her devout belief that tonight is bigger than broadcasting and means more than her own ambition. Or maybe Ruth is cognizant of her power: These are the final moments of Bell’s career as an NBA coach, and Ruth holds the microphone. In this moment she loves him but doesn’t trust him, not for a second.

  “For you, tonight concludes a long and illustrious career. Did you ever allow yourself to imagine it would end on this stage?”

  “Yes,” he says, teetering between flippant and overwrought.

  “I think I speak for a lot of people when I say I admire your brevity. But go ahead and take as many words as you need to congratulate your team.”

  “Back in Cincy, during Game Four, I told them they had time. That they needed to win. I can’t repeat my exact words but suffice it to say, I was not gentle.” Bell looks at Ruth over the microphone. “Were you there?”

  “In the locker room? Yes, sir.”

  “You’re always there. So you know I’m no good at pep talks. Inspirational speeches are not my jam. And I don’t hold hands or stroke egos. These guys have themselves to thank for this championship. They worked their asses off and they deserve it.”

  Next she beckons the commissioner back to present the finals MVP award. It’s Darius—who else?—and he indulges in a subdued thus painfully awkward victory dance as he relieves himself of one trophy to accept another. Ruth pulls him close and steers him to the mic. She begins, “At the start of the season, no one expected this team to advance through the ranks of the playoffs, let alone win the championship. When did you first believe you had a chance?”

  “Ohio was a fresh start for me. Right away I was playing more minutes and getting more touches than I was used to. Coach’s confidence in me unlocked elements of my game I couldn’t really access before. And the roster was already so good, and uh . . .” Darius pushes sweat from his forehead toward the grooves between his braids. “What was the question?” His laughter is deep and mechanical, rolling across the arena like the first rumbles of a storm.

  Ruth tightens her arm around his back. “When did you first start to think maybe you’d get a ring?”

  “Oh.” Darius goes slack. “January.”

  Ruth maintains a straight face. “January.”

  Darius nods, eyelids at half-mast. “January.”

  Finally, Ruth invokes Emory Turner l
aid up in a Manhattan hospital bed, watching, she hopes, surrounded by his family.

  “What do you want to say to your man Emory?” The question is casual, intimate, and based on the assumption that Darius wants to say anything at all; it’s everything a question should not be.

  In living rooms across the country, women flop beside their boyfriends on the couch, stealing beers and taking entitled swigs. “Who’s that?” the women ask.

  Low, authoritative voice booming in the arena. Tucked against the body of an athlete, undaunted by the man’s size, his sweat, his valor or his vulnerability. Thick-framed glasses, red lipstick, good hair day.

  “That’s Ruth,” the boyfriends say.

  The girlfriends will frown, borderline disturbed by their boyfriends’ smooth acceptance of this woman, who’s not young and not old. Not a total babe but not unappealing either.

  “Who is she?” they repeat.

  “She’s a sideline reporter,” the men explain. “But sometimes she calls the games. Next year she might call the games full time.”

  The women infer that to call the games is to be the disembodied voice of basketball, the human layer of sound atop the whistles and squeaks and cheering. At first they can’t imagine this voice as female, but after watching Ruth interview the basketball player whose dour face has been all over commercials and billboards and Twitter for weeks, they can. How Ruth will impose order and intelligence on the game, her voice a hand-clap of gentle authority warning fans to focus: Ruth Devon is in the booth and she’s about to tell you something you never knew about basketball.

  “Has there ever been a female announcer?” the women want to know.

  The men are fairly sure they’re right when they say, “No, just Ruth.”

  No one can tell that Ruth feels queasy. Or that the white pantsuit poses a risk that occurred to her too late: should blood bloom, it will publicize an uncharacteristic lack of foresight, revealing her as frazzled by her own fertility, distracted by daughters and boyfriends and ex-husbands and trolls. As Ruth smiles, the camera zooms and throws the creased skin beneath her eyes into high definition. She needs one more answer before she can surrender her mic for the season and climb down from the stage.

  Whether or not she gets the job, she knows she’s earned it. The knowledge by itself is not satisfying; when the offer is made to Rick Bellantoni or a retired player, she will shut herself into the bathroom of the master suite where she has slept alone more years than she was married and sob with her back against the shower tiles. Still, nobody can take this from her, the way Darius Lake stoops and gifts her with the first authentic grin of his career to date: in it, Ruth can see the boy on Christmas morning unwrapping the first pair of Jordans or the ball emblazoned with the official NBA logo, turning to fix his mom with this same liquefying smile. Ruth has spent half her adult life in an airport. She never got to plant a garden or adopt a dog or bust her daughter out of school for an impromptu lunch date. She got this.

  Darius says, “Emory, my brother, I know you and Sasha and the girls are watching right now. I’m so grateful to you. For everything we’ve been through together. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Darius,” Ruth says, squeezing him tight before stepping aside.

  “Thanks, Ruth.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I know I’ve been critical of RD this season but I . . . I take it all back. She gets us emotional Darius Lake . . . and emotional Darius Lake is *chef’s kiss*

  Lol, Ruth Devon killing the trophy presentation and then almost falling off the stage on her way down is #relatable.

  Can we get a bigger stage next year? Ruth almost went overboard!

  Maybe if she wasn’t wearing such high heels . . .

  If she wasn’t wearing such high heels she wouldn’t be able to reach the players.

  Did anyone else see Rick Bellantoni grab her elbow to steady her?

  Yes, love that they’re friends after everything.

  Ruth is serving us looks with that white pantsuit. Can we put this girl in the fuckin’ booth already?

  The hall is congested with group hugs and family photos. Camera operators stand in Ruth’s way, outfitting their equipment in transparent drugstore ponchos. Pressed against an Emory Turner mural, a trio of team owners are eating chocolate-covered popcorn from a metal tin, sipping bourbon from plastic cups. Ruth elbows through the throng, turning to bestow hugs and high fives on request. Outside the locker room a set of arms wraps around her without asking permission; these arms her body knows, and for a moment of reprieve she buries her face in his dry-cleaned suit jacket.

  “Call me tonight.” As always his voice is in her ear, but now she can feel the moist heat of his breath, his heart beating beneath her palm.

  “Why?” she shouts.

  Lester whispers, “Because it’s all over now—and you get so sad when it’s all over.”

  “It’s not over yet. I’m going in there!” She’s in denial, hollering like a sorority sister. Her nausea has vanished. She is no longer prone to thoughts in the first-person plural.

  When did the thoughts stop?

  “You need a raincoat!” Lester yells at Ruth, who has already been absorbed by the scrum of reporters moving through the door. She leaves Lester behind, screaming a promise to sit with him at the press conference.

  Beneath the fluorescent lights and speckled ceiling tiles of the away team’s locker room, sheets of plastic cover every surface. Interns pass out bottles of Veuve Clicquot to players festooned in championship hats and T-shirts, yellow-rimmed scuba masks to protect their eyes. As Darius dips his head toward a sea of outstretched microphones, his long fingers untwist the metal tie from a bottleneck. “I feel good,” he says in placid response to a generic question. “I feel like a champion. I feel the way I like to feel.”

  The violence with which he shakes the bottle makes Ruth duck in self-preservation. The cork pops and soars and smacks against the ceiling. Darius covers the lip of the bottle with his thumb, spraying champagne at his teammates with volcanic force. Droplets spangle camera lenses; the footage will resemble a news report on a natural disaster. Pouring champagne into his open mouth, letting the excess cascade down his neck and soak the front of his T-shirt, Darius wails with experimental glee. His team backs him up, their volume uninhibited, their triumph the project of their young lives.

  Sixth-man Florent Bandolo throws an arm around Ruth’s shoulders. (Brought up to be a Catholic priest, basketball was his rebellion. Ruth can relate.) He offers her a can of Budweiser and—guiltily, giddily—she takes a gulp. She asks him, “Where y’all headed tonight?”

  When inspired, Ruth can whip out a flawless y’all. She’s from Virginia.

  “Vegas. Can you believe I’ve never been?”

  “It’s an experience,” she says. Together they watch Denzel Kerr shower Coach Morris in champagne. Andre is known for being the best-dressed coach in the NBA, and it’s with debauched satisfaction that Denzel ruins the man’s slim-fit suit, mock turtleneck, and thousand-dollar shoes. A PR director sticks his head into the room, summoning Darius, Denzel, and Tobin to a media room down the hall. The locker room empties as nearly everyone opts to follow the stars to the press conference. Stepping over a pile of empty bottles and dented cans, skirting frothy puddles contained by plastic sheets, Ruth moves with the flow of traffic. Her mood almost wanes but she doesn’t let it. In the front row, Lester has saved her a seat.

  “You’re damp,” he tells her.

  “Champagne hurricane,” she explains.

  “Are you sad about Turner?”

  Suspicious, Ruth puts some space between their shoulders. “What do you mean?”

  “You were hoping Seattle would win. Admit it.”

  “I was invested in the series. I don’t root.”

  “Please—you think I can’t tell who you’re rooting for?”


  In short? No, she does not.

  Truth is, Ruth knew it was all wrong. Emory was falling rather than landing—having lost control of his limbs, he was deadweight dropped from a second-story window. She heard the snap, she saw the heap of his body, and even before Lester used his announcer’s license to declare the leg broken, Ruth knew. She wanted to be wrong. These injuries happen so fast that for a moment afterward it feels reasonable to assume they can unhappen. When it had happened to her, Ruth felt no pain initially, only the urgency of reversing the clock—take it back, take it back—followed by the hot seep of panic. Ruth hadn’t known the layup would be her last. She had no idea a second ambition would ever succeed her first; she had felt herself permanently defeated, in pieces on the court.

  Emory has a chance at a full recovery. Players have returned from compound fractures. Ruth hurts for him and wishes him peace of mind. But make no mistake: she is rooting for herself.

  Darius is up on the dais, his T-shirt sopping, his goggles now strapped around his forehead and pushing against the brim of his yellow cap. Despite being soaked in alcohol and looking like a flamboyant fighter pilot, he answers questions in his usual monotone, scratching his nose and pulling on his earlobes as he speaks. A reporter from the Seattle Times is the first to comment on the brief but unforgettable combustion of Peter Cheng (an event that feels somehow like it transpired years ago). “Early in the second quarter the Sonics went on a seven-point run,” the woman says. She has a Joan Jett haircut, reading glasses on a chain around her neck. “For a moment it seemed like you had lost control of the game—and your confidence, it wavered. Can you take us back to those minutes and explain what happened?”