“Go on, Mum,” Amy urged, “it’s just for fun.”
“We’ll never tell,” Kat added. “Promise.”
“No, thanks, dear.”
“Take Joe,” Kat pleaded. “The poor thing.”
Margaret considered it. “I’ll put a nickel on Ricky.”
“Oh!” Kat yelped. “You’re a horrible mother.”
Through the window they could hear the brothers ragging each other as the game got going. Joe and Michael were a team, as usual, and at the start they exploited their two-to-one advantage by spreading out, forcing Ricky to cover one or the other, then passing to the free man for easy shots. Michael was a careful player, a lurker. He liked to slide into open spaces for unmolested set shots. At times he moved out of the lighted area altogether, and the women had to squint to find him in the darkness. Joe’s game was all muscle. He moved like a bear chasing a butterfly, but his size ensured he would always have the best position under the basket. Together they made a decent inside-outside combination. As their lead climbed, 2-0, 3-0, 4-0, Joe’s taunting got louder and louder. Amy was right: Joe was pissed about the way Brendan Conroy had been treated, and, though Michael had been Conroy’s main tormenter, Joe directed his anger at Ricky. There was a tacit understanding that Michael was somehow disengaged from the grander struggle between Joe and Ricky. So if Joe was angry, it seemed perfectly natural for him to target Ricky, not Michael. The insults from Joe were all variations on a theme: “Come on, Mary…Does your husband play?…What, are you afraid of a little contact?…Pussy…”
And then, in an instant, the game changed. Michael put up one of his little jumpers, the kind he knocked down over and over, but this time the shot was flat. It caught the back rim and rebounded high, out into the street, away from the hoop where Joe was hanging. Ricky snagged it in the air.
“Shit!” Kat hissed.
A little smiled wriggled across Amy’s lips.
What happened next happened very quickly. Ricky bounced the ball once with his left hand, once with his right. Michael swiped at it, and Ricky avoided him by threading the ball between his own legs, from back to front, which left Michael behind him and out of the play. Joe took a step toward him, like a palace guard blocking a gate. Ricky paused for an instant to eye him up. He slow-dribbled the ball low and to his right, extending it a few
inches toward Joe, who finally took the bait, leaning then stepping toward the ball, a reluctant irresistible stuttery step. But it was enough. Ricky crossed the ball over to his left hand, and he was behind Joe. He laid the ball in: 6-1.
Kat groaned, “ Mmm. It’s not fair. The way Ricky shows off!”
“He’s not showing off.”
“Oh, Amy!”
“Alright,” Amy allowed, “maybe a little.”
But Amy could not take her eyes off him. Because he was showing off for her. And because he was beautiful. His game was jazzy and gliding and fast, she thought, but more than anything it was beautiful. The way he moved. The way the ball moved with him, the way it yo-yoed back to his hand. The way he spun, his body in flight. Amy had not known Ricky when he was a high-school hero-when he was Tricky Ricky Daley, point guard and captain at Boston English, All-Scholastic, All-Everything; when he’d been offered a scholarship to Holy Cross, alma mater of the great Cousy himself-and she was glad for that. She did not want to think of Ricky as one of those arrested men who were such stars in high school or college that everything after was tinged with anticlimax and nostalgia. She did not want to define him by what he had been. And she particularly did not want to define him as a jock because he wasn’t, not anymore. Anyway, Ricky never talked about it. For a long time after they’d met, Amy had had no idea the man she was dating had a glorious past, until she’d finally met his family and Margaret had shown her a book of clippings. In fact, for Amy the defining moment of Ricky’s basketball career was the way it had ended, the way he’d thrown it all away in a romantic, stupid gesture. He’d got himself pinched with a car-trunkful of Mighty Mac parkas that had “fallen off a truck,” as the saying went. That was the end of Holy Cross and basketball and Tricky Ricky Daley, and good riddance. It was all so clumsy-so un-Ricky-like-it seemed like a setup. Amy saw something heroic in the whole episode. Ricky had been true to some obscure, prickly, self-destructive impulse that no one, not Amy, probably not Ricky himself, could quite understand. He just had not felt like being Tricky Ricky anymore, so he had stopped. And yet Amy could not deny that she loved him more-at least she loved him differently, saw him differently-when she watched him play. She thought she understood in some intuitive, inarticulable way what made Ricky do the things he did. It was something about doing the opposite of what everyone else wanted him to do. My Lord, how could she not love such a beautiful, wasteful man?
Ricky spun and tricky-dribbled and flew by his brothers. His hair flopped over his forehead, grew damp and drippy. He did not say much; his virtuosity was not news to anyone.
But Joe grew more incensed with each basket. His feet got sluggish and he was reduced to pawing Ricky as he rushed past, or elbowing him, or hip-checking him.
None of it mattered. Ricky scored with leaners and fades and baby hooks, and at 19-6 Joe finally exploded. He pushed Ricky hard into the chainlink fence behind the hoop.
“Nineteen,” Ricky said as he lay on the sidewalk. “Hey, Mike, wanna switch teams?”
“Hey, Ricky,” Joe said, “blow me.”
“Oh, that’s good, Joe. ‘Blow me.’ That’s clever.”
Joe gave Ricky the finger and held it there.
“Some brother you turn out to be, Joe.” Ricky got to his feet. “First you take Conroy’s side against Michael, now this. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
Joe took a step toward him. “You want to say that again?”
“Oh, come on, Joe, be a good loser. You’ve had plenty of practice.” Ricky jogged out to the street and tossed the ball to Michael for the customary check.
“You ready, Joe?” Michael asked.
Joe growled that he was, and Michael lobbed Ricky the ball.
Ricky eyed Joe again. He could end it by shooting from out here, over Michael, but he wanted Joe to know he was going to victimize him . Joe would not have the excuse that his teammate had let him down. Ricky jab-stepped left and with one of his whirling-dervish spins he put Michael behind him. He pulled up to shoot a little bunny directly in Joe’s face. Joe waved at the shot then gave Ricky a hard shove on the left side of his chest, which sent him sprawling once more on the street.
“Jesus, Joe!” Michael shouted.
“Just play defense, Michael. It’s like I’m the only one working out here. You play like a fuckin’ homo.”
Michael offered Ricky a hand and pulled him up.
“Twenty,” Ricky said.
“I’m out,” Michael said. “This is bullshit.” He stalked back toward the house.
“Go ahead, leave,” Joe called after him. “I’ll fuckin’ do it myself. Fuckin’ homo.”
Ricky tossed the ball to Joe. “Check.”
“The fuck are you laughing at?”
“I just thought you’d want to know what I’m gonna do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“How I’m going to win. It’s gonna be a jump shot, right from here, right over you. Just so you know.”
Joe’s brow crumpled. Was it a trick? Or just more showing off? It would be just like Ricky to promise a jump shot then race by Joe, just to make him look foolish. Then again…
Joe flipped the ball back. “Check.”
Ricky stab-stepped to his right, a long, convincing lunge with the ball whipping far ahead of him, almost behind Joe, and despite what Ricky had said, Joe reacted, couldn’t help himself-he stepped back. Just one fatal fucking step. Ricky pulled back and shot over him. Joe’s chin dropped even before the shot hit.
“Game,” Ricky said.
Joe glared.
Ricky might have left it there. But the sight of Joe with that seething expression, that muscle twitching in his cheek-Joe looked like he might actually burst-seemed funny to him. Ricky watched Joe watching him, and because it was the only thing he could think of at the moment, Ricky finally blurted, “Boo!”
Joe took off after him.
