No one greeted Myron when he entered the locker room. No one broke stride. No one even looked at him. The room did not go quiet like something out of an old Western where the sheriff pushes open the creaking door and sashays into the saloon. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe the door needed to creak. Or maybe Myron had to work on his sashay.
His new teammates were sprawled about like socks in a college dorm. Three of them were draped over benches, semidressed and seminapping. Two were on the floor, a leg being held in the air by assistants, stretching quads and calves. A couple others were dribbling basketballs. Four were hobbling back to their lockers after getting taped. Almost all were chewing gum. Almost all were also listening to Walkmans, the tiny speakers jammed in their ears and blaring so loudly that they sounded like competing floor models at a stereo store.
Myron found his dressing area pretty easily. All the other lockers had bronze plaques with a player’s name engraved on it. Myron’s did not. It had a piece of white adhesive tape above it, the kind used to tape ankles, with the letters M. BOLITAR scrawled in black marker. It hardly inspired confidence or spoke commitment.
He glanced around for someone to talk to, but the Walkmans were the ideal room dividers. Everyone was in their own private space. Myron spotted Terry “TC” Collins, the team’s famed whining superstar, sitting alone in a corner. TC was the media’s newest poster boy for the spoiled athlete, the guy “ruining” the genteel world of sports “as we know it,” whatever that meant. TC was a hell of a physical specimen. Six-ten, muscular, wiry. His cleanly shaven head glistened in the fluorescent light. Rumor had it TC was black though it was hard to see any trace of skin through the work of his tattoo artist. The obscure ink images blanketed almost all available somatic sites. Body piercing too appeared to be more of a lifestyle with TC than a hobby. The man looked like a nightmare version of Mr. Clean.
Myron caught TC’s eye, smiled, and nodded a hello. TC glared daggers and turned away. Making chums already.
His uniform was hung where it should be. His name had already been sewn on the back in block letters. BOLITAR. He stared at it for a moment or two. Then he quickly snatched it off the hanger and put it on. Everything caused bouts of deja vu. The feel of the crumbly cotton. The shoelacelike tie-string on his shorts. The slight elastic tug at the waist when he put them on. The slight tightness of the top as it went over his shoulders. The practiced hands tucking in the tail. The lacing up of his high-tops. It all caused pangs. It was getting harder to breathe. His eyes blinked something back. He sat and waited until the feeling went away.
Myron noticed very few of the guys wore jockstraps anymore, preferring those tight, Lycra shorts. Myron stuck with old dependable. Mr. Old Fashioned. Then he strapped a contraption onto his leg that was loosely labeled a “knee brace.” Felt more like a metal compressor. The last thing he put on was his warm-ups. The bottoms had dozens of snaps up and down the legs, so a player could dramatically rip them off when called to go into a game.
“Hey, kid, how’s it going?”
Myron stood and shook hands with Kip Corovan, one of the team’s assistant coaches. Kip wore a plaid jacket that was about three sizes too small. The sleeves inched up to the forearms. The gut jutted out with great defiance. He looked like a farmer at the semiannual square dance. “I’m doing fine, coach.”
“Great, great. And call me Kip. Or Kipper. Most people call me Kipper. Sit down, relax.”
“Okay.” Kipper?
“Great, happy to have you with us.” The Kipper pulled over a chair, turned it so the back faced Myron, and straddled it. His pants inseam didn’t look happy with the move. “I’ll be honest with you, Myron, okay? Donny wasn’t thrilled about this. Nothing personal, you understand. Just Donny likes to pick his own players. He don’t like interference from upstairs, you know what I’m saying?”
Myron nodded. Donny Walsh was the head coach.
“Great, good. Donny’s a straight guy though. He remembers you from the old days, liked you a lot. But we got a team heading for the playoffs. With a bit of luck we can lock up home-court advantage throughout the playoffs. It took a while to get the ducks all in a row. It’s a balance, you know. Got to keep the ducks on an even keel. Losing Greg really knocked the wind from our sails, but we finally got those ducks back up. Now you come along, see. Clip doesn’t tell us why, but he insists we add you to the roster. Fine, Clip is the big chief, no question. But we worry about getting our ducks back sailing straight, you see?”
The mixing of metaphors was making Myron dizzy. “Sure. I don’t want to cause any problems.”
“I know that.” He stood, put the chair back with a sweeping motion. “You’re a good guy, Myron. Always were a straight arrow. We need that now. A team-comes-first kinda guy, am I right?”
Myron nodded. “A straight-sailing duck.”
“Great, fine. See you out there. And don’t worry. You’re not going to get in unless it’s a blowout.” With that the Kipper hoisted his belt up over the gut and sauntered—almost sashayed—across the room.
Three minutes later, the Kipper shouted out, “Gather round the board, boys.” No one paid any attention. He repeated this several times, tapping Walkman-entranced players on the shoulders, so that they would hear. It took a full ten minutes to get twelve professional athletes to move less than ten feet. Coach Donny Walsh strode in with great self-importance, took center stage, and began spilling out the tired cliches. This didn’t mean he was a bad coach or anything. You play over a hundred games a season it’s hard to come up with anything new.
The pep talk lasted a full two minutes. Some of the guys never bothered turning off their Walkmans. TC was busy taking off his jewelry, a task that took great concentration and a team of well-trained technicians. Another minute or two passed and then the locker-room door opened. Everyone removed their Walkmans and headed out. Myron realized they were heading for the court.
Game time.
Myron stood at the end of the line. He swallowed deeply. A cold rush swept through him. As he made his way up the ramp he heard a voice over the loudspeaker scream, “And nowwwwww, your New Jersey Dragons!” Music blared. The jog quickened into a full trot.
The ovation was thunderous. The players automatically split into two makeshift lines for the lay-up drill. Myron had done this a zillion times before, but for the first time he really thought about what he was doing. When you were a star or a starter, you warmed up casually, loosely, unhurriedly. There was no reason to press it. You had the whole game to show the crowd what you could do. The scrubs—something Myron had never been—handled the warm-ups in one of two ways. Some went all out, slamming reverse dunks, doing windmill moves. In a phrase: showing off. Myron had always found this behavior sort of desperate. Others hung around the superstars, feeding them the ball, playing the mock defender like a boxer with a sparring partner. Cool by association.
Myron got to the front of the lay-up line. Someone passed him the ball. When you’re warming up, you are subconsciously convinced that all eyes in the arena are on you, though in point of fact, most people were settling in or chatting or getting food or checking out the crowd and those that were watching couldn’t care less what you did. Myron took two dribbles and laid the ball against the glass and in. Sheesh, he thought. The game hadn’t started yet and already he didn’t know what to do.
Five minutes later the lay-up lines disintegrated and players began to free shoot. Myron glanced into the stands for Jessica. She was not hard to spot. It was like a beacon hit her, like she came forward and the rest of the crowd stepped back, like she was the Da Vinci and the rest of the faces were but a frame. Jessica smiled at him and he felt a warmth spread through him.
With something close to surprise, he realized that this would be the first time Jessica had seen him play in anything but pickup games. They’d met three weeks before Myron’s injury. The thought made him pause. And remember. For a brief moment his mind dragged him back. Guilt and pain washed over him until a ball careened off the backboard and smacked him in the head. But the thought remained:
The buzzer sounded and the players moved to the bench. Coach Walsh blurted out a few more cliches and made sure each player knew who they were covering. The players nodded, not listening. TC still glared. Game face, Myron hoped, but didn’t really believe it. He also kept an eye on Leon White, Greg’s roommate on the road and closest friend on the team. The huddle broke. The players from both sides approached the center circle, greeting one another with handshakes and hand slaps. Once out there, the players on both teams started pointing around, trying to figure out who was covering whom since no one had listened thirty seconds earlier. Coaches from both sides were up, yelling out the defensive assignments until the ball was mercifully tossed in the air.
Basketball is normally a game of momentum shifts, keeping things fairly close until the final minutes. Not tonight. The Dragons cruised. They led by twelve after one quarter, twenty points by halftime, twenty-six by the
