He drifts with the rest of his team up into the stands where the green and silver is draped, looking for good vantage. The seats are filling up with folks from Greenspark and its tributaries—gran’mas and gran’pas, moms and dads and sibs, fellow students, teachers, administrators, run-to-fat middle-aged ex-high school jocks, and more—more of the population present than the smaller communities raise most Town Meetings, or Greenspark ever gets out to vote, even in a presidential year.
On the other side of the auditorium, the banners are royal blue for Comfort but the faces, frames and accents of the arriving fans are indistinguishable. These are not the athletic, slim-bodied, fresh-faced yuppie college students who fill the bleachers in beer ad sporting events. These are folks who really do drink beer and eat potatoes and red meat, donuts, pies, and fried food, and have the figures to prove it. Past youth, they sport guts and double chins and substantial rear ends, about which they kid each other. They discuss Weight Watchers meetings as they munch nachos with hot cheese spray on them.
Letter-jacketed brothers and boyfriends and buddies of the Comfort girls climb over seats and eat hot dogs while checking out the cheerleaders from Greenspark. Another cluster of letter jackets (maroon with white trim) appears among them: Archangels from St. Gabriel’s, less interested for the moment in eyeing girls than in scouting the Greenspark Indians.
Except for the color of their jackets, the guys from St. Gabriel’s are nearly interchangeable with the Indians—they even have one black player. There are two big boys, brothers, one of them a sophomore, the other a senior, both heavyset and hairy, with deep dents in their chins and pale blue eyes. At noontime they have heavy shadows on their jaws, the kind of bristle that must give their girlfriends wicked beard burns. Bet they stink some when they sweat, Sam thinks. Another St. Gabe’s player could be Bither’s cousin, wiry, with rubbery lips that have a natural sneer in them, little short nose, feverish eyes that look like they could come up cherries any second. A lanky, freckle-spattered kid with protuberant knuckles reminds Sam of Scottie, the senior guard who graduated Greenspark the previous year. The powerful short boy with the bullet head and Roman nose, St. Gabe’s point man, is the same Gallic type as Dupre, Greenspark’s spare off guard. And that square-faced blond kid could be Tim Kasten’s cousin.
Rick leans toward Sam. “Stand up,” he says. “Take off your jacket. Stretch and yawn. Let’s see some articulation. I wanna see those bozos wet their buttonflys.”
Sam rolls his eyes and responds lazily, “Eat me.”
Rick laughs. “You wish.”
The two school bands begin trading off: Comfort stumbles awkwardly through “Little Old Lady from Pasadena” and Greenspark drums the crap out of “Gloria,” during which Sam provides Rick with lewd interjections by Jimi Hendrix. Comfort comes back with a more confident version of “Tequila.” When it’s Greenspark’s turn, the band wheezes, bumps and grinds its way through “Louie Louie,” managing to achieve a sound as sleazy and wasted as the original Kingsmen recording. The boys’ team is moved to join in, bellowing the legendary lyrics passed down by three decades of youths with one thing on their minds.
In the middle of the buffoonery, the distaff Indians emerge from the locker room to warm up. The Greenspark side of the auditorium jumps to its feet to greet them. The Comfort gallery counters with derision. Greenspark’s boys bellow the scatological lyrics more loudly—Bither bounding onto a seat to pump his hips until a security guard waves him down.
Though minus her hardware, the Mutant is nevertheless a sight to stir the crowd. Her skull gleams with almost the same plastic quality as her mask. The hair on her unshaven leg is emphasized by the smoothness of the hairless one and the rose tattoo draws the eye to her knee. Once she discards her warm-up jacket, her sleeveless jersey reveals her tufted armpits and the tattoos on her arms.
The other starters—Michaud with a new hedgehog ‘do, Nat with her razored swooshes, Figueroa with her nose stud, the Jandreau twins with their eyes made up with so much eyeliner it looks like warpaint, every Greenspark player exhibiting some visual warning sign—are almost as aggressive-looking as Gauthier.
While their band obliterates “Wipeout,” a block of Comfort students mime gagging and retching but not in a critical review of the hashed musical performance. It’s directed at the Mutant. Others indulge in catcalls at her.
She’s oblivious, doing what Sam told to her to do. As the girls warm up, she is using her feet to learn something about the floor, looking for the sweet spots Sam recalls. Between tournaments and exhibitions, he’s played this floor more than a dozen times, as often as he’s used some of the courts at schools Greenspark meets regularly. She’s only played it twice. While he’s told her everything he can remember, he wants to be down there with her, telling her—showing her—what he knows about it.
She alley-oops a basket and glances up into the stands, looking for him. Imitating her, he double-pumps his fist. He gets a grin from her. It takes her a few seconds to realize he has given the signal to the bandleader for the latest prank. As the Greenspark band begins its next piece, there is puzzlement among the many, delighted laughter among the enlightened—Greenspark’s players, the student body—as they recognize “The Bitch Is Back.”
Running to small and blonde, the Comfort Condors don’t look much like predators. They look cuddly. Their starting center is all of five-seven and she’s the tallest. The point’s barely five feet from her size-two Reeboks to the root of her French braid. She’s like a china doll.
Todd pokes Sam in the ribs. “Number twelve, the point—I’m in lust,” he says.
“What’s new about that?” Rick wants to know.
Once the game is under way, though, the dolly falters in the face of the Mutant’s offense. Greenspark gets on the
