“Good luck,” Sam says to Barry.
Barry grasps his hand with both hands in the extravagantly friendly shake of a televangelist about to lift a wallet and smiles graciously. “You’ll need it, shitkicker.”
Sam turns up the wattage of his own smile. “Eat me,” he murmurs sweetly.
The grin vanishes from Barry’s face and he spins away to trot back to his men.
“They’re friendly,” Sam advises Rick as they circle together.
Rick laughs. “Fuck’m. They’ll like us even better then.”
One thing Sam guessed right; Barry stinks. Everybody does, of course, with nerves and then with the physical effort, but this guy—oh my fuckness, Sam gasps, turning his face away from Number 11’s pits, full in his face as Barry tries to block him. Feinting, Sam waits until Barry comes to ground again and then pumps it casually over his thick head of hair. He whips back his elbow as hard as he can into Sam’s gut. As the ball drops through, Sam looks to the ref but the guy just sucks the whistle and stares at Sam’s raised eyebrows. Nor does he seem to hear Coach’s scream of outrage.
From the close study of game tapes, Greenspark knows that St. Gabriel’s plays physically, fouling to the max. St. Gabe’s coach regards a game in which four out of five of his starters are not in foul trouble in the last quarter as a halfhearted effort, it’s said. Whether the rumors are true or not, it is clear St. Gabe’s players regard fouling as an opportunity to inflict permanent injury on an opponent. They use their elbows, their knees, their toes, their fingers, their heads, every chance they get. They use the goddamn ball, shoving it into faces and guts. Sam himself subscribes to the belief if you are going to foul, by accident or design, you should make sure your opponent feels it—purely as a matter of creating respect—but he prefers finesse to thuggery.
Rick exits hobbling in the first quarter, his left ankle tramped by the younger of the Barry brothers. Though he returns in the second quarter to play the rest of the game—pissed off and nearly as nasty as the Archangels—his momentary absence sends a wobble through the offense. Rank is shy, not stupid. Having seen what happened to Rick, he’s understandably nervous.
At the half, the good guys have the bandits down by seven points and Sam is still holding himself back, saving something for the stretch. Near the end of the third quarter, he succeeds in forcing Scott Barry to foul him twice within a minute, both times in scrambles at the post. The second time, Barry is so enraged, he jerks his knee into Sam’s crotch, an act that even the whistlesuckers see. Sam curls up quietly on the floor and throws up on the official’s black shoes, thinking sourly that the jokers who are always saying sometimes you gotta take one for the team ought to try it. Number 11 takes a technical foul and is ejected from the game. Sam repairs to the bench to contemplate the constancy of human frailty.
After Gramolini shoots the technical with his usual competence, play resumes with Skouros trying to replace Sam in the middle. Both teams seem to lose their control and the remainder of the third quarter is a clumsy mess all around. The Archangels close the score to a point.
Sam returns to the game as the fourth quarter begins. He still feels weak and the ache in his testicles flares with every movement. He falters and Rick takes his arm and demands to know if he is all right. He shakes him off and lopes into position.
Sam is at the post when the Archangels’ centurion point drives past Billy and Todd. It’s a crazy move, with the wall of Sam waiting for him and a ref ready to call a charging foul but he keeps on coming. Sam declines the seemingly inevitable collision. He slides to the side and the point man starts past him, his hands coming up with the ball to lay it up. On Sam’s right the younger Barry leans into him. Sam goes up. Barry staggers, forward. Just as air is visible between the point’s fingers and the ball as he tries for the lay-up, Sam’s hand collects the orange neatly and sends it back out on a long arc toward Rick, backpedaling toward the other end of the court.
The gears grind and shift as Rick’s quick jump begins Greenspark’s fourth-quarter drive. All at once the Archangels find themselves in a new game. They get rougher. It costs them in short order the younger Barry and two other starters. Looking their way from the huddle around Coach during the last time-out, Sam meets Scott Barry’s furious stare, the icy blue eyes pitted darkly with the knowledge of defeat. Sam gives nothing back. Scott Barry’s history.
Rick makes a shot from outside that earns them a last three and the final score is Greenspark, 75; St. Gabriel’s, 62.
As the boys pass each other to shake hands, Sam pauses to tug his crotch and then offers that particular hand to Scott Barry, along with a huge moronic grin.
“Good game!” he says, crushing Barry’s hand as hard as he can.
Barry pales and attempts to withdraw his hand. Sam keeps right on pumping it.
“Fuck you,” Barry mutters.
“Not a chance,” Sam returns with a wink, “but I’m sure you’ll find someone.”
The joyful noise his teammates raise,
