After halftime, Sammy comes out of the locker room with a loopy grin on his face. He just squirts from between his guards whenever he wants. With every pass and shot, his tongue seems to flicker after the ball. Making a baseline jump, when his feet touch the floor again, he takes a couple of hops. The last huck he takes is at the post, and his thighs piston, driving him up and up and up, until he reaches out and drops the ball into the hopper. When he comes down, he grabs the rim with both hands and hangs there, a goofy ecstasy spreading over his features. A wild speculation lights his eyes and he rolls his eyes back in his head as if he is trying to see the backboard—contemplating swinging up and over to kick off it and into a backflip to land neatly on all fours at center court. Instead he chins himself a couple of times and drops to the floor.
Amid the crowd roar, Reuben’s own laughter fades and he glances at Pearl. She cocks her head at him, squinches up her features quizzically.
On the bench, Sammy buries his face in a towel while a Chamberlain player shoots the technical Sammy has earned for hanging on when it wasn’t necessary to avoid injury. It has no effect on the outcome of the game. At the buzzer, Chamberlain is down seventeen points. And Sammy seems to reel through the ritual courtesies to Chamberlain before bolting for the locker room.
Hugging his cramping guts, Sam vomits horror-movie green bile violently into a John. There is a weird tickle in his nose and when he sneezes, projectiles of vile mucous gout simultaneously from mouth and nose and the pressure behind his eyes is instantly gone.
Staggering to his feet, he finds Coach and the AC and his teammates standing there, staring at him. Hot-eyed, but otherwise cold and clammy to his bones, he grins.
“It isn’t easy being green,” he croaks.
Coach pats his shoulder and nudges him toward the showers.
“Better stay with him,” Coach tells Rick. “Don’t let him faint in there.”
While Rick strips hastily, Sam wanders fully dressed into the showers. Rick yanks him out and makes him take his high-tops off. Uniform covered in lurid glory and still in his socks, Sam drifts under the nozzle again. He raises his face and opens his mouth to the sweet water that sluices away the coat of slimy nastiness that seems to go all the way down his throat and all the way up into his nasal passages. Ten minutes later, Rick pushes him gently out from under the showerhead.
Sam confides in Rick. “Froggie went a courtin’, unh hah.”
Rick flings a towel over Sam’s head. “Get a grip on it, Sambo. You’ll be pissing in a bottle, you don’t calm down.”
“Just a horny toad,” Sam mumbles.
His friend shakes his head. “Man, oh man. Come on, you don’t need a chill on top of that cold.”
By the time he’s dressed, Sam can assure Coach he is fine. He is. He feels much better, gut empty, clearheaded. A little tired. He’s purged the poison. He just needs to go home and sleep about ten hours.
Outside, Nat Linscott’s little Honda is next to the truck. She rolls down the window. “Are you really gonna shave heads tomorrow?”
“No. Not over one wild shot.”
She giggles with relief, waves, and whips up the window.
Rick nudges him. “I think she’s warm for you, dude. What’s this shit, shaving heads?”
Rick’s teasing but Sam nevertheless experiences a certain slimy shiver at the thought of Nat being warm for him. Distracted, he admits the threat.
“You’re a very sick man,” Rick says. “You developing a fetish for bald chicks? We got one too many around here, you ask me. I never thought I’d hear you defending some druggie burn. Not you. She let her team down, Sambo.”
“She’s sick.”
“Yeah, yeah. Made herself sick—if she really is.”
Leaning against the side of the truck, Sam closes his eyes in weariness. It feels so weird, knowing for sure it’s no con because he was with her when she was prancing around half-naked in the cold. Be a miracle if she hadn’t gotten pneumonia right then, nevermind whatever partying she did later. He isn’t up to debating with Rick. It isn’t just a matter of protecting himself from embarrassment or declining anything that sounded like braggadocio. What had happened was between them; she owned it as much as he did.
“Hey, get your ass on home,” Rick advises, as he heads for his car, where Sarah is checking her lipstick in the rearview mirror. “Take care of yourself.”
“Yeah.”
He recognizes the bleary-eyed woman at the door as the chainsmoking clerk from the convenience store. Before she can organize herself to ask his business, a man shoulders her aside.
Tony. Shas had called him Tony. Mr. Buttcheese. Sam lets his mind drift, the way Romney taught him to do when he finds himself unable to remember something. Unplugging himself adds to the perception he is slow and of course at this moment his mouth is open so he can breathe, but the method works. He pulls the rest of Tony’s name from nowhere. Tony Lord.
“What d’y want?”
Lord is beefy, muscle going to fat but plenty of power left in his veined forearm. The man is freshly shaven and his work pants are clean, suggesting he is on a night shift. Headed to work or not, his breath is beery; he has a can in his right hand.
On the verge of extending his hand and introducing himself, Sam realizes civility is a futile effort. “Stopped to check on Deanie.”
Lord thrusts his square, dented chin out at him. “You’re a big bastid. Styles’ boy, aren’t you? No doubt about it, I’d say. Went to school with
