Winners (15 page)

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“No coffee. A glass of wine or something?”

“I don’t do no substances, nothing. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t drug, nothing. I did, was in the whole game back in the day but uhn-uh, like the song say. Ts’all over now.”

“What song is that?”

“Now you playing, huh? What, you too lazy to walk? Gots to have your coffee, wine, and beer.”

“Sure you not some born again?”

“Once was enough for me.” He gives her the smile she was waiting for. “Yeah,” she says, “you getting there, huh. Some things better than coffee and tea.”

They walk. They get off the crowded restaurant drag and she finally drops his hand, casually, and slows her pace to pause in front of the shops, examining the show windows packed with shoes and used guitars, comic books and space-age wedding dresses, the empty racks of sleeping bakeries, second-hand clothes shops packed with faded suits and cashmere sweaters. He trails a step behind her, his hands jammed in his pockets for protection.

At Washington Square he leads them around the perimeter, stopping in front of the big lit-up church of Sts. Peter and Paul that lords over the square, stretched out tall in all its fancy glory. The wide doors are open, an unusual Thursday night something under way inside. When he turns around she’s sitting on a bench, watching both him and the church.

“They even got Disneyland for church,” she says.

He sits down beside her. “They must be doing some sort of special mass tonight.”

“You go to church.”

“Sometimes. I grew up with it.”

“What are you?”

He points at the church. “Catholic.”

“Oh you Catholic.” She laughs. Catholic is funny. “So the big pope and all that. But you ain’t got no kids.”

“No.”

“Huh. That’s Catholic, huh. You go to church lately?”

“No.”

“You go on in there now, you want to.”

Inside there is no mass, just a heavy gold and marble church at rest. A handful of people sit or kneel in the pews under the high gilded ceiling. There’s plenty to look at in there. Debra stops almost in the doorway, uneasily eyeing the full-sized marble angel at the entrance, while Shane crosses himself and slips into the aisle seat of the back right pew. The only times he goes to church now are holidays or an occasional Sunday trip with faithful Ma. Lou doesn’t go. Maybe she’d like it at night, when it’s empty and quiet and personal. If his dad had been alive they would have been married in the Church. He’s been sitting there a little while before Debra appears on the side aisle and sits down in the farthest seat of his same pew and they watch each other across the expanse. He nods at her and they meet outside without a word.

They walk a block out on the street before she says, “So, what, you pray in there?”

“Yeah.”

“You pray for Samson?”

She is making fun of him. “Maybe.”

“You pray for me? You oughta pray for me, boy.” A thin trickle of anger creeps into her voice from all sides. Something about the church has pissed her off.

“I’m not too good at it. But I’ll do my best.”

She gnaws her lip as she watches a car parallel parking in front of them. “Where you think he is.”

“I don’t know.” A boyfriend, Shane thinks.

“This afternoon,” she says. “I couldn’t find Demetrius? And then he out there with that drug dealer, sitting on a car? With brand-new Nikes, you know.”

Shane isn’t sure he understands but he nods anyway. “What drug dealer?”

“This kid Ty, y’all know him.”

“With the Tennessee jersey.”

“Yeah, he the one say Samson owe him money. I owe him money. You.”

“I don’t believe him.”

“Don’t matter, do it, what you believe.”

“No. I guess not. Were they friends?”

She stops and he turns around and looks at her with the twin spires of the church behind her reaching for the black sky above. “What do I know about Samson’s friends. Shit.”

He wants to step to her and hug her tight. It’s not her fault. None of this is her fault. “I’m sorry,” he says. “He never talked about us, either, I guess. All those years. The game up at the Firehouse.”

She shakes her head. “He don’t talk to me much about anything, though.”

“You ever watch him play?”

“When he was little, yeah. Not for a while.”

“You should watch him some time. The moment he steps out there.” He sees the gold chain dangling in front of Sam’s chest, swaying side to side before he bursts into the middle, rising above the crowd.

“What.” She wants more.

“Something happens to him. It’s like…everything’s easy on the court. Everything makes sense out there. He doesn’t hesitate, he always knows what to do. I wish I could describe it. I wish you could see it.”

She wraps her arms around herself as if her body’s coming apart. She opens her mouth but instead of speaking pulls in one long breath and turns and walks off, back into the meat of the city.

He follows her through the crowded streets, walking behind her, trying not to watch the bare skin of her neck or the stitched seams of her jeans, walking behind just any ol’ stranger on just another North Beach night. Too easy to follow, he thinks. Where are all the black folks here. Where my niggas at. Even when they hit the crowds she doesn’t look back as she picks her way through the bodily traffic with the exacting step of a woman at night, alone. Beyond her swiftly moving shape, the city’s big best and brightest buildings crouch behind the illuminated triangle of the Transamerica, waiting for her or for him or for anyone who chooses to sign on to downtown ways and disappear in there. It can be done. Even at night, the tessellated blocks of light suggest enterprise and fortune, a never-ending load of things to do that tomorrow or tomorrow or maybe even tonight will send people scrambling into action. To be one of them you only have to find the right window, Shane thinks, the right tiny block of light that’s waiting for you. There must be a window down there waiting for everyone, even those of them who’ve never made it into the office after all these years. Debra, Jimmy, Samson, Shane.

Maybe that’s the answer, straight ahead. Or maybe he should stop walking altogether, take a sharp left alley turn and let her disappear and go home and try to live happily ever after. He’s afraid to be alone with her again. Talk to her about the job. Ask her about Sam’s boyfriend.

She waits for him at a light, standing with her hip cocked, sure that he’s there behind her.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Where to?”

“I got to go.”

“All right.” She doesn’t sound like she believes him.

“Should I drop you off at home?”

“Where else you wanna drop me. Might as well return me to my cage.”

The city is quiet as they retreat, winding back through the empty streets the way they’ve come. “You’ve got an interview,” he says when he can’t bear the silence anymore. It’s not remotely true but it disrupts the air inside, changing the molecules around them.

“Oh yeah?” She leans against her door, cranes her head back, gives him a far-sighted look still half-smiling. “Where at?”

“With my wife. She’s got that company.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t know when. I’ll let you know.”

“What it pay?”

“I don’t know. Do you have a résumé?”

“A little bit. Not really.”

“I’ll help you. I can help you with all that.”

“When.”

“This week, I guess. Can I ask you a favor, though? Will you let me talk to the police?”

“You want to talk to the police?” She’s angry again, but this time he’s ready and tries not to flinch under her stare. “About what?”

“About Sam. Samson.”

“Listen,” she says. The car is paused at a stop sign with the steep eastern cliff of the projects in front of them. It looks like a strip mine at night, bright lights and gouged rock. “The police, you know, what they gonna tell you? What’s it gonna be, you know? He in jail? Or they need a perp for something and here’s a black man missing. Or here’s a body. That’s what you wanna talk to the police about?”

He stares at the stark white prison lights waiting for them up ahead. “But don’t you want to know?”

“Talk to whoever you want.”

“You tell me what to do,” he says. “You tell me what you need.”

“I been telling you,” she says.

A car is coming up behind them, honking and flashing its brights as it swerves alongside in a loud rumble of angry engine. He catches the face of a kid Sam’s age yelling obscenities at him as the car passes, tires screaming down the road. Shane watches it fly down the dip and then up the steep street into the projects, whipping familiar around the curves. He feels like he’s sitting on a platform ten feet above the car, watching his life happen. See Shane sit. See Shane run.

“You all right,” she says, and he can’t tell if it’s a question or a statement of fact. He thinks: what would it feel like to smash one car into another with malice and intent? The airbags popping out to save him while the sneering kids bled to death, their guns embedded in their laps. What would it be like to get used to this?

“I could hire him myself,” Shane says. “It’s not a bad way to live.”

“Hire who?”

“Sam. Samson.”

“Samson,” she repeats.

“I never knew,” Shane says, pulling his foot off the brake and following the roller coaster ride into the projects. I never knew about any of this, he thinks.

They pull up beside her door and he waits for her to go back to her life, but she’s waiting for something too. “Call me,” he says, finally. “Call me tomorrow.”

“I will.” She doesn’t move, though. “You any good?” she says.

“I don’t know.” He’s not sure what’s she’s talking about but that seems like a safe answer.

“Playing ball.”

He smiles. “Not bad for a thirty-something white guy.”

“For real?”

“Me and your boy battle out there, that’s for sure.”

“I gotta see that,” she says, smiling. “I hope I do. Bet you surprise some people, huh.”

“I guess.”

“You surprise me. You surprise me all the time.”

“You surprise me too.” He can’t see her eyes in the night shadows, and he’s glad. “Did he ever get hurt?”

“Samson?” She sounds disappointed in the question.

“Yeah. Injured.”

“Naw. Not really.”

“I was just wondering. I got hurt once. Made me want to.” He swallows the word: disappear. The parking lot seems nothing less than peaceful in the moonlight, empty and still. “Just to realize you’re that close to nothing, all the time. One minute you’re happy and jumping in the air, and the next minute you’re a useless piece of shit. You’re that close to letting everyone down.”

“Damn,” she says, “everybody get hurt sometime.” She laughs. “You ain’t never let anyone down in your life. I know you ain’t gonna let me down. You’re a good man, you know that. You one of the good ones.”

He finds himself nodding slowly. “Well.” He checks the parking lot but it’s still calm as a summer lake. “You going to be all right?”

“Yeah. I guess you got to go, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Call me,” he says.

“Tomorrow.”

She leans in to say goodbye but instead of saying anything she cups the back of his head with her hand and presses her cheek on him for enough time to count, the bones of her face digging in hard against his. Then she releases him and swings out of the car and walks away to her door.

P
ARKING IN
P
ACIFIC
Heights is ridiculous. Thursday night after eleven and everyone is tucked in tight, their shiny cars dug into every nook and cranny he can think of. He cruises by Fulton’s house twice, but someone’s sleek blue Mercedes in the driveway stays put, a sign of continuing festivities inside. Nothing to do but widen the loop, head for the steep hard-to-park hills, murmuring teenage blasphemy under his breath: hail Mary, full of grace, help me find a parking space….

This is Disneyland, he thinks, here in Pacific Heights, these are Debra’s fantastical houses of Mickey and Donald and Goofy. Tall and painted perfect, they stand up straight, peering proudly over the bay or looking back at the city with mild disdain. There are mansions here, designed for awe, gated transparently for all the world to see. Some blocks Shane can actually trace the competition of long-dead silver barons who whipped their architects into frenzy, hurrying to outdo one another on prime visible city real estate. Who lives there now? Movie stars, doctors, lawyers, businessmen he’s never heard of, financial mavens, foreign consuls. The occasional newly titled duke or duchess of the Internet, perhaps.

His slow tour brings him by one of the more minor mansions, a house he’s been inside once, a high school party, a thousand years ago. Some rich girl from University with plenty to lose, you had to respect her a bit for daring the real rager. Her parents’ home was begging to be looted and defiled. Even back then, he thinks, there was a little science fiction to the city, you’d be going along living your own small Sunset flatland life and then find yourself high atop Pacific Heights snorting speed off antique refinished dinner tables and feeling up trust-fund girls in imported tiled bathrooms. Not his regular scene exactly, but the Catholic kids could kind of have it both ways. They could go high or low. Usually low. Parking up here was a bitch then too.

He’s almost forgotten why he’s driving around when he spots a tight space on one of the hills. The car behind it has just arrived, the guy climbing out and watching as Shane moves into position. He cuts too hard the first time and has to reset, but before he does the guy walks up beside him and shakes his head. Shane eases down his window.

“You can’t fit in there,” the guy says. Same age, maybe younger, dressed like he’s just come from the gym. His shorts look like the skin of some rare synthetic lizard, new and expensive. Shane wonders if he married that University girl, moved into that house, stored his loafers in closets they did their best to cover in vomit and piss.

“Of course I can.”

“You’ll block me in.”

“We’ll see, won’t we.”

“Hey,” the guy says sharply, but Shane throws the car into reverse and whips the car back into the space, getting the angle right this time, knocking the car behind with gusto and then front back bumping into place, whirling the power steering like a great ship’s wheel. The guy watches him angrily from beside his own car and when Shane gets out is bending there at his bumper, running one finger along the rubber and steel to check for subterranean damage. The guy stands up and stares at him.

“I guess I fit,” Shane said. “This city’s still got room for me, after all.”

“You’re an asshole,” the guy says.

“Really,” Shane says. “That’s not the problem. You don’t even belong here.”

“I don’t belong here? Who the fuck are—”

Shane steps quickly to him before he can finish, grabs the guy by the throat and pushes him back against the car. The guy reacts too late, smacking at Shane’s arm as he tightens his grip. He’s about to pulverize the guy, he’s about to punch him in the face as hard as he possibly can, he’s about to break all the bones in his hand on this guy’s face.

“Listen,” Shane says. “Shut up, and go home. And I mean home, wherever you came from.” He lets go and leaps back as the guy takes a weak swipe at him, sputtering something. “I’m serious. Shut the fuck up.” Here’s a problem he’d be happy to solve.

The guy is rubbing his neck, thinking about what to do. While he’s thinking, Shane turns and walks away, the blood still rushing through his head, preparing for the sudden attack from behind. For the first time in a while, he doesn’t give a fuck what happens. But nothing happens, although his heart’s still going good as he stomps off through the empty well-lit streets toward Fulton’s house.

A woman whose name he doesn’t remember is leaving as he arrives again at the tall grave door. She watches him approach, waiting patiently and holding the door open for him.

“Shane,” she says with slightly intoxicated concern as he steps into range, “everything all right, I hope?” Her earrings sparkle in the light from the hall behind her. He slips beside her and takes over the door’s substantial weight.

“I think so.” That’s all he wants to say but he can see on her contracted face that something more is required. “I’m sorry to have run out on all of you, missed everything.” The words come with difficulty.

“We were sorry too. Your wife is really lovely,” she adds. “In every sense of the word.” She purses her lips at him, blinks at him a little drunkenly.

“Thank you.” She needs a spanking. This whole neighborhood needs a spanking.

“I hope to see you again?”

“Sure,” he says, and slips inside.

He doesn’t hear a sound until he’s halfway down the long hallway. Two voices, no more no less, mingle comfortably in the big living room. He can hear them leaning back on the soft bright white couches, crossing their opposing legs, sipping blood-red wine. They sound like old friends. They sound like they shared a goddamn crib together.

“If we hadn’t wasted all that time with those clowns,” Lou is saying.

“Who knows where you’d be,” Fulton finishes for her. “The woulda coulda shoulda is brutal.”

“My only worry is that somehow he could sue us.”

“Sue you? You should sue his ass. You should have him drawn and quartered. Killed.”

Without even noticing, Shane has taken the weight off his heels the last few steps and then stopped entirely in the hallway, leaning against the wall out of sight. A hunk of Kryptonite, nearby, seeping into his bones. On the far side of the hall is an enormous painting for Shane to stare at while he sticks his hands behind his back and digs in against the wall and listens. As far as he can make out, the painter has captured a bunch of parallelograms at an orgy. They’re not much to look at but they’re boning each other silly, having a rocking good time.

“He’ll bad-mouth us.”

“No he won’t. He’ll see you going public without him, Wall Street ready to come all over you, and he’ll be begging to get back in. That’s about the only thing they’re scared of, you know—not even losing money but getting left out, looking bad.”

“So you’re saying we shouldn’t wait.”

“Absolutely not.”

“And what, we pretend Quixo never happened?”

“No. But you define the space. And it’s bigger than Quixo. Quixo is for small people with small minds. That’s what the mezzanine round needs to say. It needs to be fuck-you money. We will eat your children.”

“That’s nice,” she says, laughing. “Have you used that one before?”

“No. That was just for you.”

“Really.”

“Not really. I just cut and paste.”

“I’ll drink to that.” It’s only half a second before the glasses clink. How close together are they sitting? “Then who should we talk to, you think?”

“You’re talking to him, that’s who.”

“I swear, David, don’t play with me.”

Fulton laughs. “Let’s talk dirty. What was the first round?”

“Sixteen for thirty-five, fifty seats, two-year burn.”

Oh just blow each other and get it over with, Shane thinks. He creeps quietly away from them, down the hall. They’re laughing now, a bright prosperous sound walking him to the door. He slips outside and takes a long pull of fresh air. He sits on the stoop, watching the cars go by. Who are they kidding. Who is anyone kidding, here. He stretches out his legs, rolling his right foot in circles clockwise. There’s a soft pop in his ankle each time his toes pass ten o’clock. Pop. Pop. He rolls it back the other way and eventually the popping stops.

How did Sam ever find us anyway, Shane thinks. How does anyone find each other? You take an econ class with your future wife in college. You hit the gym or step outside to smoke pot with a zillionaire. There were lots of games in town. Did someone tell Sam about it? But who would tell him? Shane listens for footsteps inside Fulton’s house, but the house is quiet. The house wants nothing to do with him. An accident, then, a single moment when the kid walked out of Mission High one day after third period, algebra or something gruesome, slumped down the hallways to the huge front doors and stepped quickly down the wide, shallow steps. Walked down the steps, shrugging off the period bell behind him. Right across the street, in Mission Dolores Park, the bad kids, boys and girls, were smoking dope and fingering one another up behind the trees. He ignored their gropes and clouds of smoke as he turned right up Eighteenth Street, through the Castro. Bored, disgusted, alone, no particular place to go. Not like he was going to hurry home, now, was he. The houses got nicer and nicer as he walked, freshly painted Victorians with moldings, detail, plenty of care. Some guy like Shane sitting on a stoop like this, watching him walk by. But not like Shane at all. He hit the garish corner of Eighteenth and Castro and hung a right past the tourist gay-bar strip, the leather shops, the souvenir joints, ice cream parlors, past the big marquee of the Castro Theater showing something classic or slightly strange. And all those men and boys—he’d come through here before, hadn’t he? Just to look or be looked at or something more? Fifteen. Probably something more.

But today he kept walking and crossed Market, winding up and up the hill through steep, clean residential streets. Leaned into the hill, the tendons stretching out, the ligaments unlimbering, and he climbed and climbed. He climbed to the very top of the good-sized hill that loomed above the Firehouse court. He sat staring out across the valley at Potrero Hill where his mom didn’t know anything about him, where he was just another endangered species, and then the wind changed and suddenly he could hear the familiar percussion of the ball. The sound drew him quickly to the ledge to see the game. On the sideline two guys sat waiting on the green-red painted pavement where they stretched, pointed at the game, gesticulated, rolled their necks and flexed their backs. One of them was Bruce. One of them was Shane.

Sam sauntered down. He could hear it now so back went his shoulders, out prodded his chest and hips. The disembodied sirens of noon sounded throughout the city as he rolled up to the chain-link fence, leaned, slipped two fingers through, hanging there, watching them play. Shane remembers: the unfamiliar kid with skin half-baked between white and black, freckles, brown hair on the verge of shrubby, full lips, pointy nose, small dark eyes too close together. He wore shiny red sweatpants with a white stripe down the side, a black matte sweatshirt with a hood. That thin gold chain, the old brown watch. Red and white Jordans, almost new. Sam stood young and lanky against the fence, trying to project disdain, with all the muscles in his face pulled tight. His nostrils flared, he was breathing just a little bit too hard, and his eyes kept jumping ahead of the ball to where he knew it was going to go. Ho, ho, he wanted to run. He wanted in. Shane saw Sam and saw himself, a kid trying to act all supercool but lusting for the game. Sam looked young and skinny and lazy but he had that curious body that made you wonder what he could do.

Shane waited for a minute and then asked him. The kid gave him his best deaf-mute, blinked.

“You wanna run?” Shane said again.

“Pah,” Sam said, as if he’d suggested something outrageous and boring all at once. “Nah.”

But Shane could see. He passed the kid his ball on the bounce and Sam let it ride up into his hands where it continued spinning softly against his palm like a classroom globe. Sam put his other hand on top and then dribbled it hard, twice.

“They’re almost done,” Shane said, pointing at the game in progress, and the kid nodded at him, a barely perceptible motion. Shrugged. He saw what was being offered: a decent game, far from home, total anonymity, minimal bullshit. He could play in this game and never get better, never have to face the crazy Rashons and courtside Tennessees, never have to worry about anyone waiting for him with guns and malice after the game, never know what it was like to compete against the ghetto best. He shrugged and he took it. Rolled up his sweats, tied down his shoes, stepped onto the court, and played with them for five straight years. Became one of the guys and the youngest loyal subject of the Firehouse court until the day he stopped showing up.

The cell phone on Shane’s hip rings angrily.

“Hi.”

“Everything all right?”

“Yeah. I’m very close.”

“Okay.”

“Parking’s a bitch. I’ll call you when I’m outside.”

He stands and listens at Fulton’s door one more time for secrets, but the house knows better than that. Then he marches off to get the car.

Lou’s electric. He means to tell her where he’s been but can’t get a word in as they cross town. She is reliving the night before his eyes, and the longer she talks the less sense his story seems to make. By the time she asks him, he has decided something else even if he doesn’t know why.

“Jimmy broke down,” he says. “I had to go jump him.”

“He ever heard of Triple A?”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel like going home,” he says. There are too many things wrong right now to go home. “It’s like I missed out on my night with you.”

“We’ll have other nights. And if things work out, we’ll remember this one for a long time, too.”

“Let’s go out.”

“Out?” She’s surprised. “Where?”

“The ice rink’s closed, but I have another idea.”

“Out,” she murmurs. “You realize that I’m going to be working for the next seventy-two hours straight to get ready for Monday. You realize that.”

“All the more reason to get my night in when I can.”