Playing Without the Ball A Novel in Four Quarters

Against the Sky The wind catches you by surprise when you turn the corner onto Main Street in Sturbridge, Pennsylvania. It's brisker than you expect, and in your face if you turn off a half-deserted side street and head up toward the post office or Rite-Aid or the Turkey Hill convenience store. Especially in late autumn. It's the week before Halloween, getting dark in a hurry, so Rite-Aid is busy with people picking up giant bags of miniature candy bars and little kids scoping out masks and plastic jack-o'-lanterns. The rest of the stores are mostly closed for the night, but the pizza place is busy and the music store is hanging on for another hour or so. Nobody's in there except the clerk guy with long stringy hair, reading a magazine behind the counter. You can get used CDs for five bucks. The diner's open across the street, but on this side the gun shop is closed, and Sid's clothing store just shut its lights a couple of seconds ago. I turn into the alley between Shorty's Bar and Foley's Pizza. The alley is just barely wide enough for Shorty's twenty-year-old blue pickup, but you can squeeze past it if you have reason to take a shortcut over to Church Street. You go around back to reach the steps up to the apartments. There are four doors up here. The one marked number 3 is mine, just a room with bare walls and a scuffed hardwood floor. The bathroom is painted mint green and has a stand-up shower stall and an oval mirror above the sink. I sleep on a mattress in the corner; I can't afford a bed yet. I've got a closet, but I also hang clothes on my chair, especially wet stuff like my basketball shorts. I get free rent. Not exactly free--I work it off in Shorty's kitchen three or four nights a week. The deal includes meals during work hours and five dollars an hour off the books. When I moved into this place in September, I was seventeen. I'd never had sex, never used drugs, never forgiven my mother, never been to church, and never been a basketball star. I guess that's all still true. I played like hell last night--telegraphing my passes, missing layups. That's the sort of thing that eats at me until I get a chance to redeem myself. I heard there's a 6 a.m. game on Tuesdays at the Y, so I set my alarm for 5:30 and stumbled out the door. Six older guys and a girl about my age--I don't know her; she's new in town--are shooting around when I get there. "You in?" a tall, bald, old-as-my-father guy asks me. "Sure." "You, me, and these two," he says, pointing to my teammates. "Cover my daughter." I smile a little. She's dribbling the ball at the top of the key. I've seen her around school. Cute. An inch or so taller than me, short blond hair. "Hi," she says. "Hey." "I'm Dana." "Jay." She passes the ball in and I turn to double up on the pivot guy. Dana cuts to the hoop on a give-and-go, takes a little flip pass, and lays it off the backboard and in. I play back this time, guarding against the inside pass. She dribbles once, sets up from fifteen feet and shoots, hitting nothing but net. I blush a little. "I ain't awake yet," I say. "Right," she answers, looking me straight in the eyes. I guard her tighter now, trying not to hack her. She's very quick. Very agile and sleek. She drifts into the key, thinking she can post up on me, but one of her teammates has dribbled into the corner. He's trapped--double-teamed--with his back to the basket, but he's still trying to dribble his way out. "Oh, dear," she mutters, close enough to my face that I smell peppermint. She gives me a kind of smirk, a half-look that elevates me. "Dribbling is bad," she says. "Tell me about it." The ball goes out of bounds. It's ours. IWallace, Rich is the author of 'Playing Without the Ball A Novel in Four Quarters' with ISBN 9780440229728 and ISBN 0440229723.