The twenty-footer from the left elbow clangs off the front of the rim and the ball shoots back toward me so fast that it almost hits me in the nuts. I’m at the town park behind the police station downtown, about fifteen minutes from where I live. The sun is dying fast on a chilly April evening and it’s almost time for me to go home.
Legs. Gotta use more legs.
I’m tired. I’ve been hoisting jumpers nonstop for two hours. My forty-year-old knees and ankles and lower back are feeling the imprint of the concrete court.
If you’re watching me from a low-flying airplane, you might think I’ve been working on my jump shot for a men’s league or to stay in shape or to emulate my NBA heroes. But this is where I go when I have other things to work on, and they have nothing to do with basketball, which I stopped playing and watching competitively a long time ago. And watch out for the top of that big tree.
I’m straight out from the hoop now, about fifteen feet away, commencing another round of fate-determining free-throw shooting. Fortunately I’m pretty good from here. OK, so maybe I’m cheating. Fuck it. Here goes.
Make this and I’ll finish what is amounting to be a seventeen thousand-word chapter outline within the allotted time that the literary agent has prescribed, which is roughly three hours from now, or about two and a half hours after I get home and take a shower.
Swish.
Nice. OK. Make this and the outline will be great, a masterful work, answering any lingering doubts he might have about how we can make a book about an athlete not many people have heard of marketable to publishers and the general public with a story so rich and compelling and with so many dramatic turns that once these idiots just open the damn thing and look inside, they’ll be hooked.
Front rim, pops up, falls in.
Whew! Close one. Maybe that means I have to do some more polishing of Chapter 17, which I thought needed a bit of work this morning but I silently declared ready for submission anyway.
OK, serious now. Three dribbles, look at the front. Make this and I’ll hit “Send” at the right time, the agent will read all twenty-nine single-spaced pages by tomorrow and let me know that yes, he’s interested, and yes, he’s taking us on.
Clang! Back rim, straight back to me.
Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not interested. Maybe it didn’t go in because I won’t fire off the pivotal email on time, and that’s just a matter of logistics. He’s in New York, I’m on the West Coast, and he told me to get it to him by the “end of the week,” and since it’s now Friday evening, or Friday night in New York, it’s still the end of the week. Shit, Sunday is the end of the week. As long as I email it to him within the next three hours I should be OK. That one didn’t count.
But this one, this one is a big one. Extra concentration. Remember the legs. Make this and he’ll absolutely fall in love with it. The two chapters he’s already referred to as “solid” without saying anything else will suddenly become “brilliant.” Within two days he’ll tell me all the major houses are interested, this has a chance to be a runaway New York Times best-seller, the inevitable bidding war will ensue, and soon enough movie studio heads’ ears will be pricked.
Off the side rim. The ball skirts to the left and rolls into the cop parking lot. It gets stuck under the front of a police SUV and a pebble gets stuck to the flesh on the front of my knee as I lie on my stomach retrieving it.
Now I need a couple more. There has to be some resolution tonight. I can’t leave here without at least some divine indication of what is going to happen after I dispatch this email. I settle in the corner, about eighteen feet away. I really need to get going soon. OK. Here I go.
I’m taking the ball down to my shoulder like I do for every shot when a little boy runs onto the court. I stop what I’m doing. He’s with his father and he’s chasing a much smaller ball and he’s laughing. He must be about three years old, about the same age as my own son, and he’s wearing glasses. I get a good look at his face and notice that behind one of the lenses, there’s no eye. Just healing skin stretched over the area where an eye used to be.
Stop looking. Right now.
Oh, fuck. There must have been a terrible accident. How shitty for him, to grow up like that and to struggle for the rest of his life. How shitty for his father to know already that his son will grow up so different from his peers and will struggle for the rest of his life. My own son is so lucky.
I am so fucking lucky.
And I don’t need to shoot anymore. I don’t need to be here anymore wasting my time absorbed in my delusions of riches and glory. Just go home and finish the fucking outline and quit whining and worrying.
First, however, a layup. I’m not leaving on a missed shot. I always make the last shot.
Two-footer. Backboard. No-brainer.
Good.
***
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I can shoot the three!
Like Steve Kerr?