Chapter #65Gaming the Game by: Seuzz   Maybe your meeting with Jeremy has left you worried about the tryouts. Or maybe you're just feeling conscientious after helping Mr. Javits out in the yard. But you text Ryan Shuler back: wsup?
meet? he texts back a minute later. You suck on your lip as you tap out where? For if Shuler wants to meet face to face, he must think it's important.
* * * * *
"It's this Monday bullshit," he snaps when you're settled in at a nearby McDonalds. Settled in but far from relaxed, for Shuler is squeezing you in on one side while Shawn Sax and Matt Nichols—two other teammates—glare at you from the other side of the table. "What are we gonna do about it?" Shuler continues.
"Like do what about it?" you retort. "And why do you call it bullshit?"
Shuler snorts and turns to his friends. Sax leans back and tilts his chin at you. But Nichols leans forward with a lowered brow. "So you're okay with these tryouts?" he growls.
If they're trying to intimidate you, they've got the wrong son of a bitch. No one is going to throw a punch in a public place like McDonalds, but Seth Javits wouldn't dodge them even if he met them coming toward him on a dark street in the warehouse district.
Still, way down deep, you can't help squirting out a little fart of fear. In his black leather jacket and close-shorn buzz cut, Nichols looks like a skinhead. Shawn—the only African-American on the squad—with his gold earring, his scarlet-and-emerald bandana, and his 'stache-and-goatee, looks like a ghetto gangbanger crossed with Jack Sparrow. Even Shuler, who at five-eight has to make up for his (lack of) height with pugnacity and precision shooting, exudes a well-muscled menace in his wife-beater and torn jeans.
"It's not my call if we have to go through tryouts again," you retort. "I didn't tell Gordon to go fucking crazy and get his ass kicked off the squad." (Way down deep, you snicker.) "I didn't ask the Durrases to come out here and try out for the squad."
"No one as'd if it was your idea, man." Shawn's voice is a resonant, rumbly purr. In three years of playing basketball and sharing classes with him, Seth has never once heard him raise it, even in anger. He doesn't have to. That voice, those hard-packed muscles, and that hooded gaze peering down an aquiline nose are usually enough to get him his way. "Alls we wants t' know is, is it bullshit? In your humble opinion." The last four words fairly drip off his lips.
And despite yourself, you shift in your seat. "It's not the way I'd've handled it."
"How would you have handled it?" Shawn's voice is almost inaudible.
"Expand the roster," you say, and catch yourself in mid-squirm. "Or tell the Eastman guys they have to compete for Gordon's old spot."
"Did you tell Patterson that?" Shuler asks. "Or Coach?"
"Look, what do you want?" you demand. "And why are you bitching at me? You think I can do anything about it?"
Instantly you regret the question. If they say "yes," then it'll put you on a spot. If they say "no"—if they even think it—you'll have forfeited most of your credibility with them.
"We wanna do something about it," Nichols says. "We wanna know if you do too."
You glance around the table. "What, you think I got a fucking time machine in my garage? 'Cos if one of us don't got that, I don't see how—"
"You go to Patterson," Shawn says, "an' you tell him it's bullshit. You tell him," he continues in a soft, low rumble, "there ain't no reason t' change the squad, 'cept maybe t' add one o' these Eastman assholes."
"So why don't you go and tell him that?" you retort. "Or are you too much of a chickenshit to face him?"
"Why don't you?" Nichols retorts in turn. His hair visibly bristles. "Or can't you take his dick out of your mouth long enough to argue with him?"
You come half out of your seat with a bunched-up fist, but you catch yourself—and Shuler catches you by the arm—before you can throw it.
"Patterson'll listen to you, man," he says. "He always listens to you."
"Why, 'cos I got his dick in my mouth?"
Shawn sniggers. "Say it a little louder," he purrs. "I don't think the cooks in the back heard you."
You flush. Despite yourself, you're actually flattered by the compliment they're paying you. Steve Patterson is not known for listening to or taking advice from anyone.
"Look, you said that's the way you'd handle it," Shuler says. He sweeps off his cap and ruffles his thick, chocolate-colored curls before settling it back on. "Replace Gordon with one of the two Durras guys. Just tell Patterson that's what he should do."
"The tryouts are already scheduled," you point out. "And even if Patterson went along with it, we'd have to get Coach to—"
"Who's making the new roster?" Nichols says. "Who's picking out who stays and who goes?"
"Coach'll make the final decision, I suppose."
"'Cept he's gonna listen to Patterson," Shuler says. "He always does. Him and Gordon, back when it was them two."
True. Coach Brooks is a lazy, lazy man who likes to leave the running of the squad to the team captain, and you've got admit that Patterson is more than capable of running it without adult supervision. "That still doesn't explain how I get him to cancel the tryouts."
"Use your fuckin' brain, man," Shawn sighs. "Alls Patterson's gotta do is pick a guy to replace Gordon, an' tell Coach he's for letting the rest of the squad be. Tha's all."
You blink, and look around the table again. "Tell him it's about morale, or some shit like that," Shuler says. "Tell him we got a winning roster and it'll fuck us all up if goes cutting guys out and jamming new guys in. Except for whoever he wants to stick in for Gordon."
Now you see it in a flash. These guys—these ball-busting bad-asses—are shitting themselves just as hard as Jeremy is. They're each terrified that they'll get cut from the squad, so they're banding together to try gaming the tryouts.
You're tempted to tell them to go fuck themselves, that they'll find out on Monday night along with yourself and all the other poor assholes whether to come to practice on Tuesday. But their idea, if you could talk Patterson into it, would also save Jeremy.
Better yet, it would save Jeremy without his knowing about it, because you could put the fix in with Patterson without telling him about it. It would boost his confidence if he stayed on the squad, even while the crisis might finally teach him to give that extra ten percent that he's been too scared to throw in.
"Well, why didn't you fucking explain all this at the start?" you demand of the trio. "That I can do."
The air freezes. Then Shuler, Sax and Nichols all break out in raucous guffaws.
* * * * *
"This better be fucking important," Steve Patterson says. With his hands on his hips he glares around the gym loft, then points to a large, wooden crate. "And if it's gonna take more than ten seconds you can make yourself useful by helping me move that."
The fuck room. You can hardly believe it, but you're standing in the fabled Westside Lounge and Fuck Room. Even Seth, who has been invited a handful of times up to spend an afternoon in it, would get a thrill from standing in it again.
Not that there's much to look at. It's a loft, vaulted over with iron rafters and lined on one side by a long row of dirty window pains, high up under the roof of the school gymnasium. Officially it's a storage room, and it's stuffed with crates and boxes and discarded gym equipment. There's a set of dusty, broken weights in one corner, and a row of shelves and cabinets along a far wall. A dorm-sized refrigerator sits next to one support pillar, and piled up in the center of the room is a stack of dirty gym mats that reek of sweat, beer, old socks, and—
"You bringing a date up here tonight?" you ask Patterson as you grab one end of the crate while he takes the other. It's hefty, but you're able to shift it over three feet to open up some more space.
"It's Saturday night," Patterson retorts. "Is that what you invited yourself up here to ask me?"
And still you hang back from broaching the subject of the tryouts. Patterson scares you—yes, you, Seth Javits!—that much.
It would have been different if it was Gordon you were asking. Sure, Gordon was six and a half feet of mean-minded muscle, like the offspring of a buffalo and one of the slabs at Stonehenge. But he would always listen even if it was with a frown, and if he said, "Fuck you, no," that would be the end of it and he'd basically forget you'd ever asked.
But Steve Patterson, though taller and rangier, is like a dagger carved from cold stone and hardened ice. His eyes are the color of Arctic fog—a fog that hides icebergs—and the air seems to congeal when he locks them on you. And the son of a bitch has a memory, too. Every slip or misstep you've ever made on the gym floor; every wrong answer or embarrassing mistake you've made in a classroom; every goof, flub, bungle or boner you've ever pulled at a party—you're sure it's all been noted, processed, and cataloged in that analytical calculator he has for a brain. And you're pretty sure that his opinions of people only ratchet in one direction: down.
But now you're up here with him, and you didn't even have to wheedle the meeting when you texted him. at schl, he replied. come up. So maybe Javits's rep is still high enough that you can safely make that pitch.
He listens with cold courtesy until you're done.
Then he says, "Are you fucking high? No."  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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