“Not me.”
She tilted her head. “Do you want to know why I got divorced?”
“If you want to tell me.”
“I met him in New York. We were married six months, then he came out.”
“That must’ve been a surprise.”
“I was surprised,” she said. “Later I found out everybody knew except me.”
“I was married, too,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows.
I pointed to a gaunt woman in pigtails near the gelato truck. “That’s her.”
Tatiana balled up the napkin and threw it at me. I ducked and it landed on the asphalt behind me. A girl about seven years old ran over and snatched it up.
“Litterbug!” she yelled. Her T-shirt read LOCALLY GROWN.
She hopped around, waving the dirty napkin, chanting, “Litterbug! Litterbug!”
“Sorry,” Tatiana said. “It was an accident. I meant to hit him.”
“Litterbug!”
The girl’s mother came over to apologize. “Her class just finished a unit on recycling.”
The kid stuck out her tongue at us as she was yanked away. The band began to play “Take On Me.”
Tatiana tossed back the dregs of her margarita. “Smug little twat.”
I said, “Let’s get out of here.”
We walked east, through Ohlone Park.
“I vant to be Ohlone,” she said.
“Do you?”
“No.”
“Good,” I said. “Up for a little walk?”
“Sure.”
Aside from the occasional booze wobble, she was graceful and purposeful, fluid in her movements, shivering against me.
“Here,” I said, giving her my coat.
“Thank you, gallant sir. Nobody’s done that for me since eleventh grade. Where are you taking me?”
Ten minutes later, we arrived at University Avenue.
“You’re taking me to campus,” she said.
“Ah, yes, but: where on campus.”
“Please tell me this isn’t some hopeless attempt to relive our college days.”
“Who said anything about hopeless.”
We tottered happily through the eucalyptus grove, thumping over the bridge spanning Strawberry Creek, encountering bicycle racks and flapping banners but few faces. Mist hung in the trees, diffusing the greenish glow of pathway lighting. I imagined Donna Zhao, trudging home in the dark, bent-backed beneath the weight of her textbooks and notebooks and fatigue. In a strange way, she had brought me here now, to this moment and this place, to the feeling of Tatiana’s arm, lost inside the sleeve of my coat, but gripping me fiercely as she laughed and swayed.
Up ahead loomed Haas Pavilion and the adjoining rec center.
“Where are you taking me,” she said. “For real.”
“I want to show you something.”
We came to a side door. I fished my keycard out of my wallet, swiped it near the sensor. The lock retracted with a clack.
“An old teammate is an assistant coach,” I said. “He got me the hookup.”
“Fancy.”
“That’s how I roll.”
We went down a cinder-block corridor painted in blue and yellow and stenciled with motivational slogans. CHAMPIONS KEEP PLAYING UNTIL THEY GET IT RIGHT. BE STRONG IN BODY, CLEAN IN MIND, LOFTY IN IDEALS. The air burned with industrial cleaner. In the weight room, a few football physiques were grinding out reps with their earbuds in. They paid us no mind.
The practice court itself was at the end of the hall. I swiped in and hit the switches, and the floods flickered on, casting a sickly pall over the waxed floor.
“They take a couple minutes to warm up,” I said.
I unlocked a ball cart and dragged it to the top of the three-point line. Paused, squinting at the rim.
I have a low tolerance for alcohol. I never built one, never developed a taste; during college, when most people learn to drink, I had a strict diet and training regimen. Tonight, I’d consumed half a beer, walked it off for half an hour. Yet I still felt warm, my focus honed somewhat by the pressure of what I was about to do.
I took a basketball, spun it in my hand, breathed in, breathed out.
Pulled up.
Let fly.
It clanged off the back of the rim. Not the splashy opening I’d had in mind.
“I didn’t see that,” Tatiana said.
“See what,” I said, reaching for another ball.
I pulled up.
This time I felt it as it left my hand; I saw myself from the outside, angles in agreement, head and neck, elbow and shoulder, wrist and fingers, collaborating. I felt the weightless instant, when gravity releases its stranglehold, and you float, and the ball becomes vapor, pebbled breath rolling back against the tips of your fingers. I felt it part from me with an understanding of its mission, an extension of me that continued to rise after I had softly retouched the earth; rising and rising, the seams spinning backward in a blur of symmetry and physics; peaking and then descending in a gentle arc, a faithful delivery.
The net snapped, was still.
I exhaled and took another ball.
Snap.
Another.
Snap. Snap. Snap.
I stopped when I reached into the cart and discovered that it was empty. Loose balls lay scattered like the aftermath of a cannon battle, the echo of the last bounce fading. I’d made twenty-three of twenty-nine shots.
Tatiana shifted.
I looked over at her. I’d forgotten she was there.
She said, “That was beautiful.”
“Thanks.”
“Really, Clay. I — it was really wonderful.”
“Thank you.”
“Thank you for showing me,” she said.
I nodded.
She said, “You do miss it.”
“Of course.”
“What most of all?”
The heat of the arena. Students with their faces painted and their throats stringy as they screamed. Truth be told, it never was my job to shoot. The three-pointer show makes for a good party trick, but no way could I hit half as many with a hand in my face.
I was a point guard. A setup man. Frame a situation, hand off to those more comfortable in the spotlight.
It’s who I am, even today.
Sophomore year, somebody realized I was on pace to break Jason Kidd’s single-season school record for assists. A group started showing up to the games. They called themselves the Claymakers. They sat in a line, a few rows in front of the band. Every time I got an assist, the next person in line would turn over a poster board with a picture of a lightbulb and the words BRIGHT IDEA! Because: Edison. Get it? A very Cal kind of joke.
I ended up falling a few shy of the record. I didn’t care. I had two seasons left, two more chances to beat it. The team had qualified for the NCAA tournament for the first time in three years. That was all that mattered.
Favored in our first game, we won by twenty. We cleared the round of thirty-two. That hadn’t happened in a decade. We beat the three-seed, Maryland, to advance to the Elite Eight. You had to go back to 1960 to find the last time that had happened. I had seventeen assists in that game, one short of the tournament record. I scored twelve points, too. I was on SportsCenter. We were Cinderella. Things got nuts for a while.
When Tatiana said she’d recognized me, she was recalling the me from those few months, the italicized portion of my life. Agents turning up at our motel. One of them came to my dad’s work. It was a time for imagining. Maybe I wouldn’t go back for two more seasons, after all. Maybe I’d go pro. Get rich. Get richer. Get famous. Get more famous. It seemed so obviously desirable that I never stopped to wonder if, in fact, I wanted it.
I did want it. I know that, now.
We beat Miami in triple overtime and crashed into the Final Four against Kansas.
I had a lousy opening half. They had a great team that year, including three future NBA players, and I went into sloppy hyperdrive, turning the ball over a bunch. My coach sent me to the bench to cool off, keeping me there until five minutes remained in the half and we were down by eleven. Finally he sent me to the scorers’ table to check in.