When the car showed up, he got into the front, then it eased its way east on Fifty-ninth, uptown on Madison, back over to Fifth, and the front entrance to the Pierre. Gary got out and opened the back door for the girl, and the two of them walked through the lobby like a happy couple, Gary even putting his arm around her. There were simpler ways to do this, Gary told Billy that all the time, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass, this way was his way now, and his way was all that ever mattered.
Thinking he was being as careful as he was with the ball with ten seconds left.
Billy showed up a few minutes later in what was supposed to be the safe room, the one between his and Gary’s, the one he was sure was safe, tonight’s do-me girl getting herself ready for him in the bathroom.
Gary checked the room one last time, made sure everything was all right, then he was out the door as soon as Billy was in, Gary not even bothering to say good night.
They clinched home court for the playoffs, the Magic did, with a week to go in the regular season. Mostly, Gary knew, the rest of them watched as Billy did it, that was the truth of things, Billy doing it to the Wizards all by himself in that new MCI Center in downtown Washington, part of one of those urban fix-ups that mostly fixed up the owner of the team moving into a place like MCI. Billy Cash went in there and dropped his fifty-eight points on the Wizards and gave the Magic the best record in the NBA, east or west, carving those points into the young guys trying to stay with him the way you’d carve your initials on the side of some tree.
Billy didn’t want to go out after the game, even though D.C. was one of his favorite cities to go clubbing in the whole league. “Gary, my brother,” he said in the locker room, “I believe I’m just gonna take my shit back to the Do-It Room over there to the Four Seasons.” That’s what he liked to call his fuck room at these expensive hotels. The Do-It Room. He’d been out in L.A. one time when he was a kid, visiting Wilt Chamberlain’s famous house in Bel-Air, and he’d come up on a room that was just water bed and mirrors, no real floor to it, and outside was a little plaque, next to the door, saying THE DO-IT ROOM.
Billy told Gary to go pick up Sharon, the girl from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms he’d met at lunch after the shoot-around, bring her over there.
Billy said, “And tell her not to worry, the only illegal weapon I’m packin’ is the one I got right here,” he said, grabbing himself under his towel.
Gary said he’d be sure to pass that along.
Sharon. At least he had a name to put to the girl this time. Went outside where the limo was waiting next to the players’ entrance, drove to the address nearly all the way out of town, got her back to the hotel in Georgetown a little bit before Billy would be showing up after finishing with his media and whatnot. Took her up there, showed her around, called room service and ordered some of the champagne Billy liked, his big fruit platter. And whipped cream. Fresh-whipped and kept on ice. Lot of it.
Gary smiled.
The shit you did for love.
The second-to-last game of the regular season was in Philadelphia, so the Magic were just going to bus up there in the early afternoon, Thursday afternoon, since they weren’t playing until Friday night.
The phone rang in Gary ’s room at the Four Seasons a couple of minutes after eleven.
“Get down here now,” Billy said. “I got a situation.”
“Your room or the other?”
“Mine.”
“You still got the girl here?”
“Got Monica here,” Billy said, and hung up.
Billy was wearing a white Magic T-shirt, baggy gym shorts. He was on one couch in the living room of his suite. Monica was across from him on the other couch in the room. She wore a sharp-looking navy-blue pantsuit, one leg crossed over the other, showing off some big heels on her black shoes. She had a black leather purse next to her. On the coffee table between her and Billy was a thick manila envelope and the kind of thick binder you used to carry to school. And a shoe box that had PRADA written on the side.
By now, Gary knew that Monica would rather go barefoot than wear something other than Prada on her size 7 feet.
“Monica,” Gary said.
“Gary Hall.”
He hung back, over where the room service table was, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Waiting to see how it would play out, now that they were all finally down to it.
Here, Gary thought, in the real Do-It Room.
“She’s servin’ me,” Billy said in a dead voice.
“Just a different kind of serving than went on next door,” Monica said. “Kind always goes on next door.”
“This is how you do it?” Billy said. “Blindside me this way?”
Monica said, “One of us was blind, Billy. From the start.”
“You said the papers were in the envelope,” Billy said. “What’s the rest of it?”
“Aren’t you even a little bit curious?” Monica said.
“You’ll tell me,” Billy said. “You always did like being the smart one, even when you were little Miss Congeniality behind your Disney desk, unbuttoning enough buttons on your blouse to show yourself off.”
Monica said, “The binder’s my black book on you, Billy. You got your black book, with all your little whores in it? Now I’ve got mine. The shoe box has got cassettes in it, you can keep them if you want, watch yourself instead of the dirty hotel movies. All of it’s why we’re going to do this nice and easy, which means you can take that pre-nup you had me sign and throw it right out that window over there. I could’ve had somebody else serve you, but I wanted to do it myself. Put it all on the table, so to speak. We’ll call it irreconcilable differences. Maybe throw in a little mental cruelty on the side, just so it sounds more official. Then we smile and call it painful but amicable.” Monica smiled now. “Before I get my half.”
Billy opened up the binder, saw that some of the pages had black-and-white pictures under plastic.
He took the picture out, stared at it.
“Goddamn,” he said. “This here is Charrisse. From last week in New York. The one from MTV.”
Billy looked over to Gary and said, “How’d somebody get a fucking camera in the room?”
“It’s easy, you know where to hide it,” Gary said. “If you can’t have a practical application of all they made you learn with surveillance from the cops, what’s the point?”
All you could hear now in the suite was the hum of the air conditioner, some kind of soft music playing from the bedroom.
“You?” Billy said to him.
From the couch, Monica said, “Us.”
Billy turned and stared at her, then back to Gary, then back at the picture of him and Charrisse in the Do-It Room at the Plaza. Dropped that and pulled out another one. “Selena,” Billy said. Kept going through them and not saying the names now, just saying Cleveland and San Antonio and Phoenix and Detroit. Like he remembered the cities better than he remembered the girls.
Billy Cash stopped finally and looked hard again at Gary, more hurt now than sad, or at least playing it that way. “Why?” he said.
“Got tired of being the boy bringing the girls. Once you do that, all you are is somebody’s boy.”
Monica stood up and said, “You know what they say, don’t you, Billy? My people will call your people.”
Gary Hall walked over then and put his arm around her.
“You two…?” Billy said.
“Us,” Monica said.
Gary Hall said, “Remember you’re always telling me to get my own girl? I did.”