"So what happened with..."

"So what happened, so what happened is Chubby got drunk and he's trying to bang this chick while standing at the head of this long flight a stairs an' he loses his balance. She got a concussion an' he busted his fuckin' leg. Spent the next three weeks in the hospital."

"Couldn't he a tried out after his leg healed?"

"You know, that's one thing I could never figure out. I remember the Browns scout Buzzy Baker visitin' Chubby in the hospital an' tellin' him to call when his leg healed. Chubby never did. Always said, 'I'll call 'im tomorrah.' Then one day about six months later he joined the merchant marine an' shipped out to Surinam an' that was that. He came back a few years later an' started workin' with our old man as an electrician. To this day, I don't know what the fuck went on in his head." Tommy sighed. "Whatever, it's ancient history, right?"

Banion wanted to tell Tommy about playing forward for the All-Hallows High School basketball team. That his three-year career point total was the highest in All-Hallows history. That it took fifteen years and a six-eight nigger who later went pro to break his record. But it all seemed so distant and dim, it made him feel so angry to think about it.

"Yeah, ancient history." Banion whirred down the line. Tommy noticed somebody had stenciled "Ironsides" on the back of Banion's new wheelchair.

Tommy sat there thinking about Chubby. He had always felt that he knew Chubby inside and out, but every once in a while something would come up, like Chubby not going to St. Louis, like Chubby not having another kid, that would throw Tommy for a loop and a half.

Chubby cruised Eighth Avenue in the Forties, strolling down the block, occasionally stopping in porn book shops as a warm-up. It seemed to him most of the hookers were black, about six-foot-two, skinny, dressed in dirty hot pants and Afro wigs. Bad news. The street was steaming. He felt covered with a thin film of sludge and a slight wheeze crept into his lungs. He walked down from 48th Street to 40th by the Greyhound terminal, crossed the street and walked back up to 50th Street. Pimples and platform shoes. He was about to leave and check out the Carnegie Hall area when he saw her, coming out of a Blimpie's. Chinese. Bangs. Nineteen.

As they climbed the narrow stairs. Chubby's wheeze got worse. She was half a flight ahead of him. Aloof. Swinging her ass like a censer. She looked so much like Sooky Chubby had the shakes.

"Hot! Hot! Hot!" She minced over to the window across the small room, her hand waving in front of her tits like a fan. Chubby sat heavily on the corner of the narrow bed, trying to catch his breath. As she pushed up the window, her short white backless fishnet dress hitched halfway up her ass. Chubby smiled. "That's better!" She turned to Chubby, reached behind her neck to untie the strap holding up her dress and in an instant she was nude. Her dark brown nipples stood out like pencil erasers.