“I got to get a cheeseburger,” Sweet Man said. “I think it’s an emergency.”

Cal laughed and asked me if I had time to stop off with them. Naturally I said okay, and we went down the street to a little bar and then got a guy to go out and get the burgers, which was pretty cool. That way Sweet Man didn’t have a lot of kids all over him.

“This is the cat you told me had a nice game?” Sweet Man nodded towards me.

“Yeah,” Cal said, “Lonnie’s pretty nice.”

“Glad to meet you, Lonnie.” Sweet Man stuck out his hand, and I shook it again. I had shaken it before when Cal first introduced everybody around, but now it was different because it was just me.

“So what you been doing with your bad self?” Cal asked Sweet Man.

“Same old thing,” Sweet Man said. “You know I got this record company. I still can’t decide about this new group. They got something, you know, they sing good, but …”

“I don’t know nothing about these pop stars,” Cal said.

“You knew enough about them to marry one,” Sweet Man said.

Cal looked like he just remembered something he didn’t like. It only lasted for an instant, but it was there.

“How’d that other thing we talked about go?” Sweet Man switched the conversation.

“I tried everybody, you know, they don’t want to hear nothing.”

“How about Lee?” Sweet Man looked at Cal. The conversation was serious, but I didn’t know what they were talking about. I really hadn’t figured Cal to know Johnson in the first place. And I sure didn’t figure me to be sitting there with the two of them having a cheeseburger. “Look, man, if you’re going to get back into the game, you’re going to run into these dudes and you’re going to run into the same situations.”

“Yeah,” Cal said. “I guess so.”

Then Sweet Man switched the conversation again. He was talking to me, asking me about my game and what I wanted to do with it and things like that, and I just tried to talk it through. When the burgers came, we ate them, and Cal and the Sweet Man started talking about some game they had played in, and from the best I could make out, they had played together. Cal was heavier than I thought he was.

The Sweet Man left soon after we had finished the burgers, and Cal said he had to split. He said there would be a practice the next day, and if I came, I was to make sure I brought my sneakers.

“Look, man.” I didn’t really know what to say to him. “Thanks for saying I had a nice game.”

“I wasn’t telling him no lie, Lonnie,” Cal said. “You got a nice game, but like he said, you got to be doing something with it.”

I could only get eleven dollars together, but Breeze and I both picked the same number, and I let him have it for four dollars, so I had fifteen. Breeze always had a pocketful of money, and Ox said that he thought he was messing with some rich woman downtown, but I didn’t believe it.