Don’t want you ’cause your feets too big.

“That was the night we fell in love. Or at least the night we both knew it.”

“What is it like being married?” I asked. He had gone in this apartment, and I waited until he had found the light switch and turned it on. It wasn’t nothing to brag about, that was for sure.

“What’s it like being married? Really married?” He looked at me. “I don’t know. I always had one foot out the door and one foot in.”

“Yeah, that’s the way I am, too,” I said. “I can’t see getting next to a broad but one way, you dig?”

“You want another taste?” Cal asked. He was fumbling through a closet.

“Yeah, we ain’t playing tomorrow.”

“You sure played today,” he said, “for a half anyway.”

“You really dig this tournament thing, huh? I mean, what are you getting out of it?”

“Told you,” he said. He held two glasses up to the light to see if they were clean. He wiped one on his shirt and then held them both up again. “You’re my cover. You get the dirty glass, too.”

“Cover for what?” I asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You just want to play mysterious, that’s all,” I said. “Talking about me being your cover … acting all funny when that Casey dude came in the locker room.”

“That Casey dude?” Cal stopped pouring the whiskey and looked at me. “How do you know his name is Casey?”

“I saw him before,” I said. “He said some of the kids at Haaren who had seen you and me playing told him about me.”

“What else he say?”

“You going to pour that drink or what?”

“I asked you what else did he say, and what did he offer you?” Cal’s voice got cold, and he looked at me as if I had said something wrong. I started to shrug it off, but he just stared at me.

“He said that maybe he could get me into a college,” I said. “Or something like that. Anyway, I figured I’d try out for one of the eastern leagues. He said that if I wasn’t interested in college, maybe he could help me work something out.”

“What did he offer you, and did you take it?”

“He gave me his card and a twenty-dollar bill. He said it was money to make the call with,” I said. “Say, look, what are you getting so uptight for? The dude laid twenty dollars on me. I didn’t kill nobody. I didn’t steal nothing from nobody. He just gave me the money for nothing.”

“When’s the last time somebody gave you something for nothing?”

“Man, cut this lame stuff,” I said. I was really tired of it. “Who made you the white knight all of a sudden?”

“Hey, maybe I am the white knight, or maybe I’m Little Red Riding Hood or somebody,” he said, putting the glasses down. “How’s that: Cal Jones, also known as Little Red Riding Hood?”