“You know what you love in this life? You love what makes you stand the tallest. It can be your woman, your country, your job. I loved basketball, Lonnie. It was what I had. I had it, and I threw it away. Hey, can you dig it? The one thing that I had, the one gift, and I threw it away, can you dig it?”

Cal was really upset. His whole body was shaking. I stood up and started to put my hand on him, and then I walked away. I didn’t want to see him like that, but I didn’t know what to do. There was a record player on the bureau and a record on it. I turned it on and put the arm on the record as it started to spin. It was a chick singing.

Give me red lipstick …

And a shot of good booze

It was a slow blues. I listened to it as Cal got himself together. I didn’t think about anything, mostly because I didn’t know what to think about. I sat down in an old rocking chair he had and put my feet on the table.

I was sitting on the stoop in front of the Grant when Paul comes by with Lenny and Joni. Far as I’m concerned, Lenny still looks like a faggot.

“Hey, Lonnie, how’s it going?” Lenny talks like he’s afraid his teeth are going to break or something.

“Okay,” I said. “Where you people headed?”

“Paul’s just showing us around the neighborhood,” Lenny says. “This place is something else!”

“You ought to get yourself one of them buses that be bringing white folks through,” I said, “if you want to see the real ghett-o!”

Paul started looking around like he was embarrassed to even be there. Then he started talking some jive about when the next practice was going to be. He knew when it was going to be the same as me. I didn’t even answer him, but Lenny did.

“We’re going out to the Nassau Coliseum later on to see The Spinners and Tyrone Davis. You want to come?”

“How much are the tickets?”

“Paul got them,” Joni said, squeezing his arm. “How much were they, Paul?”

“Fifteen dollars,” he said, half under his breath.

“I ain’t going,” I said.

They hemmed and hawed for a while longer, and then Lenny said that they had to be going. Fifteen dollars times three was forty-five dollars. I couldn’t figure out how Paul got that kind of bread. I knew he wasn’t working, and I knew his moms wasn’t coming up with no bread like that to send him to the Coliseum. Then I remembered what Mary-Ann had been saying about Paul’s name being on an envelope in Tyrone’s office at the club she works in. I couldn’t make it add up.

I started thinking more about Cal playing pro ball, and the truth was that I wanted to tell somebody. Not that I wanted somebody to know about it so bad, but I just wanted to talk about it to somebody so I could get it straight in my own mind. Then I had a thought that really knocked me out. I would take Mary-Ann over to see Cal, and then maybe I would tell her, if she liked him.