There was a little three-on-three action going down, and I got in and busted the first game I played. I was playing against this sucker from Milbank who swore he was bad. Everything I threw up dropped in. I was so bad I surprised myself. When I moved, my feet hardly touched the ground, and when I shot the ball, it didn’t touch the rim, just dropped through the net. I was getting that soft shot, like Cal. I tried his move, putting the ball up with one hand off the dribble. A chick that was watching screamed when she saw me do it, and I nearly grinned myself to death. Cal had told me I was nice, but even I didn’t know I was this nice.

Another game went by, starring and directed by me, and then I decided to book. I was about to leave when I see Paul come in the other way. I called him over and told him I wanted to see him in our room. He didn’t say nothing; he just followed me on in. Ox was in the room, feeding Sparrow, and I asked him to split.

“Y’all gonna do the thing?” he asked.

“Get out of here, man,” I said.

“Hey, brother, you know what I say.” Ox had put Sparrow back in his cage and was going out the door. “A chick is slick, but gay is okay!”

When Ox left, I closed the door and locked it, and then I asked Paul what was going on. He asked me what I meant.

“What I mean?” I looked at him like he was crazy or something. “You go around punching out some chick you don’t even know, you acting funny, you don’t say nothing to nobody. Unless you talking to your new la-di-da people.”

“What are you? The FBI?”

“I’m just asking, brother.”

“If I feel this big need to talk to somebody about what I’m doing, I’ll go to confession,” he said. “In the meantime, why don’t you just walk down your side of the street and I’ll walk down mine? Okay?”

“Look, man—”

“Look, nothing, save your looks for a peep show,” he said. “I told you I don’t want to hear what you got to say.”

“Hey, man, I ain’t that chick you punched out. If you feel froggy, just leap on over here, sucker!”

There were two things I didn’t think would ever happen. One of them was that Paul and me would ever have a serious fight. The other one was that anybody could hit me one time and put me on the floor. At first I thought he had damaged my brain or something because I saw all these little lights and it hurt so much. Then I realized the sucker had hit me with the lamp. I got up and he hit me in the belly and I grabbed him around the waist and lifted him off the floor. I took a few more punches before I could push him away from me.