Sara Paretsky - Fire Sale

I tried not to let the daunting atmosphere get me down. After all, Bertha Palmer had sixteen girls who wanted to play, some even playing their hearts out. It was my job to help them until the school found a permanent coach. And to keep their spirits up after the season started, and they went against teams with better facilities, better depth-and much better coaches.

Those waiting a turn under the baskets were supposed to be running laps or stretching, but they tended to hover over the girls with balls, grabbing for them, or shouting hotly that April Czernin or Celine Jackman was hogging shooting time.

“Your mama didn’t spread her legs to pay for that ball-give it over here,” was a frequent taunt. I had to stay alert to squabbles that might erupt into full-scale war while correcting faults in shooting form. And not be bothered by the howling of the infant and toddler in the bleachers. The babies belonged to my center, Sancia, a gawky sixteen-year-old who-despite her six-foot-two body-looked practically like a baby herself. The kids were nominally under the care of her boyfriend, but he sat sullenly next to them, Discman in his ears, looking neither at his children nor at the action on the floor.

I was also trying not to let Marcena Love disturb me, although her presence was winding my team up, intensifying the pace of insults as well as of the workout. Not that Marcena was a scout or a coach or even knew very much about the game, but the team was ferociously aware of her.

When she’d arrived with me, impossibly soignée in her black Prada spandex, carrying an outsize leather bag, I’d introduced her briefly: she was English, she was a reporter, she wanted to take some notes, and possibly talk to some of them during the breaks.

The girls would have swooned over her anyway, but when they found she had covered Usher at Wembley Stadium, they’d screamed with excitement.

“Talk to me, miss, talk to me!”

“Don’t listen to her, she’s the biggest liar on the South Side.”

“You wanna photograph me doing my jump shot? I’m gonna be all-state this year.”

I’d had to use a crowbar to get them away from Love and onto the court. Even as they fought over equipment and shooting rights, they kept an eye on her.

I shook my head: I was paying too much attention to Love myself. I took a ball from April Czernin, another promising guard, and tried to show her how to back into the three-second lane, turning at the last instant to do that fadeaway jumper Michael Jordan made famous. At least my ball went in, always a plus when you’re trying to show off a move. April repeated the shot a few times while another player complained, “How come you let her keep the ball and I don’t get no time, Coach?”

Being called “coach” still disconcerted me. I didn’t want to get used to it-this was a temporary gig. In fact, I was hoping to line up a corporate sponsor this afternoon, someone willing to pay good money to bring in a pro, or at least semipro, to take over the team.

When I blew my whistle to call an end to free-form warm-ups, Theresa Díaz popped up in front of me.

“Coach, I got my period.”

“Great,” I said. “You’re not pregnant.”

She blushed and scowled: despite the fact that at any one time at least fifteen percent of their classmates were pregnant, the girls were skittish and easily embarrassed by talk about their bodies. “Coach, I gotta use the bathroom.”

“One at a time-you know the rule. When Celine gets back, you can go.”

“But, Coach, my shorts, they’ll, you know.”

“You can wait on the bench until Celine returns,” I said. “The rest of you: get into two lines-we’re going to practice layups and rebounds.”

Theresa gave an exaggerated sigh and made a show of mincing over to the bench.

“What’s the point of that kind of use of power? Will humiliating the girl turn her into a better player?” Marcena Love’s high, clear voice was loud enough for the two girls nearest her to stop fighting over a ball to listen.

Josie Dorrado and April Czernin looked from Love to me to see what I would do. I couldn’t-mustn’t-lose my temper. After all, I might only be imagining that Love was going out of her way to get my goat.

“If I wanted to humiliate her, I’d follow her to the bathroom to see if she really had her period.” I also spoke just loudly enough for the team to overhear. “I’m pretending to believe her because it might really be true.”

“You suspect she just wants a cigarette?”

I lowered my voice. “Celine, the kid who disappeared for a break five minutes ago, is challenging me. She’s a leader in the South Side Pentas, and Theresa’s one of her followers. If Celine can get a little gang meeting going in the stalls during practice, she’s taken over the team.”

I snapped my fingers. “Of course, you could go in with Theresa, take notes of all her and Celine’s girlish thoughts and wishes. It would raise their spirits no end, and you could report on how public school toilets on Chicago ’s South Side compare with what you’ve seen in Baghdad and Brixton.”

Love widened her eyes, then smiled disarmingly. “Sorry. You know your team. But I thought sports were meant to keep girls out of gangs.”

“Josie! April! Two lines, one shoots, one rebounds, you know the drill.” I watched until the girls formed up and began shooting.

“Basketball is supposed to keep them out of pregnancy, too.” I gestured to the bleachers. “We have one teen mom out of sixteen in a school where almost half the girls have babies before they’re seniors, so it’s working for most of them. And we only have three gang members-that I know of-on the team. The South Side is the city’s dumping ground. It’s why the gym’s a wreck, half the girls don’t have uniforms, and we have to beg to get enough basketballs to run a decent drill. It’s going to take way more than basketball to keep these kids off drugs, out of childbirth, and in school.”

I turned away from Love and set the girls in one line to running into the basket and shooting from underneath, with the ones in the second line following to rebound. We practiced from inside the three-second lane, outside the three-point perimeter, hook shots, jump shots, layups. Halfway through the drill, Celine sauntered back into the gym. I didn’t talk to her about her ten minutes out of the room, just put her at the back of one of the lines.

“Your turn, Theresa,” I called.

She started toward the door, then muttered, “I think I can make it to the end of practice, Coach.”

“Don’t take any chances,” I said. “Better to miss another five minutes of practice than to risk embarrassment.”

She blushed again and insisted she was fine. I put her in the lane where Celine wasn’t and looked at Marcena Love, to see if she’d heard; the journalist turned her head and seemed intent on the play under the basket in front of her.

I smiled to myself: point to the South Side street fighter. Although street fighting wasn’t the most useful tool with Marcena Love: she had too much in her armory that went beyond me. Like the skinny-oh, all right, slim-muscular body her black Prada clung to. Or the fact that she’d known my lover since his Peace Corps days. And had been with Morrell last winter in Afghanistan. And had shown up at his Evanston condo three days ago, when I’d been in South Shore with Coach McFarlane.

When I’d reached his place that night myself, Marcena had been perched on the side of his bed, tawny head bent down as they looked at photographs together. Morrell was recovering from gunshot wounds that still required him to lie down much of the time, so it wasn’t surprising he was in bed. But the sight of a strange woman, and one with Marcena’s poise and ease, leaning over him-at ten o’clock-had caused hackles to rise from my crown to my toes.