Джонатан Келлерман - Crime Scene

The net snapped, was still.

I exhaled and took another ball.

Snap.

Another.

Snap. Snap. Snap.

I stopped when I reached into the cart and discovered that it was empty. Loose balls lay scattered like the aftermath of a cannon battle, the echo of the last bounce fading. I’d made twenty-three of twenty-nine shots.

Tatiana shifted.

I looked over at her. I’d forgotten she was there.

She said, “That was beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

“Really, Clay. I — it was really wonderful.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you for showing me,” she said.

I nodded.

She said, “You do miss it.”

“Of course.”

“What most of all?”

The heat of the arena. Students with their faces painted and their throats stringy as they screamed. Truth be told, it never was my job to shoot. The three-pointer show makes for a good party trick, but no way could I hit half as many with a hand in my face.

I was a point guard. A setup man. Frame a situation, hand off to those more comfortable in the spotlight.

It’s who I am, even today.

Sophomore year, somebody realized I was on pace to break Jason Kidd’s single-season school record for assists. A group started showing up to the games. They called themselves the Claymakers. They sat in a line, a few rows in front of the band. Every time I got an assist, the next person in line would turn over a poster board with a picture of a lightbulb and the words BRIGHT IDEA! Because: Edison. Get it? A very Cal kind of joke.

I ended up falling a few shy of the record. I didn’t care. I had two seasons left, two more chances to beat it. The team had qualified for the NCAA tournament for the first time in three years. That was all that mattered.

Favored in our first game, we won by twenty. We cleared the round of thirty-two. That hadn’t happened in a decade. We beat the three-seed, Maryland, to advance to the Elite Eight. You had to go back to 1960 to find the last time that had happened. I had seventeen assists in that game, one short of the tournament record. I scored twelve points, too. I was on SportsCenter. We were Cinderella. Things got nuts for a while.

When Tatiana said she’d recognized me, she was recalling the me from those few months, the italicized portion of my life. Agents turning up at our motel. One of them came to my dad’s work. It was a time for imagining. Maybe I wouldn’t go back for two more seasons, after all. Maybe I’d go pro. Get rich. Get richer. Get famous. Get more famous. It seemed so obviously desirable that I never stopped to wonder if, in fact, I wanted it.

I did want it. I know that, now.

We beat Miami in triple overtime and crashed into the Final Four against Kansas.

I had a lousy opening half. They had a great team that year, including three future NBA players, and I went into sloppy hyperdrive, turning the ball over a bunch. My coach sent me to the bench to cool off, keeping me there until five minutes remained in the half and we were down by eleven. Finally he sent me to the scorers’ table to check in.

Rather than run the set play he’d drawn up, I gave in to frustration, coming off a screen and barreling down the lane. I remember, distinctly, the look on their center’s face as I went straight at him: a mix of awe, pity, annoyance. He had eight inches and a hundred pounds on me. For me to dare — it wasn’t in his mental playbook, and I’d wrong-footed him.

He reacted as best he could, sliding to cut me off, throwing his hands straight up and knocking me sideways in midair. I came down at an angle, landing on the inside of my right foot, the knee caving inward, the full weight and force of my heroism skewing laterally through my anterior cruciate ligament, medial collateral ligament, and medial meniscus.

I’ve heard other people talk about a catastrophic injury. They say things like It’s funny, there wasn’t any pain. I can’t agree. It wasn’t funny, and I felt more pain than I’d ever experienced. But pain, however bad, isn’t what sticks in the long term. We can place it on a spectrum and assimilate it.

It’s the unfamiliar sensations, the ones without a point of reference, that become the stuff of nightmares.

Take a wet bunch of celery.

Grip it with both hands.

Twist, as hard as you can.

That’s what my knee felt like.

And the crowd, shrill and unforgiving.

And the floor, slick and unforgiving.

And the face of the trainer, scraped pale. He couldn’t help himself. Consolation would follow; encouragement, planning, structure. But he’d shown me the truth in an instant, and to this day I can’t help but feel a certain hatred for him.

I looked at Tatiana. “Mostly, I miss my teammates.”

She slipped off my coat and her shoes and padded over. I tossed her a ball. She caught it awkwardly and dribbled a few times, slapping at it. She seemed to be seeking approval, and I started to step forward to give her a pointer.

She tore past me with a screech, chucking a wild shot that hit the top corner of the backboard and went flying.

“Fuck,” she yelled as we both ran after the rebound.

I got there first, corralling it and dribbling out to half-court. Tatiana faced me, cat-backed, grinning, rubbing her hands together, beckoning.

“Ones and twos,” I said.

“I don’t know what that means,” she said.

“Normal shots are worth one. A three-pointer is worth two.”

“That makes zero sense.”

I ran toward her, stopped short, pulled up, and let fly. Snap.

“Two,” I said. I reached down and plucked a ball from the floor. “Loser’s out.”

“Oh fuck you ‘loser.’ ”

We played with no regard for boundaries, running and heaving and traveling when convenient. When I blocked her path, she simply turned and sprinted downcourt toward the other basket; when I poked the ball from her hands, she snatched the nearest one off the floor. If I got within arm’s reach of her she started hacking at me mercilessly, her shrieks caroming from the walls and the stands, lighting up the hush. Nobody came to see what the racket was all about or to tell us to keep it down. We were living in a one-room universe.

Flushed, her hair sticking to her forehead, her shirt glued to her ribs, she put up a particularly heinous airball from the free-throw line.

I backpedaled, leapt, snatched it from midair, rolled it in.

“We’ll call that one for you,” I said.

“What’s the score? I’ve lost count.”

“Me too.”

“I am so completely terrible at this.”

I took a ball and stood behind her, leaning down to wrap my arms around her, positioning her hands. “The right provides the power. The left acts as a guide. Think of it as a one-handed push.”

I stepped back.

She bricked it, short.

“Closer,” I said, grabbing another ball. “Put some height on it. The more you exaggerate the arc, the bigger your target gets.”

She dribbled once, twice. Shot.

Got the bounce.

I applauded. She turned and curtsied. Held out her hands.

“Come here right now,” she said. “Please.”

We sank down together, tugging and prying at each other, fingers catching on fasteners and fabric, rolling around half naked on the hardwood. It seemed like a fun idea but she soon said, “Know what, this is really uncomfortable,” and we both started laughing.

I said, “We’re not kids anymore,” and she said, “Thank God for that.”

I got up and helped her up and then, before I could dwell on the risks to my knee, I swept my arms around her back and behind her legs and carried her to a stack of gym mats shoved into the corner. They smelled plasticky and sharp. Bodies had fought here.

I spread out my coat and she uncoiled, a creature released from captivity, running to trap and devour the first living thing it saw, which was me. She caged me with her arms, her fingers taloned my neck, light drilled down on us in high contrast, her perfect contours raised up above the surface of the world.