Jonathan Lethem - The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

And yes, I killed him.

Needless to say, there wasn’t any Mob on his trail. The call he’d been dreading was the Baltimore police. He was on the run from a molestation offense.

Like I said, I live alone. It’s a pretty nice place, and a lot closer to the station. There’s a pretty nice bar around the corner. Different crowd every night.

Yes, I still go to Hell, but it’s different now. There isn’t any horse, or witch, or Happy Man. There isn’t even a forest.

When I go to Hell now it’s like this:

I’m back in the house with Maureen and Peter. I live with them again. But I’m unable to speak, or reach out to them: I’m a zombie. I start by sitting in front of the television, flipping channels, and then eventually I wander around the apartment, brushing past Maureen, but never able to speak to her, never able to take her hand or hold her or lead her into the bedroom. After a while I go and stand in the doorway of Peter’s room. He turns and looks up at me, but I look away, afraid to meet his eye. I pretend to look the other way, and he goes back to his computer.

And that’s it. I spend the rest of the time standing in his doorway, looking over his shoulder at the computer screen.

Watching him play my Hell.

Elwood Fossett and I were in a hotel room in Portland, after dropping a meaningless game to the Sony Trail Blazers — we’d already made the playoffs — when the lottery came on the television, the one where they gave away the Michael Jordan subroutines.

The lottery, ironically, was happening back in our home arena, the Garden, while we were on the road. It was an absurd spectacle, the place full of partisan fans rooting for their team’s rookie to draw the Jordan skills, the rookies all sitting sheepishly with their families and agents, waiting. The press scurried around like wingless mosquitoes.

“Yo, Lassner, check it out,” said Elwood, tapping the screen with his long black club of a finger. “We gonna get you and McFront some company.”

He meant the white kid in the Gulf and Western Knicks jersey, stranded with his parents in that sea of black faces. Michael Front—“McFront” to the black players — and me were the two white players on the Knicks.

“Not too likely,” I said. “He won’t make the team unless he draws the Jordan.”

Elwood sat back down on the end of the bed. “Nobody else we’d take?”

“Nope.” There were, of course, six other sets of skills available that night — Tim Hardaway, if I remember correctly, and Karl Malone — but none with the potential impact of Jordan’s. In a league where everyone played with the skills of one star or another, it took a Jordan to get people’s attention. As for the little white rookie, he could have been anyone. It didn’t matter who you drafted anymore. What mattered was what skills they picked up in the lottery. Which star’s moves would be lifted out of the archives and plugged into the rookie’s exosuit. More specifically, what mattered tonight was that the Michael Jordan skills were up for grabs. It was fifteen years since Jordan’s retirement, so the required waiting period was over.

The Jordan skills were just about the last, too. The supply of old NBA stars was pretty much depleted. It was only a couple of years after Jordan retired that the exosuits took over, and basketball stopped growing, started feeding on itself instead, becoming a kind of live 3D highlight film, a chance to see all the dream teams and matchups that had never actually happened: Bird feeding passes to Earl the Pearl, Wilt Chamberlain going one on one with Ewing, Bill Walton and Marques Johnson playing out their careers instead of being felled by injuries, Earl Maginault and Connie Hawkins bringing their legendary schoolyard games to the pros, seeing if they could make it against the best.

Only a few of the genuine stars had retired later than Jordan. After this they’d have to think up something new. Start playing real basketball again, maybe. Or just go back to the beginning of the list of stars and start over.

“Nobody for real this year?” asked Elwood. He counted on me to read the sports papers.

“I don’t think so. I heard the kid for the Sixers can play, actually. But not good enough to go without skills.” Mixed in among us sampled stars were a handful of players making it on their own, without exosuits: Willard Daynight, Barry Porush, Tony Smerks, Marvin Franklin. These were the guys who would have been the Magic Johnsons, Walt Fraziers, and Charles Barkleys of our era, and in a way they were the guys I felt sorriest for. Instead of playing in a league full of average guys and being big stars, the way they would have in the past, they were forced to go up against the sampled skills of the basketball Hall of Fame every night. Younger fans probably got mixed up and credited their great plays to some sampled program, instead of realizing they were seeing the real thing.

The lottery started with the tall black kid with the Pan Am Nuggets drawing the David Robinson skills package. It was a formality, a foregone conclusion, since he was the only rookie tall enough to make use of a center’s skills. The kid stepped up to the mike and thanked his management and his representation and, almost as an afterthought, his mom and dad, and everyone smiled and flashed bulbs for a minute or two. You could see that the Nuggets general manager had his mind on other things. The Pan Am team was one of the worst in the league at that point, and as a result they had another lottery spot out of the seven, a lean, well-muscled kid who could play with the Jordan skills if he drew them. If they came up with Robinson and Jordan the Nuggets could be a force in the league overnight.

Personally, I always winced when a talented seven-footer like Robinson was reincarnated into the league. Center was my position, and I already spent most games riding the bench. Sal Pharaoh, the Knicks’ regular center, played with the skills of Moses Malone, one of the best ever, and a workhorse who didn’t like to sit.

Elwood read me like a book. “You’re sweatin’, Lassner. You afraid the Nuggets gonna trade their center now they got Robinson?”

“Fuck you, Elwood.” The Nuggets old center played with the skills of a guy named Wes Unseld. Not a superstar, not in this league, but better than me.

I played with Ralph Sampson’s skills — sort of. Sampson was briefly a star in his time, mostly because of his height, and as centers go he was pretty passive, not all that dominant in the paint. He was too gentle, and up against the sampled skills of Abdul-Jabbar, Ewing, Walton, Olajuwon, Chamberlain, and all the other great centers we faced every night, he and I were pretty damned ineffective.

The reason I say I only sort of played with the Sampson skills is that, lacking the ability to dominate inside, when I actually got on the floor — usually in the junk minutes towards the end of a game — I leaned pretty heavily on an outside jumpshot. It’s a ridiculous shot for a center, but hey, it was what I had to offer. And my dirty little secret was that Bo Lassner’s own jumpshot was just a little better than Ralph Sampson’s. So when I took it I switched my exosuit off. The sportswriters didn’t know, and neither did Coach Van.

“Relax, fool,” said Elwood. “You ain’t never gonna get traded. You got skin insurance.” He reached over and pinched my thigh.

“Ouch!”

They gave away the Hardaway subroutines, to a skinny little guy with the Coors Suns. His smile showed his disappointment. It was down to four rookies now, and the Jordan skills were still unclaimed. Our kid — they flashed his name, Alan Gorman, under the picture — was still in the running.

“Shit,” said Elwood. “Jordan’s moves are too funky for a white cat, man. They program his suit it’s gonna break his hips.”