by Simon Rich
Vlad nodded.
“Okay,” Elliot said. “Okay.”
He closed his eyes and massaged his temples.
“I’m sorry for yelling before,” he said. “I’m in a foul, black mood.”
He patted Vlad on his giant shoulder.
“Good work today.”
He flicked open his cell phone and whispered something into the receiver. A few seconds later, the gym doors opened and some frustrated middle-aged regulars filed onto the court.
“The court is now open to the public,” Elliot announced, wearily buttoning his long, black overcoat.
One of them started to ask him who he was and how he had managed to book their usual time slot, but his friends quieted him down. They sensed, somehow, what a mistake it would be to question Elliot.
• • •
“Tell them that you’ve been practicing,” Elliot said. “Tell them you’ve been working hard all summer and you want to join in their game.”
It was a Friday afternoon and Lance had organized his usual three-on-three game in John Jay Park. Most of the boys were clustering by the court in the hope that they’d get picked this week. The girls were sitting on the bleachers eating French fries and pretending not to watch.
“What are you waiting for?” Elliot demanded. “Do as I say!”
I explained how hard it was to get one of the six slots, how even the best athletes in the eighth grade had to kiss up to Lance all week to be considered. There’s no way they’d select me, I told him, and even if they did, the game would be an embarrassment. I’d definitely made progress in my first five weeks of training: I finally understood what a double dribble was, and, judging from how much dessert my mother was offering me each night, I had lost a considerable amount of weight. But I still wasn’t anywhere close to being at their level.
“They won’t let me play,” I said. “You don’t know how it works.”
Elliot took two quick steps away from me and then sharply spun around.
“Okay,” he said. “For starters: Don’t you ever tell me that I don’t know how a thing works.”
He paused for a moment, to let that sink in.
“You’re going to have to trust me,” he said. “My plan is too elaborate and ingenious for you to comprehend right now, but it is vital that you follow every step anyway. Now go over there and say, as loudly as you can, that you’ve been practicing basketball over the summer and that you wish to be selected.”
Elliot seemed adamant. I took a long swig of Pepsi to buy myself some time to think. As a rule, I tried to limit my contact with Lance. He had recently started to call me “Chunk-Style,” and I was terrified that if he uttered that nickname a few more times it would enter common usage. Then again, Elliot had done so much for me in the past few weeks—I didn’t want him to think I was ungrateful. I put down my soda and started to walk toward the court.
“Wait!” Elliot whispered. “Who’s that alpha girl holding court on the bleachers? The smiley one with the stupid, stupid curls?”
“Oh, that’s Jessica,” I told him. “She’s the one I told you to rank higher on your list. She’s probably the most popular girl in the whole grade.”
“That’s right,” Elliot said. “They all look the same to me.”
He pointed at me.
“Make sure she hears.”
When I came back thirty seconds later, my cheeks were flushed and my eyeballs burned with tears.
“How did it go?” Elliot asked.
“He called me Chunk-Style and everybody heard. I can’t believe it…people are going to start calling me Chunk-Style. I’m Chunk-Style now. This is now my life.”
I looked across the playground. Someone passed Lance the ball and he immediately made a three-pointer. Elliot grinned and returned to his book.
“Why are you smiling?” I said. “He said no. It didn’t work.”
“Are you kidding?” he said. “It worked perfectly.”
• • •
Vlad handed me a basketball and manipulated my arms and legs until they were in the proper shooting position.
“Follow through this time,” he said. “And don’t forget about the backspin.”
I checked my grip, bent my knees, and let loose from the foul line. The ball slid off my fingertips, arced through the air, and whooshed through the middle of the net. I swiveled around to catch Elliot’s reaction, but he was too engrossed in his book to notice.
“Hey, Elliot!” I called out. “I made a foul shot!”
Vlad laid his giant palm on my shoulder.
“It’s way too early to celebrate, kid,” he said. “We still got loads more work to do.”
Vlad blew his whistle and a tall man in mesh shorts and a baseball cap walked through the doors of the gymnasium. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t immediately place him.
“I’ve brought the children you requested,” he announced in a deep, monotone voice. “If you need any more, just let me know.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “James?”
It was Elliot’s limo driver, the guy who drove us to the gym each day. I had never seen him without his black suit and cap.
James snapped his fingers and a group of boys ran into the gym, wearing matching T-shirts. There were exactly nine of them, I noticed, just enough for a full-court scrimmage. Vlad stared at James for a moment, shocked that he had abducted so many children so effortlessly. Then he cleared his throat, blew his whistle, and went back to work.
• • •
“How did you get those kids to come?” I asked on the limo ride back to my apartment.
“I had James create a basketball league,” Elliot told me. “There are more than one hundred players.”
“Jesus,” I whispered. “Isn’t that a lot to ask of your driver?”
“James is more than a driver,” Elliot said.
“Okay,” I said. “But…still…isn’t it a little crazy to start a whole league, just for me?”
“You needed scrimmage partners. And this was the only way to get parents to send in their children. Any other method would have made them suspicious.”
“So…are there, like, games and stuff? Even when I’m not there?”
“It’s a standard league,” he said. “There are tournaments, coaches, a newsletter. The team you scrimmaged with today believed they were here for a regular practice. They’re called the Timberwolves.”
We drove for a while in silence.
“Hey Elliot,” I said. “Did you see the fourth quarter?”
“No,” he said. “I was reading.”
“Oh. Well, it was pretty cool. I stole the ball a couple of times and I made a bunch of layups. I wasn’t the best one out there, but I was definitely better than average. I don’t want to get my hopes up…but I’m actually starting to feel okay about tryouts.”
Elliot nodded.
“Don’t get too complacent,” he said. “The Timberwolves are the worst team in the league.”
• • •
Over the next few weeks, my speed increased, my shot improved and my confidence soared. Every week, I played against increasingly better teams in Elliot’s league, and by the week of tryouts, I was regularly leading the ragtag Timberwolves to victory.
My mother, terrified by my recent weight loss, had two different doctors test me for parasites. When I tried to explain that I had been playing basketball after school, with Elliot, it only confused her more.
“Didn’t he push you down the stairs?” she asked.
“That was just an experiment,” I said.
We left it at that.
I wanted to play in the park to see how I stacked up against my classmates, but Elliot ordered me not to.
“Lance might notice your improvement,” he said. “And it’s imperative that we catch him off guard.”
He shook his head suddenly in disgust.
“The fact that someone of Lance’s class has influence at this school is a perfect testament to its baseness.”
> “What do you mean?” I said. “Isn’t Lance…you know…”
“Isn’t Lance what?”
“Well, you know…isn’t he rich?”
“Of course not,” he said. “His father owns some warehouses in Queens. That doesn’t exactly constitute an empire.”
“But he’s got the new Penny Hardaways,” I said.
“Exactly! The most ostentatious shoes on the market. He has to wear them, to prove that his family can finally afford them! He’s like a caveman with a piece of ivory through his nose. Sure, Lance is proud of those shoes. But when his children see photographs, they’ll be embarrassed that their father had to try so hard. And his grandchildren—they’ll be downright mortified.”
I looked down at Elliot’s shoes. They were hand-stitched loafers made out of what appeared to be alligator skin. They had silver tips and golden buckles and their soles were the color of blood.
“What about those?” I asked.
Elliot shrugged.
“The Allagashes have come full circle.”
• • •
Lance may have been the first boy in class to wear Penny Hardaway sneakers, but by the day of tryouts, so many boys had started copying him that he felt the need to upgrade. He was wearing the new Air Jordans—an obscenely priced shoe with gold-plated laces and some kind of removable sleeve. No one noticed them until study hall, when he cocked back his chair and propped both feet up on his desk.
It was a pretty disruptive gesture, but Mr. Hendricks kept his mouth shut. Hendricks was a nervous man, a frail French teacher whose hands shook comically when he yelled. He wore tweed jackets and dark-framed glasses but he couldn’t hide the fact that he was the youngest teacher at our school. It was clear from the neatness of his exams, the care he put into his recycling murals, and the way he winced when students complained about the homework. Elliot mocked him incessantly—particularly for the low quality of his tweeds—but he was easily my favorite teacher. He was the only one I could relate to.
Jessica and Lance started whispering and Mr. Hendricks took out a book, pretending he didn’t notice. When their voices grew too loud to ignore, he went to the bathroom so he wouldn’t have to yell at them.
“You should check out tryouts,” Lance told Jessica.
“I’ve got cheerleading.”
I was sitting right behind them; I noticed that at some point Jessica had propped her feet up next to his.
“You guys could get a head start on the season,” Lance said. “Cheer me on today.”
She inched her feet closer to his, until they were practically touching.
“I’ll be there.”
My stomach tightened. I was already nervous enough without the threat of female witnesses. If Jessica went, all the girls would. I’d been training for months—what if it all ended in disaster? The only thing that calmed me was the sight of Elliot. He was gazing out the window, arms folded, a serene smile on his face. As hard as it was to imagine myself succeeding, it was even harder to imagine that Elliot could fail.
• • •
A few hours before tryouts, Mr. Hendricks took us over to the playground for recess. I was running through some yoga stretches Vlad had taught me when I heard a commotion by the water fountain. A tall man wearing a giant foam Butterfinger costume was handing out Nestlé product samples. I instinctively began to run toward him when I felt Elliot’s hand clamp down on my shoulder.
“It’s for them,” he said. “Not you.”
I looked across the playground. Mr. Hendricks was urging the students to “just take one!” but it was too late. Lance had already organized some kind of eating contest, and the other boys were cheering him on, loudly chanting his name. The man in the foam costume emptied the rest of his sample crate onto the ground and the larger boys began to wrestle over them. Then he nodded once at Elliot and was gone.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Was that James?”
Elliot leaned against the jungle gym and stared at the crowd.
“Look at the animals,” he said. “Eating their sugar.”
He looked at his watch.
“Sometimes it’s almost too easy.”
• • •
Mr. Hendricks usually had to turn off the lights to get us to pay attention to Final Announcements. But an intense sugar crash had settled over the classroom. Most of the class was slumped over in their seats, breathing slowly and heavily, with their eyes half-closed. A few were actually asleep.
“I know everyone is excited for basketball and cheerleading tryouts,” Mr. Hendricks said. “But before dismissal, we have a quick student announcement. Elliot?”
Elliot walked over to the blackboard and pressed his hands together, as if in prayer.
“Every year,” he said. “Three dozen inner-city youths fall victim to asbestos poisoning. I have decided to start an after-school program devoted to fighting this terrible epidemic. I will serve as president, but I will need a secretary to help me with administrative duties on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Obviously, anyone elected to this position would have to forego any basketball or cheerleading commitments. But I’m sure we can all agree that such a sacrifice is a small price to pay to help remove asbestos from our inner-city schools. I’m asking you, my fellow Glendale Lions, to select the student you deem most worthy of this position.”
Few people looked up as he walked around the classroom, placing ballots on everyone’s desks. I’d spent enough time with Elliot to grow habituated to his oddness. I was used to his knobby fingers, scratchy voice, and chilling stares. But my classmates treated him like a ghost, ignoring him whenever possible
“I didn’t know you were starting a club,” I whispered when he sat back down next to me.
“I’m not,” he said.
I had more questions to ask him, obviously, about James and the candy, but I decided to leave the matter alone. There was something else I wanted to say to him, something I’d been meaning to say for months.
“Hey, Elliot. Listen…even if I don’t make the team, I just want to say, like, thank you for—”
He cut me off.
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “Remember, I’m not doing this out of kindness or generosity. I’m doing this purely for sport. It’s an intellectual exercise—a way to occupy my days during this hellish period of my life.”
“Okay,” I said. “But still…I just wanted to say thanks. It really means a lot to me.”
Elliot hesitated and fiddled with his cuff link. It was the first time, I realized, that I had ever seen him look uncomfortable.
“You’re welcome,” he muttered finally.
The bell rang and we filed in to the gym.
• • •
The tryouts seemed to move in slow motion, like something out of a dream. I had improved so much so rapidly that it felt as if everyone else had gotten worse. I stole the ball from Lance at the first possible opportunity and bulleted across the court for an easy layup. Lance, a little bit shocked, did his best to score on me during the very next play. But I anticipated his crossover move, stole the ball again, and broke free for another layup. I shot this one left-handed, for variety’s sake. Meanwhile, Elliot’s sugar blitz was having the desired effect. The other boys were so sluggish on the court that the coach actually stopped practice during a sprinting drill to give a speech about “desire.” One of the larger boys, who had been eating samples pretty steadily since recess, took this opportunity to run into the bathroom and vomit.
In the beginning of the tryout, when I first started dominating, Lance responded with laughter. But his amusement quickly gave way to frustration—and then fear. During the final seconds of the scrimmage, he and another boy double-teamed me at the half-court line in a desperate attempt to stop me. I got past Lance with a spin move, threw the other defender with a pump fake, and knocked down a three-pointer at the buzzer. The gym fell into a reverential silence. The only sound I could hear was a thin, high-pitched giggle coming from the bleachers. I assumed it was
one of the girls—they were assembled in the front row—but it was Elliot. He was sitting alone in the very last row, drinking what appeared to be some kind of martini. He grinned at the stunned cheerleaders, nodded at me once, and then was gone.
• • •
I wasn’t aggressive enough to fight my way through the crowd, but I didn’t have to see the list to know I’d made the team. A few boys who I barely knew patted me on the shoulder and even Lance mumbled his congratulations. I was about to head home when Elliot stopped me. I threw out my arms to hug him—but he held up his palms in protest.
“We’re not done yet,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“The goal wasn’t to get you onto some pitiful athletics team,” he said. “That was only a stepping stone. We’re not after acceptance; we’re after dominance.”
He leaned in close and continued in a whisper. His breath was foul, like the formaldehyde we used in frog dissections.
“Trust me,” he said. “This is only the beginning.”
He stood up on a chair and addressed the mass of students huddled around the list. The results for secretary were in, he said, and by a large majority, the class had selected me. My new teammates stared up at him in shock.
“He can’t do it,” one of them said. “He made the basketball team.”
“I know the sport of basketball is very important,” Elliot said. “But this is a chance to help underprivileged children. Maybe we should let him decide.”
The boys scoffed and jeered. But the girls, I noticed, had a different reaction. Some of them were rolling their eyes at the boys. And some of them were smiling at me with a far-off look in their eyes.
“What are you going to do?” Jessica asked me, laying her hand on my forearm. “Which one are you going to choose?”
There was a popular series of books that year called Magic Eye. Each book contained a bunch of computer-generated images. The pictures were meaningless, but if you stared at them long and hard enough, you started to see three-dimensional shapes. A horse, a crown, a sword. This was that moment, when the blurriness finally cohered into a shape and I started to get the picture.
