Homecourt Advantage

by Rita Ewing

  “It’s on me, but are you sure you don’t want to join Michael and me for another round?”

  “Hey, Jake, do you want us to win or you just trying to make us crazy?” Paul was confused at Jake’s mixed signals.

  “Nope, thanks anyway,” was all Brent said as he leaned down to shake Jake’s hand.

  Paul stood and, not really feeling like shaking Jake’s hand, patted Michael on the back. “Michael, save some for the game tomorrow.”

  “Aw, man, I’m getting out of here in a few minutes myself,” Michael said, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Yeah, I know, just one more lap dance. Peace out, man,” Paul said as he followed Brent toward the exit through the crowd of the club.

  As soon as Paul and Brent got in the back of the hotel courtesy sedan, Paul pulled out his cellular phone to call Lorraine. He wanted to make sure she was only going to work one shift, but more than anything, he was aching to hear her voice. But with each ring of the telephone, Paul became increasingly worried. Someone in her unit should have answered it already.

  Over the last two weeks, she had experienced two more nightmares that he knew about. It troubled him that he couldn’t figure out the source of her dreams. Nor would she talk about them.

  “Paul … Paul?” Brent said, sitting up in the back of the car.

  “What’s up, man?”

  “I don’t get Jake sometimes. He talks out the side of his mouth,” Brent said pensively.

  “You’re just now figuring that out?” Paul said.

  “I know he’s full of shit about that ‘we are family’ crap. That’s not what I was talking about. Don’t you think he’d want us back at the hotel getting our rest if we’re trying to sweep the rest of the series?”

  “Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. You would think that, butyou know how Jake gets off on being seen out in public with his clients.”

  “Man, it just irks me that he talked to us about how important it is for us to win, then in the same breath invites—no, encourages us to keep on drinking all night.”

  “You know how Jake is. He thinks he’s on the road with us, just like he’s one of the players. He’s trying to get his partying in before he goes back home to his wife.”

  “You just never know with Jake. Maybe his former clients don’t call him ‘Shaky Jake’ for nothin’.”

  Chapter 22

  “Code blue! Emergency room! Code blue! Emergency room!” the loud robotic voice of Harlem Hospital’s main operator roared through every speaker of the hospital’s seventeen floors. This was followed by a screeching electronic wail that swept through the doors and walls on each ward.

  Lorraine Thomas took a deep breath and sharply exhaled. She prayed for the patient being coded in the ER and hoped whoever it was would not be the hospital’s latest mortality statistic. Lorraine was exhausted. She had forty-five minutes left in her twelve-hour graveyard shift, and she needed to go home and try to sleep. Maybe she’d even have a few minutes to talk to Paul on the phone. Lately that was all she had to spare him—a growing sore spot in their marriage. She knew it would be early to call him, but he insisted that she call him when she got home in the morning, no matter what time.

  Paul had been putting more and more pressure on her to quit her job. He insisted she didn’t need to work and recently had become increasingly annoying by constantly reminding her of the fact that he made over four million dollars a year playing for the New York Flyers. Lorraine was tired of explaining to her husband that her career meant more to her than finances.

  Paul desperately wanted her to fit his perception of other NBA wives: always available. He would have been content for her to sit at home and do volunteer work for their church in between hair and manicure appointments along with shopping for the latest designer fashions. Paul expected her to plan her schedule around his practices and pregame naps and meals while regularly attending all of his home games.

  But Lorraine could never relegate her life to being the trophy wife of a professional athlete. She absolutely thrived on being a nurse—even when she was dead tired. Sometimes she couldn’t believe that Paul, who shared so many of her values, wasn’t condoning her work at Harlem Receiving Hospital, considering what a difference it made to the people in the community where she’d grown up. This was something Paul did not fully comprehend, and she wondered if he ever would, having come from a small town in Alabama himself where the only community crisis was having to raise enough money to buy new uniforms for the high-school basketball team. Whenever they had an argument about her working, they both remained fiercely devoted to their positions. He incorrectly assumed her desire to give back to the community could be fulfilled by delivering food baskets to the sick and elderly, followed by being at home for dinner every night the Flyers happened to be in town—with a smile on her face, of course. She wanted more out of life, had to have more. Lorraine needed to save lives.

  “Lorraine! Lorraine!” the head nurse on duty yelled at the top of her lungs.

  She ran out of her patient’s room and rushed over to the unit’s charge station expectantly. “A new patient?”

  “Yes,” Francine answered. “And this one sounds like he’s in really bad shape. They just coded him in ER, a nineteen-year-old Hispanic male suffering from gunshot wounds. It sounds like he’s going to needplenty of blood just to get him stabilized, not to mention a new lung and half his face replaced. Then he’ll be in perfect critical condition,” she said sarcastically.

  “Well, at least he’s not in the morgue,” Lorraine said, silently praying for strength.

  “Lorraine,” Francine said, glancing over at the unit’s assignment board, “your shift’s about over. Sign this admission over to the nurse coming on duty. Why don’t you do yourself a favor and get your butt home; you look beat. The only thing that’s gonna help him now anyway is prayer.”

  “I’m praying for him … praying that God gives me the strength to help him. What happened to the kid anyway?”

  The charge nurse rolled her eyes before answering. “Typical drive-by shooting over in Spanish Harlem. Witnesses say this one took three bullets before he stopped staring at the commotion on the street and fell to the ground. What else?”

  Lorraine cringed at Francine’s callousness. She always had a flippant remark as if urban teenagers somehow deserved to be gunned down or clubbed to death. She knew she held higher standards than most of her co-workers, but the hollow look of utter despair in a mother’s eyes after being told she would never see her child alive again gained one a sobering sense of reality.

  Lorraine glanced at the scratched Swatch watch with the big, clear dial that she had worn throughout nursing school. She rarely found an occasion to wear the expensive watch Paul had given her for her twenty-fifth birthday. She felt it was too pretentious for the halls of the hospital, and her Swatch had served her well for years. She saw no reason to change now, though there had been many changes in her life.

  She had grown up only ten blocks south of Harlem Receiving Hospital on Martin Luther King Boulevard. Her neighborhood had been plagued with gangs, drugs, and weapons. She understood firsthand that this violence had a very real effect on very real people.

  By the time Lorraine was twelve, she had seen enough violence to last her several lifetimes. One day she witnessed the paperboy down the street being stabbed to death. Another day she saw the bag-checklady from Safeway fatally hit by a car. Lorraine knew only too well that these were real people with real families.

  But even though she and Paul had money now, they weren’t immune to problems. Paul had clearly been distraught right before the play-offs began over two weeks ago when he told Lorraine about the possibility of the team being sold and moved to Albany. Paul feared the politics of Leonard Hightower and Hightower Enterprises. Lorraine also was distraught, but for a different reason than Paul. She was not prepared to work as a nurse anyplace except Harlem, and the relocation of the Flyers could separate them. Although she had not told him she wo
uld not move, the question floated dangerously between them.

  She loved Paul desperately, and if nursing was like breathing for her, Paul was the lifeline in their relationship. He was the rock and the stabilizer, with a strong spiritual base that held them together. Lorraine was willing to have a commuter marriage if Hal Hirshfield actually moved forward with the sale of the team. Unlike many of the other NBA wives and girlfriends, Lorraine did not have a problem trusting Paul when he was out of her sight. They enjoyed an honest, loving relationship. In fact, Lorraine suspected that Paul was far too traditional to ever agree to them living in two different cities, even if they were only a few hours drive from each other. That type of arrangement would be at odds with everything Paul represented. He was a man of honor and convention. She only prayed that it didn’t come to that. She didn’t want to be forced to choose.

  Chapter 23

  Lorraine was oblivious to the sheets of rain beating down on her head. Her bangs were now plastered to her forehead as she stood before the old storefront. The front window of what used to be a Jamaican carry-out restaurant was replaced with layers of plywood, as if that thin shield could protect her from the memories that had begun to haunt her.

  Lorraine worked only minutes away, had grown up a mere two blocks away, but this was the first time she had revisited the site in many years.

  Her mind had been on automatic pilot when she left the hospital over an hour ago. Instead of heading uptown toward the George Washington Bridge, Lorraine had made a detour south. Now she stood before the scene that had recently returned in her mind along with the phone calls that tormented her.

  She flinched at the sudden brightness of the lightning. She could have sworn moments before that a stream of blood oozed its way out the door onto the slick concrete. The puddles of water circled Lorraine’s soaked loafers, which had taken on a deep burgundy color. Lorraine blinked her unreliable eyes and frantically wiped the rain away, certain that she was seeing things or going crazy. Grabbing the sides of her head as a shot of pain sliced through her right temple, she cursed as the images returned.

  “Get up, Raino! We’re gonna leave your sorry ass here if you don’t get back in the car! You can’t do shit about it now; come on!” Roy hollered out of the back window of the black low rider that the Disciples regularly used to cruise the neighborhood.

  Lorraine’s heart was beating like a jackhammer. The child on the ground before her could not have been more than eight years old. How had she gotten in the line of fire? Lorraine hadn’t even known that Tommy and Roy planned on doing a drive-by. She knew they had beef with the local Jamaican gang, the Posse, but the plan to shoot up their hangout had been kept from the Disciples’ girl members.

  “Somebody call 911! Somebody has to call an ambulance!” Lorraine cried as she leaned over the young girl’s limp body.

  “Just get in the car, Raino; they gonna be here in a few minutes anyway,” Roy shouted over the distant sound of sirens.

  “Go! Just go! I’m not leaving her here. She’s gonna bleed to death. We have to stop the bleeding,” Lorraine said, taking off her coat to put under the child’s head.

  “Raino, get the fuck in the car!” yelled Tommy from the driver’s seat. Tommy was the gang’s leader.

  “I’m not going anywhere … Can you hear me? You’re going to be okay. What’s your name?” Lorraine asked the wounded little girl.

  “Raino, when the cops get here, you weren’t with us and you don’t know shit or you gonna find your ass bleeding on the concrete too … next to your mama! I promise you that,” Tommy said before he skidded off down the street.

  Lorraine grasped the girl’s tiny hand. “What’s your name? Can you hear me? If you can, squeeze my hand.”

  “Cri … Criss … Crissy,” the little girl gasped.

  Lorraine felt relief wash over her entire body as a sob caught in her throat.

  “Ohh, good, honey. Oh, that’s so good. Your name is Crissy? Oh, that’s a pretty name.”

  “Mommy … Mommy calls me that,” Crissy said as her eyes rolled back in her head.

  “Crissy. Crissy! Talk to me. Squeeze my hand.” Lorraine felt panic rise within her.

  “I … I … want Mommy,” Crissy quietly sobbed.

  Lorraine watched helplessly as Crissy’s eyes closed and her legs began to convulse.

  “Come on, Crissy, come on! Please say something! Say something! Please, honey. You’ve got to speak to me,” Lorraine cried, rocking back and forth as the tears streamed down her face.

  When the police arrived, Lorraine was still hunched over the lifeless child in a state of utter despair.

  “Ma’am. Ma’am?” a male voice said, interrupting Lorraine’s thoughts.

  “Yes?” Lorraine said, turning toward a young man in a neon green rain cover-up.

  “Is that your car over there?” he said, pointing toward the red Range Rover.

  “Yeah,” Lorraine answered, still in a daze.

  “I think it’s about to be towed.”

  Lorraine glanced over in the direction of her car and saw the tow truck backing in for the steal.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you so much.”

  “You’re drenched. You’re gonna catch your death out here.” The young man stared at Lorraine. “Well, take care of yourself.”

  I think my death has already caught me, Lorraine thought as she ran through the thick rivulets of rain.

  Chapter 24

  “Liza. Liza. You’re not listening to me. How many times do I have to tell you, I’m not going? After my mini tour, try and reschedule it, or maybe I can do it when I perform in Chicago,” Remy said in exasperation to Liza Anderson, her talent agent of seven years.

  Sometimes Remy wondered why she even bothered to explain anything to Liza. Liza’s only concern was Remy being the biggest star in the Western Hemisphere, whether that was a realistic goal or not.

  Liza’s philosophy was to sacrifice anyone and anything for success.

  Remy pulled the phone away from her ear. She could not believe that Liza was complaining about the air play on “Happiness Is Divine.” It was number two on the Billboard chart and number one according to the majority of other music industry polls.

  “What about what I need? What about that? I’m tired. I just finished shooting three videos in less than two months. It’ll be my oneday off in L.A. and I don’t feel like crisscrossing the country just to do a talk show,” said Remy adamantly.

  Liza had a point, Remy knew. People didn’t just turn down “Oprah.”

  “Liza, if I did the show, I’d have to fly back here for a two-hour concert, four hours after landing back in L.A. No, thanks.”

  “It’s the perfect opportunity to plug the tour,” Liza was saying, pleading in Remy’s ear.

  Remy did not respond. The few select shows she was doing had sold out months before. She was exhausted talking to Liza and she had more pressing issues to worry about than going on a television show, even if it was “Oprah.”

  “Look, maybe I’m just burnt-out Liza; I am human, you know,” Remy said, walking with the telephone to the ten-foot window in her loft.

  Remy knew Liza wouldn’t buy it. Liza had known her too long and too well.

  Liza hit Remy’s hot button, saying, “If I told you the Flyers were going to be in Chicago, would it make a difference? You’d probably be gone in a flash.”

  “Collin has nothing to do with this,” Remy said a little too defensively.

  “You’d be on that plane in a hot second. You’d conjure up the energy to see him, but not for your career. Is that it now?”

  Remy sat down on the ledge of her window feeling utterly defeated. Truthfully, if Collin had asked her to meet him someplace, she would have traveled the world to see him. But the fact of the matter was, every time she had asked Collin if something was wrong, he claimed that it was just a stressful time for him and that it had nothing to do with their relationship. He had promised Remy that his feelings for her had not change
d. But what were those feelings?

  “Liza, I’m not doing it. Now, please stop pressuring me about this,” Remy said, fighting back the tears as she stared out her window, envying the anonymous pedestrians who could amble their way down Spring Street, families and loved ones having time and space for each other.

  “All right, all right, don’t worry about it,” Liza was saying on the other end of the line. “I’ll figure something out to tell them. We’ll get you on ‘Oprah’ another time. You okay now, kiddo?”

  “I’m fine,” Remy said in a childlike voice.

  “I just hope you don’t regret it later,” Liza said, and hung up the phone in Remy’s ear.

  Remy was used to Liza hanging up without saying good-bye. It was her trademark. She was one of the most aggressive, astute, and powerful agents at Talent Management International. Liza was also a big softy but she would die if she ever thought her cover as the toughest agent in town was blown.

  The dial tone buzzing in Remy’s ear pulled her out of her deep thoughts and she replaced the phone in its cradle. Remy walked toward the treadmill in the corner of her living room and jumped on it in hopes of clearing her mind. As she turned the mechanism on high incline, Remy’s legs began to churn. Closing her eyes, she picked up speed and tried to pinpoint how and exactly when the distance had crept between her and Collin.

  Running faster on the treadmill, Remy was determined to find a way to bridge the gap.

  And she wondered about the link between Hightower and the team.

  Chapter 25

  Even though Rick was in Miami in the middle of a game, Trina still found herself tiptoeing through his office. Unless Rick was sitting at his desk, the room was strictly off-limits to her and the kids. His word was so intimidating that it was not even necessary for him to put a lock on the door.