“Who is this savior?” a woman by the television asked about Fred.
Fred noticed, as everybody’s eyes moved to study him, that the lone figure at the balcony was Tony Winters. Tony looked at him blankly, as though he didn’t know him.
“Fred Tatter,” Tom Lear said to the group, and then rattled off their names. It turned out that the distinguished man who had opened the door was Richard Winters, Tony’s father. Fred recognized one of the other names. Sam Billings, whom he knew to be the producer of Tom’s movie, but the rest were obscure. That made Fred anxious, since he couldn’t know who was important and who was not, a circumstance rather like walking through a mine field, in which any innocent twig might have the capacity to blow his career to kingdom come.
“Was Ray Williams really close to his sister or is that just bullshit?” the thin leather-skinned woman who was introduced as Melinda Billings asked. She had the emaciated body and cynical eyes of a woman who spent her life attempting to retain the allure of her youth, knowing all the while it was both hopeless and required. She referred to the Knick guard who had been playing poorly (and therefore earned the active abuse of fans) until that night. Williams had missed the previous playoff game when it was announced he had to attend the funeral of his sister, a forty-year-old victim of cancer. Tonight he returned and had played a brilliant and uncharacteristically mature half. The same fans who had vilified Ray now felt piously supportive and, presented with a good performance, were rapidly alibiing for Ray’s earlier play (he had been distracted by the wait for his sister’s death), and spinning out a fantasy in which the tragedy would spark a fundamental change in Ray, and he would now forever burn with the intensity of a superstar.
Fred, although he knew as a sportswriter it was an appealing angle, was also convinced that Ray was a hopelessly stupid and undisciplined basketball player who, in time, would return to his selfish and disorganized play. People don’t change, most of all athletes. Fred knew. The yearning of the Knick fans to believe in a mystical transformation through personal tragedy was precisely the reason Fred wanted to escape from sportswriting. Covering the Knicks, Fred would be obliged to go along with the pretense: fans didn’t want the truth, namely that whatever makes a player weak transcends whether his wife loves him or his father dies on the night of the big game, or all the other movie clichés. The young power hitter who can’t hit a change-up won’t do so simply because he’s fallen in love, the brilliantly talented quarterback who chokes under pressure and throws fourth-quarter interceptions will go on throwing them even if his two-year-old son recovers from leukemia, and Ray Williams would continue to turn the ball over, despite his sister’s tragic death, because he was too dumb to keep his concentration up. But all that has to be concealed from the sports fans. They don’t want the illusion destroyed that the games they watch possess a significant soap-opera subplot. Why couldn’t they appreciate the games as games? Fred wondered. Why isn’t the simple majesty of men able to follow a ninety-mile-an-hour ball and hit it with a stick of wood enough to astonish and delight? Even inconsistent Ray, twisting his muscled arms in midair and lightly flipping a basketball through windmills of flailing arms up against the backboard and into the basket, was a miracle of nature, an awesome proof of humanity’s ingenuity, a modern preservation of our savage past, the physical equivalent of our evolution from painting on cave walls to splashing paint on a canvas. Now we celebrate the warriors who toss pigskin spears. Who cares if their wives love them, if they need cocaine to face the modern equivalent of death (failure), or if Ray Williams needs a sister to die in order to know he shouldn’t take jump shots from the top of the key when Bill Cartwright is loose under the basket? Watch him do it! Whatever the reason!
“Yeah,” Fred answered. “I guess he’s dedicating the game to her.”
There was a murmur from them at this.
“I think she kind of raised him.” Fred said, making it up, but already busy convincing himself it must be true. “His bad play this year dates almost exactly from when she was diagnosed.” That bit of sentiment originated with the Knick publicist whom Fred had called to get his ticket. The Garden organization was taking a truly clever tack: immediately after saying that, the publicist went on, “But Ray doesn’t want that known. He doesn’t want people to think he’s using his sister’s corpse as an excuse.” Who knows, Fred said to himself while the others in the box gave him their full attention, eyes wide open with the wonderment of children, maybe it’s true, maybe her being sick really did bother him. But then what was bugging Ray for the previous six years?
“How come nobody said anything about it while he was fucking up?” Tom asked peevishly.
“Ray kept it from everyone but Hubie and asked him to keep it a secret. He didn’t want to use her death as an alibi.” Boy, is this bullshit, Fred thought, amazed that he was holding their attention so easily. I’ll bet Tom isn’t sorry he invited me, he thought proudly. “They’re a very close family. You know,” he said to the leather-skinned woman. Melinda wife of the powerful producer, “Ray’s brother, Gus, plays for the SuperSonics. They grew up guarding each other. It’s great when they play in an NBA game opposite each other. Suddenly you can picture them playing as little kids on a dirty playground on a summer day in New York.”
“Yeah, it’s fantastic,” Tom Lear said. “Straight out of a movie.”
“Does sound like a movie,” Sam Billings said, and for a moment the room seemed to hold its breath. By Fred’s count there were certainly three writers in the room and he suspected one of the men at the bar was also. Fred almost blurted out, “I’ll write it.”
“Yeah,” Tony Winters said. “Think of the dream casting. Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy.”
Someone murmured appreciatively. Fred cursed himself for not having thought of it.
Tony, meanwhile, frowning with concentration, went on: “Richard Pryor and Robert Redford. Eddie Murphy and Clint Eastwood—”
People began to laugh as they understood he was fooling.
“As brothers?” Tom Lear said, spelling out the joke.
“Yeah,” Tony went on. “You do a movie in which Redford and Pryor are two poor brothers who grew up in the slums and who end up facing each other in the championship game. Call it De Naturals. Don’t bother to explain how they’re brothers. Just assert it.” Tony looked thoughtful while people, with slight embarrassment, laughed sporadically. “Meryl Streep could play their mother. I think it would be a good stretch for her. She could play a Polish mother—”
Now the room was laughing shamelessly, except for Fred, who stared sullenly at Tony. That’s disgusting, he said to himself with rage. Making fun of talent that way—it’s a cheap shot.
“—she could do a Polish black accent,” Tony elaborated. “Now that would be interesting!”
Fred wanted to say something cutting, shut off Tony from the group’s admiration as thoroughly as he had been. Tony would deserve it—his smug attitude of equality with the people he made fun of infuriated Fred. Tony had no right to such a pose. What play of his had run on Broadway? Everything was so easy for men like Tony. He took his presence in the private box for granted. Probably his father had been bringing him to elite seats his whole life. Someone like Tony Winters had never sat in the mezzanine of anything. And Fred, poor Fred, he had been stuck way up in the back, in life’s cheap seats, scraping ancient gum off his shoes and straining for a view of the action.
“Are you a sportswriter?” Richard Winters asked Fred in his low, calm tone while the others were elaborating on Tony’s joke.
“Uh, used to be. I’m writing a novel now.”
Richard nodded wisely, as though he had expected that answer. “Did you cover basketball?”
Tony called across the room, answering for him: “You probably have read Fred’s stuff, Dad. He did a lot of writing for American Sport magazine. The interviews?”
Fred was bothered by Tony having overheard (why is he on my case?) and made nervous by his tone. He had
called it “Fred’s stuff,” not even giving it the dignity of an “article.”
But Richard Winters snapped his fingers and looked delighted at Fred. “Of course! You did that great interview with Billy Martin. First time I understood both why he was a great manager and also why he’s crazy. Everything else I read about him would do one or the other, never both.”
“You two know each other?” Tom Lear asked Fred, meaning him and Tony. There was ill-concealed surprise in the question.
“Oh, sure,” Tony said. “We’re old friends.”
Fred now relaxed, decided he had been paranoid. Obviously Tony was trying to be helpful and friendly. He did not notice, nor did the others, that Tony smiled to himself after his assertion of amity with Fred, like a man contemplating an irony.
Below, the buzzer sounded to signal an end to the halftime warm-ups and the teams went to their benches for final instructions before the start of the second half. Fred moved toward the door. “I’d better get back—”
“No, stay!” Tom said, and a few others did also.
“We have plenty of room,” Richard Winters added with a note of warmth sufficient to imbue his words with urgency, but not intense enough to suggest even a hint of desire.
The Knicks, although they gave their fans a good scare near the end. won the game, Ray Williams perfectly playing his role of the athlete redeeming personal tragedy through triumphant performance. He won the game with his controlled, determined leadership and showed no vulgar pleasure in his achievement or the fans’ delight. He left the court with his head bowed, accepting the congratulating embraces of his teammates with an unprecedented modesty.
For Fred, also, the evening was a triumph. While they shuffled into the elevator to take them out, Tom turned to him suddenly. “Where’s your friend?”
“My friend?”
“Who did you bring to the game?”
Despite the fact that Fred had had hours to prepare a response, he still fumbled over his response: “I gave it away to one of the teenagers outside.”
“You didn’t sell it?” Tony Winters asked, and again Fred thought that perhaps in his tone there was an insult, a suggestion that Fred was incapable of any act that might be considered generous or good.
Before the game, when Fred arrived in a taxi outside Madison Square Garden, there was a collection of kids desperately asking, “Selling any? Anybody selling?” as there usually is preceding a hot game. Normally there are plenty of ticket scalpers available, but their goods must have gone quickly, because by the time Fred arrived—only five minutes before game time—with his spare ticket, having thought of no one he wanted to accompany him to the box at halftime. the forlorn cries, “Ticket? Anybody got a ticket?” had not been comforted. He spotted a pair of black teenagers and walked up to them, whispering, “I’ve got one. I can give you one.”
“How much, man?” asked one.
“Where is it?” the other said before Fred could answer.
“Courtside.” Fred said.
They looked startled. And then wary. “How much you want for it?”
“Nothing. Cost me nothing.” He held the ticket out, leaving to them how to resolve which one would get it. One of them grabbed it, saying, “It’s my turn. You said it was my turn.”
“Fuck,” was all the other one could say, listlessly, suggesting that his whole life had been dominated by ill fortune.
During the first half, the kid had sat next to him, in a state of ecstasy, totally into the game, shouting himself hoarse, arguing with the refs, advising the players, cursing extravagantly at the opposition. All around them, people smiled at his intensity and laughed at his expressions of agony.
Fred had felt stupid, stuck with the extra ticket, embarrassed by his deception of Marion and his inability to think of someone to invite along that he would be comfortable with, but the accident of having provided a seat for that kid salved his conscience. You see it was for the best, he told himself. I’m a good guy, after all.
When they were released onto Seventh Avenue, surrounded by the happy departing crowd, Tom turned to Fred in a determined manner (as though this was something he had been considering for a while and had made up his mind to do because he had decided it was the right thing) and said. “I told Karl I’d drop by the poker game and play for the last couple hours. Why don’t we both go?”
“Uh …” Fred couldn’t think how to put it, and found himself telling the truth: “He didn’t invite me.”
“I know. Cause of crazy Sam. Well. Karl’s being stupid about it. Come along. Sam’s bark is worse than his bite. He’s a child. He has to be told no, or his demands just escalate endlessly.”
Fred tried to refuse, but Tom insisted, and later, sitting at the game, while everybody totaled up winnings and losses, and Karl was busy writing a check to Fred for thirty dollars. Sam said to him, “You really played good poker tonight,” in a tone that implied concession and acceptance.
I’ve won, he thought calmly, without the usual silly rush of adrenaline. He felt like tragic Ray Williams, head bowed, a champion at last, scarred to be sure, but with the home crowd finally—finally, at long last!—on his side.
David Bergman sipped his cold coffee. Presumably that morning its flavor had been heated and reheated away, and now it had even lost that one virtue—heat. But he liked sipping it. He was at the cover meeting, listening to a furious argument between Chico and Harpo over whether the Russian withdrawal from the Olympics was a Nation story (Chico’s domain) or an International story (Harpo’s bailiwick).
David listened dispassionately, enjoying, as were the other senior editors, the spectacle their supervisors were making of themselves. The effort Chico and Harpo put into disguising this battle of ego as a disagreement of substance was especially diverting. Harpo, with his longish blond hair, cheerful open face, and relaxed manner, contrasted well with Chico’s dark-haired, beady-eyed controlled rage.
The majority in the room felt friendlier toward Harpo. He now occupied, and had occupied in the past, a position of less power than Chico, but only part of the good feeling toward Harpo was a result of his having fewer natural enemies. After all, Harpo was a Marx Brother. He hired and fired, he top-edited, he had to (in theory) obey the law of middle management: toady to superiors, bully inferiors. But Harpo, unlike Chico, seemed to take Newstime (its intrigues, its etiquette, its self-delusions) less to heart than Chico. On a week when Weekly’s cover clearly bested Newstime’s, Chico seemed hurt and baffled, a grieving man, while Harpo made jokes, sometimes gallows humor to be sure, but jokes nevertheless, which implied he had a sense of proportion, a knowledge that after all, this was simply a job, and Newstime merely a magazine. Chico made people feel that to point out such an obvious fact to him would be roughly equivalent to informing Genghis Khan that a battle he had just lost was insignificant, and his quest, in general, merely a transitional phase between one empire and the next. Telling Chico the truth might get you decapitated and your head stuck on top of a hot-dog stand’s multicolored umbrella.
Today, however, Harpo seemed to be taking things seriously. “Look, five countries have pulled out. More will follow. There’s no way LA’s problems are bigger news than the international implications.”
“They’re national!” Chico’s voice squeaked. An amusing disparity with his huge body, it brought secret smiles to the faces of the senior editors. David looked away from Mary Gould (senior editor, back-of-the-book) because her mischievously twinkling eyes threatened to crack his smile into noisy laughter. He studied the only neutral face there— Rounder’s. “Who gives a shit whether Yugoslavia will come or not! This is really about Soviet-American relations, the MX, the effect on the election—”
“We’ve heard the list,” Harpo said dryly. “I agree, no question, there are obviously important Nation implications but, my God, how you can argue that the Olympics, by definition, isn’t an international story is beyond me.”
“Excuse me,” Rounder said. There were laughs
around the room. But they were cut off by the surprised look on the editor in chief’s face. Apparently he hadn’t meant his polite interruption to be sarcastic. “We’re not going to put this in either Nation or International, are we? It’s the …” He hesitated, as though unsure. “… cover, right?”
David looked down. He had again caught the eye of Mary Gould and several of the other senior editors, and he felt himself want to laugh at their astonishment. It was astonishing. Surely Rounder should know what Chico and Harpo were really arguing about, namely whose writers were more qualified to cover the Soviet withdrawal, and therefore who was going to top-edit the story. Normally Chico could conduct a raid on someone else’s province like this without opposition, but today Harpo had decided to put up a fight (justifiably, David thought, since it really was an international story) and it was up to Rounder (as editor in chief) to resolve the conflict. Apparently he didn’t even understand its terms.
“Yes,” Chico said, his voice loud and impatient, “but who’s gonna write it?”
There was an uneasy silence. Rounder made the situation worse by trying to look imperious to cover what was obviously confusion. “Why don’t we first decide if it is the cover?” Rounder said haughtily, implying that Chico was the one who was asking foolish questions.
“The Russians withdraw from the Olympics!” Chico said so vehemently that a stranger entering the room might think the news had just broken and Chico was a proprietor of several large Los Angeles hotels. “What else are we gonna put on the cover?”
“Robert Redford in The Natural?” Mary Gould suggested playfully. That had been a proposed cover before the Russians had withdrawn, but she was kidding.
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