Middle Men Read Online Free PDF Page A

forgotten to take off, and I promised to get her some. When I got down the bleachers, I saw Overton chatting up a ponytailed cameraman, who kept pushing him away. I ran across the street to the 7-Eleven, but by the time I got back, the studio door was locked and the security guys wouldn’t let me in.
    I found a pay phone and called home for a ride. When my mom got there, she grounded me for a month, a purely symbolic act, because, with the exception of tonight, I never went out. We stopped for gas. As I pumped, she stood next to me and lit up.
    â€œI have a question for you,” she said. “Can you please tell me why you’ve been drinking out of the Lowrys’ pool? Carol keeps seeing you back there. What the hell is wrong with you?”
    â€œI’m not drinking it,” I said, and I had to explain my acne situation. I saw relief in her eyes. She extinguished her Winston in the squeegee bucket and threw the butt in the trash.
    â€œWe can’t afford a dermatologist,” she said. “Not right now.”
    The show aired at midnight. The donut shop owner was clearly insane but that didn’t stop Wally George from denouncing him as an enemy of the American people. Every time he slapped his desk in exhortation, the camera turned to the audience. I couldn’t see Jessica or Overton, but there was Pham,his face red from nonstop booing, and there was Tully, posing in his blazer and turtleneck. He had brought an old-fashioned pipe. As everyone around him jumped and screamed and made lewd gestures, he just stood there, taking imaginary puffs, in the plummy style of Thurston Howell III.
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    At evening mass on Sunday, the celebrant, Father Meyer, read with feeling from the final canto of the Purgatorio , and from there he transitioned smoothly into a thoughtful and witty analysis of Aquinas and his notion of Angelic Knowledge. Or maybe he just told us that abortion was bad. Either way, my mind was elsewhere. The next morning we were driving up to Ventura.
    After mass we got Del Taco and watched The Simpsons. I stayed up late shooting baskets, until my mom opened the front door and yelled at me to go to bed.
    At some point that night, Michelle, my manicurist, sat next to me on the bleachers at St. Polycarp. Several Big Wallys were running up and down the court, and then Wally George was there too. It was a convergence of Wallys. Eventually, Michelle touched my chest and I woke up. It was three o’clock in the morning. I peeled off my boxers and snuck out the back door. Before I got to the trash cans, I heard music, and noticed a light burning in our old storage shed. I took a step toward it and kicked an empty bottle. The light went off, but not before I caught a glimpse of my dad, holding a beer and sitting on a rusty folding chair. There was a tape player at his feet. In the darkness, I could still hear music.
    â€œPat?”
    â€œDad?”
    I wanted to ask what he was doing out here at three o’clock in the morning, but I also didn’t want to know. I think he felt the same about me. We were both caught. The less said about our depraved nocturnal errands, the better. Now I could make out the voice of Bonnie Raitt.
    â€œEverything okay?” he said.
    â€œYeah.”
    Moonlight fell softly on my spunk-laden boxers. For a moment we were quiet. “I wanted to come see the tournament,” he said, “but I found some work out of town. I might be gone for a little while.”
    â€œHow long?” I said, but he changed the subject and asked about my last summer league game, and I stood there for about five minutes, giving him the play-by-play. He never mentioned the fact that I was wandering around the backyard naked, and I never mentioned the fact that he was squatting in a dark shed, listening to Bonnie Raitt.
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    The van broke down on the 101. Coach Boyd pulled onto the shoulder and walked to an