Playing Without the Ball Read Online Free PDF

anything, just shower and get dressed. Two more days of this, then he’ll pick the team. Based on today, I think I’ll make it.
    I drink about nine gallons of water, then leave the locker room at ten to 6. That gives me just enough time to check my mail before the post office closes. I average about one worthwhile piece of mail a week, but I look in my box every day anyway. Today there’s an envelope: a letter from my father.
    They’re closing up, so I take it outside to read. There’s a check for a hundred bucks. I’ll cash it as soon as I can, because it’ll probably bounce again. He wants me to call him. He says I need to get a phone. He wants to know what I’m planning to do for Thanksgiving, that it wouldn’t kill me to go to my mother’s for a day or two.
    I look up and Spit’s walking toward me.
    “Hey,” I say.
    “Jay. What’s going on?”
    “Nothing.” I fold the letter and stick it in my pocket. “What about you?”
    “Nothing,” she says. “You’re not working?”
    “No. You up for anything?”
    “Yeah. Anything.”
    I look around. “Hit the diner?”
    “Sure.”
    We walk the half block up Main Street to the diner and take a seat in a booth.
    “I started writing some new songs today,” she says.
    “At work?”
    “Yeah. I had nothing to do, so I typed lyrics into the computer. I’m trying to blend punk with some traditional Portuguese stuff.”
    The attorney she works for is fresh out of school and doesn’t do a lot of business. His father is a prominent real-estate/insurance guy, and he put his soft, nerdy son through law school and set him up in an office above his. Spit does his typing and some research.
    “He’s such a weenie,” she says. “I don’t know what he thought I was working on. He’s got like two appointments all week. I figure if I look busy he won’t get rid of me, but there ain’t a whole lot to do.”
    “You think he’ll dump you?”
    “Nah. He’s too worried about his image. He wouldn’t be caught dead answering his own phone. And his father pays my salary anyway. Just till he gets established, he says. Ha.”
    The waitress—the new one—comes over and asks if we’re ready to order. Spit asks for tea with lemon. “And maybe some toast.”
    I say, “Orange juice. I don’t know what else …. Soup maybe.”
    “We have clam chowder and cream of broccoli.”
    “I guess chowder.”
    “Cup or a bowl?”
    “Um, a bowl.” This is dinner. I’ll cash the check and eat good tomorrow. “Extra crackers, please.”
    Spit pushes back her hair. “You make the team?”
    “Don’t know yet.”
    “You care?”
    “Yeah. I care a lot.”
    She nods, then keeps nodding and turns it into a kind of dance, back and forth with her shoulders and all. “You need your rushes, too, huh?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t think of it like that. It’s kind of pure. Just energy. Like you block out everything else and just use what you got.”
    “Yeah,” she says. “Try singing in the spotlight sometime. You might like it.”
    Each booth has its own little jukebox thing. You turn a silver wheel on top to flip through the selections. She starts going through it, saying, “Lame. Lame. Decent. Lame …. You got any quarters?”
    I check. “I’ve got one.”
    “Good enough.” She takes it and punches in some numbers.
    “You like
this?”
I say when Frank Sinatra comes on, singing “Let Me Try Again.”
    “It’s honest,” she says. “Yeah, I like it.” She kicks me gently under the table.
    “It looks like it’s between me and this sophomore for the last guard spot,” I say.
    “You should be better than a sophomore, aren’t you?”
    “Probably. Yeah. But not much. And see, he can start JV and play some varsity, which I can’t do because I’m a senior. Plus he’s got potential for the next two years.”
    The waitress brings the soup and the tea and a whole basket of crackers and rolls. She’s what, nineteen maybe, with blondish hair pulled back in