Without saying a word to the other mauve shirts or even looking at them, Jojo began practicing short jumpers. One clanged off the front of the rim. Jojo leapt up, took the rebound from below the level of the rim, kept ascending, and dunked it, stuffed it, all in a single fluid motion. He had just landed on his feet when he happened to look over and see…Coach…over there in the shadows…same place he had taken him aside…arm around a big man in a yellow practice shirt. Congers, of course.

The court was Jojo’s refuge from all that was impure. There were rules, there were lines, and they couldn’t be moved, twisted, cajoled, or flattered. He had never before felt suspicious or cynical here on the holy golden stage. But at this moment he just knew what Coach was saying to his freshman phenom: “Look, Vernon, I can’t humiliate old Jojo by not letting him start in the first game of his last season here, especially since it’s at home. But don’t worry, you’ll be on the bench in name only. I’ve had you playing with the other starters for two weeks now, right? You already fit in better with them after two weeks than old Jojo does after two years. You’re gonna get so many minutes, the only player who’s gonna maybe get more is the Tower. And next year—hey, it’s all yours. So don’t worry about Jojo. You have to be gentle with a faithful old horse.”

Jojo was standing stock-still on the golden stage holding the ball with both hands, the blond mesa atop his noggin a-dazzle in the LumeNex lights, when the word he was looking for came to him: manipulated.

16. The Sublime

STATIC::::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC :::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC :::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC:::::::::: STATIC choked the Buster Bowl, choked it here on the LumeNex-floodlit polyurethaned blond wood floor of the court, choked it up up on and up the cliffs of seats, choked it all the way to the dome—choked it—but Jojo could hear every word the black giant, Jamal Perkins, said as Perkins and his 250 or so pounds bellied him from behind.

“Yo, Token—yo’ white ass better hope the man don’t th’ow it to you, ’cause yo’ token white ass gon’ fuck up, Token! Yo’ fucking fingers made a china, and you shaking like a fucking cup, Token—”

So Jojo backed his own 250 pounds even harder into Perkins’s midsection, all the while watching the orange ball, which was now the center of the world, as Dashorn, the point guard, was dribbling it way out beyond the three-point line, looking for an opening in the Cincinnati defense…and the crowd, the full fourteen thousand, sold-out, was roaring, but Jojo no longer heard it as a human sound. The roars ricocheted off the cliff until they somehow fused and became sheer

::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: in Jojo’s ears, and the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: enveloped Jojo and the other nine players on the court and shut out everything else in the world—George III, resentful professors, smart but weak tutors, Sleeping Beauties who wouldn’t give him the time of day, brothers barreling down the track to parent-approved success as lawyers and investment bankers ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: Only when enveloped by the ::::::::::STATIC did Jojo feel alive and in his realm and fulfilled in the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: of battle, where the boundaries are clearly the boundaries and the rules are clearly the rules and the tally of battle is up on an electric board and is clearly the tally and smart mouths and the insidious strategies of weaklings mean nothing. Jojo’s greatest dread was the sound of the horn, the horn, whose bray would signal a time-out, a substitution, the end of a quarter—and the play would stop, the static would turn back into human voices, and just like that he, Jojo the Athlete, would be back in the world where small people with shrewd purposes would once again have the power to humiliate him.

Still out there beyond the three-point line…bounced the orange ball. Dashorn passed it to André, who bent at the waist, holding the ball low with both hands about knee level, swinging it to this side and that, looking for a way to fake his man out and drive around him—gave up and passed it back to Dashorn, while Jamal Perkins was trying to get inside Jojo’s head.

“Wuz all ’at wiggling yo’ token white ass, Token? The bitch coming out? Hunnh?—the bitch coming out, Token? Four at home and five on the road—shit, you ain’t gonna last five minutes in this game. This game rightcheer, right now! Old Buster gon’ yank yo’ white ass and put in Congers! Oh yeah, yank yo’ flat-footed white ass and put Congers—”

Jojo was stunned. How did a Cincinnati player like Jamal Perkins know about his Vernon Congers problem? And if he knew, then the rest of the Cincinnati squad knew it, and if they knew it, then every team on the schedule knew it—

—and Jamal Perkins had now done it. He had gotten inside his head. He was messing up his mind…and now all the trash he’d been talking began to sting. Not that Perkins was some unknown black monster from the deep. Jojo played against him last year—played against him in the AAU leagues and at the shoe-company camps before that—but now this big bastard had gotten inside his head, and he couldn’t remove him—which meant that now he couldn’t let the bastard get away with talking about the bitch coming out, could he, since that was exactly the same as calling him a faggot, wasn’t it, a faggot, and—that bastard!—you couldn’t just take shit like that, could you.

Jojo blurted back over his shoulder in desperation, “Yeah, and outcho momma’s ass, too, Jay maulll. Why she be calling you Jaymaulllll? Yo’ daddy a fucking Ay-rab? Or you even know, Jaymaulll? Where yo’ daddy at Jaymaulll, out butt-fucking camels—Jaymaullll?”

Jamal Perkins went silent, as if his breath had been knocked out :::::::::: STATIC::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: then a seething whisper: “Just keep on talking, you gray motherfucker. You got ass-rape on your fucking mind? We gon’see who’s gonna get fucking ass-raped!” He dug the heel of his left hand into Jojo’s left kidney.

A trill of delight! The black giant had wedged his way into Jojo’s head, but now Jojo was inside of Jay maulll’s head, way inside, and that dumb fuck was never—but how did he know about Congers?

At that moment, Dashorn, dribbling with his right hand out beyond the three-point line, looked at Jojo and put his left hand up in the air. Then he turned his head toward André Walker, also out beyond the line, stopped dribbling, and held the ball in both hands. They had practiced this so often that Jojo didn’t even have to think about it in any sequential way. He thrust himself back harder into Jamal Perkins’s midsection in order to have the big man back on his heels when the ball came.

Dashorn faked a pass to André and, without looking, threw the ball inside to Jojo. The orange core of the world—Jojo had it in his hands in the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: of fourteen thousand cheering souls. Jojo’s part was to pivot away, jump as if he were about to try a short jump shot, and instead pass off to André, who would come driving straight down the lane toward the basket—or to Treyshawn, who was to muscle his way around his man and drive toward the basket from over along the baseline.

Jojo jumped—both hands on the ball, Jamal Perkins up with him on top of him—André not in the lane—pick hadn’t worked?—Treyshawn ramming his way to the basket, his man all over him but a fighting chance, Jojo lowers his arm to dish off to Treyshawn—now!—whack, Perkins chops Jojo’s forearm, the ball pops out at a crazy angle, Jojo lands off balance on his back looking up at the LumeNex lights in the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: melee over the ball ::::::::::STATIC