Cold Type. Harvey Araton

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СКАЧАТЬ from his business—newspapers—to hers—book publishing—until finding more mutual territory: a love of Jackson Browne, every Seinfeld episode from the show’s inception in 1989 and the NBA playoffs.

      Jamie was for Magic Johnson and the Lakers because they were, beyond Showtime, the essence of unselfish team play. She was for the Pistons and Isiah Thomas because he had “the cutest ass and an irresistible smile.”

      Given that standard, Jamie decided not to elaborate on how much of a basketball junkie he really was—and how much of his adolescence he had devoted to the game.

      He looked more like a wrestler than a basketball player. A shade over 5' 8" without the verticality of his hair, Jamie was on the stocky side, a body replica of his father. The curvature of his back made his shoulders look stooped. Nor was he the most graceful or fluid of athletes. But he had spent hours as a kid launching weathered balls at backboards and rims in schoolyards and in cramped neighborhood backyards. From the time he played his first games of three-on-three, he loved basketball’s freewheeling nature and simplicity, the ease with which it was organized, controlled, without parental supervision or intrusion.

      By late middle school he was the proud owner of a magnetic dribble with a surprising quickness for the proverbial stout white boy. For Jamie, the beauty of playing his position, of being the point guard, was that he was in control of making things happen for others. The process of creating off the dribble and finding the open man was instinctive. You had to make an immediate decision and live with it. There was no time for second guessing—a Jamie specialty—because the next play was coming up fast.

      He made his high school freshman team and became friends with several black kids who lived in the housing projects a few blocks away. In the 70s, Farragut Houses was no isolated fortress of poverty and despair like other developments around the city. Blacks and whites, European immigrants and those from the Caribbean co-existed. But there was never a proprietary question around the basketball courts that were smack dab in the middle of the cluster of buildings. The black kids reigned. And Jamie had an open invitation to get chosen in.

      They called him J—so what if he bore no resemblance to the gravity defying Julius Erving, Dr. J? At least his curly hair, worn stylishly long, could from a distance pass for a reasonable imitation of Erving’s trademark fro.

      The courts were quiet on Sunday afternoons when Erving’s Philadelphia 76ers played on national television. Jamie often watched from the crowded apartment of the boy he liked best. Ronald Allen was a gangly six feet tall—gap-toothed and so skinny that the other boys called him Bones. His favorite Knick was Earl Monroe, though his attempts to mimic Monroe’s classic spin moves were comical. His bank shot, however, was money.

      “Man, we should go to your house and watch the game,” he said to Jamie one Sunday when Dr. J and the 76ers were playing the Knicks—his favorite team but only a shell of the early 70s championship teams. “Bet your family’s got a nice color TV, better than this old piece of shit.”

      That was true, but Jamie made up an excuse that his family was having relatives over. For one thing, he was suspicious of how welcoming his father would be. He hated it when Morris and Uncle Lou used that word—schvartzer. Their attitudes convinced Jamie to make sure that what happened in the projects stayed in the projects.

      Beyond basketball, there were other adolescent adventures going on there. He smoked his first joint in a chilly, dark stairwell. He copped his first feel.

      Sarah Tompkins’ breasts were fleshy and Milky Way brown. In the half-dozen times they slipped away from the crowd, she confidently guided him under her sweater, never bothering to complicate matters with a bra.

      Morris had no clue that his son’s incursions into the projects were producing such interracial indulgences. He still hated that Jamie spent time in a place that his generation believed symbolized failure. They had worked so hard to escape from it.

      “I just go there to play ball,” Jamie told him. But Morris learned otherwise one hazy summer afternoon between Jamie’s freshman and sophomore years. Jamie’s team had lost a game and stepped off the court for the boys who called next. Jamie wandered outside the fence where the girls watched and flirted. Sarah Tompkins and a friend were among them.

      The friend sidled up to Jamie and said, “You’re not bad for a white boy.” Sarah promptly elbowed her aside.

      “Don’t be getting ideas,” she said. “Jamie and I got a little thing going. We have our secret meeting place.”

      Jamie blushed, uncomfortable with the public display. Just the same he was aroused by Sarah’s seductive playfulness. She was wearing a spaghetti-strap top with tight shorts that highlighted the tautness of her thighs.

      She winked at Jamie and said, “Maybe we’ll meet up soon if you promise to take me on a date.”

      “Like where?” Jamie said.

      “You know, like a movie.”

      The thought of being with Sarah outside the projects terrified Jamie. He played along though, asking her what she wanted to see.

      “Something sexy,” she said, rubbing a shoulder against his. This led to a game of pretend fighting and a round of kissy face. Jamie was feeling his fifteen-year-old oats until he felt a hard tap on the shoulder.

      He turned to face his father.

      “What are you doing here?” he stammered.

      “I need you to come home now,” Morris said, red-faced and in no mood to argue.

      “Why?” Jamie said. He sensed the others were watching.

      “Because your grandmother had a heart attack and is in critical condition. We’re all going to the hospital.”

      Morris turned and walked off. Jamie looked at Sarah, who had overheard them. She shrugged her shoulders. Jamie left without saying a word. One of the mouthier boys yelled out, “Don’t worry, Big Daddy. J’s cool. We weren’t taking his money—only his motherfucking Cons.”

      It was a reference Morris wouldn’t get—Jamie had bought a new pair of black Converse sneakers that were the envy of the playground.

      He got why his father had to come looking for him and why he had to follow him home, lame as it looked to the others. But only the gravity of his mother’s health had eclipsed the shock of what Morris had stumbled upon—his son in the arms of a black girl. He didn’t say a word about it to Jamie, but Jamie read the disapproval in his eyes.

      Jamie told his mother, “Every time I pick up my basketball and walk toward the door, he looks at me like I’m going out to join the NAACP.”

      “Talk to him about it,” Molly said.

      “Yeah, right,” Jamie said.

      He knew it was pointless to explain—and why the hell should he? Morris would never understand what his social acceptance in those outdoor courts meant. Even Jamie was incapable of fully getting it until years later when he explained it to his brother-in-law Mickey, who liked basketball. “Going into the projects helped me play all four years in high school. I sat the bench on varsity as a senior because I didn’t have the speed the other kids did. That didn’t matter. I was on the team. I was accepted as a player. Not that it mattered to anyone at home.”

      “Your dad didn’t go the games?” Mickey asked.

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