Dave just looked at him, his expression flat. To me, he said, “I’m fine.”
“And I’m Ellis,” his friend said, sticking out his hand. I shook it slowly. “Now that we’re acquainted, you have got to teach me how to do that shot. Seriously.”
“No,” I said, sounding sharper than I meant to. They both looked surprised. “I mean . . . I don’t really know how to do it.”
“Dave’s medulla oblongata begs to differ,” Ellis replied, pressing the ball into my hands. “Come on. Please?”
I felt my face flush. I didn’t want to. In fact, I couldn’t believe I’d even thrown the ball in the first place, much less that it had gone in. It was a testament to my dad’s teaching—administered basically since I could walk, at parks and our home court—that I could not touch a basketball for years and still make his signature shot.
While my dad loved basketball, and lived it and breathed it for most of his young life, he was not the best player: a bit on the short side, with a passable jump shot and a decent layup. But he was fast and passionate, which usually got him playing time, even if it wasn’t much. To his teammates and friends, though, he was more known for the various custom shots that hedeveloped and honed during practice downtime and in neighborhood pickup games. There were dozens of them: the Slip ’n’ Slide (a sort of backward spin move), the Ascot (a necklevel fakeout, then sudden burst to the basket), the Cole Slaw (you kind of had to see it to understand). But of them all, the Boomerang was the most famous. It was more of an assault than a shot, and required an overhand throw, practiced aim, and more than a bit of luck. Clearly, I’d had two of the three.
Now as I stood there with these two guys, both watching me expectantly, I suddenly heard the rattle of my dad’s truck. When I looked up, he was downshifting, turning into the driveway. It wasn’t until he was approaching and I saw his face, surprised, that I realized I was still holding the basketball. He pulled up, looked at it, then at me, and cut the engine.
“Look,” I said to Ellis. I . . . I can’t. Sorry.”
He looked at me, quizzical, as I knew this apology sounded entirely too heartfelt under the circumstances. Then again, it wasn’t really for him. Or even for Dave, who deserved it, considering the hit he’d taken. Instead, even as the words came I knew they were really for my dad, whose eyes I could feel on me as I handed off the ball, and walked off the court and back inside. Game over.
“Okay, try this one. Four-letter word, has an a in it. Clue is country in Micronesia.”
I heard chopping, then water running. “Guam.”
A pause. “Hey. That fits!”
“Yeah?”
I watched from the doorway of the Luna Blu kitchen as Tracey, Opal’s worst waitress, hopped up onto a prep table, crossing her legs. Across from her, at an identical table, a slim blond guy wearing an apron was chopping tomatoes, a huge red, pulpy pile in front of him.
“All right,” she said now, peering down at the folded newspaper in her hands. “How about this? Shakespeare character born via C-section.”
The guy kept chopping, using the knife to push another pile into the ones on the table. “Well—”
“Wait!” Tracey whipped out the pen front behind her ear, clicking it open. “I know this one! It’s Caesar. I’ll just . . .” She frowned. “It doesn’t work, though.”
The guy rinsed the knife, then wiped it with a bar towel. “Try Macduff.”
She squinted down at the page for a second. “Holy crap. You’re right again! You’re entirely too smart to be a prep cook. Where’d you go to college, again?”
“Dropped out,” the guy replied. Then he looked up, seeing me. “Hey. Can I help you?”
“Better straighten up,” Tracey told him, although, I noticed, she herself did not get off the prep table or put down her paper. “That’s the boss’s daughter.”
The guy wiped his hands, then walked over. “Hey. It’s Mclean, right? I’m Jason. Nice to meet you.”
“We call him the professor, though,” Tracey called out, folding her puzzle up. “Because he knows everything.”
“Hardly,” Jaso said. To me he added, “You looking for your dad?”
I nodded. “I was supposed to meet him here, but he’s not in the office or out on the floor anywhere.”
“I think he’s upstairs,” he replied, pointing at the ceiling above us. “With Opal’s, um, community project.”
Tracey snorted. She was short but built like a bull, with broad shoulders and muscled arms, and wearing the same sheepskin boots I’d seen her in my first day, this time with a denim dress. “Her gang of juvenile delinquents, he means.”
“Now, now,” Jason said, walking over and picking up his knife again. “We can’t judge.”