:::::::::: Perkins bulls his way in got it dismayed ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: beaten! ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: Jojo rolls over ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: striped shirt referee’s over him blowing his whistle swinging his arms in a scissor fashion to halt play ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: calls a foul on Perkins. Jojo will shoot two.

STATIC:::::::::: dies down…He’d won…He’d gotten inside the big fuck’s head and provoked him into a blatant foul…He wanted some way to announce it to the crowd…give them the whole trash-talking dialogue…explain how he obliterated the big fuck’s delusion of domination…said unspeakable things to him…out-niggered him!…Yo! And you think it was just two big men fighting over a ball!

As he approached the free-throw line, a girl’s voice shrieked, “Go go, Jojo!” A swell of cheers from all the cliffsides…Jojo tried to pick her out…The cry came from…over there…near the floor…but no luck, even though he could pick out individual faces now—

He’d never been calmer at the free-throw line in his life. He’d already won—if only everybody could know the truth of it. The others were lining up on either side of the lane. Treyshawn was giving him a big, goofy grin from down near the basket…In a falsetto voice: “Go go, Jojo!” Falsetto…Treyshawn knew how he’d won…Jojo could feel this confirmation by Treyshawn The Man…feel it, even though he wouldn’t have dared explain it out loud to a living soul.

He sank the first shot just like that, without thinking about it. The noise of the crowd swelled…André walked up the lane toward him…Jojo met him, and they touched fists in the congratulatory way—

“Twenty-four! Twenty-four!” A girl’s voice, again from courtside. A couple of beats before Jojo realized that was his number…He stared at the first courtside section of seats…You couldn’t miss her…standing, beaming, red faced, miles of blond hair…Some sort of white thing…cardboard?…began to rise up in front of her until it covered her face…a poster with amateurish, inelegant, big, thick, unmistakable hand lettering: 24! I’LL BE YOUR WHORE! Great whoops from the other side of the arena, from those who could see it. The poster began to descend, and when it reached the floor of the stands—poof!—the girl was gone. More whoops, laughter, and mock but lusty cheers. A ribald buzz rose in the Buster Bowl, and heads were craning this way and that. 24! I’LL BE YOUR WHORE!

That warrior, Number 24, returned to the free-throw line, and the referee tossed the ten-inch orange core of the world to him. Jojo had never felt looser at the free-throw line than he did right now. The buzz had scarcely abated. The Buster Bowl moaned from the girl’s salacious proffer. Jojo bounced the ball four times, held it in a crouch, then rose to almost his full height before releasing it. The Buster Bowl went dead silent as the ball reached the apogee of its arc toward the basket…Whisk…It snapped the strings of the net, so clean was the trajectory and so steep the descent.

A roar—immediately rose to STATIC:::::::::::: of stupendous intensity. It hummed in Jojo’s very hide as he ran down to the Cincinnati end to play defense. He had to fight off the desire to smile for the crowd’s benefit. As he passed the Dupont bench, in peripheral vision he could see Coach on his feet. Buster Roth in the tan gabardine suit, the shirt and tie he wore for games. The shirts were always white, custom-made, with some kind of go-to-hell high roll in the collar, and he always wore a Dupont tie, Dupont mauve with a print of golden basketballs emblazoned with small mauve versions of the Dupont D. Coach had his own unsmiling, clench-jawed look of triumph on his face and was leaning forward toward Jojo and yelling something to him. Whatever it was, Jojo wished he could hear it. His first name wouldn’t be Fucking. Coach never used Fuck Patois in approval or triumph.

Over his shoulder he could see Perkins, whom he’d be guarding, coming up behind him…Not a good idea…asking for it…but he couldn’t resist. As Jojo turned about to take up a defensive posture and play his man, he gave Perkins a sneer and a single dismissive wave of his hand. Perkins just stared at him with his lips slightly parted. No expression…Oh, Jojo had gotten inside the dumb fuck’s head, all right, deep inside…Jay-maulllll, him and his “white ass” and “Token” and “bitch”…Jojo had invaded the dumb fuck’s head and caused him to lose it, commit a foul so flagrant no referee in the world could have missed it.

Perkins played inside, the same way Jojo did, and Jojo took up his position between Perkins and the basket while the Cincinnati point guard, a black guy, American but named Winston Abdulla, not much over six feet but with prodigiously large hands—everybody who played against him talked about his hands—Abdulla dribbled about, looking for a way to get something going. Jojo immediately bellied into Perkins’s back to reestablish dominance, get deeper inside the big fuck’s shaved head. Perkins’s delts and lats were so big, his upper back looked a mile wide through the shoulders and tapered down sharply to a narrow waist.

Jojo started in immediately. “Yo, Jay maullll…What happened, Jaymaullll? You jes’ plain-long fucking lost it’s what happened…Nome sayin’, Bluhhhhhd?…The white man gitchoo all choked, Bluhhhhhhd?”—and on in that vein.

Perkins said nothing—nothing. He, Jojo, had crowbarred his way inside the giant’s head, and the bullshit had hemorrhaged out of his fucking brain. Now Perkins was leaning back into him very hard, and Jojo began pushing back with both hands. The referees would allow that much as the big men went sumo to sumo inside. Winston passed to Cincinnati’s great shooting guard, a willowy black guy named McAughton. Both Dashorn and Curtis moved in on him. Curtis covered him, and then Dashorn moved in from the side and almost knocked the ball out of his hands. Totally hemmed in, McAughton made a desperate bounce pass inside to Perkins. Jojo was all over him. Perkins held the ball up over his head out of Jojo’s reach and seemed to be looking about to feed the other guard who was a step ahead of Curtis and cutting inside. Perkins brought the ball down and bent way over, as if to tuck it in his midsection—pushed off one foot, dribbled once, took two steps, wheeled about, and leaped as high as Jojo had ever seen anybody leap on a basketball court. Jojo jumped to block him. The next instant stuck in his mind like a photograph: the orange center of the world and Perkins’s black arm in a corona of LumeNex light at an apogee a full foot above Jojo’s own hopeless fingertips. Perkins rammed home a seemingly effortless dunk. He sailed over ::::::::::STATIC::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: the second tallest Dupont player on the floor and made it look easy.

How could it have happened? As Jojo ran back down the court, defeat registered with a pain real enough to be tactile :::::::::STATIC:::::::::: STATIC::::::::::STATIC:::::::::: didn’t want to so much as glance at Coach as he passed the bench, but his peripheral vision betrayed him. Buster Roth had his hands cupped around his mouth like a megaphone. He was leaning forward, a contorted figure emerging from the atomic fog of the ::::::::::STATIC:::::::::::::

When Jojo got down near the basket to take up his position, Perkins was waiting for him, staring…but not saying a word. Instead, he had his tongue stuck in the big pocket of flesh between his gums and his lower lip. It created a bulge above his chin and a wholly mechanical smile in which his eyes weren’t involved at all. Perkins had a pair of mean-looking eyes. He nodded up and down ever so slightly, as if to say, “Yes, white boy, that’s how it’s going to be. Get used to it.”

Jojo felt fear. He wondered if Perkins could smell it. Jamal Perkins was not only big, he was quick and a plyometric marvel on top of that ::::::::::STATIC

::::::::::STATIC::::::::::

Perkins didn’t say anything. This Jojo took as a bad sign. It was abnormal. Jojo backed into him, and Perkins shoved back, always with the heels of both hands over Jojo’s kidneys. Not that it hurt particularly, but there was something…sinister…about it, something calculating…Out on the three-point line’s semicircle, Dashorn and Curtis and André were shuttling the ball back and forth and trying picks that didn’t work and getting generally frustrated by the Cincinnati defense. The shot clock was running down. Finally André faked a three-point jumper that was in fact a soft, looping feed to Treyshawn. Cincinnati’s big Serb, Javelosgvik, was all over him. He was so aggressive and had such long arms that Treyshawn had to try a fadeaway with a high arc from ten feet out. It clanged on the cantilever that attached the basket to the backboard and bounced. Jojo and Perkins went up for the rebound :::::::::::::STATIC:::::::::::::::STATIC::::::::::::: The ball took a lazy bounce almost straight up, and both men came back to the floor…had to jump again. Perkins shoved Jojo sideways with his forearm and beat him easily on the second jump, but the ball took a second clanging bounce on the rim and Perkins was already descending, heading back to the floor again as Jojo regained his footing and jumped up and seized the ball above the level of the rim and came down with it and, hemmed in by Cincinnati uniforms, fed it out to André, who immediately threw it back inside to him.