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Billy would say, “Never, that’s when I was in Jamaica.”
Then he’d smile and say, “Aw, man, you know what it is by now. They’re just trying to come up with creative ways to say ‘Please fuck me.’”
The car pulled up to Ray’s, the new hot club, at least for the time being, this one way down in the West Village. They sat down at the table they had reserved for Billy and Gary ordered one of those nonalcoholic beers that tasted like real. The girl ordered a Cosmopolitan that came in a huge martini glass. They sat there feeling the loud beat of the music as much as listening to it until Billy made his big entrance about an hour after the Magic had beaten the Knicks, which Gary knew already from making a call when he’d gone to the men’s room, knowing the final was 112-100 and Billy had gone for forty-three on them. Now Billy did his usual at Ray’s, kissing on a few please-do-me girls at the bar, giving the manager his Billy hug even though you could barely notice him stopping him to do it, bopping his head in a cool way to some i
“Hey, fine thing,” Billy said, leaning down to kiss her hair.
It came out “thang,” the way it did sometimes when Billy wanted to brother himself down a little.
Gary wondered if he called them “fine thing” as much as he did because he wasn’t sure of their names, either.
“Hey,” he said to Gary.
“Big man,” Gary said.
To the girl, Billy said, “My man Gary treatin’ you good like I told him?”
His man.
One that brought the girls.
Shit, Gary Hall thought.
The girl tried to look sexy as she looked at Gary and took a sip of her Cosmopolitan and then licked her big lips.
“He’s nice,” she said.
“The best,” Billy said. “Like my own Secret Service.”
Now Billy said to Gary, “You want to go wait at the bar? Or go someplace your own self? I’ll call you on the cell by and by, you can meet me outside the hotel?”
“I know the drill,” Gary said.
“We got it down, don’t we, dog?”
“There’s a jazz club not too far. I may go over there, have a real drink, kick back for a little bit.”
“Keep the phone on,” Billy said, “I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
He always got more bossy at this hour of the night, not even hearing the snap in his own voice.
Gary shook his head on the way to the door, thinking about what he’d talked about with Jayson Miles, how Billy obsessed on Monica the way he did, then thinking he could be out and about like this, grab-assing his way through life, telling people the girl just wanted to have a drink with him, or have her picture taken with him, if somebody did take a picture and it ended up in the papers.
Gary didn’t go to the jazz club, just walked into the first quiet bar he saw, on Horatio Street, nursing a Scotch until the phone buzzed about one. Gary paid his check and got into a cab and got to the Pierre before Billy did, shot the breeze a little bit with the guy from security who helped him set things up, then walked up Central Park South, past Mickey Mantle’s, where he knew the limo would pick him up.
When the car showed up, he got into the front, then it eased its way east on Fifty-ninth, uptown on Madison, back over to Fifth, and the front entrance to the Pierre. Gary got out and opened the back door for the girl, and the two of them walked through the lobby like a happy couple, Gary even putting his arm around her. There were simpler ways to do this, Gary told Billy that all the time, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass, this way was his way now, and his way was all that ever mattered.
Thinking he was being as careful as he was with the ball with ten seconds left.
Billy showed up a few minutes later in what was supposed to be the safe room, the one between his and Gary’s, the one he was sure was safe, tonight’s do-me girl getting herself ready for him in the bathroom.
Gary checked the room one last time, made sure everything was all right, then he was out the door as soon as Billy was in, Gary not even bothering to say good night.
They clinched home court for the playoffs, the Magic did, with a week to go in the regular season. Mostly, Gary knew, the rest of them watched as Billy did it, that was the truth of things, Billy doing it to the Wizards all by himself in that new MCI Center in downtown Washington, part of one of those urban fix-ups that mostly fixed up the owner of the team moving into a place like MCI. Billy Cash went in there and dropped his fifty-eight points on the Wizards and gave the Magic the best record in the NBA, east or west, carving those points into the young guys trying to stay with him the way you’d carve your initials on the side of some tree.
Billy didn’t want to go out after the game, even though D.C. was one of his favorite cities to go clubbing in the whole league. “Gary, my brother,” he said in the locker room, “I believe I’m just go
Billy told Gary to go pick up Sharon, the girl from Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms he’d met at lunch after the shoot-around, bring her over there.
Billy said, “And tell her not to worry, the only illegal weapon I’m packin’ is the one I got right here,” he said, grabbing himself under his towel.
Gary said he’d be sure to pass that along.
Sharon. At least he had a name to put to the girl this time. Went outside where the limo was waiting next to the players’ entrance, drove to the address nearly all the way out of town, got her back to the hotel in Georgetown a little bit before Billy would be showing up after finishing with his media and whatnot. Took her up there, showed her around, called room service and ordered some of the champagne Billy liked, his big fruit platter. And whipped cream. Fresh-whipped and kept on ice. Lot of it.
Gary smiled.
The shit you did for love.
The second-to-last game of the regular season was in Philadelphia, so the Magic were just going to bus up there in the early afternoon, Thursday afternoon, since they weren’t playing until Friday night.
The phone rang in Gary ’s room at the Four Seasons a couple of minutes after eleven.
“Get down here now,” Billy said. “I got a situation.”
“Your room or the other?”
“Mine.”
“You still got the girl here?”
“Got Monica here,” Billy said, and hung up.
Billy was wearing a white Magic T-shirt, baggy gym shorts. He was on one couch in the living room of his suite. Monica was across from him on the other couch in the room. She wore a sharp-looking navy-blue pantsuit, one leg crossed over the other, showing off some big heels on her black shoes. She had a black leather purse next to her. On the coffee table between her and Billy was a thick manila envelope and the kind of thick binder you used to carry to school. And a shoe box that had PRADA written on the side.
By now, Gary knew that Monica would rather go barefoot than wear something other than Prada on her size 7 feet.
“Monica,” Gary said.
“Gary Hall.”
He hung back, over where the room service table was, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Waiting to see how it would play out, now that they were all finally down to it.