Read Online Playing Without the Ball by Rich Wallace - Free Book Online

test of skill for me than my full-court running game. But I play well; it feels good to be back. Later I ask Dana how the jumping’s going.
    “Hit a snag,” she says. “We were looking at tapes and decided that I’m not going to go much higher unless I try a new approach. A variation on what I’ve been doing. So it’s like backto square one.” She pulls up her tank top to wipe the sweat from her face, revealing her tight abdominal muscles.
    “So now I’m struggling to clear five-six,” she says, “but once I nail the new form I’ll be going higher than I ever would have before.”
    “Is that frustrating?”
    “A little,” she says. “I find myself lapsing into the old style just to get over the bar sometimes. But I fight it. I know I have to regress a little in order to get better.”
    Spit doesn’t come around until Wednesday, but she seems like her old self. She rushes into the kitchen.
    “We got another gig,” she says.
    “Where?”
    “Ground Zero. Over in Weston.” She does a comical little dance, like the twist. “I’m psyched.”
    “When?”
    “Friday. This Friday. Somebody backed out and they called us.”
    “You ain’t playing here?”
    “Not this week. No. We weren’t supposed to. Shorty’s bringing in a DJ on Friday and some other band on Saturday.”
    “So you’re moving up in the world.”
    “Nah. We’ll be back here next week. But this is cool, isn’t it? We never played anywhere else.”
    “Wow, what’s next? Scranton?”
    She laughs. “Oh, jeez, that’d be like too much to even think about. I mean
Scranton.”
    I give her a high five. She’s beaming. I notice that her eyes are sort of bloodshot.
    “What’s with the eyes?” I ask.
    “Nothing. Remember last weekend when my body was rejecting my stomach? I broke some blood vessels from barfing so hard. No big deal.”
    “You kind of overdid it.”
    “It was just that medicine,” she says. “I think I was allergic to it.”
    I roll my eyes. “Maybe it was the thirty glasses of wine.”
    “Whatever. No big deal.”
    I fold my arms and squint at her. I’m not about to lecture, but I can’t believe she’s blowing this off. “Do you say this stuff just to bust my chops?” I ask.
    She sticks out her tongue. “Hey, it’s happened before,” she says. “I just don’t make a big thing out of it. I like having fun. What’s wrong with that?”
    So Friday’s looking bleak, with Spit over in Weston crawling toward the big time, and a DJ here cranking out Chuck Berry and Beach Boys songs. I hang in the kitchen all night, but it’s slow and boring.
    Around midnight I start wiping everything down, shining the counters and the refrigerator and the stovetop.
    Somebody says hi from the doorway.
    I turn and it’s Julie, the tennis player. She’s got a Red Barons baseball cap on with a ponytail hanging out the back. I say hi in return, drawing it out to almost two syllables, expressing surprise and delight and interest.
    “How’s it going?” she asks.
    “Uh, well, fine. You been out there all night?”
    “No. Just a few minutes. Thought I’d say hello.”
    She can’t mean that she came here just to say hello to me. She must mean that she was here anyway, and, since she was here, she thought she’d check in.
    I set the washrag on the table. “You, uh … who you with?”
    “Those same girls. We were at another bar most of the night.”
    “Oh. Well, I been here all night.”
    She laughs, which means she knows I was trying to be funny, even though what I said really wasn’t. “I figured.”
    “Yeah, I’m kind of chained to the stove here. I mean, you know, not all the time.”
    She looks me up and down, quickly, just a flick of her eyes. “What was your name again?” she says.
    “Jay. Same as before. How’s your elbow?”
    She points it at me. “Not bad. It comes and goes.”
    “It’s beautiful.”
    She frowns a little, unflexes her arm. The same girl who interrupted last time comes into the doorway.