Midnight and the Meaning of Love (20 page)

I pushed all the rushing girlies toward my teammates, wanting to ease out of there. Purposely, I had played low-key throughout the game but now I had brought too much attention onto myself.

“That was a mean-ass shot,” Vega yelled as he pulled me out from the growing, clawing crowd. “Step to the side with me for a minute.”
He pushed me forward with one hand and the crowd back with the other. I followed him and he used his authority as a coach to keep the crowd off my trail. Panama and the fellas were still entertaining the crowd, holding up the number one, their arms raised up high, index finger toward the sky. Girls gathered around them and began cheering.

“Let me ask you something, man?” Vega said. “Right before you took the winning shot,
did I see you close your eyes
?” He was leaning in toward me like I was about to reveal some unknown magic potion. “Listen, tell me what you were thinking in that split second,
please
?” He looked serious and too curious. So I lightened him up.

“I was thinking that I had to make Coach Vega look good,” I told him. He smiled and hugged me up like one of my excited teammates.

“Listen, this weekend is the International Auto Show. I got tickets for you and the other four starters. I want to introduce you to somebody influential. Matter of fact, I
could
take the credit, but
he
actually asked me to introduce you to him,” Vega said, speaking rapidly and emphasizing the importance of the meet-up. “Before you say no, just let me tell you we got a white Mercedes 300E Hammer being unveiled. It’s the—”

“World’s fastest passenger sedan, V-8 engine made by AMG, 375 horsepower, seven airbags, and it goes from one to sixty miles per hour in four seconds flat. I know, it’s a beautiful machine.” I finished Vega’s sentences. I always kept up with the car magazines.

“Okay, the New York Coliseum, right across from Central Park. We meet up at about seven tomorrow night,” he stated like it was a confirmed fact.

“Wish I could, Coach. But I won’t be seeing you until game time for the next game. Remember I told you in advance I had something to take care of?” I reminded him. He gave me a stare, conveying his disappointment, then must’ve decided he still needed me.

“Aight, my man, I got you, my bad. You did tell me that. Hold up, let me grab the other four then, and we can do this right now.” He dashed into the crowd and pulled Panama, Machete, Jaguar, Big Mike, same as he did me. That broke up the furor, and the crowd began to slowly move out and off the court. Some girls sucked their teeth. Others waited impatiently. Some of the players’ peoples chilled outside the fence for them.

“Let’s walk,” Vega ordered the five of us.

On the dark side of the building, Ricky Santiaga sat calmly on the hood of a black Ferrari 288 GTO. Only a fool didn’t know how exclusive that joint was. It cost almost $170,000. Off the top I wondered if it was his or if he rented it just to see jaws drop open, like they were dropping right now.

His men were grouped up at the corner of the building within eyesight. I figured they were there to block off any curious heads and to make their boss feel at ease. My eyes captured the car of course, the soft white leather seats and precise piping. Every detail popped out before me. His new Tod’s, the black suede driving shoes he wore as he rested his feet against his front fender. A single lamppost casted a beam of light around them as if they were being displayed in the shoe store window of a Park Avenue shop. I checked my Datejust. It was 10:05 p.m. I had shit I had to handle and had to meet up with Ameer at 11:30. As I eased my eyes off the face of my watch, I saw his Cartier. Yet what really stood out was his gold band topped off by one clean princess-cut diamond, a modest one-and-three-quarter-carat diamond being rocked on his married finger.

“You got an appointment?” Ricky Santiaga asked me in a cool and even tone.

“I do,” I answered calmly.

“This is the appointment,” Vega intervened, giving Santiaga a pound and then introducing him to the five of us. Santiaga eased off the hood of the Ferrari and stood. He was at least as tall as me at six-one.

“My man Midnight says he has an appointment tonight and I believe him. So we’re gonna make this quick. Y’all ran a good game tonight, made me feel proud. Your teamwork was crazy and that’s what killed off your opponents. Y’all outsmarted them, made hood history. I like that. It made me want to meet you. So let’s get to know each other real fast. I’m gonna erase everything I heard about each of you from other people up until tonight.” He checked his watch. “You do the same, aight?” he asked us.

“Aight!” My four team members called out immediately.

“I’m gonna ask each of you three questions, any three questions that I choose. You get one chance to pass if you don’t want to answer one of the three questions. Then each of you gets to ask me one question.
I’ll take one pass for myself, got it?” he said, looking each of us in the eye one by one to get his feeling across. He was talking slowly and seriously. He commanded everyone’s attention with his style and method, and now Vega was unusually silent.

“Machete, where are you from, originally?” Santiaga asked.

“La República Dominicana,” Machete responded without smiling, in his normal laid back, intentionally threatening style. Yet I could see clearly that he was in awe of Santiaga.

“Jaguar, where are you from originally?”

“Belize,” Jaguar answered.

“Panama, from Panama right?” Santiaga asked and answered.

“No doubt,” Panama confirmed, so excited you would think he had been MVP of the league already, his gold framed teeth all exposed.

“Braz, same question.” Santiaga pointed.

“Las favelas de Rio de Janeiro, Brasil,” Braz said proudly. It seemed everybody was suddenly rocking their accents and mother tongue.

“And you?” Santiaga asked me with a slight smile.

“I’ll pass,” I responded.

“No problem, that’s your one,” Santiaga said patiently. “So we’ll start with you this time. What’s the meaning of team?” Santiaga asked me.

I paused and then answered, “It’s a group of people who decide to work together to accomplish one or more goals. If one person falls or fails, every team member covers for him. We all keep pushing until we get it done right, the way we agreed in the beginning.”

Santiaga looked at Vega one time as though they could communicate without words. Then he refocused on the next player. “Machete, what are your plans for the future?” Santiaga questioned.

“I’m hoping to be alive in the future, that’s the first thing. Come to think of it, I want to be like you, so large I can sit on a Ferrari like it’s nothing and have a bunch of dudes who got my back standing around just waiting for me to give the word.” My teammates all laughed, not just at his answer but at Machete’s style. We were used to him, but Santiaga was just getting a taste.

And so the questions went around just like this. I said in the future I wanted the black team to win the tournament undefeated. They all cheered for that, overlooking that I never answered the question
of how I see my future and what I wanted to become. For his third and final round, Santiaga got more serious, in his face and his interrogation.

“Machete, what is success?” he asked.

“Twenty-five million dollars!” Machete didn’t even pause to think about it.

“Panama, what would you do to get twenty-five million dollars?” Santiaga asked.

“Any fucking thing,” Panama said confidently. My teammates laughed, then confirmed.

“Braz, what is your definition of a traitor?” Santiaga asked.

“Anyone who gets in my way of what I’m try’na do,” Braz responded seriously.

“Jaguar, if you had to sacrifice one thing on your body, what would it be?” Santiaga asked.

“Damn, why me? Why ask me that?” he said, disappointed.

“Answer the question.” Santiaga didn’t give him a way out.

Jaguar paused. “My middle toe,” he said after a minute. Everyone laughed. “No, seriously,” Jaguar said, “’cause I got two on each side of the middle one and I could still walk or run without it, and nobody but my girl would know it was missing.” Everyone laughed.

“Midnight, my man, what is the meaning of life?” Santiaga asked me, turning everyone’s attention to my reaction.

“Family.” I said just that one word. No one said anything. For seconds, no one moved.

“Alright, let’s speed it up. You each get one question, ask me anything,” Santiaga ordered.

Braz asked, “Where are you from, originally?”

Santiaga looked at me and then answered, “I’ll pass.”

Machete asked, “Why are you putting money up for this league?”

Santiaga quickly said, “Because we can’t let no one else get a monopoly over our young.” Machete took one step back as though the answer was too deep for him.

Jaguar asked, “Why did you choose us players in the first place?”

Santiaga said swiftly, “Because I know what kind of men to surround myself with.”

Panama asked, “What do you do for a living?” Everybody got quiet. He knew it was a dangerous question and so did we.

“I’m a businessman, of course,” Santiaga said with a smile. “You know, an entrepreneur.”

“About that pendant that you wore the last three times I saw you, the gold pendant of the baby shoe. Why did you choose that piece?” I asked him, truly wanting to know.

“ ’Cause babies are innocent and men are guilty,” Santiaga said. Then he touched the pendant he was rocking tonight, a 24-carat gold chess piece. It was the queen piece, surrounded by a link made up of forty 24-carat gold king crowns. “Alright, time’s up. Now we know each other a little better. Great game, keep it up until the job is done.”

He gave each of us a pound. I was last. Strangely, he gripped my hand when I gave him a pound and pulled me into his embrace.

We all walked past the Ferrari to view it from another angle as we left. Purposely I didn’t delay. It was 10:25 p.m. now. I walked out with a few players and random youth who were still excited and involved in heated conversation, which included reenactments of small pieces of our game. I hopped on the train with a few and rode toward my Brooklyn apartment. I got off six stops later. Slowly I quieted my mind and blocked out any thoughts of basketball, money, or the game. Calmly I walked by and with anonymous passengers. I went up the stairs, crossed over, and went back down into the subway on the other side and hopped back on the train moving in the opposite direction.

There is a pathway by her house that nobody should be on unless they live there, and an alley with only one window facing a solid brick wall. I only had a half hour to give. The results would be based strictly on chance. I wouldn’t want to attach this act to Allah without His permission. I crouched there, black sweats, black Nikes, my black fitted riding low. Warm weather made my face moist. I could smell the cement and the trash and traces of spilled Kool-Aid, which had attracted a bunch of busy bugs.

In only twelve minutes, he came creeping. It must have been his appointment with destiny. He was using the back entrance, because he was the type who was hardly ever welcomed willingly through her front door. This time it cost him. I leaped up from the ground, certain I was nothing but a silhouette in the dark of the night. He was startled, surprised, and unprepared, of course. My guess was that he was only used to fighting girls. Men like him think they’ll have a free hand forever.

I struck him one precise and powerful blow to his throat, so swift with my right closed fist that when his head tilted forward, he never saw my right leg at a 120-degree angle. My sharp kick made his head stand back up straight and his body fall backward against the wall. I disappeared faster than the mist, before his body could even slide down to the ground.

They say that a leopard grabs its prey by the throat, drags it, and then rips it apart with his teeth. When he’s done, he leaves nothing but blood and broken bones behind. As I moved swiftly yet calmly, taking forty-five seconds to walk through the back streets of BedStuy and down the stairs of the subway, I thought to myself,
Bangs wanted me and her to have a secret.
Now
we have a secret.

“Where is everybody?” Ameer said, as he entered my Brooklyn apartment for the first time.

“Everybody like who?” I dodged, taking a few steps over to close Umma’s bedroom door.

“Your family,” he emphasized, like I should’ve already known.

“They’re away, because I’m going away tomorrow, remember?” I told him.

“Oh yeah, I knew you were going. I didn’t know they were going also,” he said, looking around my living room. I never corrected him on that matter.

“I hope you got some food up in here,” Ameer demanded.

“If the red team would’ve lost tonight, I would only let you get a bowl of hot water. I would put it right there in the corner on the floor,” I joked with him. “You’re lucky y’all won.”

“I
still
got your one hundred dollars though,” Ameer said, like he had one up.