Crime Scene

Chapter 18

Tatiana stepped from her apartment in jeans and a sleeveless top that fell straight and sheer, emphasizing her leanness. Black hair fanned over her shoulders. She’d put on a touch of makeup. Hoop earrings. She said, “How do you feel about Mexican?”

“Some of my best friends are Mexican,” I said.

We set off walking.

“You look beautiful,” I said.

“Thank you.”

“Too strong?”

“No such thing,” she said.

She’d picked out not a restaurant, but a food truck, one of a dozen circled in the parking lot outside the North Berkeley BART station. A couple hundred people milled around under string lights, eating off paper plates. Unattended kids ran in giddy loops to the backing of a zydeco band. A banner behind the stage read OFF THE GRID.

“You are free to partake wherever and whatever you want,” she said. “But I strongly recommend the tacos al pastor from Red Rooster.”

“Done.”

We got food and beer and found a pair of unclaimed plastic chairs.

“I think they do one of these around Lake Merritt,” she said.

“Saturdays,” I said. “I’m working.”

“Poor you.” She held out her lengua for me to try. When I declined, she reached over, forking a piece of pork off my plate. “I only offered so you’d give me some of yours.”

“You could’ve gotten your own.”

“Then we couldn’t share.”

“We aren’t actually sharing,” I said. “You’re just stealing politely.”

“Right, but this way I feel justified.”

“For some reason I had this idea you’d be a vegetarian.”

“Vegan,” she said. “Thirteen years.”

“What happened?”

“Tacos al pastor,” she said.

I asked what she planned to do in Tahoe, other than dispose of furniture.

“Ski. Do yoga. Realistically it’s my last chance to use the house before we sell it.” She paused. “Barb — his first wife — she was the skier. My dad never cared for the cold. I don’t know why he’s held on to it all these years.”

“From what I’ve seen,” I said, “he wasn’t one for purging.”

“Yeah. Although you’d think, a house... He kept talking about renting it out, but he never got around to it. Most of the year it was unoccupied. He went up every few months to check on it. I can’t remember the last time I was there.”

“You didn’t go with him.”

“He never invited me. I’m sure he would’ve let me tag along, but I could tell he needed to get away, so I tried to respect that.”

“Away from what?”

“Me,” she said.

“Kind of harsh on yourself.”

She shrugged. “I pestered him. I knew I was doing it. I wanted him to be healthy.”

I said, “Your brothers are Barb’s sons.”

Tatiana nodded. “She’s a nice lady. She flew in for the funeral. I was touched, but my mom threw a hissy fit.”

“About what?”

“What’s it ever about? She seems to believe she still has an ownership stake in Dad. Their relationship was totally ridiculous. They’d be in divorce mediation during the day then go home and sleep together at night.”

“That’s... different.”

“You think? I know because my mother told me. I was like, ‘I don’t need to hear this, please.’ She told me I had a bourgeois sense of morality.”

“Meaning ‘a sense of morality.’ ”

“It’s the revenge of our generation.”

“What about your brothers?”

“Oh, they’re way more uptight than I am. Charlie’s a lawyer. Human rights. Stephen was in finance, but he quit to open a rock climbing gym.”

“That doesn’t sound uptight.”

“He runs it like an investment bank,” she said. “We don’t fight, but we’re not close. You?”

“I grew up in San Leandro. My folks are still there.”

“Siblings?”

“None to speak of.” I reached for her empty cup. “Another?”

“Please.”

As I stood in line, listening to an accordion-driven version of “Every Breath You Take,” I glanced at the street sign.

We were on the 1400 block of Delaware.

Four blocks east of Julian Triplett’s mother’s house.

I looked over my shoulder at Tatiana.

She raised a hand.

I did the same.

I brought back a Corona and a margarita, giving her the choice.

“We’ll share,” she said, taking the margarita.

“I know how that works with you.”

The band played “Super Freak.”

Tatiana said, “I want to tell you something but I’m not sure I should. Should I?”

“How about this,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me what it is first, and then I can decide if you should tell me or not.”

She laughed. “Okay, I’m going to tell you. I was married.”

“Yes,” I said, “you can tell me that.”

“It doesn’t freak you out?”

“Why would it freak me out?”

“It freaks some guys out.”

“Not me.”

She tilted her head. “Do you want to know why I got divorced?”

“If you want to tell me.”

“I met him in New York. We were married six months, then he came out.”

“That must’ve been a surprise.”

“I was surprised,” she said. “Later I found out everybody knew except me.”

“I was married, too,” I said.

She raised her eyebrows.

I pointed to a gaunt woman in pigtails near the gelato truck. “That’s her.”

Tatiana balled up the napkin and threw it at me. I ducked and it landed on the asphalt behind me. A girl about seven years old ran over and snatched it up.

“Litterbug!” she yelled. Her T-shirt read LOCALLY GROWN.

She hopped around, waving the dirty napkin, chanting, “Litterbug! Litterbug!”

“Sorry,” Tatiana said. “It was an accident. I meant to hit him.”

“Litterbug!”

The girl’s mother came over to apologize. “Her class just finished a unit on recycling.”

The kid stuck out her tongue at us as she was yanked away. The band began to play “Take On Me.”

Tatiana tossed back the dregs of her margarita. “Smug little twat.”

I said, “Let’s get out of here.”

We walked east, through Ohlone Park.

“I vant to be Ohlone,” she said.

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Good,” I said. “Up for a little walk?”

“Sure.”

Aside from the occasional booze wobble, she was graceful and purposeful, fluid in her movements, shivering against me.

“Here,” I said, giving her my coat.

“Thank you, gallant sir. Nobody’s done that for me since eleventh grade. Where are you taking me?”

Ten minutes later, we arrived at University Avenue.

“You’re taking me to campus,” she said.

“Ah, yes, but: where on campus.”

“Please tell me this isn’t some hopeless attempt to relive our college days.”

“Who said anything about hopeless.”

We tottered happily through the eucalyptus grove, thumping over the bridge spanning Strawberry Creek, encountering bicycle racks and flapping banners but few faces. Mist hung in the trees, diffusing the greenish glow of pathway lighting. I imagined Donna Zhao, trudging home in the dark, bent-backed beneath the weight of her textbooks and notebooks and fatigue. In a strange way, she had brought me here now, to this moment and this place, to the feeling of Tatiana’s arm, lost inside the sleeve of my coat, but gripping me fiercely as she laughed and swayed.

Up ahead loomed Haas Pavilion and the adjoining rec center.

“Where are you taking me,” she said. “For real.”

“I want to show you something.”

We came to a side door. I fished my keycard out of my wallet, swiped it near the sensor. The lock retracted with a clack.

“An old teammate is an assistant coach,” I said. “He got me the hookup.”

“Fancy.”

“That’s how I roll.”

We went down a cinder-block corridor painted in blue and yellow and stenciled with motivational slogans. CHAMPIONS KEEP PLAYING UNTIL THEY GET IT RIGHT. BE STRONG IN BODY, CLEAN IN MIND, LOFTY IN IDEALS. The air burned with industrial cleaner. In the weight room, a few football physiques were grinding out reps with their earbuds in. They paid us no mind.

The practice court itself was at the end of the hall. I swiped in and hit the switches, and the floods flickered on, casting a sickly pall over the waxed floor.

“They take a couple minutes to warm up,” I said.

I unlocked a ball cart and dragged it to the top of the three-point line. Paused, squinting at the rim.

I have a low tolerance for alcohol. I never built one, never developed a taste; during college, when most people learn to drink, I had a strict diet and training regimen. Tonight, I’d consumed half a beer, walked it off for half an hour. Yet I still felt warm, my focus honed somewhat by the pressure of what I was about to do.

I took a basketball, spun it in my hand, breathed in, breathed out.

Pulled up.

Let fly.

It clanged off the back of the rim. Not the splashy opening I’d had in mind.

“I didn’t see that,” Tatiana said.

“See what,” I said, reaching for another ball.

I pulled up.

This time I felt it as it left my hand; I saw myself from the outside, angles in agreement, head and neck, elbow and shoulder, wrist and fingers, collaborating. I felt the weightless instant, when gravity releases its stranglehold, and you float, and the ball becomes vapor, pebbled breath rolling back against the tips of your fingers. I felt it part from me with an understanding of its mission, an extension of me that continued to rise after I had softly retouched the earth; rising and rising, the seams spinning backward in a blur of symmetry and physics; peaking and then descending in a gentle arc, a faithful delivery.

The net snapped, was still.

I exhaled and took another ball.

Snap.

Another.

Snap. Snap. Snap.

I stopped when I reached into the cart and discovered that it was empty. Loose balls lay scattered like the aftermath of a cannon battle, the echo of the last bounce fading. I’d made twenty-three of twenty-nine shots.

Tatiana shifted.

I looked over at her. I’d forgotten she was there.

She said, “That was beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

“Really, Clay. I — it was really wonderful.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you for showing me,” she said.

I nodded.

She said, “You do miss it.”

“Of course.”

“What most of all?”

The heat of the arena. Students with their faces painted and their throats stringy as they screamed. Truth be told, it never was my job to shoot. The three-pointer show makes for a good party trick, but no way could I hit half as many with a hand in my face.

I was a point guard. A setup man. Frame a situation, hand off to those more comfortable in the spotlight.

It’s who I am, even today.

Sophomore year, somebody realized I was on pace to break Jason Kidd’s single-season school record for assists. A group started showing up to the games. They called themselves the Claymakers. They sat in a line, a few rows in front of the band. Every time I got an assist, the next person in line would turn over a poster board with a picture of a lightbulb and the words BRIGHT IDEA! Because: Edison. Get it? A very Cal kind of joke.

I ended up falling a few shy of the record. I didn’t care. I had two seasons left, two more chances to beat it. The team had qualified for the NCAA tournament for the first time in three years. That was all that mattered.

Favored in our first game, we won by twenty. We cleared the round of thirty-two. That hadn’t happened in a decade. We beat the three-seed, Maryland, to advance to the Elite Eight. You had to go back to 1960 to find the last time that had happened. I had seventeen assists in that game, one short of the tournament record. I scored twelve points, too. I was on SportsCenter. We were Cinderella. Things got nuts for a while.

When Tatiana said she’d recognized me, she was recalling the me from those few months, the italicized portion of my life. Agents turning up at our motel. One of them came to my dad’s work. It was a time for imagining. Maybe I wouldn’t go back for two more seasons, after all. Maybe I’d go pro. Get rich. Get richer. Get famous. Get more famous. It seemed so obviously desirable that I never stopped to wonder if, in fact, I wanted it.

I did want it. I know that, now.

We beat Miami in triple overtime and crashed into the Final Four against Kansas.

I had a lousy opening half. They had a great team that year, including three future NBA players, and I went into sloppy hyperdrive, turning the ball over a bunch. My coach sent me to the bench to cool off, keeping me there until five minutes remained in the half and we were down by eleven. Finally he sent me to the scorers’ table to check in.

Rather than run the set play he’d drawn up, I gave in to frustration, coming off a screen and barreling down the lane. I remember, distinctly, the look on their center’s face as I went straight at him: a mix of awe, pity, annoyance. He had eight inches and a hundred pounds on me. For me to dare — it wasn’t in his mental playbook, and I’d wrong-footed him.

He reacted as best he could, sliding to cut me off, throwing his hands straight up and knocking me sideways in midair. I came down at an angle, landing on the inside of my right foot, the knee caving inward, the full weight and force of my heroism skewing laterally through my anterior cruciate ligament, medial collateral ligament, and medial meniscus.

I’ve heard other people talk about a catastrophic injury. They say things like It’s funny, there wasn’t any pain. I can’t agree. It wasn’t funny, and I felt more pain than I’d ever experienced. But pain, however bad, isn’t what sticks in the long term. We can place it on a spectrum and assimilate it.

It’s the unfamiliar sensations, the ones without a point of reference, that become the stuff of nightmares.

Take a wet bunch of celery.

Grip it with both hands.

Twist, as hard as you can.

That’s what my knee felt like.

And the crowd, shrill and unforgiving.

And the floor, slick and unforgiving.

And the face of the trainer, scraped pale. He couldn’t help himself. Consolation would follow; encouragement, planning, structure. But he’d shown me the truth in an instant, and to this day I can’t help but feel a certain hatred for him.

I looked at Tatiana. “Mostly, I miss my teammates.”

She slipped off my coat and her shoes and padded over. I tossed her a ball. She caught it awkwardly and dribbled a few times, slapping at it. She seemed to be seeking approval, and I started to step forward to give her a pointer.

She tore past me with a screech, chucking a wild shot that hit the top corner of the backboard and went flying.

“Fuck,” she yelled as we both ran after the rebound.

I got there first, corralling it and dribbling out to half-court. Tatiana faced me, cat-backed, grinning, rubbing her hands together, beckoning.

“Ones and twos,” I said.

“I don’t know what that means,” she said.

“Normal shots are worth one. A three-pointer is worth two.”

“That makes zero sense.”

I ran toward her, stopped short, pulled up, and let fly. Snap.

“Two,” I said. I reached down and plucked a ball from the floor. “Loser’s out.”

“Oh fuck you ‘loser.’ ”

We played with no regard for boundaries, running and heaving and traveling when convenient. When I blocked her path, she simply turned and sprinted downcourt toward the other basket; when I poked the ball from her hands, she snatched the nearest one off the floor. If I got within arm’s reach of her she started hacking at me mercilessly, her shrieks caroming from the walls and the stands, lighting up the hush. Nobody came to see what the racket was all about or to tell us to keep it down. We were living in a one-room universe.

Flushed, her hair sticking to her forehead, her shirt glued to her ribs, she put up a particularly heinous airball from the free-throw line.

I backpedaled, leapt, snatched it from midair, rolled it in.

“We’ll call that one for you,” I said.

“What’s the score? I’ve lost count.”

“Me too.”

“I am so completely terrible at this.”

I took a ball and stood behind her, leaning down to wrap my arms around her, positioning her hands. “The right provides the power. The left acts as a guide. Think of it as a one-handed push.”

I stepped back.

She bricked it, short.

“Closer,” I said, grabbing another ball. “Put some height on it. The more you exaggerate the arc, the bigger your target gets.”

She dribbled once, twice. Shot.

Got the bounce.

I applauded. She turned and curtsied. Held out her hands.

“Come here right now,” she said. “Please.”

We sank down together, tugging and prying at each other, fingers catching on fasteners and fabric, rolling around half naked on the hardwood. It seemed like a fun idea but she soon said, “Know what, this is really uncomfortable,” and we both started laughing.

I said, “We’re not kids anymore,” and she said, “Thank God for that.”

I got up and helped her up and then, before I could dwell on the risks to my knee, I swept my arms around her back and behind her legs and carried her to a stack of gym mats shoved into the corner. They smelled plasticky and sharp. Bodies had fought here.

I spread out my coat and she uncoiled, a creature released from captivity, running to trap and devour the first living thing it saw, which was me. She caged me with her arms, her fingers taloned my neck, light drilled down on us in high contrast, her perfect contours raised up above the surface of the world.

“Someone might come in,” she said.

“Does that bother you?”

She smiled. “I like it.”

I should have figured: she was a performer.