different, the way every dryer at the Suds-O-Rama sounded different, and that if I listened in warmups I could learn a strange gym's iron in about fifteen shots.
I didn't play much. I got in for two minutes at the end of a blowout against Troy High and grabbed three rebounds and missed a free throw, and my mother wasn't there because she was on second shift and couldn't trade. I got in for a minute against Catholic Central and got called for a three-second violation, which I hadn't known existed. I sat at the end of the bench in a red warmup jacket with BRZEZINSKI on the back in iron-on letters that Dolores had fixed for me when the Z started to peel, and I watched.
What I watched, mostly, was Brent.
He was very good. I should say that clearly, because the rest of this story is about something wrong with him, and that wasn't the main thing about him. He could shoot from anywhere. He had a long smooth turnaround that he released at the very top of his jump, and a first step that made good defenders look like they were standing in wet cement. He scored twenty-six against Troy High and thirty against Catholic Central. In the papers, the Times Union called him "Lansing Hill's Callahan" as if there were others.
But he was a bad rebounder. A strange bad rebounder. A six-foot-three kid with springs in his legs, who on some nights grabbed eight boards from the right side of the floor and none from the left. I noticed it the way I noticed which side of the crate was bowed. I didn't think about it much at first. I thought it was a habit, a laziness, some star's thing of not caring about the dirty work.
Then I took the job at Kerwin's.
* * *
Kerwin's Pharmacy was on Fifth Avenue, two blocks from the laundromat, and old Mr. Kerwin had placed a card in the window that said DELIVERY BOY WANTED, MUST HAVE BIKE, MUST BE HONEST, in that order. I had a bike. It was a gray Huffy ten-speed with a bent rear fender. I figured that if we were moving to North Carolina in June we'd need money for the deposit on an apartment, and my mother, who would never ask me to work, didn't say no when I told her.