Ride Around Shining by Chris Leslie-Hynan Page A

guess when she didn’t it seemed only respectful. He didn’t desire her, so I didn’t. She wasn’t even illicit anymore, merely passé. I knew they weren’t done with one another, not really, but he wanted to live in this illusion of complete erasure of her, and I complied. Through simple will he made a new, diminished world and walled her out of it, and then we lived there together, he and I, with his wounds.
    In the middle of October , we went for a week to the Pharaoh’s estate. Savier “Pharaoh” Ramses was the last of the Jail Blazers, the gifted but misbehaving old guard who had taken the team to the Western Conference finals in ’99 and 2000 but bottomed out the franchise by the mid-aughts. Pharaoh had been a high draft pick during the team’s decline, but he was one of those talents who never became more than a sideshow collection of impressively mismatched skills. He was six-nine with guard speed and a great handle, but had no half-court game: he was too weak for the post and he couldn’t shoot. He was technically still with the team, but he’d not been on the active roster at all the previous season. The official reason was a slow-healing knee injury, but the rumor was that he and his bloated salary were getting pushed out. All summer I’d seen his classic Pontiac convertible with its “PH4R40” license plate haunting the players’ garage. Ras, his Antiguan driver, liked to dispense paternal advice to me about car wax, and Pharaoh became a sort of mentor to Calyph, gifting him with the nickname Yoshi, or Young Sheed. The team probably would’ve given Calyph a bonus just for staying away from Ramses, but with their matching knee injuries and defiant on-court attitudes, there was no keeping them apart.
    I arrived at the Pharaoh’s as a guest, but soon found myself placed among the staff. I guess it was clear right away I wasn’t going to be any good at smoking spliffs and sitting by the pool. “Come,” said Ras, as I stood awkwardly in the doorway of my narrow room that first afternoon. “You’ll see more of de place if you work a little. We’ll only give you chitty-chitty stuff to do.”
    The gaming tent stood in the middle of the hanging gardens, which ran almost to the cliff in the southwest corner of the estate. The Pharaoh had built on a desolate stretch of coast about two hours from Portland, and at high tide I could hear the sea in all its violence. My week there was one of the most singular of my life, but few moments there thrilled me with as much consummate oddness as following Ras down a narrow stone path beneath dangling creepers, carrying gourmet BLTs on a blinding silver tray to men who sat in the hiss and boom of the seething Pacific, playing video games.
    â€œDon’t shoot that,” came Calyph’s voice. “That’s not your range, boy.”
    â€œI hit that all day.”
    â€œNot on here you don’t. They got you so you can barely make a damn layup.”
    â€œNaw,” Belmont said, jockeying his controller around in unconscious compensation. “I show you.” He wore a bright white T-shirt and a modest gold chain, and looked hardly more than a boy.
    They crowded the wide set, and the low stools they sat on leaned dangerously as they traded fast breaks. Calyph’s crutches sat against a nearby chair. Pharaoh lay behind them in a squat black chaise longue, watching indifferently. Only when we came beneath the tent did he grasp his cane to rise.
    â€œBrick again,” Calyph chided. “Better put Deron back in.”
    â€œMan, you musta put it to Superstar.”
    â€œI didn’t put nothing to nothing, and you’re oh for six from deep. You’re playing this game like you twelve.”
    â€œI’m tellin’ you, they got me rated right . Ninety-five speed.”
    â€œYeah? Pause it, let’s see. Let’s see what rating they got for