Winners (24 page)

He’s trying. He is sitting on the stairway now, gazing out over Fulton’s house as if it were his own. Maybe he won’t ever want her back. Maybe that’s his not-so-secret secret. Maybe he will live a simple life, move back in with Ma for a while, play ball, clean chimneys. Maybe he will hire a couple guys to help him. Yeah. He will hire a kid from the projects, take some fucked kid with nothing going for him up on the roof and show him how the spines of houses work. The kid will be like a son to him, they’ll go up to the court together at noon to play some ball, the kid will fuck him over one day and steal his tools, beat him, kill him, rob him blind. He doesn’t know. Look at him, here and now. He obviously doesn’t know.

A car engine lingers close outside again, a satisfied purr of coming home. Shane stands up sharply, floats down the stairs, jogs down the hallway to the front of the house. He peeks out the windows there but he can’t see what’s going on. This might be Fulton pulling in right now, there might be one last chance to get out the door and gone. Walk briskly down the sidewalk as the man climbs the steps to his own front door. A car door slams shut, an alarm does its two-tone beep. Maybe he’s walking toward the door right now where there will be no choice but to meet Shane face to face. Shane grabs the door handle, putting his weight against it, holding it tight. They can meet there on the stairs and just destroy each other. It’s easy. You can break your foot, you can rip down a chimney just like that but to rebuild the goddamn thing? You don’t have to be a chimney sweep, you don’t have to play basketball, you don’t have to be a husband, you don’t have to be anything. Those are the choices, but you have to choose. You must.

When is the best time for planting trees? he wonders. He opens the door.

modemport's original commercial release April 02 2011

T
HIS BOOK WOULD
be dead pulp and ink without my main man Ethan Remmel, friend since fifth grade whom I trust and love and count on, off and on the court. And the rest of my boys from States and Grattan—you know who you are.

I also want to thank the friends who have made my San Francisco—Sarah Malarkey and Jonathan Kaplan, Lindsay and Wally Sablosky, Michael Terrien and Hannah Henry, Larry Shadt and Claudine Friedberg, Jon Burke and Tami Lipsey, Catherine Generackos and Nick Denton and many many others. You are all the world to me, and don’t let nobody tell you different.

Finally, I am deeply grateful to Jay Mandel, David Poindexter, Anika Streitfeld, Evelyn Somers, Steve Elliott, Jeff Friedman, William H., Bridget W., and everyone else who helped bring this book to life and keep me going—especially my parents, my sister, and my one true love, Meredith McMonigle.