“How the hell did it happen?” he said, and I said, “What?” and he said, “Why, that last game. How the hell did that scrub team ever happen to beat you?”
“It was just one of those things,” I said. “They just got hot and couldn’t miss the basket any way they tried, and you know how it is with a team like that, there just isn’t anything you can do to stop them, because if they bent over and fired the damn ball between their legs it would still go in,” and he said, “That’s the damn truth, but just the same, if I’d been coach instead of Umplett...,” and then he went on telling me what he’d have done if he’d been coach, and it was a lot of crap, of course, and it took him damn near a half hour to get through with it, and I’d just about decided that he was just giving me a Goddamn runaround and was trying to talk about anything but the red Crosley he owed me, but then he wound up saying, “But however it might have been, it’s water under the bridge now, and the fact is, you were high point man of the tournament and have won the Crosley sports car.”
“Well,” I said, “I don’t expect you to give me anything as valuable as a Crosley sports car. Besides, I never thought for a minute you really meant it,” and he said, “The hell I didn’t mean it. When Arnold Hamshank says he’ll do a thing, he’ll damn sure do it, and the car’s greased and oiled and full of gas and ready to go in the back room right now.”
I said that was sure as hell generous of him, and it was sure swell to know someone who liked basketball well enough to do something like that to encourage one of the players, and he said to think nothing of it and that he was always ready to do a little thing now and then for the boys who made the game what it was, and to tell the truth, I thought he was a damn fool to put out a new Crosley to someone like me that he didn’t even really know just for throwing a God-damn ball around. Anyhow, he asked me if I’d like to go back and take a look at it, and I said I would, and we went back and looked it over, and it was sure as hell little, just a one-seater like all sports cars, bright red and shiny as a new nickel, and I thought it was a damn sweet little job but that you’d sure never get any business done in the seat like old Marsha Davis and I had almost got done in the front seat of her old man’s Buick.
He said, “Well, what do you think of it?” and I said it was a slick little job, and we went back to his office again, and he had all the papers and everything already fixed up for me to sign and all I had to do was get a driver’s license and buy some tags and I was all set. We talked some more about other things, and after a while he said, “Where’s your home, Skimmer?” and I told him, and he said, “That’s not a very big town, is it?” and I said it sure as hell wasn’t, and he said, “It must be pretty dull for a guy like you around there in the summer,” and I said it sure as hell was.
“How’d you like to stay here in the city this summer?” he said, and I said I’d like it fine but didn’t have the money, and he said, “You could get a job, couldn’t you?” and I had to admit I hadn’t thought of that, and he said, “How’d you like to work for me selling cars?”
“Well,” I said, “I’d like that fine, but I never sold cars before,” and he said, “There’s nothing to it. A big basketball star like you would be a cinch, because people around here go in a big way for basketball players. I’d pay you fifty bucks a week plus commission,” and I said, “That sounds good to me, and you’ve just hired yourself a salesman for the summer,” and he said, “That’s the stuff. I like a guy who can make up his mind in a hurry, and I knew you could do it because you wouldn’t be the best forward in the country if you couldn’t. That’s one thing about basketball, it teaches you to make up your mind fast.”
After a while I said I had to be getting back to the university, and he said to drop in and see him once in a while, and I said I would, and he said he’d be expecting me to start work right after school was out in June, and I said I’d do that, too. He followed me back to the Crosley and watched me crawl in and start it up, and he laughed and waved and yelled as I drove out to be sure to remember to get out of the Crosley before I got into the mood, and I yelled back that I would and drove on out, and I was feeling damn good, I don’t mind admitting, not only because I had the Crosley but because I had a job for the summer, too, and wouldn’t have to go home and put up with the bull from the old man just to get a crummy meal now and then.
That was how it happened that I stayed in the city that summer, and if it hadn’t been for old Arnold Hamshank giving me the job selling cars I’d probably have gone on home and never met Candy Caldwell or Francis Z. Ketch, who was called Franzie because of everyone’s running his first name and middle initial together like one word, or any of the others that I met. Everything goes right back to that God-damn crazy game of basketball, and it just seems impossible that so much could have come of it, but that’s the way it was, and it’s a good thing for me I learned to play it. Candy Caldwell was the one I met first, and I didn’t meet this Franzie Ketch for quite a while afterward, because he wasn’t the kind of guy you met easy, and as a matter of fact you didn’t meet him at all unless you had something he wanted, which I did, and so I’ll start with Candy and work through it the way it came.
After school was out I went down and took over the job selling cars, and it was a pretty damn plush job, if you ask me, because old Hamshank didn’t seem to give a damn whether I put in much time selling or not, and every now and then he’d come around and say, “Skimmer there’s a guy I know ought to be about ready for a new Packard. This guy’s a hot basketball fan, so why don’t you run out and see him,” and so I’d run out and see this guy he told me about, and usually he’d get warmed up right away when he found out who I was and wind up a little later taking the Packard, which meant a commission on top of the fifty bucks, and altogether it was just like sitting under a tree in the shade and having someone shake apples in your lap. I got me a room in a little hotel that didn’t cost too much but wasn’t a bad place to flop, and this hotel was right at the edge of the downtown area where a lot of nightclubs and things were, and I got to going down there nights to see the shows and learned how to drink stuff like martinis and daiquiris and not always plain beer, and you’d be surprised how many people I met who knew me from all the publicity I’d got over the basketball and wanted to give me the glad hand and buy me a drink and things like that.
One afternoon a little after five o’clock I went into a cocktail lounge called the Gay Gander that was a pretty fancy place with a thick carpet and big pots of green stuff here and there and soft light coming out of a little trough that went all around the room up near the ceiling. I was sitting by myself at a table, because all the stools at the bar had roosters on them, and all of a sudden this guy with slick black hair stepped out with a little microphone and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, here she is,” just like any damn fool ought to know who she was, and I guess most of them did, even if I didn’t, because they started to clap in the quiet way they do it in joints like that, and another guy came out and sat down at a piano, and this doll followed him and leaned against the piano and began to sing. She was wearing a black dress that was made out of thin stuff that showed the black slip underneath, and it came down to just below her knees at the bottom and down to damn near below her knockers on top, and her hair was black, too, and cut short and sort of shaggy on purpose, and I’d like to describe the rest of her, just the way she looked, but I damn sure can’t, and no one else could, either.