All You Can Fake

“Let’s just play; it’s a basketball court, no matter where it is.”

Anchevitz gave voice to everyone’s thoughts when he rode over Wiemer’s grousing, although he, like the rest of them, couldn’t help but stare at the center court puddle, which could have been mopped up after the rain had stopped two days ago. The Fit Universe Center obviously thought as little of the rooftop cage court as they did.

There was a muted roar below and to the right, in the main gymnasium where they’d been meeting every Thursday evening for a year, until their 9 p.m. court time got bumped in favor of the youth program designed to keep kids off the street from 9 p.m. to 12 midnight.  Local news editor Ruebens had borrowed Alan from the foreign desk the month before to cover the fledgling program, and the younger reporter had resisted the urge to stick pins made of bias into that which was killing his basketball nights. Even though, as he had pointed out on more than one occasion to his teammates, he had uncovered statistics from other cities that had tried similar programs and failed to curb delinquency as a whole. Youth crime did indeed subside as long as the games actually played. It picked up again after midnight, proving that young people were as adept at time shifting as Fit Universe.

Until this program came to the same conclusion or ran out of grant money, Alan’s group would have to frequently switch locations; hence that night’s cage match. The group’s numbers had dwindled through the adverse conditions, slipping from almost twenty regulars of wildly varying ability to four on four with one substitute, a friend Weimer had brought along that night whose name Alan hadn’t caught. He hadn’t really been paying attention because he had been trying to talk News to Matthew Heath in a manner that looked natural to everyone concerned, especially Heath himself.

Heath was the corp’s junior accountant, the only work colleague of Alan’s who had ever played in the evening basketball group, and the one who connected him to the basketball group to begin with. They didn’t cross paths too often at work or off the court, so Alan had an inkling that the other man could be a perfect alibi if things went wrong.

It wouldn’t make sense to suddenly talk News with the man in a place where men typically tried to forget their various work lives, especially if they found themselves on opposite sides, guarding each other. Alan played clean most of the time, but his instincts drove him into Heath when the accountant telecasted a fake at least three seconds before he performed it, and then pivoted into Alan for the real jumpshot that had them connecting heads. For Alan the bells only rang once, his vision returned, and he felt the relieved soreness and headache that actually is a sign that one has escaped a major head injury. Heath perceived dimmer lights and a clock that struck ten in his head forty minutes before it would in actuality, and although he claimed to be okay after that, the others insisted he sit on the sidelines with ice - and not lie down, or they would take him to the hospital over his protestations.

Weimer gestured to the sidelines. His guest pulled off his hooded sweatshirt and sauntered out on the court. “Don’t knock heads with this one, Alan.” Alan was perfectly willing to do the expected thing and sheepishly laugh and promise not to.  But all expectations died in his parched throat when he saw that Weimer’s friend was the man who’d gotten fired in his place, Alan Dirsuwalt.

Part of the ‘Fake Me’ series.