True Legend (18 page)

THIRTY-SEVEN

C
allie didn't drive a Maserati.

Her father had bought her a Kia when she got her license. Not the roomiest front seat in the world—Drew wanted to stretch out his legs, but when he tried to do that, he bumped his knee into the dash.

And winced.

“Hurts that bad?” Callie said, putting the car in gear.

“It just gets stiff after games.”

“I could drop you at your house, if you want.”

“What I want,” he said, “is to go to the library and then go get something to eat.”

He didn't add, “With you.”

On the way into town, Callie asked him about what she called “Lee's accident.” Drew just said that he felt bad because it was really his fault more than Lee's, that Lee would never have taken the car out without Drew saying it was, as he said now,
aight.

“But he was still the one driving,” Callie said. Her hands—beautiful hands, Drew couldn't help but notice—were at perfect driving-manual position on the wheel, ten minutes after ten.

Drew only knew that because Lee had told him one time. He hadn't cracked open his driver's manual yet. Just another book he hadn't opened. A guy on his way to the library.

Drew changed the subject as quickly as he could, got Callie talking about her own team, asking her how many games they
had left and if anybody had a chance to stop them from going into their tournament undefeated for the season.

“We should be good to go,” she said. Just a small smile this time, not even turning her head, eyes on the road. “Long as somebody on our team doesn't borrow somebody's car.”

“You,” he said, “are definitely not feeling
my
pain.”

“Poor baby,” she said.

They laughed together.

She parked in the lot behind the library, said that what she needed to do shouldn't take longer than an hour. If that.

“Do you have to work on your English paper for real,” she said, “or are you just keeping me company before I get you fed?”

“For real,” he said.

He wasn't totally sure he needed any more material on playground ballers than he already had. But there was one more book Mr. Shockey had suggested, called
Heaven Is a Playground.

“Just go do your thing. Don't worry about me,” he said. “I've got this one book I need to check. Might not even have to check it
out.
I might just find myself a quiet piece of floor and stretch out my legs and read.”

“Text you when I'm done,” Callie said.

He watched her walk away, this cool girl, even breezing through a library in a way that made you watch her. Drew thinking,
I don't understand girls now, and I never will.

He didn't try now, just went to a computer and punched in the title of the book, found out the author was named Rick Telander. Then Drew had to ask where to find it and what the code meant. He wouldn't have admitted this to Callie, but he had never been inside the library before.

And Agoura Hills, for a small town, had a big one, three levels, looking pretty much brand-new to Drew. It turned out
Heaven Is a Playground
was on the third level, all the way in the back. Drew made a couple of wrong turns getting there and twice found himself in the wrong stacks before finally managing to locate the book.

It was even quieter up there than it had been downstairs.

He hadn't brought a notebook, since he wasn't planning to be there, but he decided that if he found something he could use, he would walk himself back downstairs and get the first library card of his life.

On his way into the stacks, he'd seen this open area with chairs and a couch overlooking one of the town parks. But the chairs and couch were taken. So Drew decided the stacks were fine; there was a nice soft carpet on the floor. He'd noticed an empty spot near a window, bright light coming in, and decided to head there.

He made sure his cell was on vibrate, and powered up, not wanting to miss Callie's text if she finished early.

Came around a corner and stopped.

The man with the hotel room full of books sat surrounded by them now.

THIRTY-EIGHT

L
eave me alone.” His voice was like some sad note from the jazz music Legend liked.

He didn't say “
please
leave me alone,” but Drew heard it anyway in Legend's quiet library voice, like he was asking and not telling.

“I can't,” Drew said. “You got to know that by now. If I was gonna let you be, I would have done it in the park that first night.”

“I ran then.”

“I didn't run after you,” Drew said, “but I started following you just the same.”

“All the way here,” Legend said. “Funny . . . I didn't take you for the library type.”

“This time I wasn't following, I just found you. Like it was meant to be.”

“What's meant to be is what I am,” Legend Sellers said. “And you can't change that, and neither can I.”

“Bull,” Drew said.

Sitting there, Legend looked older today. Smaller. And sadder. He made no move to get up or go anywhere, just put down the book he was reading. Drew saw it was called
Out of Sight
, which he thought was a movie with J-Lo and George Clooney.

Drew made a motion with his hand that asked if it was all right to sit down next to him.

“What am I gonna say, no?” Legend said. “You're more stubborn than I am, which might make you the most stubborn guy ever.”

The older man watched Drew sit himself down, get his legs out in front of him, seeing the effort it took to stretch out the bad knee.

“You get that looked at?”

“It's getting better. I played today.”

“Your team win?”

Not asking how Drew had done. How the team had done.

“Yeah.”

They sat there for a minute, the quiet between them just part of the quiet all around until Drew finally said, “You promised.”

“Promised what?”

“You wouldn't run.”

“I did.”

“You lied.”

Legend said, “I wasn't lying when I said it. You can believe that or not. But that's what happens sometimes. What they call in books the law of unintended consequences. Stuff you say turns out to be the opposite of what you do, and that turns out to be the same as a lie. But you can't stop yourself. And that
is
the truth.”

“Nobody made you run.”

The man made a sound that was like a laugh that didn't make it all the way out of his throat. “I made me.”

“Why?”

In a whisper, Legend said, “Because I'm afraid.”

“Of what?” There was another long pause. Drew turned himself so he could watch the man's face.

Legend's eyes were closed.

“Afraid of stepping back into the light,” he said.

“What about your job?” Drew said. “What about your place to live and your talk about getting a degree? Maybe even going on to college?”

“I wasn't ready,” Legend said, eyes still closed. “Because I'm never gonna be ready to take that step, or the one after it, or the one after that. It's the same as in ball. When you're growin' up, there's finally a game you're not ready for.”

Drew nodded his head, yeah, like he understood, even though he didn't—there'd never been that kind of game for him, even when he was the littlest and youngest one on the playgrounds back in the Bronx.

Legend said, “I can't make myself into something more. It's too late for that. This is who I am. Maybe who I was always gonna be.”

Opening his eyes, putting those sad eyes on Drew now, hard.

“Liar,” Drew said.

“Leave me alone, boy. Leave me
be
. This here, the bust-out you're looking at, I took a good look at him the last few days. This is me. The rest of it is just dreams. Just worry about your own.”

“Too late.”

“No!”
His voice got louder. He dialed it right back down. “No. It's too late for me to go back to being Urban Sellers.”

Now Drew was the one putting a loud voice on him.
“No!”
he said back to him. Imagining his voice carrying all the way down to the front desk, or to wherever Callie was.

“You're just a punk kid. Your whole life, you only cared about yourself, playing ball, and now you're gonna make things right for me? Who do you think you are?”

The answer came from Seth Gilbert, all the times he'd said this to Drew: “I'm your guy.”

Legend actually laughed, but not in a mean way. “Are you, now?” he said. “And how do you know I won't run again?”

“You can try,” Drew said. “But you're not as fast as me. Probably never were.”

“You say.”

“I
know,
old man.”

And for the first time today, he saw some life in Legend, some little spark in his eyes.

“You're trash-talkin' me now . . . in a library?”

“Word,” Drew said.

“All just words today,” Legend said, “that neither one of us can back up.”

Drew said, “If you didn't want to be found, you would've run farther than this. But you didn't.”

Legend closed his eyes, looking tired again, and said, “You got no way of understanding this, but as you get older, your world gets bigger or it gets smaller.” He let his breath out now, almost like he'd been holding it all in. “I didn't run farther on account of I got nowhere else to go.”

“Where are you living?”

“Got myself a room at the Y.”

“Never thought to look there.”

“Shouldn't've bothered to look anywhere.”

“Give up? You got to know that's not me. Tell me I
can't
do something? Now you have lost your mind.”

“I may have underestimated you.”

They just sat there, both of them comfortable with the quiet. Or maybe just comfortable being with each other.

“How's that paper of yours comin'?”

“Comin'.”

“Doin' it on your own for once?”

“Couldn't find anybody smart to help me out with it. So, yeah.”

“Look at you. Just another Hemingway.”

They laughed at the same moment. Something else too loud for the library, even with the two of them stuck back here. This time they heard somebody shushing them. Drew looked up and smiled.

“So I see you made a library friend,” Legend said.

Callie was standing there, hands on hips, smiling.

“I did,” Drew said.

And without hesitating or asking for permission, Drew introduced her to Urban Sellers. By name. And her to him.

Legend didn't hesitate, either, stepped forward, took off his Lakers cap, put out his hand. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. Even gave her a little bow.

Drew had stepped back to give them room. Or maybe just to take it all in.

As he did he noticed something: the last of the afternoon sun coming through the window, hitting Legend square.

Like he really had come back into the light.

THIRTY-NINE

C
allie drove them all to the Y, about four blocks from the train station. Legend had collected his bag, which was mostly filled with the five or six books he hadn't put into storage.

Then they went back to the Conejo Valley Hotel.

The man behind the desk seemed about as interested in Legend's return as the fly buzzing around above his head. “You're back,” he said, sliding a room key across to him.

“Miss me?”

“Oh, something terrible.”

Drew asked if Legend wanted them to help move the boxes of books back in tonight. Legend said no, he was tired, he could manage tomorrow.

“Tomorrow you meet Mr. Shockey,” Drew said. “World's greatest English teacher.”

“You being such an expert on English, and teachers,” Legend said. Turning back into his old self, right in front of Drew's eyes. “You told him about me?”

“Not your real name. And not
all
about you. I told him I couldn't tell everything about you in a paper. You got one of those lives that if you wrote it all, people would think it was made up.”

“Sometimes I get to thinking maybe it was.”

They were in the room now, Legend sitting on his bed.

“Nah, it's real,” Callie said. “Like us being here with you is real. You got two point guards with you, not one. How can you lose?”

“Got real good at that over time.”

Callie said, “Yeah, but I hate to lose.”

Legend said, “As much as him?”

She put one of her best Callie smiles on him and said, “Not so sure about that. Someday I'll tell you about this game of H-O-R-S-E we played one time.”

Drew said to Legend, “I have to know something. You gonna be here tomorrow when we come back to get you?”

Legend nodded.

“We're clear on that, right?”

“Clear,” Legend said. He looked over at Callie then and said, “The young man will tell you. I took this fall a long time ago, thought it was the worst thing ever happened to me. But it turned out to be the easy part.”

• • •

On the way back to the best burger place in Thousand Oaks, called P & L, Drew told her as much of the story as he could fit into the short ride, including the fall in the club.

“It's hard to see him as that guy,” Callie said. “He seems so sweet.”

“Sweet?
Legend?
” Drew shook his head. “Only because you were around.”

“Nah,” she said, “it's in him. I can always spot it when it's in somebody. She gave Drew a quick look, just with her eyes, and said, “It just takes more work with some people than others.”

They went inside and ate like fools and then had banana splits for dessert, and when they were finished with the banana splits, they just sat and talked. So it was nearly eleven o'clock when they finally pulled up in front of Drew's house.

Even then, he didn't get out of the car right away.

Callie shut off the engine, like she wasn't ready to call it a night, either.

“You think he'll be there tomorrow like he said?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“And you think he'll see things through once you get him with Mr. S?”

“Not a clue.”

Now they sat there in silence until Callie said, “Well, a pretty interesting first date, all in all.”

“Is that what this was?”

She leaned forward, before Drew had any idea what was going to happen next, and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

“Well, it sure was a lot better than H-O-R-S-E,” she said.

When her car was out of sight, Drew ran for his house. Feeling as fast as he ever had.

In that moment, feeling no pain.