Eddie Jones

“Jones, in my office,” Mr. Jarvis bellowed. “Now!”

“God damn it,” Eddie muttered to himself. “What does that asshole want? It’s almost five o’clock and I’ll be damned if I stay late.”

Jarvis was actually a good boss. He was usually easygoing and supportive of his employees but he was nearing the end of his rope with Eddie Jones. Eddie had been a pretty good employee until recently. . .had done excellent work, was punctual and had gotten along well with his colleagues. Lately, however, he had changed. His reports were sloppy and were often completed after deadline; he was surly and argumentative and he regularly arrived late. Today, in fact, he had waltzed into the office at 10:15. The last straw, though, was the Gates report that Eddie had handed in about fifteen minutes ago (several hours late, of course.) Said report was now sitting on Jarvis’s desk like an oracle predicting the loss of the Gates account. The report was missing crucial sections and was chock full of grievous miscalculations. “I’ve had it with this guy,” Jarvis decided.

Eddie didn’t really care that he’d been fired as he left the office, turned left on crowded Seventh Avenue and, along with a huge mass of pedestrians, mindlessly trudged towards the downtown IRT subway train. He stared straight ahead with disinterest and only raised his apathetic eyes as he passed majestic Madison Square Garden, home of the New York Knickerbockers.
Things had not been going too well for Eddie for the past month or so, since Elizabeth had left. They’d been living together for nearly a year and Eddie had intended to ask her to marry him sometime soon. If he were honest with himself, Eddie would have to admit that the breakup had been his fault. At the start, he’d been loving and attentive, had basically treated Elizabeth like a queen. Somewhere along the line, though, he began to take her for granted. On the rare nights that he bothered to stay home, he invariably plopped down in front of the TV and spent the night watching basketball. Most nights he went out with the boys, usually returning well after Liz had retired for the night.
Through it all, Liz loved him and stayed loyal; until, that is, she met a guy at work to whom she was desperately attracted. When, one evening after work, he lured her into the bedroom of his fancy Fifth Avenue apartment, they finally fell together in a frenzy and the next morning Elizabeth told Eddie goodbye.

Eddie had been depressed ever since. He cared nothing for his job and it showed in his performance. He’d tried a few times to patch things up with Liz but she was not interested. He told himself he didn’t care, that he could have any girl he wanted whenever he wanted. Really, it had always been easy for him. But since the breakup it hadn’t been so easy. He’d been in some kind of a slump.

Last night had been typical of his recent struggles. He’d stopped at the Botanica Bar, a notorious pickup place on the Lower Last Side. Like most Thursday nights in Manhattan, the place was packed with what seemed to be a ratio of nearly two girls for every guy. Try as he might, Eddie could not connect with a single good-looking babe. Like a pathetic loser he spent most of the night drinking Jack Daniels and offering stale pickup lines to a growing number of annoyed women. As closing time approached and the crowd had thinned he surveyed the room for what he had decided would be the last time. As he swiveled his stool to get a better look at what the bar had to offer, a brief rush of vertigo nearly got the better of him. Fortunately, he caught himself before falling and with a mixture of amusement and disgust said aloud, “Damn whiskey is kicking my ass.”
Finally managing to gain his balance and focus his drunken eyes, he noticed a redhead alone at a table in the corner. “Damn, she is hot,” he declared. “I wonder why I didn’t notice her before.” He staggered to her table and announced his infatuation and before long he found himself in her bed. The girl was eager and he was willing but somehow he could not get hard. Despite her disappointment, she was sympathetic. “Don’t worry, honey,” she said. “It happens. You just drank a little too much. Just put your hand here and help me get off.” Eddie was embarrassed but compliant and after a time the girl climaxed.

He awoke the next morning with grenades exploding inside his head. He glanced sleepily at the girl beside him and wondered what he’d seen in her last night. He shook his head slowly, carefully trying to avoid increasing the pain in his head. Then he looked at his watch. “Oh shit,” he cried. “I’m late for work.”
The girl stirred and murmured something romantic but he struggled free from her hungry embrace. “Sorry babe,” he said, “but I’ve got to get to work.”
“Whatever,” she replied, angered by his rejection. “Call me sometime. I’m sure next time you’ll be able to get it up.”

Eddie was able to put the incident behind him. It was Friday night and tomorrow morning was what he lived for. Every Saturday he played in a pickup basketball game. It wasn’t Rucker Park or the West Fourth Street court in the Village but the talent at Theodore Roosevelt Playground was pretty good. He was one of the better players and rarely sat, even if his team lost. If the next team needed a player, Eddie was the one they usually picked. All his problems and humiliations faded from his memory when he was balling. Shooting hoops was what made his life worth living.

“It’s too bad I never made it to the NBA,” he thought. “I bet if I’d gone to college my game would have improved enough for me to go pro.”
Eddie had been an above average high school player who dreamed of playing at an elite university but when no scholarship offers came he decided to get a job. When in a certain mood he felt that the need to earn an immediate living was what prevented him from playing in college. He was thinking along those lines when he entered the court on Saturday morning.
Suddenly, he saw the light. “Who am I kidding? I could never play in the NBA. I’m too small and a step too slow and my shot is no better than average. And I jump like the white boy that I am.”

So when he arrived at the game, Eddie was not as ecstatic as usual. Still, he laced up his Jordans and stepped on to the court to warm up, first doing some light stretching, jogging once around the court, practicing a few layups then taking jumpers from different spots. By the time he finished his routine his mind was back in its usual Saturday place.
A small crowd watched as the game began. Eddie glanced at the onlookers and two of them caught his attention. One was a petite black woman with a pretty face ,wearing colorful beads in her braided hair. She caught his eye and offered an alluring smile. He decided that he was playing for this girl today. He meant to impress the hell out of her with his basketball skills.
The other spectator that he noticed was a sunburned, dapper man in a neat, summer-weight suit and a black bow tie. He seemed out of place in this world.

The games began and Eddie was having a great day. His shot was falling and he was out-quicking all defenders on his drives to the basket. Defensively, he was a “man of steal,” intercepting pass after pass and pickpocketing dribblers of the ball. On the final play of the final game, a bitterly contested battle whose score was tied, Eddie stole the ball from Bobby Garcia, the opposing point guard, and raced to the other end of the court. When he got to the foul line he gathered the ball, took two steps and leaped high into the air, finishing the play with a fierce tomahawk dunk. It was the first time he had ever dunked the ball. His ecstatic teammates hoisted him upon their shoulders as the little crowd went berserk. The pretty black girl applauded wildly and shot him a look that told him she was his for the taking. The sunburned little man smiled sardonically and walked slowly toward him.

“Hello, Eddie,” he said as he offered his hand.
My name is Fore. Louis Charles Fore. I have a little proposition for you.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Eddie replied as his eyes searched the park for the girl. “What’s the proposition?”
“I’m a scout for the New York Knicks and we’re looking for a player with skills like yours. We think you’re just what we need to help us break through to the next level. I’ve been authorized to offer you a contract for the rest of this season.”
“Is this some kind of a joke?,” Eddie asked as he continued to look for the girl out of the corner of his eye. “I’m not NBA material.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” Fore said pulling a contract out of his suit pocket and handing Eddie a pen.

Eddie signed and the two men shook hands.

Eddie’s life had been transformed. Within days, he had moved into the Knicks starting lineup, creating a sensation throughout the NBA. The newspapers were full of stories about his rise from nowhere to become the best and most exciting point guard in all basketball. Louis Fore was a fixture behind the Knicks bench, always smiling that devilish smile and seeming to transmit a curious energy in Eddie’s direction. Basking in the adulation of the rabid fans and the energy of Fore, his guardian angel, Eddie carried the Knicks on his back to the top of the Eastern Conference; the World Championship seemed to be on the horizon.

Overnight, he had become a folk hero. Be it at the Garden or any other arena in the country, fans wore Jones jerseys and carried handmade signs of praise. After games he was escorted to clubs where scores of sycophants slapped his back and brought him drinks; beautiful women lined up to lie with him; lucrative endorsements rolled in.

But Eddie was uneasy. Something was wrong. He’d never been this good. He was beginning to suspect, irrationally, he knew, that he was drawing some sort of supernatural strength from Lou Fore. He’d begun to think of the scout, not as a guardian angel, but as a dangerous little devil who was somehow building Eddie up with the help of an evil power.

He was also, inexplicably, uncomfortable with all the feminine attention that was being lavished upon him. Never in his life had he imagined sleeping with a different actress or super-model every night. And yet he felt sexually unfulfilled. He’d been unable to forget that pretty black girl from the playground and he was bewitched by the memory of her dark beauty.

Game 7, NBA Finals; score tied at 100 with 10 seconds left in regulation. The crowd at the Garden is tense as the hated Lakers bring the ball deliberately across half-court. Their plan is to use most of the clock and try to score with a second or two remaining, depriving the Knicks of an opportunity to retaliate. The Lakers figure that the worst case scenario would be a missed shot and the game would go into overtime. With 8 seconds remaining, the Lakers start their offense. Suddenly, Eddie swoops in for a steal, robbing the point guard of the ball in broad daylight. With the speed and the grace of a gazelle, he dribbles towards his basket. The clock runs down and the fans roar as he goes up for a dunk, smiling, soaring Jordan-like more than ten feet into the air, poised to jam the ball through the basket...

Everything had gone dark. There was a strange, arhythmic pressure on his chest. Distant voices floated through the ether and finally made their way, muffled, into his ears. “Come on Eddie, stay with us...Please Eddie, hang on.” He opened his eyes to find himself on his back on the hard pavement of Roosevelt Playground. Bobby Garcia was kneeled over his supine body, administering chest compressions. In the distance he saw Louis Fore, an evil, somehow satisfied smile on his face. Eddie was bewildered and panicked. He struggled for a breath then suddenly smiled and relaxed. The pretty black girl was approaching, her arms outstretched and her large, dark eyes conveying the message that she’d long been awaiting this moment. “Come to me my darling,” the girl whispered. She knelt and gathered him in a suffocating embrace. He hungrily inhaled her earthy scent and his head seemed to fill with a syrupy sweetness. Gradually, he melted into her honeyed darkness where he knew he would remain for eternity.