Ficciones

Traveling .................................................................................................................................................

Refereeing a pickup basketball game is an art form like any other, one that Jookie is exceptionally suited for. “Traveling! Traveling!” he pronounced vigorously, clenching his fists and rolling his forearms over one another in a disco-style motion. “Come on Jookie man, I get my two steps! Where my two steps at Jook?!” He grabbed the ball from the offender who stood a solid foot taller, and with a misplaced confidence that assured him the color of authority, he gripped the ball with his left hand, snapped his right arm erect, pointed his finger toward the far basket, and blew his whistle hard. With his black and white polyester shirt form fitting and cleanly pressed, he declared, “Skins basketball! Play on!”

Jack Mann has worked the street courts since he was sixteen, and has refereed pickup and organized games under the Jookie moniker for even longer. His career began somewhat officially in the second grade at Our Lady of Faith and Earnestness Preparatory School for Boys during physical education when Father McReynolds - who later declined into a rabid atheism due to the Boston Red Sox’s biblical World Series failures –stepped out for a cigarette during kickball one afternoon and designated Jookie as “the ref pro tempore.” In class he was rather dull and was once accused by a particularly surly nun of infecting the children with his malaise. But with a whistle hanging from his neck, Jookie was vibrant and deft in his movements: strictly enforcing the no pegging rule with a do-over, ordering the pitches with even the slightest of spin to be re-rolled, and preventing the impatient from leading off before the ball was kicked.

It was not the power that intoxicated him, but the boldness of the structure. A referee is not subject to the momentum of the game, nor does he draft the rules; the referee sustains logic, balancing chaos within the organization of principles. His passion for the craft began soon after the absurd death of his elderly parents, who did not survive the eighty-six foot drop from atop the Cyclone roller coaster in Coney Island. The farcical nature of the event never completely abandoned him.

On a whim, he took a long weekend licensing course at the Five Star Basketball Referee Camp in Monticello. It was there that his professors introduced Jookie to the spirituality of rules. As the memory of his parents accentuated the absurd, the High School Basketball Rulebook and Guidelines to Officiating offered him the elegance of design. It was not the actual rules that resonated with him so profoundly, but the exception to the rule, or the exception to the exception. He admired the minor distinction between a player’s grace flouting the laws of gravity and a traveling violation. He was fascinated by luck and those with a talent for fortuity. Watching a ball bounce off a point guard’s foot and roll through the defender’s legs into the hands of a wide open center under the basket who slammed the ball home, made Jookie question the makeup of chance. Perhaps the untended consequences of formulated plays were not arbitrary, but some form of accidental sagacity that escaped him.

Nearly a decade after the death of his parents, Jookie still lives in the same gabled attic bedroom in The Bayside Manor for Assisted Living and Mature Adults that he shared with his geriatric parents. The room remains in its identical state, regally decorated with Persian rugs, assorted antique bric-a-brac, and Victorian furniture that impose a certain amount of gravity onto the room. It is the largest room at the Bayside Manor and aside from Matteo, none of the other residents has braved the extra flight of steep, narrow stairs that lead into Jookie’s room. He insisted on keeping everything from the monogrammed Limoge china to the burgundy Louis XV Provençal chaise lounge immaculate and orderly. He sleeps in his deceased parents’ canopy bed, on a king size mattress nestled in a mahogany frame ornately crafted to resemble a sailing ship. On warm nights he falls asleep to the whoosh of cars passing on the street below. Late at night when the traffic moves fluidly, the flow of passing cars is indistinguishable from the sound of breaking waves.

After his parents died, Matteo, the owner-slash-manager of the Bayside Manor, let Jookie stay on in exchange for certain duties and upkeep. Jookie liked Matteo enough, but was always skeptical of Matteo’s ambiguous eye color that moved freely between blue and green. His movements were so exaggerated, and intonations so punchy that Matteo exists as if being filmed. He spoke perfect English in a Puerto Rican accent to Jookie, but when conversing with the eclectic mix of immigrant residents that stayed at the Bayside Manor, his articulation decomposed into fractured sentences of broken English. He would tell Jookie, “Remember, lock the front gate and courtyard before sleeping.” When Mi-Hoh, the resident Chinese gardener who shared a 300 square foot room with his twin sister Mi-Heh, was asked to perform the same function the order was translated into “lock door – before sleep.” To which Mi-Hoh replied, “Yes sir, Mr. Matteo, right away sir. Would you like me to lock the courtyard as well?”
“Yes, lock-garden.”
“Matteo, you realize Mi-Hoh used to be a Physics professor in China,” Jookie would remind him.
“Hey puto, he also sleeps in the same bed as his sister, your point is what?”

In addition to the occasional cooking and upkeep of the Queens brownstone, Jookie was asked to run the bank during Monopoly night, officiate over the Sunday afternoon bocce ball tournament, and to deal out the weekly poker game in Mr. Mandelbaum’s suite.
“Jack, my friend, tell me again, who is stronger the flush or the straight?” Asked Mr. Mandelbaum.
“The flush.”
“Yes, of course, the flush. Otherwise, you’d always be full of shit. How can one forget such a thing?” Konrad Adenauer Mandelbaum is the only person who calls him Jack. Outside of his duties as Entertainment Coordinator, Jookie’s most intimate responsibility is the many tasks that consists of caring for Mr. Mandelbaum’s morning routine.

“Jack buddy, get this bedpan out of here, I can smell my own stink.” Nothing disgusted Jookie more than quickly walking a bedpan swirling with feces and urine to the toilet. He made the mistake of wearing sandals only once, and never entered Mr. Mandelbaum’s quarters without gloves.
“Give me a sec over here, can’t you see I’m switching tanks. I got you some of that fresh oxygen you like.”
“Oxygen is good, Nitrous is better. Do you me a favor and unplug that thing. It’ll be better for the both of us. I get to dance with the ex-wives in heaven, and you’ll have one less old schlump to bother with. Deal?”
"No deal. Why do you feel the need to bust my balls this early in the morning?”
“Who’s busting balls? I’m only massaging, a mild rubbing at best. Be a good kid and get me my hand towel. I’m schvitzing over here.”
“You’re always sweating Mr. Mandelbaum. That’s what you do, sweat, shit, and bitch.”
“I’m Austrian, we’re hot-blooded.” Mr. Mandelbaum ran a steady temperature of 99.9 degrees Fahrenheit at all times and had been slated to pass away “in a matter of weeks” for the last three years. To his dismay and with the aid of numerous machines, implanted technological devices, and a robust regime of pharmaceuticals, he survives rather remarkably with a high running temperature that simultaneously fends off infection and renders him just ill enough to teeter on the cusp of death. He has spent his last remaining years bed-ridden at the Bayside Manor watching daytime television and reading assorted newspapers and periodicals. “Just take your meds so I can be out of here,” Jookie said impatiently. Slipping a pill into the back of his throat and forcing it down without water, Mr. Mandelbaum replies half swallowing, “Enough of this white man’s medicine already.”

In his spare time, Jookie picked up a few functional hobbies. He spent afternoons liberating plastic bags captured by the menacing branches of city trees. He manufactured a retractable device from a series of plastic broomstick handles and a metal coat hangar that was surprisingly effective in extending, snaring, and then dislodging the filthy bags from their captors. He also assisted Matteo in treating his mild hoarding issues, by gently coaxing his boss to remove a few pieces of mail a week from his junk mail collection that over time has consumed the entire office closet from floor to ceiling.

To only see oneself is a form of blindness. Jookie recognized it in others with contempt, but would never concede it was his most profane vanity. After spending much of his adolescence in the attic, he began harboring an irrational disgust of old people sneezing or coughing. Lying in bed, he cringed beneath the sheets at the symphony of illness hacking and moaning through the thin walls. Fearful they would infect him with the disease of aging, he would shirk from the slightest cough or exit the room if he sensed an ensuing sneeze from any of his geriatric housemates. Much to Mr. Mandelbaum’s amusement, Jookie never ate the cooking at home and avoided the common bathrooms. To reach his bathroom in the attic, he would travel through two lounges, a cafeteria, and two flights of stairs merely to satisfy an ambivalent need to urinate that may or may not have fully ripened. “Do you pee sitting down too?” Mr. Mandelbaum felt obligated to inquire.

Most things were biding time in between opportunities to referee, and all other games were practice in anticipation for the Saturday night doubleheader at the St. Anthony’s Midnight Basketball League. At fifteen dollars a game, refereeing did not cover his grocery bills, but it allowed him the luxury to rightfully claim to be a professional referee.

The midnight league drew the best players from around the city, and after a brief transitory period they learned to respect Jookie as a “for real” referee. He never bought into the conventional wisdom that the best referee is the one you don’t notice. Initially and rightfully so, the players were confused at the level of ardor he brought to the game, and his willingness to call the most obscure of fouls not recognized by amateur athletes. No street-baller had ever been called for an illegal use of the hands before, or had an idea what combination of subtle factors constituted an illegal defense. Soon word got around that Jookie was a “no joke ref,” and that he called a game rigidly, but consistently. Some players knew him from pickup games around the city and even preferred him to what Jookie called “the other hacks that didn’t possess the nuance to distinguish between a pushing and a blocking foul.”

Jookie was never comfortable telling people that he was professionally schooled as a basketball referee. Despite his formal training, he considered himself self-taught. They may have taught him the rules, but Jookie claimed, “No one can teach you passion.” He was convinced that he reffed “on a more philosophical level” and “on instinct with an inherent feeling for the flow of the game.”

During the second game that began after 2:00 am, he noticed a mild decline in the geometry of his craft. He did not favor the Austin Street Crew initially, but late in the game he caught himself unconsciously leaning ambiguous calls in their favor. Jookie knew a few of the Austin Crew guys from the neighborhood, but he held no particular affinity for any of them. He may have admired the natural fluidity of their game, the intimacy of their teamwork, and even their adherence to the rules. To qualify, Jookie never made any obvious bad calls that decisively altered the outcome of the game, but merely called a few extraneous touch fouls on the opposing team, or perhaps leaned toward the Austin Street Crew in a vague out of bounds ball. While not guilty of fixing the game, Jookie realized he had shifted the momentum and exposed himself to the ethical missteps that he prided himself in avoiding through structure and discipline. He allowed himself to wonder briefly if he had always been susceptible to the same transgression or if he only recently entered the realm of moral misconduct that all referees dread.

His initial reaction was to try to brush the incident aside and convince himself that he was just tired, or that it may not have even happened. Skilled in the repression of unpleasant facts, Jookie has been working with a damaged sense of truth since his adolescence in the attic. He had come to believe that problems are not solved, but left behind. In his defense, most people don’t require truth as much as a corroboration of reality.

Jookie was not friendly with everyone at the Manor, but with Mr. Mandelbaum he was fluent in idle chit-chat and able to talk for hours about nothing of substance. After some mild prodding, Jookie began to confide in the old man that both repulsed and intrigued him. There is something cathartic about confiding in a dying man who knows nothing about your life outside of what he is told.

The next morning, he brought the paper into Mr. Mandelbaum’s room and was welcomed with a “What, no coffee?” Mandelbaum read the newspaper from back to front like the Talmud and felt a greater empathy for international affairs than for the local news. “Look at this in the Sahara, they say by 2060 North Africa will be all desert.”
“I thought it was already a desert,” Jookie asked.
“It’s like a desert in here, I’m sweating in places I didn’t know I had.”
“I’ll get you the hand towel,” Jookie responded lethargically.
“Jack, what’s wrong with you this morning? You stay up late coaching the delinquents again? Me, I’m in bed by nine, still I wake up cranky.”
“They’re not delinquents. And I was refereeing, not coaching. Shit, do you listen to anything I say?” Jookie said growing impatient.
“Always so serious Jackie boy, if I taught you anything it’s that solemness is a false virtue.”
“Easy to say for a dying man.”
“And I’d be dead already too, if you’d unplug all this nonsense.” Mr. Mandelbaum retorted.
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
“Listen. Last night at the game, I sort of let it slip. I let my objectivity fade and I made some loose calls for a team of guys I kind of know from around the way. I mean I actually cheated and I’m not really sure why.”
“Because you could, that’s why,” Mr. Mandelbaum interjected.
“I guess… It just felt right, bending the rules just far enough so no one would notice,” Jookie thought aloud.
“Who cares about a bunch of punks playing games past their bedtime?”
“Obviously not you,” Jookie noted peeling of his gloves as he prepared to leave the room. “I take refereeing very seriously. Can’t you respect that?” He asked framed in the doorway.
“Look at me Jack. Look at me attached to these machines buzzing and humming. The only thing I take seriously anymore is irony.” Jookie remained silent for a few awkward moments and closed the door behind him.

It was not the first time that he dabbled in the moral gray area. When he first started out, Jookie would referee pickup basketball games in the projects that people should not do, and much to the amusement of the players and onlookers he was not afraid to cold deck a player who got up in his face. On one occasion after clocking an undersized small forward in the jaw for pushing him into the fence, a melee broke out on the court that erupted into a gunfight where a twelve-year old girl was shot dead. That was last game he worked in Brooklyn.

There was also the occasion when he was asked to clean out Sylvia Neto’s room after she fell down the stairs in the middle of the night and died in a pile in the foyer. In gathering her personal effects he discovered and quickly pocketed $978 in single dollar bills from her underwear drawer, proceeds from her bridge and pinochle swindling in the Queens geriatric community. Similarly, he had always suspected Matteo of running some sort of scam at the Bayside Manor that he was unknowingly complicit in, and had always harbored some vague guilt about it. This time was different. He felt no guilt for his refereeing indiscretion, but guilt for not feeling guilt.

On his way out, Jookie stopped in Matteo’s office, who was looking busy at his desk shuffling papers. “Mi amigo, just the man I was looking for,” Matteo said as Jookie opened the door without knocking. “Make yourself useful cabron, run to Movie City for me and grab a video for movie night.”
“I thought movie night wasn’t until tomorrow?”
“Now its tonight, and don’t bring me anything about dying or with subtitles again, it gets the chochos depressed. Think happy. A romantic comedy or some sappy shit like that.” Matteo remarked still scribbling at his desk.
“I thought you liked the last one, it was Spanish you know.”
“And I’m Puerto Rican, your point is what?” Pulling his glasses up and over his brow revealing a greenish iris for the day, Matteo asked, “How is Mandelbaum holding up?”
“All right, I think. He’s getting crabbier though, he keeps asking me to pull the plug.”
“You would do the same if you had to spend the rest of your life in bed,” Matteo said.
“It doesn’t sound all that bad to me.”
“Don’t be a wiseass.” Matteo placed his glasses on the table slowly, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and creased the skin between his eyebrows in an expression that telegraphed a serious statement was about to ensue. “Look Jookie, the doctor says he doesn’t have much time left.”
“They’ve been saying that since he moved in three years ago,” Jookie reminded him.
“It’s for real this time Jook. Be good to him, he needs you,” Matteo said putting his glasses back on and going back to his paper shuffling. Jookie stood there in silence, staring. “Leave already,” Matteo said without looking up. Jookie rolled his eyes, opened Matteo’s junk mail closet, grabbed his plastic bag snaring tool and a sizeable pile of outdated supermarket circulars, and ran out. “Hey, where you going with my mail? I need those. Pendejo!”

Jookie walked a few blocks until he saw a taupe colored shopping bag, the most common of tree bags, dangling from a lamppost by a single handle. He tossed Matteo’s junk mail in the trash and stretched out the device to its full fifteen-foot reach on the sidewalk and attached the curved hangar to the top. Supporting the butt with one hand and gripping the wobbly contraption with the other, he easily snared the bag, dirty with soot and smog. Still holding the bag-snagger vertical, he caught sight of a pair of sneakers across the street splayed out over an electrical cable. Jookie waited for a green light and crossed the street with the bag-snagger fully extended. In his periphery, he caught sight of a decent ball game starting to brew on the Forest Hills Courts. He finagled the late model Air Force One sneakers from the wire, threw them over his shoulder and headed toward the game.

He did not like refereeing without his uniform and whistle, but they also created additional liabilities in a street game. Before he could recognize any of the players, one recognized him. “Ah man! Not that kid, I’m trying to ball over here, not win no sportsmanship merit badge.” His name was Gregory Anthony Karp, but he went by his graffiti tag of GAK. Jookie remembered him from last night’s midnight league game; he had called a particularly egregious traveling violation against him late in the second half. “Look at this kid with his sloppy hair and raggedy-ass tennis shoes.” Jookie was used to being razzed by players before, but hostility was not something to be taken lightly. As a matter of course, he found staying quiet and handling himself professionally was the best response to aggression.

Jookie sat down by the fence and laced up the well-aged Air Force Ones, which fit snugly around the ankle but were still tolerable. “What you putting on those dogged out kicks for? We ain’t in no gym, no need for a ref out here son,” GAK taunted. The mob separated out into two teams, and began to take warm up shots at their respective baskets. Jookie made his way out toward center court, feeling out the assorted balls, looking for the one with cleanest bounce and about eight pounds of pressure. He usually had an air gauge, but today he dropped the balls from eye level and chose the one that bounced back evenly to his waist. He allowed the players ten minutes for warm-up, before calling over both team captains for tip off. “Look, I want a clean game with no bullshit,” Jookie stated in his customary boxing referee tone. “Oh, call me Mr. Clean bitch!” GAK warned. Jookie waited for the players to gather themselves before he yelled “Game on!” and tossed the ball high and vertical between GAK and the opposing center. Moments before the ball left Jookie’s hand, GAK soared over his opponent, slipped his entire palm beneath the ball, and flung it to his point guard. Jookie noticed the foul instantly and instinctively reached for his phantom whistle. As he realized he had no whistle, the game was already in full swing and GAK’s team had set up their half-court offense. For the first time in his career Jookie decided to not make a call based solely on intimidation. “It’s just not worth it,” he rationalized.

The skill level of the players was tolerable, although like most pickup games, there were more indulgent displays of individual talent than any signs of cohesive teamwork. The game proceeded without much fanfare, he called a few hacking calls that did not elicit any protests beyond the ordinary whining. Jookie was not as concerned with the game as he was with his ability to referee objectively and hold onto the semblance of an orderly world. He desperately wanted to prove with each game he worked that the structure of order, which had initially seduced him to refereeing, was more important than luck or emotion. It had to be, otherwise what was the point?

He refereed much of the game in a philosophical haze, and only started paying attention again when it was nearly over. GAK was posting up near the basket on a smaller defender and inadvertently shuffled his pivot foot. It was the same traveling violation that Jookie called on him about twelve hours ago in the midnight league. He did not want to call the foul and deal with the inevitable confrontation. “If I don’t call it, then what am I even doing here,” he thought. On reflex he shouted, “Traveling! Traveling!” from across the court, quickly rolling his arms over one another. “What the fuck!” GAK exclaimed slamming the ball hard against the blacktop, launching it into the air, over the fence, and down into the crevice where the curb meets the gutter. “You didn’t just call that bullshit on me! Oh no, you-did-not.” GAK shot Jookie a hard glare, and walked quickly toward his gear behind the basket. Jookie saw him shuffling through his gym bag wildly, tossing through his clothes, and intently looking for something. Without hesitation, Jookie took off at full speed and started to run home. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw GAK posturing in the gated entrance to the court, brandishing some sort of weapon in his right hand, while yelling indecipherable taunts at him.

Jookie never broke stride the entire sprint home and panted on the stoop for a couple of minutes before entering the Bayside Manor. “Hola amigo! You look terrible, what crappy video have you brought me today?”
“Leave me alone Matteo, I didn’t bring home a fucking video all right,” he said as he began the long ascent into the attic.
“Gracias maricon!” Matteo shouted as Jookie stumbled up the stairs. After almost crawling up the final set of rickety, narrow stairs into his bedroom, Jookie slammed the door shut and set to fix himself a cup of tea. He undressed slowly as the water boiled, closed the shutters, and lightly sugared the bottom of Limoge teacup before pouring a steaming cup of chamomile. He settled into the chaise lounge with a slim joint and a cup of tea. He blamed himself for falsely believing that dogma is susceptible to common sense and then passed out with his tea still warm.

Jookie awoke in the middle of the night to a cacophony of moans and hacking coughs creeping up from the floors below. He winced in recognition of Mandelbaum’s watery chest cough that wheezed for a long second before it faded into a light whistle. His afternoon nap that lasted into the early hours of the morning infected him with a pseudo-jet lag disorientation. The sound of Mandelbaum’s wheeze and whistle grew progressively louder, and Jookie thought he could feel the warmth of Mandelbaum’s diseased breath surrounding him. He peeled his face off a small pool of warm drawl, crawled out of the chaise lounge, and put on an over-sized terry cloth robe with matching slippers. He opened the shutters and the window to let in the sounds of the street, but the cadence of the wheeze and whistle become unbearable.

Lethargically, he unlocked the door and began the long descent downstairs. The wooden staircase seemed to give more than usual under his feet and he could hear every squeak and crackle of the wood clearly pronounced. He walked down the second staircase and followed the lingering trail of the wheeze and whistle into Mandelbaum’s room. Jookie opened the door and was not surprised to find Mandelbaum wide-awake and sweating profusely. Neither of them spoke. The sound of the machines humming merged with the rhythm of the wet cough. They exchanged glances quickly before Mandelbaum turned his head to face the wall. Jookie stood over the end his bed, silently staring. He walked toward the machines and the knotted wires and cords entangled around one another. Methodically, he pulled each plug from the wall, one at time, until the only sound that remained was the wheeze and whistle. Jookie gently placed his hand into Mandelbaum’s sweaty palm, and could feel the gentle squeeze of recognition. He waited there until the wheeze and whistle gradually dissolved into a gentle hum, and then into silence.