In keeping with the new direction of Retrospect, this story is a bit different; it is true-ish. All the incidents related did happen, but not all on the same day. Roman, and unfortunately Reno and Moretti, were quite real.

In my mind I played so well.

So after supper that Sunday night, when it was a bit cooler, I went over to the playground on Croft Street, to see if maybe Roman could shoot some hoops, test out my new basketball, the official Spalding NBA model. Roman lived right across the street from the playground. The schoolyard over at PS 4 was closer, but Reno and his thugs liked to hang out there; for safety’s sake, I had been avoiding Reno all summer.

I dribbled my way down Orient Street, loving the hollow, ringing ka-ponk ka-ponk sound that the ball made when I bounced it on that stretch of gray slate flagstones that had somehow escaped being replaced with concrete. Only new balls have that sweet sound. I juked back and forth, spinning and faking – he shoots, he scores! In my mind I played so well. In my mind I never bounced the ball off the toe of my Chuck Taylor All Stars, never had my shots swatted back at me and off the top of my head to the great amusement of the onlooking crowd. In my mind I was dancing grace incarnate on the court, and all of my shots went in with a swish of nonexistent braided cotton net as Roseanne looked on from the sidelines, smiling shyly.

I rang the Byliki’s bell. Mrs. Byliki leaned out the third floor window to see who was at the door. I waved at her and inquired as to Roman’s freedom to come out and play. Mrs. B. ducked back in and was replaced by Roman, who said he’d be out in a minute or two.

I crossed the street to the still empty playground and sat on a swing, idly kicking my feet back and forth, eliciting a slight rocking motion. This late, the apartments on the west side of the little park cast it in shadows, but the sun had baked the concrete all day; the faint breeze I made as I swung felt delicious.

Someone had dropped a Popsicle onto the hot pavement near where I sat. Lime. A column of little brown ants flowed and undulated like a tiny Pine Barrens creek between the sticky neon-green puddle and the small crack alongside the leg of the swing set that led to their nest. I imagined being an ant. The nest would be dark and cool, invulnerable beneath the reinforced concrete slab, alive with purposeful activity as my fellow workers and I brought our sweet offerings to the Queen.

Some big kids I didn’t know passed me by. They went into the basketball courts and started playing a casual full-court game. There were only two courts, four hoops, and now two were gone. Roman had better hurry.

I had just gotten to my knees for a closer look at the ants when Roman showed up and asked me if I was there to play ball or give out BJs.

We went through the gate in the high fence that separated the playground from the blacktopped basketball courts. It was Sunday night; hopefully no bigger kids would come along who’d feel like kicking us off the courts.

Someone, maybe the neighborhood drunk whom we all called Ah-Beep-Beep for reasons no one knew, had smashed an empty bottle of Night Train right at center court. Roman and I carefully picked up the larger shards and tossed them into the silver steel-mesh trash basket on the sidelines, which angered the cloud of circling yellow jackets a bit. We kicked as many of the smaller pieces as we could find into the weeds that surrounded the court. We shot fingers (one-twice-three…shoot!) for first ups, and began our own casual game of one-on-one.

I couldn’t dribble worth a damn and had a mediocre lay-up, but I was fast, could jump and was pretty good from the foul line. Roman was taller, stronger and handled the ball better, but couldn’t jump a foot and was so slow that even I could guard him. He usually won, but we were evenly matched enough to make it interesting.

For whatever reason, that evening we were both at the top of what passed for our games. We laughed and shot and dribbled, bouncing one handed lay-ups in off the silver-painted plywood backboard. We’d occasionally manage a steal, which elicited a few good-natured obscenities and dire insults. We even swished a few rimless gems through the tattered rags of old net that clung to the rusty, slightly askew hoops. Once, the gate to the courts opened and closed with a bang; we looked up to see a group of bigger kids, project kids, watching us with smiles on their faces. But it was cool; it was only Tyrone and Scotty and some of their friends. They waved and joined the game on the other court.

Roman and I played until the long summer shadows had faded to dusk. His mother called him in just as the streetlights came on and filled the court with their bilious yellow glow and film noir shadows. He went in right away; the Bylikis were strict. My parents were more tolerant of late hours during the summer, so I kept on shooting.

Soon after, Tyrone and his friends filed out of the court and away. All alone, I played at half-court Hail Mary’s and towering Kareem skyhooks until it was quite dark. Lightning bugs danced and flashed in the weedy lot across the playground. Eventually the Sunday night silence got a bit creepy and I packed it in. I dribbled my way toward the gate and walked right into Reno.

Reno was two years older than I was, but he was one grade behind me in school. He was one of the dangerous kids that the rest of us stayed away from at all costs. He was big, about six feet tall and way over two hundred pounds, immensely strong and much faster than anyone would suspect from his size. He had a soft, quiet voice, and could be unnervingly friendly when he wasn’t hurting or threatening you. Cobra quick, he shot out a huge hand and wrapped it around my wrist in mid-dribble. My new ball bounced forlornly away on the pavement. He tightened his grip and I felt my pulse pounding in my fingertips. He smiled. “Hey, look! It’s the little squealer!” A voice behind him laughed and added “Bust him up, Reno.”

It was Moretti, Reno’s buddy and partner in crime. Moretti was the only person I knew who scared me more than Reno did. Reno was mean, but I was sure that Moretti was crazy. He carried a long switchblade knife, the only one that I had ever seen. Last summer, down by the Puddle, I had watched him use it to slowly gut a live frog.

“Good idea!” Reno continued. “Squealers who won’t share their answers oughta get busted up.” He squeezed harder, twisting, forcing me down toward the ground; I felt the bones in my wrist grind together.

I groaned and bent low, almost falling to my knees, trying to ease the pain and maybe keep him from breaking my arm. Moretti chose that moment to scoop up my ball, cock his arm and peg it, hard, at my head. Of course, with my head no longer where it had been, my faithful NBA Official Spalding smashed right into Reno’s nose.

He dropped my arm and grabbed his face, screaming “You stupid fucking son of a—.” I rolled away and scrambled to my feet. Not waiting to find out if he was madder at me or at Moretti, I sprinted for the other exit from the playground.

Reno was no longer a problem; I could run circles around him all night. But Moretti was fast, my only mid-distance rival in the gym-period races that Mr. Skinner held in the schoolyard. I was a sprinter; if he kept after me long enough, he could run me to ground like a rabbit.

At the gate I made a feint left and cut right, toward home. Moretti, only a few feet behind me, took the bait, then, unbelievably, tripped over my outstretched left leg as I pushed off. We both fell, tumbling and leaving patches of skin on the concrete. I fell in the right direction; as we each scrambled to our feet and resumed the chase, I had gained two critical yards. I tore up the sidewalk, up Croft, back the way I had come, with the playground fence on my right, a solid line of parked cars on my left, Moretti behind and the first gate – with Reno heading for it – coming up fast.

I snuck a look back; Moretti had taken to the street and was moving fast, no closer, but all too close. Reno banged open the gate and came at me, screaming incoherently, blood like war paint streaming from his nose and down his face. I had no choice, so I jumped to my left onto the hood of someone’s car, angled across the trunk of the next one and landed in the street in front of the surprised Moretti. I didn’t fall, didn’t lose a stride, but the leap had cost me a precious couple of seconds. Moretti was nearly close enough to grab me as we raced up Croft St. toward Orient.

Running for my life, my mind spun with possibilities like the One-Spin-Wins wheels at Uncle Milty’s arcade. I had three choices. a left onto Orient was the short way home, a mere block and a half away. But our outer door was locked; I knew because I had locked it. With Moretti following close behind like gleeful death, I’d never make it into the hallway. With the a/c running and the TV on, my parents might never even hear me screaming.

Right on Orient was toward the closed lumberyard, past a couple of blocks of rundown houses, some vacant, others housing equally rundown families. It was, in fact, Moretti’s neighborhood. If he ran me to ground there, they could drag me into a vacant lot and torture me at their leisure behind the tall weeds.

Straight ahead, down Croft, only a long, dark block away, was Broad Street. Broad promised lights, maybe an open store, adults to deter the impending homicide. Right on Broad and a short sprint down was the diner, always open, where there was sure to be a people and a cop or two.

I risked another glance over my left shoulder. I had gained a bit on Moretti, but he knew where I lived and was shying off to the left to intercept me when I made the turn. Amazingly, a look to my right showed Reno, well behind but staying in the chase with the Leviathan implacability of the long trainloads of toxic chemicals that rumbled through town day and night.

Croft it was.

Heedless of cars, I flashed across Orient Ave. and straight down Croft, my legs screaming, my lungs unable to grab enough of the wet August air. I’d just run the fastest hundred-yard dash of my life and then some; I should be breaking the tape in sweet victory by now. But I had to click off another one nearly as fast if I wanted to make it to high school in the fall.

A voice behind me—close behind me—started screaming what it was going to do to me when it caught me. I had lost concentration and Moretti was closing the gap; I couldn’t believe that he found breath enough for threats. I focused on my feet, willing them to find just one more RPM, one more foot per second, to get me to Broad Street before I felt Moretti’s death-grip on my shoulder.

We flew in formation in the darkness, three steps apart, hawk after sparrow, down the center of Croft Street. Past the light and noise of Eddie Braz’s Tavern where my grandfather held forth nightly until he died. Past the Venezia Pizzaria. Past darkened storefronts and stoops where on any summer night but Sunday people would be sitting, drinking cold Piels that they got from Eddie’s in white cardboard containers, chatting in Polish or Spanish, escaping the heat and preventing crime. I could see the neon lights of Broad Street glowing up ahead. I could also hear Moretti’s pounding steps behind me, close. Very close.

I flashed past the gap between a pair of parked tow trucks that belonged to the garage on the corner,  just ahead of Ah-Beep-Beep as he reeled out from between the trucks and stumbled directly into Moretti’s path.

It was all the break I needed. Whether Moretti or Ah-Beep-Beep was seriously injured in the collision I didn’t know or care. Moretti’s screamed obscenities faded as I made a left onto sweet, brightly lit, non-deserted Broad Street and jogged the last block and a half to home at merely near-record pace. All I had to do now was avoid them for the rest of the summer.

The next morning, just after sunrise, I returned to the park. It was still locked, but I didn’t need to climb the fence. I could see my new official NBA basketball. Someone had slit it open and impaled it, like the head of a defeated enemy, on the bright chrome nozzle of the drinking fountain.