Blasphemy by Sherman Alexie Page A

way he’d moved them for nineteen years, and after she’d chewed on his collarbone and pulled his hair and sucked on his lips in the same way she had for those same nineteen years, and after they’d had the most recent orgasms of a one-thousand-orgasm marriage, they laughed again.
    “Damn,” she said. “That was efficient.”
    “Teamwork,” Joey said.
    Later that night, unable to sleep, Joey tried to sneak out of bed.
    “Hey,” she said. “Are you okay?”
    “No,” Joey said.
    “What’s wrong?” she asked.
    “I keep thinking about Ed. I was pretty hard on him today. I want to apologize.”
    “It’s three in the morning. You can’t call him this late.”
    “I’m not going to call him. I’m going over to see him.”
    “You’re crazy,” she said. “He’s crazy. Basketball just makes you guys crazy.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Joey said. But she was right. Ed’s ex-wife, Joey’s cousin, had actually claimed that Ed’s hoops habit—he played at least three times a week—was an irreconcilable difference. And the judge had mockingly agreed.
    “Just don’t divorce me because of ball,” Joey said.
    “Just don’t wake up the boys,” Sharon said.
    She rolled over and went back to sleep. Joey got dressed, warmed up his car, and drove toward Big Ed’s apartment building. Divorced for two years, Ed lived in a studio apartment with his plasma television. It was a much better relationship than the one he’d had with his wife.
    “I don’t miss her,” Ed had said more than once. “But I miss seeing my son every day. And I miss seeing us all together, you know?”
    Joey knew.
    On his way to Ed’s place, Joey noticed a lone figure shooting hoops on the St. Jerome basketball court. It was too dark and far for Joey to be sure, but the night-shift hoopster was approximately the same size and shape as Big Ed.
    Joey pulled over, turned off the car, and watched the maybe-Ed shoot and miss jump shot after jump shot. Joey kept score.
    Miss. Off the front rim.
    Miss. Off the side of the backboard.
    Miss. Front rim.
    Miss. Off the top of the backboard.
    Miss. Front rim.
    Air ball.
    Joey watched the man, unguarded and alone on the court, miss twenty-one jump shots in a row. In the dark, in such a large but quiet city, it was an eerie display of ineptitude.
    Then maybe-Ed dribbled left and right and took a running jump shot and scudded it off the bottom of the rim. Maybe-Ed angrily grabbed the rebound and threw the ball as hard and far as he could. It flew maybe fifty feet through the air, bounced through a parking lot, rolled across the manicured grass, and came to a rest at the base of a pine tree.
    “Nice shot,” Joey said to himself.
    Maybe-Ed walked to center court, perhaps in initial pursuit of the ball, but he stopped and stood still for an impossibly long time. Joey wondered how a person could stand so motionless for—yes, Joey kept checking his watch—twenty-three damn minutes. Joey wondered if this maybe-Ed needed help but, Jesus, what could he do to help anyway? Maybe this guy was some schizophrenic transient who was stuck in some dreamworld. Maybe this homeless hoopster was dangerous.
    Two or three times, Joey told himself to start the car and drive away. What kind of sad bastard, homeless or not, plays basketball in the middle of the night? But worse, what kind of hoopster turns himself into a goddamn statue in the middle of that night?
    And then, finally, this maybe-Ed—Screw that, Joey decided, it had to be Ed; yes, it was Ed—walked off the court, away from the basketball, and disappeared into the dark.
    “Jesus,” Joey said aloud, and made the Sign of the Cross. He wasn’t Catholic—he wasn’t a Christian at all—but he knew he’d watched something unbeatific happen on a Catholic basketball court.
    “Jesus,” Joey said again, just to be sure.
    Soon after that, Joey started his car and drove back home. Inside the house, he took off his clothes—he was naked for the fourth time that