Chapter 4

Cold Showers

Home

TOCAYO
Part 1
Prologue
Playa Norte
Charly the American
A Catholic Education
Cold Showers
A Peruvian Name...
Tossing Armando...
Bob Cousey's Shorts
Inside Immaculada
Warming the Bench...
A Little Socrates...
Running From Lola
Ping Pong Politics
A Perfect Basketball Day
A Man Needs His Friends
A Pig In a Hole
Condors Over Ticlio
Wrestling in the Plaza
Handcuffs and Curfews
Rochabus
A Hero Hiding
Hitting A Brick Wall
Part 2

Back in the locker room I put on my entire school uniform, including the blazer, but didn't bother to button my collar or tie my tie, a privilege of the late hour. I stuffed my wet clothes and sneakers into my gym bag and slung its weight over my shoulder. It tugged my blazer to one side. Adjusting the strap to make it more comfortable, I walked heavily out of the locker room and grunted good-bye to Coach Phil Rink, who was sitting in his office, figuring out how to teach us basketball the following week.

On my way out I heard a basketball echoing in the gym. What lunatic would want to be anywhere near a basketball after this week, I asked myself, but knew the answer before I had finished asking the question. I turned around and walked to the basketball court. On the court, under the basket, Charly was walking around, sweating and breathing hard, speaking to the floor.

The gringo was tall, perhaps 6-2, maybe 6-3, with long arms like me. I had watched him all week. He looked like a great basketball player to me, but I had never seen a great basketball player play basketball, so I was just guessing. It did not matter. He was many years better, perhaps a generation or two better, than anyone on our team.

I shrugged the gym bag off my shoulder and let it drop to the floor, where it landed with a loud slap. Charly stopped what he was doing and looked up at me. “Tell me, gringo,” I asked him in English, “Do you not ever get tired?"

Charly stared at me, as if he were trying to understand the question, then explained himself. "I have this move," he replied in English. As he spoke, he walked through his actions in slow motion. "I just blew past my man, see? ... I'm driving up the left side, and out of nowhere their big man appears." His face lit up in mock American astonishment. "I’m covered and there's nowhere to go, you know? What am I gonna do? What I’m gonna do is shift my body and slice across the front of him." Charly skipped to the other side of the basket, catching up with his story. "Protect the ball with my body and lay it up under the other side of the basket. . . swish!" He tossed the ball at the backboard with a special spin and it dropped through the basket and the net. "Two points."

He had never said so many words to me. Or to anyone, as far as I could tell. In fact, for the short time that I had known him, he seemed to live his life holding his breath. Only now, on the basketball court, did he seem to be breathing. It was a dramatic transformation. A drop of water, a reminder of my baptism in the cold shower, slid off my wet scalp and wriggled down my left cheek. I wiped it off with a forefinger. "How are you going to get from there. . . to there?" I asked him.