The night Odessa told me about the ad, I didn't sleep. I sat at the kitchen table with Brock's folder open to page eleven, where my sticky note was still waiting.
The paragraph was four lines long.
In the event of an unsuccessful attempt, all footage became the property of Updraft Athletics, "for use in any promotional context." I had read it twice the first time. I had not asked what it was for. Now I knew.
Odessa had sent me a still from the ad. It was a dark gym, not ours, with a single beam of light on a hoop.
White text faded in across the bottom. It said: "Lightning doesn't strike twice. Train like it won't."
Then four seconds of black, with a label in the corner. KOVAC MISS — INSERT HERE.
After that, the Halo Four, rotating slowly on a pedestal, very white.
I told Walt at seven the next morning, in the shop, before the first call came in. I showed him the still on my phone.
He looked at it the way he looks at a water heater someone has installed upside down. Not angry yet. Just confirming what he was seeing.
"So they want me to miss," he said.
"They want it either way," I said. "If you make it, they get a commercial. If you miss, they get a different commercial."
"A different moment," said Walt. He had read my sticky note. Of course he had. It was on the desk.
He set his coffee down. He picked up an elbow fitting and held it for a moment. Then he put it in the bucket by hand, which he had never done in his life.
"I'm out," he said. "Call Brock. Tell him I'm out."
"Walt, the gym—"
"I know about the gym." His voice went up for the first time in years. "I know about the gym, Tess. I've known about that drain since 2009."
He took a breath. "I told them it would collapse. Nobody listened. Now I'm supposed to fix it by being a joke on clips.com?"
"You're not a joke."
"I'm a four-second gap with my name on it."
I called Brock. He came to the shop that afternoon in a different pair of unreleased sneakers. These were gray, with an orange sole. He told us their name before we asked.
"The Ember," he said. "Next spring. Very limited."
"We saw the ad," I said.
Brock didn't blink. He sat down in the customer chair, the one without the P-traps. He crossed one leg over the other so we could see the orange sole.
"Okay," he said. "So you saw it. Let's talk about it like adults."
"Let's," said Walt.
"Nobody at Updraft thinks you're going to make that shot, Walt. Nobody. Our data people ran the odds. They put it at roughly one in two thousand for a professional."
He spread his hands. "So we made two ads. That's not cruelty. That's planning."
"It's planning for me to fail," Walt said.
"It's planning for what happens." Brock leaned forward. "Here's the thing nobody tells you. Misses sell."
"Misses," I said.
"People love a guy who almost did it. 'Lightning Doesn't Strike Twice' tested better than the make version. People said it felt human."
"I'm human now," said Walt. "Before, I was a plumber."
Brock smiled, as if this were an extremely good line he planned to use later.
"You'd still be paid. A miss gets you nothing under the contract, but we'd do an appearance fee. Five thousand. For your time."
I looked at the quote from the city's contractor, which I had pinned to the corkboard behind my desk. Forty-nine thousand eight hundred. Five thousand would fix about one tenth of a floor.
"No," said Walt.
Brock stood. He buttoned his jacket. For a second I thought he looked sorry, but it was hard to tell with Brock. His face only had settings for pitching and for having pitched.
"Think about it," he said. "Sleep on it. The stream's in nine days. Clips.com has already put it on the front-page schedule."
"I know," I said. "I know the person who schedules it."
Brock paused at the door, then left. Walt waited until the car was gone.
"You posted it," he said quietly.
It took me a second. "What?"
"The clip. You posted it. I didn't ask you to."
"I post everything," I said. "I post clogs. I posted a clog that looked like a seahorse."
"It was a good clog," said Walt. "That's not the point."
We didn't speak for two days, which is a long time in a shop with one office and one truck.
He took his calls from the truck. I texted him addresses, and he texted back "ok."
I sent invoices. I did not keep the book, because there was nothing to keep.
The clip stayed number one on clips.com for most of those two days. The replay counter went past ninety million. I watched it sometimes, at my desk, when nobody was calling. I watched my own thumb, pink and steady in the corner, and I wondered if I'd done this to him.
On the second day, Dennis came by the shop with a box of donuts from the bakery near his school. He set it on my desk. He adjusted both braces.
"I'm here to mediate," he said. "I've done it for the chemistry department for nine years. I'm very good."
"We're not fighting," I said.
"Walt texted me 'ok' four times yesterday," said Dennis. "He's never texted me 'ok.' He texts 'k.'"
I took a donut. "He thinks I made him into a joke."
"You didn't." Dennis took a donut too.
"Clips.com made him into a hero. Updraft is the one trying to make him a joke. Different departments."
"He's quitting."
"I know. He told me."
Dennis chewed thoughtfully. "He also said something else. He said he can't do the shot because he doesn't know how he did the first one."
He brushed sugar off his braces. "He said it's like a leak you can't find. You know it's there, but you can't put your hand on it."
That sounded like Walt. That sounded exactly like Walt.
Marisol took the news better than anyone. I went to the gym that Thursday to tell her in person. She was mopping the far corner, because it was raining, and it was always raining.
"I didn't expect the money," she said. "I want you to know that. I expected March first. I still expect March first."
"He feels terrible," I said.
"He shouldn't." She leaned on the mop. "Your brother has fixed every toilet in this building for nothing since 2011."
"Every toilet?"
"He snaked the showers twice. He replaced the fountain by the lobby with one he took off a job. If anyone has paid for this gym, it's him."
I hadn't known about the fountain. I wrote it down later.
"I keep thinking," Marisol said, "that the one thing anyone ever saw happen in this gym was a mistake. Fifty years of games. Everybody remembers a mistake."
"It wasn't a mistake," I said. "It was a pass."
She smiled at that. Then she went back to mopping.
At eleven that night, my phone rang. It was Marisol, which had never happened before.
"Your brother is in the gym," she said.
"Now?"
"He's been here two hours. He asked for the key, and I gave it to him."
She hesitated. "I didn't think I should say no to him, of all people. He's not using a basketball. You should come see."
I drove over in my coat and slippers. The gym lights were on, only the half over the far basket. The rest of the floor was in shadow. Rain was ticking against the high windows.
Walt was standing on the half-court line. Next to him was a cardboard box from the shop, full of copper elbow fittings. The yellow mop bucket was under the far basket, where it always was, forty-seven feet away.
He picked up a fitting. He threw it two-handed, without a thought, from his chest.
It landed in the bucket. Clank.
"How many?" I asked.
He didn't turn around. "Sixty-three," he said. "In a row."
He picked up another one and threw it. Clank. Then he stopped, looked down at the box, and pushed it aside with his foot.
From under the bleachers, he took out a basketball.
Up next: The Bucket
Continue to Part 5 →