LEN BIAS: CROSSOVER
A novel
By: Michael D. McClellan | September 19, 2010
It's 3:00 a.m. when we return. Jeff Baxter and Keith Gatlin are asleep, done for the night, and that's fine with me. Both guys are as close to me as brothers, but neither of them do drugs and neither of them know that I've used cocaine. Terry Long and David Gregg are still up, waiting. These guys, they know. They've both bought from Brian Tribble, and along with me have become part of Trib's growing drug enterprise. We go straight to my room, pulling in chairs and a folding table. Long brings the beer and liquor and a six-pack of Pepsi. Gregg turns on the TV. Trib reaches into the brown paper bag and pulls out a mountain of white powder. He laughs at the surprised looks on our faces and passes the Ziploc bag around the table. The weight is both impressive and intimidating, all at the same time. It feels like a sandbag. Soon the powder is being poured into the beer and the Pepsi, and also distributed into neat, evenly spaced rows on the mirror. I snort a line and sit on the edge of my bed, watching the other guys take their turns. Trib chases his line with a spiked Pepsi. Gregg does the same. Long matches them both, drink and line.
We play the stereo low enough to hear anyone on the other side of the door. The suite's main living area provides a natural sound barrier against the other rooms, but we don't want to take any chances. If we hear a door open, we immediately hide the drugs and try to play straight. At least that's the plan. Hopefully we don't forget our predetermined roles when the high kicks in. Fifteen minutes after our first hit we feel that initial jolt of energy. Now we're talking about the Celtics again, about my future, about competing against Michael Jordan. Always Jordan.
There are bags of chips and pretzels on the table but I'm not hungry. Cocaine does that to you. You have no appetite but you feel like you can bench press the world. Your mind is alert and seems to race a million miles an hour, and yet everything seems to run in slow motion. The room feels hot. I strip down to my shorts and undershirt, and the guys all make comments about my physique. I'm ripped. I look like I could play tight-end for the Dallas Cowboys. I proclaim myself a horse, and I pour myself another line, twice as big as the last.
Shame, guilt and fear are nowhere to be found.
~ ~ ~
The questions don't bother me now. I'm stoked up, bragging about how good I'm going to be, how I'm going to force the Celtics to play me major minutes as a rookie. I promise another reverse dunk, like the one against Carolina, and guarantee that it will happen before All-Star Weekend. I also promise to drain a three with my first NBA shot. The guys join in, agreeing with me one minute, telling me I'm full of crap the next. It's all good fun. We give each other five between laughs, and we continue to work on the large white mound of powder in the center of the table.
~ ~ ~
Time gets away from us. It's late - or early, depending on how you want to look at it. The clock reads 5:32 a.m., and even though I haven't slept in twenty-four hours I feel more alive than at any other point in my life. And I feel strong. Invincible. I wish that training camp started this morning, because I would be out there with the best team in basketball, playing like a maniac, trying to impress my new coach. My mind races backwards through the '86 playoffs, and there is Jordan dropping 63 points on the Celtics. He's leaping, flying, contorting. Basket after basket, with three Celtic players draped all over him. Air Jordan. And there is Bird afterwards, a hundred microphones jammed in his face, proclaiming that it was actually God out there on the court disguised as Michael Jordan. I can't wait for my shot at guarding MJ. I can't wait for him to guard me. He can leap but so can I. And I'm bigger than he is, with a better shot and longer range. I'll pull him away from the basket, launch a three, then smother him on defense. I'll post him up on the block. The best going up against the best.
The start of the NBA's great new rivalry.
~ ~ ~
I go back to the mirror several more times over the next hour, bragging about how great I'm going to be and how lucky the Celtics were to draft me. I'm a horse, I proclaim yet again, and lean over the powder and snort another line. Only this time something happens. Something wrong. The air enters my lungs as the cocaine enters my system, and my heart begins to beat wildly out of rhythm. It feels like a train jumping the tracks. It beats hard, then shallow, then not at all. It jumps again. Three fast, heavy beats, and then eight weak beats spaced out at terrifyingly irregular intervals:
Dupp-lub...dupp-lub.................dupp.....lub.............dupp-lub-dupp-lub..........dupp-lub...................dupp-lub.....dupp-lub....
I imagine my heart trying to gulp in blood the way a freshly caught fish struggles to breathe. I drop the straw I'm holding. I shoot straight up and clutch my chest. My face feels numb. My hands tingle with needles, like they're asleep. Trib looks at me and asks if I'm alright. I can't catch my breath. I can't speak. I stumble backward, knocking over a beer. I drop straight down on the bed, my heart still racing but completely out of time, a broken drum machine. Terry Long is standing beside me now. He tells me to lay back, that I'm messed up from all of the cocaine and that I need to take a few minutes and chill. I do as he says and fall back onto the bed. Everything gets worse. My heart is out of control, off the tracks, and I can't do anything to bring it back.
~ ~ ~
The guys stand around the bed, leaning over to get a better look. They're talking to me, to each other, to themselves. High as kites. I can see the fear on their faces. I'm holding my breath, trying for force my heart back into its normal rhythm, but that makes it more erratic. I sit up. I want to stand but can't - my legs are all rubber, the same spring-loaded legs that turned me into a human dunking machine...
My right hand clutches my chest, my fingernails digging against flesh. I try to stay upright but fall back instead. My eyes roll up in my head, and I begin to convulse. My legs shoot straight out. My jaw locks. I can hear panic in the room now, noise to a dying man.
~ ~ ~
I detach again and watch it unfold.
A dream.
This dream. Again.
Terry Long jams a pair of scissors into my mouth, handle first. David Gregg holds my legs down. Brian Tribble picks up the phone and calls his mother - Lenny's having a seizure, he says. He's slurs it. She tells him to call 911. He hangs up and does as she says.
