The Stiff Upper Lip Read Online Free Page A

inability to handle the English H, that Roscoe Hadley was doing his thing.
    That “Palais des Sports,” stuck in the middle of a shopping center some forty kilometers from Paris, was a little concrete-domed gem of an arena, with a seating capacity of some 5,000 including laps, and it was full to bursting. Maybe le basket hasn’t caught on yet in the capital, but out there in the boondocks of the twenty-first century, where the only competition for the entertainment franc is the tube, Roscoe’s show had them stomping in the aisles.
    And pretty exciting stuff, if you didn’t know any better. Even if you did. The game itself was really two games, one involving four black American giants and the other half a dozen sawed-off Frenchmen who, to judge from the rare moments they touched it, still thought a round ball was something you dribbled with your feet. The match-ups in the two-on-two, though, were pretty unequal, and not only because of Roscoe Hadley. Odessa Grimes was a monumental slab of glistening black granite who looked like he should have been holding up a building instead of two-stepping around a basketball court. He was the kind of player you never notice much until the other team misses a shot, which in this case was often. Call it intimidation, and Odessa Grimes knew how to intimidate. Because whenever the ball came off the hoop, up would go Odessa, bald head and all, crashing the boards like he was going to eat them, the rim and the net too, plus anything that got in his way, man or beast. And down, the ball in his paws, and up, with a flick of the wrists, to fling it out to mid-court, where Roscoe was already breezing in high. A couple of dribbles later, Roscoe would hit the foul line, and then he’d take off. A feint, a twist, a head fake or two—all in mid-air—and then he’d be floating at the hoop, hairdo and all, and it was two more points and “ AD - LAY AD - LAY AD - LAY .”
    Only the referees kept the rout from becoming a stampede. They were French, of course; so was Descartes. According to Descartes’ way of looking at reality, anything that goes up has got to come down, meaning that there was no way you could do what Roscoe did without cheating. Descartes, I guess, never heard of Elgin Baylor and body control, and neither had the French referees. So they called Roscoe for traveling even though his feet never touched the floor, and for charging, goal-tending, grab-assing, and assorted other infractions they thought up on the spot, and the crowd threatened mayhem, which turned into a standing ovation when Roscoe came out with four fouls and a twenty-point lead shortly before half time, followed by another standing ovation when the lead dwindled in the second half and he had to come back on, and when he quit for good, with forty-two points and leaving Odessa Grimes to mop up, you’d have sworn you were in the L.A. Forum and that Baylor, West, and Co. had just put away the Knicks in the seventh game of the finals.
    â€œJust like the good old days,” I said.
    â€œThat’s the trouble,” said Valérie, biting her nails.
    They came out of the arena together, four jolly black giants in blazers and gray flannels. They’d driven down from Paris together, and apparently they did pretty much everything together when the schedules allowed, along with the other brothers who played the European circuits. They came clowning and hotdogging through an admiring crowd like all four of them had won the game. Until, that is, they saw us waiting for them. Then the grins wiped off their faces like erasers sweeping a blackboard. This wasn’t because of Valérie. They could tolerate a white French chick. But I, to judge, was a real conversation-stopper.
    Valérie introduced me around. Nobody shook my hand, though, and when Roscoe allowed as how he was going with us, he had to go palaver with them, and it took the whole tribal bit, complete with palm