Page 88 of The Locker Room

suits, the custom shoes, the countless meals with different teams

(because, according to Leo, they didnotraise their lubricated assholes

foranyonein the NBA unless they expected to become best friends with

a power drill), the asking Penny"s friends to stand in as escorts, in the

end, all of that effort, that role playing, that pretending to be men who

were as ruthless off the court as they were on it, all of that was worth it.

Because in the end, the bestwasthe best. The best was

Sacramento, on a “building” year, when the two of them as rookies were

the most exciting thing the old cow town had seen since Vlade, Peja, C-

Webb, and Bibby had lit it up together on the court eight years before.

The best was a mansion in Folsom, bought together with their signing

bonuses and “pimped out” (Leo"s word) to look like two cocky kids

trying to stay frat boys past their prime.

“What we"re going to do is market Xander as the quiet one and

Chris as the party boy. So the east wing of the house is going to be all

nice, understated shit, austere, that kind of thing—you know, sort of like,

say, that godawful dorm room, except you"re going to let me hire the

decorator—okay, boys?”

The two of them stood in the doorway of the big-assed two-story

house that did, indeed, have an east wing and a west wing, clenching

hands in both awe and horror.

They were going to live here?

“And what"s the other wing going to look like?” Chris asked

dubiously, and he and Xander both looked at each other and grimaced.

God only knew what the little man could come up with to make them

look straight. A room full of synthetic breasts, maybe? A harem? A

harem in the titty room, with an estrogen hookah? What would it take to

Amy Lane

make the two of them look like they weren"t fucking each other? (A