Part 8 (1/2)

Now? Now flight attendants look at Jumbo and think about where the defibrillator is stowed. At such moments as this-asking for a seat-belt extension-no one can possibly loathe Jumbo Cashew as much as Jumbo Cashew loathes himself.

Jumbo is not the only pa.s.senger on his way to the Heat game. Adrift on this morning's Vike, Jumbo can't be certain that the entire posse is aboard-but that tall rumpled gent in a track suit a few rows back is certainly Lynn Merritt, LeBron's Nike shadow, the same jamoke who strong-armed the dunk tape last summer. And the handsome young fellow with the fade in the seat in front of Jumbo-could that be Rich Paul, one of James's Akron friends and business partners?

Jumbo hopes so: he would hate to be inflicting this searing flatulence, ripe with last night's burrito and guacamole, on a complete stranger.

At baggage claim, I spot Lynn Merritt and ask if he knows of an extra singleton to the Heat opener tomorrow night. My question is for sport and also serious: I requested credentials from the Heat more than a week ago, but Tim Donovan hasn't yet seen fit to answer yes or no.

Merritt eyes Jumbo with surly amus.e.m.e.nt. Despite our paths crossing last season outside the Cavs locker room before and after a score or more of games, he is either unable to place the silvered land walrus in front of him now, or unwilling to proffer a hint of recognition. His smile is tight, disapproving, as if he finds my presumption that he is in town for a basketball game insulting.

”You can't afford to sit where we sit,” Merritt says.

How much?

”Twenty-five thousand dollars. But they're not for sale.”

You must be sitting next to LeBron.

”That's right.”

Merritt hauls a mammoth Nike duffel off the carousel and wheels it away.

Jumbo's Samsonite is heavy with Luna Bars. A rented Malibu, a bed at the Marriott Biscayne Bay, plenty of pills: Jumbo on the loose, riding high. Maybe too high to drive. He takes refuge in a Starbucks. The face of the barista there carries him back to the tiny village in Ukraine where John Demjanjuk was born, where Jumbo interviewed a one-legged nonagenarian farmer who had been Demjanjuk's boyhood chum and whose granddaughter looked just like Bobby Kennedy's daughter Kerry and the airport barista.

Her feet were dirt-crusted, her thighs firm, her smile sunny. Beaming, she showed him two piglets squealing in the barn, but Jumbo could hear a deeper snuffling close by and beseeched the interpreter to ask Kerry about it. Kerry giggled, and drew with her outstretched hands the shape of the creature hidden by a low door at the side of the barn, then opened the door to reveal the Shaquille O'Neal of hogs.

Something she says makes the interpreter laugh.

”You remind her of the sow,” the interpreter says.

Jumbo tells the interpreter to ask where the nearest Jew is buried.

The interpreter shrugs, one hand raised, puzzled.

The guard at the rental-car gate says he knows someone selling tickets to the Heat game, and he writes his phone number on my Thrifty envelope. I can't even remember the drive to the Marriott. I make a mental note not to take the Valium together with the Vicodin.

I can use a nap. I can always use a nap.

I wake up to find two new e-mails. The one from big Z says he has family visiting and won't be able to meet with me while I'm in town. The other one is from Tim Donovan: ”We can't do tomorrow. Sorry.”

That's each and every word, and it took the d.i.c.k 10 days.

Fine. Good. I'll buy a seat. I'll get the postgame sound files from my pals on the beat. I'll make do. I believe firmly in sports journalism's Second Law: A $40 room-service cheeseburger plate will fix any problem.

I also wors.h.i.+p the First Law, of course: Everything that happens is good for the story. It may not be good for the story you're working on-the pig in Ukraine never made it into the Demjanjuk feature-but life is neither a magazine feature nor a book: life itself is the story whole.

In other words, if you wish to truly taste the room-service cheeseburger, you must first savor the smell of Tim Donovan's a.s.s.

What Kerry Kennedy of Dubovi Makharyntsi saw when she looked at me helped teach me what Lynn Merritt saw at baggage claim, what Tim Donovan saw at Media Day. It isn't what my wife and son see-I'm not sure about the dog-and it isn't any insult to my pride or dignity. I have no pride, no dignity-I have a mission.

And I have a cheeseburger.

And a creed: What another sees in you will reveal that person. What you see in another reveals your self. We are-each of us and all of us-mirrors.

In the morning, a fruit plate. With yogurt. And Vicodin. And a large pot of coffee. After I dine, I set up shop at the desk and scan the Heat's website, where hundreds of season-ticket holders are auctioning their seats to tonight's game. I nab one in Section 119, near center court, eleven rows from the floor, mine for a mere $546.25.

I crawl back into bed with the Heat's media guide, 444 pages of arcana. I'm stopped cold by a sentence on page 5, upon which is inscribed the biography of the Heat's owner, Micky Arison: ”Although his father, Ted, brought the NBA franchise to South Florida in 1988, it has only been since Micky took control in 1995 that the HEAT has evolved into one of the NBA's top organizations.”

A son's sweet tribute to his dear, departed dad. Ted Arison was the founder of Carnival Cruise Lines, a Tel Avivborn gonif who parlayed refurbished s.h.i.+ps, slave labor, and tax evasion into an empire worth billions of dollars-so much gelt that in 1990, Ted renounced his American citizens.h.i.+p and moved back to Israel in an effort to avoid taxes on his estate, only to die in 1999, the world's richest Jew but nine months short of the IRS requirement that he live for ten years outside U.S. territory prior to his demise. An unlucky clan, clearly.

Even so, Ted somehow managed to leave Micky in decent enough shape for a billionaire, with Carnival and the basketball team and various other holdings, which is what makes Micky's media guide honesty so refres.h.i.+ng. Rather than brag about his old man, Mick tells you up top that Ted was no good at running the team, and then he never mentions his father again.

When it was time for me to go to college, my mother cosigned a government loan. My father said he was sorry that he couldn't help me out. I don't feel bad for myself; I feel bad for Micky Arison, who never had the chance to fail and find out who he really is, and who'll never forgive his dad for that.

I pick up my ticket at Will Call and watch a thunderstorm roiling above Biscayne Bay. The sky blackens, the wind gusts, the lightning crackles. In a minute or two, a wall of fat raindrops sweeps the street alongside the arena, and then moves along, leaving the air thickened, sticky warm. My s.h.i.+rt is soaked with sweat and rain. Toxic, this weather. Fat men keel over, their lungs full of syrup, their aortas burst, in this sort of sauna. It could happen, Scotty.

Some whiskered lout waves me over as I approach the stairs to the entrance. Jesus, he looks like a version of me that never got sober or grew fat as a pregnant sow. His name is Jack Subwick. He left Cleveland for Florida years ago and settled in Boca Raton. He doesn't have a ticket, says he doesn't care about the game, but he has opening-night programs for the Heat's whole life span, and asks me to pick one up for him and bring it back out.

I tell Jack to give me his number and I'll grab him a program and call to arrange delivery. Jack mulls it over briefly, then scribbles his number on the back of a restaurant coupon he yanks from his pocket.

Two missions.

It turns out the Heat have printed three covers of tonight's program-one with Wade, one with Bosh, one with James. I take one of each.

On his cover, LeBron glares into the camera, head lowered, eyes hooded, tight-lipped, his thick white headband riding ever higher on his forehead as his hairline approaches oblivion. He stands with his hands on his hips, with his shoulders thrust forward, the visual embodiment of his summertime tweet: ”Don't think for one minute that I haven't been keeping mental notes of everyone taking shots at me this summer. And I mean everyone.”

He's ready to wreak havoc upon the NBA. No prisoners. Blood on the hardwood. Mano a mano. If your name's on Bron-Bron's list, you're going down hard as a motherf.u.c.ker.

That's the pose. I think back to a game his rookie season, against the Indiana Pacers, when NBA tough guy Ron Artest was mugging James as he fought for position to take an inbounds pa.s.s. Artest had an arm across LeBron's upper chest and neck and a leg planted between James's knees bowing him backward. Paul Silas was coaching the Cavs, and Silas came up off the bench screaming-first at the nearest referee for not calling a foul on Artest, and then at LeBron for letting Artest unman him.

James has grown stronger and smarter over his seven seasons in the league, but he still tries to finesse defenders like Artest. His game has never hungered for a battle, much less marked him as the cruel-eyed enforcer who glares out from the program's cover.

G.o.d d.a.m.n, it smells great in here. This has to be the best-smelling sports venue I've ever walked through. Bars everywhere, but the food grilling is what makes my nostrils twitch. Cuban chicken chop-chop. Arepas. Empanadas. It is a heavenly smell, and nearly enough to distract the brain from the women.

Nearly, I say, because G.o.d d.a.m.n, the women are fine. Dark hair, darker eyes, dark skin and plenty of it. Liquid they strut, supple brown legs and heart-shaped a.s.ses, teeth agleam, the peals of their laughter melding into the stew of aroma, wafting high a soft yielding cloud of spice and sizzle and samba and suns.h.i.+ne and everything that Cleveland, Ohio, is not.

This doesn't even feel like a sporting event-it feels like a party to which I have never been invited.

G.o.d d.a.m.n, it is a party: the arena itself is nearly vacant. I find my seat, an excellent seat, and study a two-page spread in the front of the program-”FAN UP, MIAMI!”-devoted to instructing Heat fans how to act like actual fans. Beginning with a Rileyesque us-versus-them taunting-”They say that Heat fans are fickle fans,” that ”Heat fans don't deserve to have a team like this,” and that ”It's time to prove the naysayers wrong”-it promises freebies and discounts to fans who get to their seats for tip-off and stick around for the whole game.

Lord. This is where LeBron James wants to play basketball, in front of sun-dried cretins who must be bribed to act like they care about the game and the team. Where another superstar already is the Man in the locker room and on the court; where n.o.body in the media will ever mention his collapse against Boston, his phantom elbow pain, and his steadfast refusal to hold himself accountable for his team's big-game failures.

For as long as I've been a fan, I've rooted hard against certain teams and players, but never have I hoped to see a career-ending injury-until tonight.

My seat has a face value of $150 and is one of four owned by Dr. Jeffrey Rosen, who had been hoping to get $2,500 for it, and then $1,500, and then $1,000. Jeff does a nice job of pretending not to be disappointed, and I restrain myself from embarra.s.sing him by shouting at LeBron during warm-ups. Five minutes before tip-off, the lower bowl is barely half full.

A dreadlocked old man walking with two canes makes his way to a stool at center court. The PA announcer says that this is Clarence Clemons, which I find hard to believe. Only a little while ago-August 8, 1975-I saw Clarence Clemons for the first time, at the Akron Civic Center. I walked around the building afterward, snuck through the stage door, and thanked Bruce Springsteen for the greatest show I'd ever seen. Behind him stood the Big Man holding a fifth of Jack Daniel's, laughing as he drank-lit from within, he seemed like the coolest cat on the planet. I walked over and shook his huge, hot hand.