| | | Editor's Note: When we got to work today, we found another e-mail from that bartending, skateboarding buddy of ours in California. We decided to pass it along again. A word of warning: always wear a helmet.
Chapter Six
... in which our hero tries to calm a civil war.
I have trashed my leg and ankle coming down wrong on paraglide landings. I've popped a dislocated elbow back into place after wiping out on a street luge run. And I broke my jaw last year the first time I tried off-road skateboarding down the Angeles crest highway.
But I've never been shot at until last night.
And it never would have happened if not for Michael Jordan.
The evening started off in an emergency meeting here at Lore's sports bar, in case you missed it. Which you probably did, because there were only four
of us there. Me. My homey Puker. His bud, Hops, who works in the Palisades, and a girl who came all the way up from San Diego named Janine. Janine was
there because while you've been watching all that garbage about who's going to get to be President, there's been a real civil war going on. Southern
California is in flames.
Janine came from Mission Valley where she attended a memorial skate session in honor of Ray Lang, who was shot dead while boarding two weeks ago. He was
just 17.
Puker was shouting about how the only reason God invented cargo pants was so you'd have a place to fit your gun. He said he was fed up with being run off property by security guards. As if it wasn't bad enough, people were putting anti-skateboarding signs and impediments up all over every new thing that got built.
"The dude that killed Ray Lang ... I say we go down there and deliver a message about being oppressed, which is exactly what John Brown tried to do at Harper's Ferry, Wheeler," Puker said.
"I'm trying to tell people about it on the ESPN website, and maybe raise some coin to help," I said.
"We should be allowed to break our own bones without being shot before we can," Janine said.
"Tell that to Ray Lang's family," Puker said, and he took off out of Lore's with Hops. The last word he ever wants to hear is "wait."
If he hadn't been so blind with rage, he might have seen that he almost knocked down a huge man on his way out.
The man was maybe six and a half feet tall, black and looked like he was used to littler guys running around by his kneecaps.
The man was Michael Jordan. The.
|  | | Our hero learned fast that Michael Jordan never backs down from a challenge. |
As best as I could figure, MJ was in L.A. playing a few rounds of golf so he could be about as far away as possible from the basketball team known as the Washington Wizards. Halfway into his first beer, he began sounding as if taking a piece of the franchise was the worst bet he'd ever made. Worse, even, than being a bad minor-league baseball player.
"What's your name?" he asked me after I'd delivered a large Extreme Nachos with Pork and chili peppers.
"Wheeler," I said.
"Wheeler, you want the Wizards, I'll give you the Wizards," MJ said, blowing some air out of his mouth and adding, "Oooh ... spicy."
I try to be as respectful as possible to all the clientele. But I told MJ that I didn't think he made such a funny joke. That maybe he thought I was just some dude bringing refills, but he was talking to a competitor. Somebody who went for it as much as he was famous for doing. And that I did want something from him, but I'd whip his ass and take it fair and square.
That perked MJ up.
"You're on, then, Wheeler," he said. "Name your price."
I said the price was justice for Ray Lang. And that would mean taking some of MJ's money.
"Well, for starters, you'll have to tell me how many chips are left on this plate of Nachos," he said, covering it with a napkin. "I'll give you
a thousand if you guess right."
It caught me by surprise. I guessed wrong.
I should have stopped there. I didn't have a thousand. And I was safer on a street luge run down Las Flores Canyon than betting against Michael
Jordan.
"Let's raise the stakes," I said, which he thought was pretty funny.
I told him to turn his stool away from the TV monitor that was on overhead.
"Now, add up all the number of the players on the court in white uniforms," I told him. "If you can't, you owe me ten grand."
MJ thought about it a while. He scribbled some numbers down on the armrest of his barstool.
"Well," he said, "I'm guessing that was the Clippers at Staples. So they'd be in home white. I'll guess, they got out there ... that big turkey, Michael Olokowandi, he's number 34. Darius Miles, number 21. Definitely, Odom, if the game's still in the first quarter, and he hasn't fouled out already. Seven. If they're not too stupid, which they usually are -- Q. Richardson. I think he's number 3. And probably that whimpy guard who I would've eaten alive, Keyon Dooling. Number 1. I guess ... 66."
I think my mouth was still hanging open when he threw a twenty on the bar and said to me, "You owe me 11 grand, sucker, and I'll be back next
week to collect," and walked out.
"What are you going to do, Wheeler?" Janine asked me, rubbing my arm. Somehow she knew that 11 grand was more money than I ever expect to
make in my entire life.
Definitely change my name and definitely leave town were the first things that came to mind.
That's when my eye fell on the barstool. The one MJ had just been sitting in.
Lore's manager, Stu Getzler, was talking on the phone at the other end of the bar when he heard the explosive sound of me and Janine cracking
the stool off from its steel mount on the floor.
"Where the hell do you think you're going with that?" Stu yelled.
The wood-and-leather seat was surprisingly heavy. We knocked people all over the waiting area trying to weave our way out.
"I'm calling the cops, Wheeler," Stu hollered. I saw him pick up the phone. "You won't get far!"
If you saw a guy on a skateboard and a girl sitting on a broken-off barstool on top of that skateboard hurtling down Ocean Ave. and onto the Pacific
Incline in Santa Monica last Saturday night, that was me and Janine.
I figured if I could sell that barstool -- the one the immortal Michael Jordan had been in -- it might be worth at least eleven thousand dollars. And
it might be worth something to help Ray Lang's family.
There was nobody around to videotape. But if you saw me and Janine riding that barstool on top of my skateboard and hitting 50 miles an hour, maybe
you also saw that cop car in pursuit. And maybe you saw the gun get fired and that bullet whiz by my ear.
The men in the uniforms ordered me to stop. I never do. Especially not in the name of justice.
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