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thinking about his life and everything.
    “Your moms and pops are some special people,” Jared said. “What a wonderful gift.”
    “So you see, my brother, I’m fine. I just wanted you to know what a gift you are to me. And I love ya, man,” Raymond said.
    “And I love you back,” Jared said.

8

    “I did something strange the other day,” Basil said.
    “You want to tell me about it?” the doctor asked.
    “There was this honey at the gym. I noticed her checking me out for a couple of weeks, but, of course, there was nothing strange about that. I mean honeys and knuckleheads check me out all the time. Sometimes I speak … sometimes I don’t. It all depends on how I’m feelin’ at the particular time.”
    “What was strange about this lady?”
    “It wasn’t anything strange about her physically. I mean, she was beautiful. I couldn’t even tell if she was black, probably mixed with something. She kinda reminded me of this honey in Spike Lee’s movie
Mo’ Better Blues
, the one with Denzel Washington. Did you see that?”
    “No.”
    “Cynda Williams, that’s her name.”
    “The young lady?”
    “No, the actress, but back to the honey I was talking about. She was beautiful. I said that, didn’t I? So anyway, the other day she finally walked up to me and asked if I was John Basil Henderson, which was weird ’cause everybody calls me Basil. When I said yeah, she looked at me and said she’d been wanting to meet me for a long time. I’m thinking she must be a reporter or something, but I suddenly find myself looking at her eyes. They’re hard to ignore, brownish-gray babydoll eyes. There was something sincere and sad in her eyes.”
    “How so?”
    “It’s kinda hard to explain. I mean, it was like she knew me.”
    “Was she a reporter?”
    “I asked her and she said no,” Basil said.
    “Did you ask her if she knew you?”
    “No. But, of course, she did know me. She knew my full name at least. When I was playing ball, I was in the newspaper and magazines all the time. And honeys, just like little boys and some men, collect photos of their favorite players. And now with my gig at ESPN, I have a whole new group of fans,” Basil said confidently.
    “So she knew you from your football playing days or your current position?”
    “I think both. We didn’t talk about it that much. We went to lunch and she didn’t want to talk about sports at all. And she wasn’t really coming on to me, but I know she wants me.”
    “How can you be certain?”
    “Think about it. A good-looking honey comes over and says she’s been wanting to meet you for a long time. I mean, come on. Her approach may be a little different, but in the end I’m certain she wants what they all want … a piece of the beef. The honeys nowdays are getting slicker all the time. They’re starting to think and act like men. I kinda feel sorry for the dumb mofos making all that money playing sports. Honeys be reading the sports section like it’s a romance novel or something. They do their research and then they go in for the kill.The next thing some of those mofos know, they’re in court trying to work out child support payments.”
    “What did you and the young lady talk about during lunch?”
    “First just some general things. And then she asked me about my childhood, and even though I didn’t tell her much, she seemed really interested in me. She asked me about my father. Said she had read an article on me where I talked about how tight I was with my father, since he was a single parent. I started to tell her don’t be trying to analyze me, I’ve already got somebody doing that,” Basil laughed.
    “Are you interested in pursuing a relationship with her?”
    “I don’t know. I ain’t really hanging with anybody seriously. I might ’cause she is fine, and I like it when honeys want to talk about something besides sports and who I fucked that was famous. You know?”
    “You want somebody who’s not interested in