Red 1-2-3

Red 1-2-3 by John Katzenbach Page B

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Authors: John Katzenbach
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space that shouldn’t have been there. And so, just as the three of them closed, she slightly dipped her shoulder and moved forward an inch or two at the moment they came together. The girl on the other team took the force of Jordan’s shoulder in her chest. Jordan could hear wind knocked from her body, and a grunt and a small gasp as the two of them locked together. Her own teammate slipped past the instant tangle of players, emerged free on the far side, and took the pass.
    An easy two, Jordan thought, as she rolled toward the basket, not expecting a rebound, but moving into position as she had both been coached and had learned by instinct.
    She fully expected to hear the referee’s whistle. Foul! Number 23!
    She could hear the crowd cheering. She could hear the opposing coach from his sideline bench, frantically screaming, “Illegal pick! Illegal pick!”
    You’re damn right, coach, she thought.
    To her side, the opposing player, having regained her wind, whispered,
    “Bitch!”
    Damn right again, she told herself. She didn’t say this out loud. Instead, she loped back down the floor to take up her defensive position, knowing she should watch out for a stray elbow aimed at her cheek, or a fist shoved into her back where the ref couldn’t see it. Basketball is also a game of hidden paybacks, and she knew she was due at least one.
    The noise from the crowd rose in anticipation, filling the gym—there wasn’t much time left and the game was close and Jordan knew that every action on the court in the seconds remaining would define who won and who lost. The dying moments of a basketball game require the greatest focus and most intense concentration. But something quite different popped into her head. The Big Bad Wolf outthinks Little Red Riding Hood.
    He outmaneuvers her at every point. No one comes to her rescue. No one saves her. She is completely alone in the forest and she can do nothing to stop the inevitable. She dies. No, worse: She is eaten alive.
    Jordan tried to shake loose the prior evening’s research. She had spent two hours in the library, reading the Grimms’ fairy tales, then another 46
    RED 1–2–3
    ninety minutes on the computer examining psychological interpretations of the story of Little Red Riding Hood . Everything she’d learned had terrified her and fascinated her. This was an awful combination of feelings.
    She heard one of her teammates yell, “D-Up! D-Up!” And when her opposite number came into position, Jordan set her shoulder against the girl’s back in an I’m right here movement. She could hear voices shouting warnings. “Back pick! Watch the screen!” Organized chaos, Jordan thought. It was the part of the game she most loved.
    A girl on the opposing team took an ill-advised, hurried three-pointer.
    The combination of cheering, the clock winding down, the closeness of the score, and the girl’s overconfidence all conspired to push the ball away from the rim. Jordan jumped, reaching for the rebound, snatching it from the air, swinging her elbows wildly to clear away anyone who might try to steal it from her. For a second she felt as if she were alone, soaring angel-like above the court. Then she thudded back to the hardwood floor. She could feel the rough surface of the synthetic leather beneath her sweaty palms. She wanted to hit someone, just foul her savagely, but she did not.
    Instead she flipped the ball to a guard and thought, Now we’ll win, but understanding that the point of the fairy tale was that death of innocence was unavoidable and that the Big Bad Wolf and everything he symbol-ized about the inexorable force of evil would ultimately win out. No wonder they changed the story around, she thought. The original version was a nightmare.
    The whistle blew. One of her teammates had been fouled. The other team was resorting to hacking its way back into the game. Just pathetic hope , Jordan imagined. They believe we’ll miss our free throws. Not goddamn very

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