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