Free Armageddon Conspiracy by john thompson

else—DeLeyon, his Little Brother! Today was their monthly game of hoops! He put his hands to his head. He’d never survive. He had the shakes, the cold sweats. He’d have a heart attack if he tried to dribble a basketball.
    He gave up thinking about the pain because he couldn’t break a promise to DeLeyon. He staggered back into the bedroom, and five minutes later, wearing shorts and a tee shirt and carrying a fresh shirt in a canvas bag, he caught a taxi to the West Side. He climbed out at Riverside and 125th Street and stumbled down through the narrow band of Riverside Park to a concrete basketball court shaded by tall sycamores and oaks and bordered by the West Side Highway. A game was in progress on one end of the court, while at the other end, a huge African American kid in a sleeveless tee shirt stood with a basketball held loosely against his hip and an impatient look on his face.
    “Yo, y’all late!” he called when he caught sight of Brent.
    “Rough night,” Brent mumbled.
    DeLeyon screwed up his face. “You wish!” he said, starting to dribble the ball. “Prob’ly went to a movie by yo’seff and overslept.” He cut loose with a jump shot and swished the chains that hung in place of a net. He was sixteen, beginning to grow into his size, hisarms filling out with ropes of dark muscle, his bony little kid face taking on a sculpted maturity that was still full of youth but also a soulful depth.
    The Big Brother thing had been Harry’s idea. He’d said it was more for Brent than his Little Brother, that it might keep him from becoming too much of an egotistical Wall Street asshole, at least slow the process a little. For almost five years Brent had flown down once a month from Boston and headed to the Upper West Side to meet DeLeyon, who had grown from a gangly kid to his current six-five. DeLeyon had miraculously managed to survive his boyhood on the Harlem streets, even though some of his posse hadn’t. His life had been hard enough to make bad choices awfully tempting, but most times he’d managed to make good ones. He slept at his grandmother’s some nights, other nights at his mother’s, and sometimes even at his father’s—depending on where it was safe or who was sober.
    No matter what else was going on in his life, Brent always showed up because these once-a-month meetings were pretty much the one constant in DeLeyon’s life. Regardless of his own efforts, he gave the kid all the credit for staying on track. In addition to being a superb athlete, DeLeyon had excellent grades and the brains to go Ivy. Brent already had the coaches from Harvard, Yale, and Brown looking.
    Now he took a deep breath and tried to shove his pain into the background. “Late or not,” he grinned as he stepped onto the court and touched fists with DeLeyon, “I’m going to kick your bony ass.”
    “Keep wishin’, white boy.”
    “It ain’t wishing,” he said, giving DeLeyon’s ball a quick swat as he attempted a steal.
    DeLeyon recaptured the ball then dribbled it easily a step or twoaway. Brent headed to the foul line. “Okay,” he said, feeling his knees wobble. “Let’s not waste time. Gimme the ball.”
    “Uh-uh,” DeLeyon said. “We shoot for it.”
    Brent missed his first shot, while DeLeyon hit, giving him first possession. Immediately, he blew past Brent to score on a spinning lay-up. Brent lost the ball on his first turn, and DeLeyon took it back behind the line then swished a long three-pointer. The game went like that for the next hour and fifteen minutes, and DeLeyon won forty-four to twenty. Twice, Brent had to bend over, hands on his knees to catch his breath.
    “That’s the worst ass-kicking yet,” DeLeyon said with a broad smile as they walked off the court.
    “Yeah,” Brent admitted as he stripped off his sweat soaked shirt, used it for a towel on his chest and underarms. “You’re getting better, and I’m getting worse.”
    “You bad today,” DeLeyon laughed. Then he