Free Playing Days by Benjamin Markovits

recognized immediately as his city clothes: a pair of fashionably torn jeans and a thin white linen shirt half unbuttoned. He had the sheepish, almost resentful air of a boy introducing you to his parents.
    There was no elevator, which meant we had to walkthe five flights to their apartment. Basketball players hate walking. By this point in the season everything hurt, my knees, my back, the balls of my feet; running at least provided a drug to ease the pain of motion. Steps were particularly painful, and my breathing echoed upwards in the broad, tiled stairwell. To hide the noise of it, I told him that I might want to go to a club later on and mentioned the name Anke had given me.
    â€˜Nobody goes there,’ he said, ‘only middle-aged women.’
    We climbed the rest of the stairs in silence. The door at the top was open; Olaf’s sister was lying on a pale leather sofa watching television. She shifted, resting her arm over the sofa back, and leaned out inquiringly when we came in. ‘Lazy sack,’ Olaf said, by way of introduction. And then: ‘This is Brigitte.’ She was about half his size, with short brown curly hair and a wide mouth, which she twisted into a forced smile. She was also white.
    Olaf had never mentioned that he was adopted. His mother came home shortly after with a bag of groceries under one arm. She was a doctor and had the kindly neutral worn-out air of a woman who has spent the day dealing gently with strangers. Katrin, she asked me to call her, taking my hand somewhat limply before unpacking the food and beginning to cook. She looked like her daughter, only thinner and flat-haired. Brigitte, in fact, was in the midst of applying for a residency and had come home to await results. Her house-share had broken up over the summer; she seemed embarrassedabout living with her parents. Wohngemeinschaft was the word she used, which means a commune, though it sounded more conventional than that.
    â€˜I’m the big sister,’ she explained at one point, reaching up to pat Olaf’s shoulder. ‘He’s my little brother.’ The pleasure she took in his size was touching. Their relations seemed to me collegiate, almost flirtatious.
    A large purple painting above one sofa was the only splash of color in the room, aside from the windows. These took up most of a wall and looked out on tall trees, whose branches, heavy and green in that late summer, seemed almost ornate with silence. The gardens below it included a children’s playground and a stone ping pong table. A group of teenagers were sitting and smoking on it.
    â€˜We used to smoke there, too,’ Brigitte said to me, looking down. ‘Or rather, I smoked and Olaf tried to play ping pong.’
    When the food was ready, his father emerged from his study; he had been at home all along. Herr Schmidt was tall and slender and carried himself well – upright without stiffness. His curly hair was receding and he had let it recede. From time to time he brushed the stray locks behind his ears. ‘Olaf gets his height from me,’ he joked, ‘and his hairline, too.’
    â€˜Have you been working?’ I asked, after Olaf introduced me as a friend from the team.
    â€˜I used to be a lawyer,’ he said, ‘but I have given up the law. Perhaps I could most pompously describemyself as a radio personality, which means that I work two hours a week and spend the rest of the time reading newspapers and keeping up to date. At my age, that is work.’
    Over dinner he presided very naturally. I had not talked so much since graduation and had to resist the urge to mention my writing; he was pleased, among other things, to hear where I had gone to university. I didn’t want Olaf to think our friendship depended on my curiosity. With Charlie, it didn’t matter, but Olaf and I had made a joke of drifting together. We played basketball because it seemed a pleasant way of not doing anything else. In