Morrell reached out a hand to pull me down for a kiss before introducing us: Marcena, an old journalist friend, in town to do a series for the Guardian, called from the airport, staying in the spare room for a week or so while she gets her bearings. Victoria, private investigator, basketball locum, Chicago native who can show you around. I’d smiled with as much goodwill as I could summon, and had tried not to spend the next three days wondering what they were doing while I was running around town.

Not that I was jealous of Marcena. Certainly not. I was a modern woman, after all, and a feminist, and I didn’t compete with other women for any man’s affection. But Morrell and Love had the intimacy that comes from a long-shared past. When they started laughing and talking I felt excluded. And, well, okay, jealous.

A fight under one of the baskets reminded me to keep my attention on the court. As usual, it was between April Czernin and Celine Jackman, my gangbanger forward. They were the two best players on the team, but figuring out how to get them to play together was only one of the exhausting challenges the girls presented. At times like this it was just as well I was a street fighter. I separated them and organized squads for scrimmage.

We took a break at three-thirty, by which time everyone was sweating freely, including me. During the break, I was able to serve the team Gatorade, thanks to a donation from one of my corporate clients. While the other girls drank theirs, Sancia Valdéz, my center, climbed up the bleachers to make sure her baby got its bottle and to have some kind of conversation with its father-so far I hadn’t heard him do more than mumble incomprehensibly.

Marcena began interviewing a couple of the girls, choosing them at random, or maybe by color-one blonde, one Latina, one African-American. The rest clamored around her, jealous for attention.