And then my older brother, Jeff, the football coach at East Hampton High, shows up with Patrick Roche in his school-issued van.

“Where the hell is Feif?” asks Artis. Artis has never actually volunteered what he does for a living, but the hours are highly flexible, and it pays well enough to keep his canary-yellow Ferrari in twenty-two-inch wheels.

“Yeah, where’s the white Rodman?” asks a dude called Marwan with dreadlocks.

Artis LaFontaine and crew can’t get enough of Feif, with his bleached-white hair, the piercings and tats-and when he finally rolls in barefoot on his bicycle, his high-tops dangling like oversized baby shoes from the handlebars, they practically give him a standing ovation.

“Be careful with this one, fellas,” says Feif, meticulously lowering his kickstand and parking his eight-dollar bike between two hundred-thousand-dollar cars. “It’s a Schwinn.”

I’ve depended on Jeff my whole life, but all these guys are indispensable to me. Roche, aka Rochie, is the deepest soul I know, not to mention a terrible sculptor, a mediocre poker player, and a truly gifted bartender. Walco is pure, undiluted human earnestness, the kind of guy who will walk up to you and, apropos of nothing, pronounce Guns ’N Roses the greatest rock-and-roll band of all time, or Derek Jeter the finest shortstop of his generation. As for Feif, he’s just special, and that’s immediately obvious to everyone, from the Dominican cashier at the IGA to your grandmother.

This whole place is owned by the movie star T. Smitty Wilson, who bought it five years ago. Wilson wanted to show his fans he was still keeping it real, so after dropping $23 million for a big, Waspy house on four acres, he dropped another half mil on this sick basketball court. He used the same contractor who built Shaq’s court in Orlando, and Dr. Dre’s in Oakland, but he hired Walco amp; Son to do the landscaping, and that’s how we found out about it.