We kept court No. 7's old spot for twenty years

The open-air courts on the south side of town have eight half-courts. The chain-link fence gets fixed, rusts, gets fixed again. Court seven is the easternmost one. From three in the afternoon it sits in shade, so in summer you can play without the sun in your eyes. That spot belonged to the five of us. We held it for twenty years.

The division of labor had not changed since university. Dapeng at center, the biggest man there, out of breath after three steps. Kai at point guard, a ball hog, but a ball hog with reasons. Skinny Monkey at shooting guard, named for the three shakes he does before every shot. Old Zhou at small forward, the hardest-working man on the floor, who fell more often than he scored. And me, a swingman, which is to say I stood wherever there was a hole.

Twenty years, and life went by like a lantern slide. On the afternoon of Dapeng's wedding the three of us could not find a parking space outside the bride's building, so we stood at the edge of a court in our suits and watched other people play. The year Kai divorced he missed four Saturdays in a row. On the fifth he showed up and nobody asked. Skinny Monkey threw him the ball and said, "Warm up." That was all it took. The half year Old Zhou was in hospital, court seven was half empty — not because we were short a man, but because the rest of them kept instinctively bringing the ball up the left side, then pulling it back halfway.

Last autumn, Old Zhou died.

It came fast. In the last stretch we took turns at the hospital. On his better days he still handed out assignments. "Kai, that three-pointer of yours is still garbage. Skinny Monkey, can you shake one less time." We laughed, and then stood in the corridor with red eyes.

The first Saturday after, the four of us turned up and nobody said whether we were playing. Finally Dapeng spoke. "Let's play. He'd curse us if we didn't."

That game was very quiet. Halfway through, Skinny Monkey stopped. "Do you remember," he said, "Old Zhou always said court seven had good feng shui. He fell here for years and never once broke the skin."

The ball bounced a few times on the concrete and stopped.

This spring the fence was repainted. The maintenance crew came early and found four men squatting on the east side of court seven. We had a stencil and a can of spray paint. On the spot where Old Zhou fell most often we painted a number: 7. Beside it, one small line: Fine players fall here often. Please walk around. No laughing.

The maintenance man looked at it for a while and said nothing. Then he helped us press down the edge of the stencil.

Now every Saturday at three the four of us are there. Before we warm up, each of us walks a half circle around the 7. It is not a ritual. It is a habit, the way you walk past someone who is still standing there.

Last month a middle-school kid came over. "Hey — why is there a 7 painted on the ground?"

Skinny Monkey thought about it. "There used to be a guy here," he said. "He fell down here for twenty years and never once said it hurt."

The kid nodded, half understanding, and ran off to shoot. The ball went in. Outside the fence the light was going gold. Dapeng said, "Next week?" We said next week.

The caretaker is a man in his sixties who has watched us for twenty years. On painting day he carried a chair over and sat at the edge, and at the end he said one thing: "Twenty years. It's only ever you lot. Even when it snows you shovel a patch and play." Only then did we realize he was the oldest spectator court seven had ever had. Old Zhou's thermos was still at the sideline that day. Skinny Monkey had washed it out, and from then on, every Saturday, it gets filled with hot water, the way it was when Old Zhou was here.

Some places are empty and are no longer empty. They become a coordinate, marking where a friendship has been.