Double Fault (13 page)

  "I'll stay Novinsky."

  "You've thought this through, then."

  "I've thought of little else."

  Max transferred his weight from his left to right foot, as if torn between Willy and the door. "That sounds distracting." He shifted to the left again. "The New Freedom satellite is next week."

  Willy hefted her arms forward. On this contraption the asymmetry of her strength was the most glaring. Her right arm plunged to its full extension; the left quaked catching up. The disparity was another reminder that, in focusing on one goal only, she had refined a single proficiency at the price of ineptitude at a great deal else.

  Willy squeezed out between breaths, "I've done nothing—but think of tennis—since I was five."

  "And look where it's got you."

  The metal slabs clanked still. "Not far enough."

  "It's got you ready. The next two years are your big push. I find your timing on this marriage business peculiar."

  "Marriage isn't a business."

  "It is," he objected. "And it will affect your business; it may affect mine." Max, who seemed to have made up his mind about staying, straddled the leg pull three machines away, twisting her towel.

  "Might you consider that I get lonely?" asked Willy. "None of the girls in locker rooms will speak to me—"

  "A good sign. If they're friendly, you're not intimidating enough."

  "Well, maybe—I could use—a hand to hold, maybe—a happy tennis player—is a better—tennis player." The iron clapped to rest.

  Max squinted. "You know, I couldn't name a
happy
tennis player."

  Willy traced a handle with her forefinger, elbows limp at her waist. Her whole upper body was burning. "When I was a kid, tennis was ecstasy."

  "Meaning it's different now."

  "When I haven't been on a court for two or three days I still tear my hair."

  "When did you last go
three days
without tennis?"

  She smiled. "I don't know, five years ago?"

  "Grown-up tennis isn't concerned with ecstasy," Max hazarded, tightening the towel into a rope. "Facing down what you're made of on a daily basis doesn't lend itself to peace of mind."

  "None of which—explains why—I shouldn't get—married." Her chest had begun to shudder; her left arm was trembling so violently that the vibration rattled her jaw. This was too much weight, but she was not about to stop shy of twelve repetitions under Max's scrutiny.

  "Don't talk pressing that much weight, Will. I mean, it's hard enough to wrestle the gremlins in your own head without living alongside somebody else's heebie-jeebies, too."

  Willy forced herself to ease the weights down with a controlled sigh. She caught her breath. In truth, she felt a bit nauseated.

  "Eric doesn't have heebie-jeebies," she recited. "Eric is sure that he'll do very well. And that I'll do very well, too."

  Max eyed her. "A few months ago, a hand to hold was the last thing you wanted."

  "
Your
hand!" Max had her towel, so she wiped her face on her shirt. "My
coach's
hand."

  "I guarantee," Max went on in that horribly moderate voice that reminded Willy of her father, "that if you came to me and said you'd found a nice boy who didn't hit you and had some grasp of the dedication demanded by your career—a decent fellow who would tend to his own dog food factory or whatever and would wait loyally for you to come home from Tokyo—I would wish you the best of luck."

  "Eric is nice and he doesn't hit me and understands better than anyone the demands of my career, since it's his career, too. So when do I get the good wishes?"

  Max slapped the vinyl of the leg pull with her towel. "You are being
deliberately
stupid!" The restraint in his voice had given. Willy appreciated that they were at least conducting their first legitimate conversation since that wretched morning of
It's cold, come back to
bed
, and instead she'd left his bed forever.

  Willy adjusted the sit-up board at a severe angle, banging the hooks on the rungs. Tucking her ankles under the padded brace, she rested her little fingers on her temples and her thumbs under her jaw. As she rose her elbows drew forward; they sheltered her breasts. Though Willy did sit-ups like this every other day, there was a suggestion in the fenced arms, hands over her ears, that she didn't want to hear what Max had to say.

  Max was badgering her by the board. "You're the only girl I coach who has an inkling that a successful tennis career is a miracle of God. Half these poor whelps honestly believe they will waltz out my gate and straight into an Evian contract worth three million bucks a year. You're not that retarded. So I am shocked by your shabby imagination."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about." With her stomach muscles contracted, Willy's voice was squeaky.

  "You've always had this precociously cynical bite to you, Will. It's not like you to be so trusting."

  "Of Eric?" she wheezed.

  "Of
yourself
."

  "Trusting yourself is tennis in a nutshell." She flopped on her back head-down.

  "Only at its best."

  The blood rushing to her head made Willy dizzy. She raised to clutch the ankle brace and bowed her head.

  "
He's a tennis player, Will
."

  She clapped her palms back over her ears, bent her knees, and resumed wrenching up and down. "Isn't that fabulous," she grunted. "He's good, too."

  "All the worse."

  Willy toiled through her sit-ups, eyes shut, but still Max preyed at her elbow as the embodiment of all she didn't want to consider. She was happy, and the novelty of the emotion slapped the rest of her life with reproof. Willy had never regarded herself as miserable in the past. But now it turned out she'd led a barren young adulthood; she'd never had boyfriends even in high school. All the guys thought she was stuck up, or involved in something that didn't pertain to them, which it didn't. At last she had a lithe, lean, lovely man, and sleep had never been so gorgeous, a luxury in itself rather than one more drudgery to dispense with. She was only twentythree but already fatigued; perseverance required respite. And here Max would convert her sole salvation into one more obstacle.

  Willy rolled off the board and turned into the staple-shaped dip bar. Laying her arms across its corners and gripping the iron, she stood facing Max with her chin thrust, willing to make him the enemy if the alternative was to return to a life that, had it been palatable before, could only seem destitute now.

  "If nothing else," she said steadily, "I have found an excellent hitting partner whom we don't have to pay."

  "A husband's just a cheap addition to your entourage, then," said Max sardonically, hands on the hips of his sweatpants. "An economy."

  Willy withdrew an inch. "We can work out together, run together—"

  "Really." Max grasped the dip bar, leaning to her ear. His cheek brushed her hair. He'd not dared come so close since May. "What other paradisiac visions do you have of a life together in the same sport?"

  "We can enter the same tournaments—"

  "On the satellite circuit, there are a handful of coed events. But your ranking is better than twice his, and Oberdwarf's not going to get into the same gigs. Moreover, you don't intend to
stay
in satellites, do you?" Max spoke with a measured enunciation, as if addressing a child or an idiot. "Isn't the plan to amass enough points in the coming year or two and hit the WTA international tour?"

  "Of course."

  "And Oberdork, he wants to get on the ATP tour?"

  "Naturally…"

  "Do you realize, aside from Grand Slams, how few international events invite men and women to compete at the same place and time?
Two
. I guess you'd really look forward to them."

  "I was hoping you'd congratulate me, but I should have known better."

  "I'm just being practical." One of her father's favorite words. "Let's take the possibilities one at a time, shall we?" Max pressed back forefinger with forefinger. "One: you both succeed splendidly. Top 200, maybe better. So you're on the road,
different
roads, all but December. Merry Christmas. Meanwhile you'll both have umpteen affairs from Munich to Tel Aviv, since that's the only way either of you will feel anything from the waist down. After fifteen years, you'll retire to a bald stranger with bad knees and back problems, who you're right back to calling 'Underwood' because you no longer remember his name."

  "I already call him 'Underwood,'" Willy objected. "It's a joke."

  "Very cute," said Max, and bent back his middle finger. "But let's peek behind Curtain Number Two. Let's say, tennis being tennis, that you both fall on your butts. Oberklutz never does get his backhand cross-court on the more profitable side of the alley. You go back to charging a net you can't cover—"

  "I can, too—"

  "Shut up. So you're both washouts, wandering about in the 700's, where you can't make a living like just about everybody else can't make a living at this sport. Maybe for a time you get along because misery loves, etc. But I bet that after a year or two, unable to get your constricted, furious hands around the throat of the whole world, you'll start going for each other instead."

  "These fully furnished dioramas are a hell of a wedding present, Max. Remind me to send you a thank-you note—"

  "But let's look behind the
third
curtain," he barged on, bending the next finger. Max was double-jointed, and its angle was shiveringly obtuse. "Will hits the tour. Underwood, tragically, falls short. But that's lucky in a way, isn't it? Because now your cut-rate hitting partner is free to accompany you around the world—booking your practice courts, massaging your shoulders, and balancing your burgeoning bank account. Shall I go on?"

  "No thank you," she said coldly.

  "Excuse me, have I left an alternative out?" He wiggled his remaining pinkie.

  "That will do." Willy about-faced to the running machine, whose hum would mercifully mute her coach's malicious monologue. The treadmill began at an easy lope, but as she sped from 5.2 to 7.4 mph she did not manage to run so much as a yard from Max, or from what he was saying.

  The jolt of her step gave Willy's voice a huffiness. "There are plenty of tennis couples on the tour."

  Max crossed his arms. "Name one."

  "Chris Evert and John Lloyd."

  "They're divorced," said Max flatly. "And what is John Lloyd best known for?"

  Her flush was covered by a natural reddening when she acceler ated the treadmill still faster. "Being married to Chris Evert," she admitted. "But they made a good team for a while!"

  "Since when do you join any team, Will? You can't even play doubles. You compete with the girl on your side of the net."

  "I'm not in love with the woman on my side of the net," she puffed.

  Max sneered. "And I thought you liked classical music and proper literature. The way you talk you've been listening to Top Forties and reading Harlequins—
baby, baby, baby
. Now you think that love conquers all? I refuse to believe that being over the moon about some horny hunk has turned your mind to mush."

  "Liz and Peter Smylie!" More speed.

  "Liz made it to 36. Peter quit."

  The machine rose from a rumble to a whine. At 10 mph the tromp of her shoes and the rasp of her breath made it necessary for Max to shout: "You forget how well I know you! You'd compete with a fly if you thought it was trying to climb walls faster than you. All the world's a contest. A fine quality in a sportswoman. Not in a
wife
."

  She thumped the stop button. "Nobody's asking
you
to marry me!"

  The mat had come to an abrupt halt; Max steadied her when Willy lurched forward. He kept his hand on her arm. The treadmill silent, he spoke quietly. "Do me one favor. Fill out the picture in your head of this glorious future of yours. See if it doesn't include Underboy shouldering your luggage to Kennedy and requesting your wakeup calls in ten different languages. When your career takes off and he's still hacking away in the 900's, you think he's going to be all meek and supportive, from the
sidelines?
Because Will, my friend, if you're this gaga over a kid after years of being Miss Frosty, I'll bet my bottom dollar that he's
just like you
."

  "That's so terrible?"

  "It is," said Max, dropping his hand to his side, "disastrous."

  But Willy would have entered if the tournament were bankrolled by a company that produced assault weapons or child pornography. The New Freedom paid its winner only eight thousand dollars, but made up for the poor purse with computer points. Besides, points were money; they were better than money.

  This fortnight was as Max foretold: the Worcester satellite had no men's counterpart; if it had, Eric's ranking would have precluded him. Instead Eric was in Oklahoma, competing in the Jox All-Comers. Jox paid a pittance in every respect, but Eric couldn't afford to skip any tournament that earned points at all. Willy couldn't manage a ticket to Oklahoma City to applaud him through his first two rounds, and until she started hauling in substantial prize money this was bound to be a standard fiscal constraint. Her original visions of urging each other on all over the globe began to cloud.