Double Fault (30 page)

  "Will, dear," Max intoned when the boy was gone. "You can't play tennis from the crapper."

  "I won't show my face until you buy me some makeup."

  Max obliged, but commercial makeup has its limitations, especially applied to a surface with a life of its own.

  "It's turning into bubble-wrap!" Willy cried from the mirror, from which she could not be parted.

  "Will, we've got to go practice."

  "I'm not leaving this room."

  "You are tomorrow, kid."

  It was out of the question to attempt a last-minute withdrawal because of cold sores. The WTA would consider the ailment spurious, and slap her with a fine.

  Forlornly the next morning Willy spent another five minutes examining the damage. By now the sores were suppurating. Makeup only made matters worse. Resigned, Willy dabbed off her dripping paint job, donned dark glasses, and moped downstairs. At the taxi stand, a teenage boy pointed, "Hey, VD lips!" and sniggered.

  Unfortunately, you cannot play a tennis match with your head in a paper bag. Though the sores were painful, nothing about a face like boiling marinara should have technically hampered her game. But above all tennis may measure confidence, of which Willy had zilch.

  When Willy shook hands with the victor at the net, the girl whispered, "That happened to me once. I couldn't have hit a beach ball. I just wanted to go home. I heard you were terrific. Better luck when that clears up."

  It was the sweetest thing that any opponent had ever said.

  Meanwhile? Eric didn't get periods, Eric never got a cold sore, and if Eric had any problem with umpires it was that they fell in love with him.

  No, Eric was frolicking about the globe collecting computer points in his basket like a kid picking up Easter eggs on a hunt he was too old for. But they had both concurred that another five-month estrangement was no-go. Tallying the expenses of his last departure, Eric adjudged that for his phone bill he might have flown home twice. He promised to space his tournaments more widely, and play fewer per year. More magnanimity from the well-endowed, which Willy yearned to return in kind.

  But Willy didn't need to be magnanimous. She managed to be home all the time. Organizing a tournament schedule, you had to decide whether to allow for success. Satellites took up to three weeks, and required as many for advance registration. Defeated in the first round, after one day you were footloose. The alternative was to assume you'd lose early and double-book. But if you planned on losing there was no point in entering in the first place. Consequently, Willy allowed the usual three weeks between tournaments, then postcalamity had most of the month on her hands.

  Though she could always head to Sweetspot to groove strokes, training was no substitute for the taut schedule of the journeyman on a roll—when you sweep off from the finals to grab your bags at the hotel, lunge into a taxi and tell the driver to step on it like in the movies, weave through other passengers at a jog to arrive panting at the departure lounge, where the plane is already boarding, and buckle up as the turbines rise in pitch. Sure it was tiring, sure you got fed up with hotel coffee the color of chicken broth, but Willy missed the grind; she even missed moaning about it. Because lately Willy packed (unheard of) the day before a tournament and arrived at the airport an hour ahead of takeoff like all the other saps who believed what the airline told them over the phone. And she was never in a motel long enough to make much of a fuss about the coffee.

  Ticketing was expensive. Each time she lost early her reservation had to be changed, and that cost; what she now owed Max Upchurch Willy shuddered to contemplate. She might have taken the odd day to explore the country, but once she'd lost in a city it was spoiled. In that event Willy was free to play the happy homemaker if she liked, though the one afternoon she did go buy new curtains she was too depressed once back home to thread them on the rods.

  Coinciding with Eric's return for a breather in late April, a phone call from
Tennis
magazine was not unwelcome. Willy wasn't a publicity maven; even
Slick Chick's
replacing her in its spread hadn't broken her heart, except inasmuch as it emblemized that unprecedented choke in the Chevrolet. But the season had been so catastrophic so far that Willy was relieved to be popping up on their screens at all, and readily agreed to an interview.

  "Why you?" asked Eric distractedly, rewinding the Borg-McEnroe final, now flecked from constant replay.

  "Has it become that surprising that anyone would be concerned with my career?"

  "Don't be so touchy. I was only wondering what the peg was."

  "They didn't say." Willy smiled wanly. "Maybe they're doing an article on herpes simplex, and I set some kind of record." Three full weeks later, the sores had not healed in the centers, and gray, shadowy scars etched her chin.

  The journalist, Jeremy Roman, was fresh-faced, squeaky-clean, and sporty.

  "You play yourself?" she asked idly, showing him a chair. It seemed chivalrous to solicit the interviewer when she was structurally the center of attention.

  "Strictly amateur." He waved his hand. "I'm a hack."

  She sensed he was proud of his game. "I forgot. Most pros couldn't spell
t-e-n-n-i-s
, much less write for it."

  Roman chortled, and Willy settled on the couch, spreading one muscular calf across the other shin. She'd worn a simple sundress and bright leather pumps. She might have frumped to the door in sweats, but Willy, still recovering from "VD lips," was glad for an excuse to look alluring. Besides, he might want a picture.

  "So, just to warm up," the reporter began, placing his microcassette on the coffee table and arranging a pad on his knee. "What's your husband's favorite food?"

  Willy's hand draped her knee at an elegant angle, her back sinking in the pillows. "Broiled chicken and fried rice."

  Jeremy scribbled on his pad.

  "I'm partial to plain chicken myself."

  The journalist wrote nothing.

"This is pertinent?" Willy inquired.

"Oh, we just need color. And when did you two meet?"

  "Almost three years ago. The first day, Eric—that's my husband—swept me off my feet. Literally. Though I was warned off marrying a tennis player, I obviously didn't take the advice."

  Jeremy turned up the level on his machine. "The people who told you not to marry a tennis player—so far, have they been right?"

  Willy drummed her fingers on her other arm. She was uncertain how honest to be with a reporter. The question was doubly difficult because she wasn't sure what an honest answer was. "Of course there are tensions…"

  "Such as?"

  She chewed her lip, playing with the last little cold sore scab. There were tensions that a faithful wife was not to mention. Like the
tension
that the bastard was outdistancing her on the tour by a mile. That was supposed to be swell. Go team. All for one and one for all. The taste on her lip went salty; in dabbing a tissue to the spot Willy pressed herself to keep her mouth shut. "We rarely see each other."

  "For the record, how old are you two?"

  "Eric's a year younger than me. I'll be twenty-six next month," she said firmly. "That sounds old, I know. But I don't think the game is benefiting from the trend toward younger stars. They don't have the emotional resilience to handle the tour. You've got to be able to hunker down. Frankly, you need the courage to fail. To survive injuries, bad patches, and still land on your feet. That requires guts and resolve—not to mention patience—that most teenagers don't have. If you look at the history of the really young phenoms, as soon as they encounter adversity, they crumble."

  Willy assumed the man's squiggling was to remind himself to transcribe this section of the tape. But readjusting on the sofa, she noticed that he was doodling daisies in his margins.

  Oh, maybe the microcassette tempted her to pontificate. But could she be blamed for holding forth, after three tournaments in a row sent her home, tail between her legs, after the first round? To bask in this no-account's attentions was irresistible. Already the air filled her lungs more richly, her shoulders squared, and for the first time in months she felt beautiful. No one had shoved a microphone in Willy's face in nearly a year.

  Having blackened the centers of his daisies, Roman noticed that she was finished. "When you learned of the award, how did you feel?"

  "Award?" asked Willy blankly.

  Award! Willy racked her brains to imagine for what she might be singled out this of all years. Most Star-Crossed Paid-Up WTA Member Who Has Not Jumped off a Bridge? Willy didn't care; she'd take it.

  "Most Impressive Newcomer of the Year," said Roman impatiently.

  "
Newcomer
, but I—"

  "It was announced six weeks ago, and we just haven't had the space to…"

  Having begun to scissor her other leg on top, Willy let the calf back down. "Oh," she said heavily. "Eric's award."

  "Didn't your husband tell you?"

  "Of course he did," Willy assured the journalist, hoping her face had not turned too bright a red. "It's just that Eric wins so much lately, it's hard to keep it all
straight
." Willy uncrossed her legs and crossed her arms instead. "What is the purpose of this interview, would you mind telling me?"

  "Sorry, thought I explained on the phone. We do dozens of profiles, and they get kind of monotonous. So we thought we'd take a new angle, and interview the wife this time, get the woman's perspective, you know? Like, what are some of the stresses of holding down the fort when your husband's on the road? When he's back, do you hit the town, or after all that hotel fare does he really look forward to a home-cooked meal?"

  "Maybe you'd better get this rolling, Mr. Roman. I have a practice game at four-thirty across town."

  "Say, that's a good detail. You play tennis, too?"

  The practice game had been a lie. Once she'd finally pushed Jeremy Roman out the door, Willy kicked off her pretty shoes and yanked the bobby pins from her hair. Roman hadn't wanted a picture after all. Slumping on the couch and crumpling her summer dress, Willy aimlessly flipped through the
Times
. The "A" section had run another feature on the First Lady. Hillary's health-care reform bill had been shit-canned. She was widely regarded as having botched it. White House advisors had prescribed a more muted role. The president's wife now made only a few modest appearances. Her new blouses tied in bows at the chin. When she accompanied her husband abroad Mrs. Clinton gathered hen parties for tea and sandwiches. She gave speeches on women's issues—day care and child-rearing. Hillary had started her own newspaper column, which eschewed politics for household hints. The
Times
had reprinted the First Lady's favorite recipe for oatmeal cookies. Eyes small and black as raisins, Willy clipped it out.

  The door slammed. Hair still wet from showering at Jordan, Eric poked his head in the kitchen. "Why are you banging pots?"

  "To make dinner."

  "Fuck that. Let's go out."

  "I can't afford to go out."

  "My treat." Eric took the pan off the stove and poured the water down the sink. "What's this Hamburger Helper crap? I thought the interview this afternoon would put you in a good mood."

  "Right, humiliation always cheers me up." Willy filled the pan with water again, and brisked to the cutting board to whack an onion in half. She wasn't adept in the kitchen in the best of times, which tonight wasn't. The knife sliced the tip of her finger. The exposed white onion tinged pink, darker between layers, where the blood coursed to each end. Damn it. The onion juice stung like fury, but the injury wasn't serious and the last thing Willy wanted was a lot of dither over a stupid cut. That

kind of pity was cheap, and this evening she was disinclined to let Eric off quite so lightly.

  "With that look in your eye, you've no business playing with knives." Eric hustled her out of the kitchen. He didn't notice the cut, and sat her down on the sofa. "Now, tell me what happened."

  She hadn't bound it with a napkin, so the finger kept oozing, dripping silently on the white upholstery. It hurt. It hurt a lot, actually, but a sharp stabbing sensation at every beat of her heart seemed apt. "Why didn't you tell me about winning the ATP's Most Impressive Newcomer Award?"

  "Oh, that." Eric waved his hand exactly as Jeremy Roman had, in dismissing the tennis aptitude that the reporter was secretly smug about. "Just a statistical thing. Which player new to the tour advanced the highest number of rankings over a year. The computer spit my name out. It doesn't mean anything."

  "It means enough to
Tennis
magazine to do a profile on you. From the wife's perspective, of course. So she could coo and prate on your behalf."

  Eric rubbed his eyes. "Nuts."

  "
Why didn't you tell me?
Have I made you ashamed of your own accomplishments? Or are there so many awards coming in that some of them slip your mind?"

  "Honey, I knew how you'd react."

  Willy stood up, leaving a rich stain on the couch ribbing. "How's that?"

  "Willy, your hand—!"

  "Never mind my hand. How would I react?"

  "Let me see that—"

  She whipped the finger away from him, spattering the Plexiglas table. "
How?"

  "You'd get mad! Look at you now!"

  "Yes, I'm mad now, because I narrowly missed making myself look like a prize chump. I thought, absurdly it turns out, that that journalist wanted to talk about
me
."

  Eric busied himself wadding tissues, holding them out toward her finger.

  "Typical," she taunted. "Tend some trivial cut instead of noticing where I'm really bleeding from!"