Aloft (25 page)

"No way. I haven't played in more than twenty years," I tell him, not an untruth, the last time being at a divorced/widowed singles holiday mixer at an indoor tennis bubble, and only because I was bored to death.

"We'll just hit."

"I'm not dressed. Look at my shoes." I show him (and everybody else) my knockoff Top-Siders from Target. I'm wearing long shorts and an old polo shirt with a Battle Brothers logo on the breast, the head of a rake.

"What's your sneaker size?"

"Twelves. There's no way I'd fit into one of yours, what, you're an eight, nine?"

"We've got lots of extra pairs around here. Alva, if you can take a look, please."

"Yes, sir."

"Forget it. Anyway, I just ate."

"So did I."

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"I haven't finished."

"Listen, Jerry," Richie says, irked, in his sharp conference table alto, "when are you going to figure out that there's no free lunch around here?"

Suddenly everyone's calling on me to play, except of course for Alva, who has just disappeared inside the house on her errand.

"Okay," I say, looking back to the house for Rita, my only ally, though thinking that perhaps she's been instructed to stay inside by Richie, so that she won't be a good health professional and dissuade this fifty-nine-year-old idiot from killing himself on the court.

We start hitting, or at least Richie does, as I blast his first three balls to me over the fence; after the third, Richie tells me to cut the bullshit. But I'm not playing games; it's my first time with these new titanium racquets, my last weapon being a lac-quered wood model (Jack Kramer Flight) strung with natural gut that you could nicely spin the ball with but had to whip to get any decent pace. This feather-light shiny thing feels like a Ping-Pong paddle in my hand, its head seeming twice as big as it should be—yet another game-improvement technology that makes anyone instantly competent in a sport he should probably never pursue but will anyway, leading to a lifetime of further time/financial investment. But after a couple more moonshots and a few overspins that dive and hit the court on my side of the net, I start to get the old stroke back, my arm feeling like the twenty-year scaffolding around it has been dis-mantled, and soon enough I'm solidly striking my ground strokes, at least those I don't have to range too far for, as my foot-work is shot and probably gone forever. And
Ah yes,
comes the revelation,
I have legs, I have knees.
Richie, on the other hand, A L O F T

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appears to be playing a narrower court than mine. He's always hitting from the correct body position, knees flexed, shoulder to the target, weight moving forward, and though he doesn't hit for power he consistently places his balls deep, right inside the baseline, and periodically shaves a nasty cut backhand that skids low on the Har-Tru, making me bend that much more than I really can. He's good, for sure, obviously not self-taught, nothing natural about it, but thanks to hundreds of hours with his pro and a home ball machine and traveling tourneys with his club, he's got game.

"Not too shabby, Jerry," Richie calls out. "Not too shabby at all."

I can't really answer because it's taking all my energy to keep the rally going, and although I'm enjoying the action and its rhythms, the breezeless air suddenly seems unbearably humid, like I'm playing inside a dryer vent, and I just stop, letting his approach skip past me unharmed.

"What's the matter?" Richie says, poised at the net.

"I think I'm done."

"Not possible, Jerry," he says, chopping at the top of the white tape with his racquet. He's excited, though hardly breathing. "You gotta keep going. You're just getting into a groove. I think we're nicely matched. I usually play against guys who hit it pretty flat, but you have a lot of topspin on your shots, even your backhand."

"I'm done, Richie. Plus my feet are killing me."

I slip my sockless foot out of the deck shoe, half afraid to look. But it's not horrible, gone the color of watermelon, just that shade (white) skin turns just before the blisters puff out.

"Come on, it's nothing," he tells me, like his play date is being cut short. "Anyway, look, here comes Alva. Rita, too."

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E

I turn around, and indeed the two of them are approaching the court, Alva holding an orange shoebox, Rita sporting an expression of extreme confusion and alarm, as if the sight of me holding a racquet near Richie were tantamount to wielding a machete, as in what is that lunatic Jerry doing now?

Alva flips the box top and hands me a pair of brand-new Nikes. "Twelve on the dot, Mr. Jerry," she says, it seems to me a bit gleefully. "I already laced them up for you. With fresh socks inside."

I say to Richie, "Where did you get these?"

"I told you," Richie says, coming on to my side of the court,

"we keep tennis shoes around, for guests. You can keep them."

"He doesn't need them," Rita breaks in. "Jerry, I'll talk to you later, all right?"

"Hey, now, Rita," Richie says. "He's a big boy."

"JerryI" she says, her voice firm and sharp enough that I reflexively begin handing the sneakers back to Alva.

Richie pushes the pair into my chest and says to Rita, "Hey, sweetheart, be a nice girl and sit down, okay?"

"Jerry was just going ..."

"We're having fun here, Ri-ta," he says, more pronouncing her name than speaking it. "We'd like to focus on the business at hand. Please sit down and watch, or else join my friends and have something more to eat. Can I ask you to do that? Is that too much for me to ask? Because if it is, I'm confused. Maybe I'm dumb. But hey, if you insist, I'll do what you want."

Rita doesn't answer, because it's really not too much to ask but of course it is, especially when you ask that way, and I understand now why I never really liked Richie Coniglio too much, why I never really regretted standing by while the The Stank made a tortilla out of his foot, and why, too, maybe the A L O F T

19,9

worst kind of bullies are the ones who exert brain power rather than muscle power (as they can badly mistreat anyone they like, women and children, too, and still remain upstanding, for they leave no marks). Guys like Richie get pretty much 98 percent of whatever they want, that's their core talent, what they actually do for a living, the only thing slipping their grasp being that tiny sliver of unalloyed good feeling from friends and acolytes and lovers and other parties who should be celebrating but definitely are not. And maybe in a somewhat related manner, the people near and dear to me have perhaps decided that I'm not altogether different, that if I'm no rainmaker extraordinaire like Richie I'm a fellow who has enjoyed a bit too much calm flying for my (or anybody's) own good, and thus should suffer regular baleful storms of ill will to dash so unbuffeted a route.

There's sense in this, for sure, but I'd say, too, that there's no other mode in this life of ours as sanctified as the one in which you glide to the finish, supine, reclined, as sleepy-eyed as a satyr.

"Let's play, Richie," I say, without pleasure or merriment.

"One set."

"You got it. But what's the stake?"

"Whatever you like."

"Oh God," Rita says, starting back for the house.

"How about our wheels?" Richie says, straightening the strings of his racquet head. "What are you driving these days?"

"Impala convertible, '67."

"Yeah, I'll put up my '92 Testarossa. It's the one there by the garage. Four hundred original miles. It's worth at least eighty."

"Fine with me."

"Sure, but you'll have to do better. The Chevy's worth what, twenty at most? Don't you own a little plane?"

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"You don't fly, Richie."

"You watch. I'll learn."

Rita has stopped, her posture and expression disbelieving that this has pretty much come to a pissing contest (though that would be a lot quicker and easier). She's waiting for my answer.

"Okay," I say, the sound of it harmless, not quite believing that this is for real, which is no doubt how chronic gamblers blithely invite utter ruin. Rita turns and immediately heads for the house. I tell everybody to wait a second, and follow her, at a respectful, cool distance, but once inside she goes right into a powder room next to the kitchen.

"Come on, now," I say through the walnut door. "We're just playing a game."

"You two are jerks."

"I still think he's worse than me."

"Just leave me alone, Jerry. Leave me alone."

I keep talking, but she doesn't answer, and soon just keeps flushing the can to drown out my words.

On the way back out I notice on the kitchen desk a laptop computer that's on, and hooked to the Web (the bastard has this same incredible fast line in his house that Jack does back at the shop), so I quickly tap in Sir Harold's address, and there it is, right on the big full-color flat screen, a grainy shot of Sir Harold's deflated silver balloon afloat in the water, signage of the party definitely being over, a skinny brown fisherman corralling it with a long-staffed hook. Another shot is of the damaged pod, its hatch missing, one side of it crushed in like a half-eaten whorl. The text is brief, and is addressed to Our Friends and Supporters: The Magellan Ill pod has been located, Sir Harold Clarkson-Ickes has not yet been found. Our search will continue.

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One of the women knocks at the French doors and waves at me to come out. I click off the site and follow her to Richie's Centre Court, where the others are buzzing with talk of the wager.

But as I tie on my new sneakers I picture Sir Harold stiff-limbed and suspended in the dark water of the ocean, his hair streaming out in wildness, his gray-tipped beard fixed forever with its tragic explorer's-length growth, the shoes and socks knocked off his now bare feet, and his eyes, his eyes, gazing out at the terrible immensity of the deep. He surely loved to be alone, but not down there, submerged, caught in the wrong element. I feel suddenly sick to my stomach, and I step over behind the beautifully clipped boxwood and retch all of Alva's fine cold lobster curry. The shrub is tinseled in reds and greens.

My eyes tear with the gagging, of course, but for a few seconds I really let go; I can't remember the last time I bawled like this (not even after Daisy), and it's only when I feel a hand on my shoulder do I suck it up.

"Maybe you ought to take a pass, Mr. Battle." It's Kenton, offering a napkin. "You look real sick."

"Oh, he'll be all right," Richie calls over. "Just game-day nerves. Come on, Jerry, let's get this show on the road."

Richie, being the lawyer, goes over the whole deal: one six-game set, 12-point tie breaker at 6—all, honor system for calls, and (this clause for me) any play-ending injury or other inability to continue resulting in the forfeiture of the match and the keys to his car and my plane, which we've placed in a wineglass on the courtside table, where everyone but Rita is sitting.

Not surprisingly, I start out slow, serving first and promptly losing the game love, dumping three of the points on double faults. Richie easily wins his serve, and in the next game I do
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better, though still lose, chunking one game-winning volley into the net, and then completely whiffing an easy overhead on an out, for an instant 3-0. No one is saying anything at the side change, least of all Richie, who simply micro-adjusts his wrist-bands and smiles the tidy smile of a man who knows the future.

The fourth game looks bad for me, as Richie is working his big-kicking serves into my body, which I can't do much with save return harmlessly to him at the net, starting a predictable chain reaction of his crisp deep volley and my lame lob and his controlled smash and my desperate, futile get. But after those I sneak a couple skidding line jobs, and at 30—all he double-faults, I don't know how or why, but this squarely irritates him, I can see, because his whole game is not to commit any unforced errors, and on his ensuing serve (a bit flatter and wider) I go for broke and bust a forehand winner down the line. Game, Mr. Battle. I even pump a fist in the air, not just for me but also for Sir Harold, and while I'm mentally feting myself (because it sure feels to me as if I've already won), Richie breaks my serve again in a love game to go up 4-1; and as we change sides it dawns on me with a big fat
duh
that he's maybe eight lousy points away from taking my
Donnie.
But rather than inspire me, the circumstance paralyzes, I'm choked with dread, the picture of Richie soaring on high at the controls surveying the contour and line of his own earthly garden and then the rest of us gravity-stricken bipeds literally taking my breath away, and I have to clutch the net post to keep from falling down.

"Somebody give Mr. Battle there a drink," Richie says, already waiting at his baseline. "Nobody's going to croak here today."

Kenton comes and gives me a bottle of spring water, and says, with a hand on my shoulder, "You okay?"

I nod, finishing the bottle in one quick pull. He gives me an-A L O F T

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other, this time advising me to drink it slow. When I look into his eyes I can see how he's seeing me, as a bedraggled pathetic heap, a veritable
old
man, which maybe I am but I'm not (but maybe I am?), and though
Donnie
is in jeopardy and I'm losing my ability to perspire, it's this that really shakes me, halts my breath.

Richie says, "What the fuck, Kenton, you nursing him now?"

"Jes bein a good water boy, boss," he says in a thick pick-aninny accent, which gives them all a good laugh, including Richie.

"Well let's move it along, son."

Kenton yessuhs, and I mutter "Thanks, buddy" to him, and as he hands me my racquet in exchange for the empty bottle he says in a voice so low I can hardly hear him, "Play low to the forehand."

I don't acknowledge him, of course, because I can hardly manage anything more than the basics, but when play resumes I think about what he said and begin doing it, hitting short cut shots to Richie's forehand whenever he's well back, which normally wouldn't be recommended against a solid net player like Richie but is strangely effective, as he seems to have some trouble handling a shortish ball on that side, resulting in flabby groundstrokes that are long and out, or, if in, I can hit back hard. Maybe Kenton has played enough with Richie to have learned this tendency, but after yet another short ball that Richie has to scuttle forward for I realize perhaps the reason why: it's his left foot that leads that particular shot, his left foot broken in youth by The Stank. Maybe it plain hurts when he lunges on it, or maybe it's a phantom hurt (which can be just as disturbing, if not more), but the fact of the matter is, it's working for me, not just for cheap and easy points but also because
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