Double Fault (12 page)

  "Yossi Brenner," said Eric, bored.

  "
Yossi
was running the same race. Eric's sure he can beat the guy, but doesn't want him to feel outclassed. Fakes an injury. Gives him the event. I had to tell Eric, you're not doing that guy any favors. If you don't beat him, somebody else is going to."

  Eric sighed. "He did win, Dad. And the ribbon meant much more to him than it would have to me. I only ran track to help my basketball."

  "I always thought Eric's bowing out for a friend was lovely," said Alma quietly.

  "It was sweet," Axel granted. "But I'm sorry to say, there's little place for charity where Eric's headed. Where
any
of you boys are headed," he added, as if just reminded that he had three other sons.

  Willy caught Eric's eye. "I wouldn't worry about Eric's competitive drive. To really give his friend satisfaction, he'd have
run
the race and dropped behind. Obviously, he couldn't stand that. Compromise: a sprained ankle. He still wins the race in his head."

  Eric remarked to his father, "I told you she was smart."

  Alma offered Willy more polenta, and Axel stayed the platter. "Willy doesn't want seconds, Alma. She's got to watch her figure."

  "Actually, Mr. Oberdorf, I rallied for three hours today and I'm famished. I'd love some more polenta, which, by the way, is delicious." Willy lifted her plate and exchanged a smile with her hostess.

  "Can you tell me why so many girl tennis players are
fat
?" Axel nodded at her dinner. "Capriati is a load. Seles is a cow. Even Sanchez-Vicario is dumpy."

  "Well." Willy smoothed the polenta in her mouth. "Sponsors pressure women players to look sexy. Sometimes that pressure backfires into eating problems. But we're not paid to be fashion models."

  "Of course not," Axel concurred heartily. "But a pretty face like yours sure brightens up a game. Nothing wrong with looking good, is there? And it must help your speed, to stay light on your feet."

  Willy resolved to be agreeable. "It did improve Martina's agility when she dropped a few pounds."

  "Bit of a shame about the lesbianism, though," Axel reflected innocently. "Mean, I'm as liberal-minded as the next person, but never thought Martina and Billy Jean were much good for the game's rep. Every fan's not as
tolerant
as we are."

  "Lesbianism in the WTA has been greatly exaggerated by the press." Willy paused, placing her tongue between her molars to keep from grinding her teeth.

  "I bet Willy's not a dyke, Dad," said Mark, raising his eyebrows. "Ask Eric."

  "Say, Willy, when you play Eric here," Axel pried, leaning forward, "who wins?"

  The boys had fallen silent, and with no other course immediately forthcoming it seemed that Willy was for dessert.

  "Willy beats me easily, Dad," Eric provided.

  That this information registered Axel signaled by ignoring it. "Must be difficult," Axel commiserated, "struggling in a profession with a number like 386."

  Willy's voice rose despite herself. "It's murderous to be ranked at all!"

  "No need to get exercised," Axel soothed his guest. "Just being sympathetic with the frustration of being relatively unknown."

  "I don't mean to be rude, but how many people have ever heard of Axel Oberdorf?"

  "Every other vascular surgeon in the country," said Axel gruffly.

  "Exactly. I've been noted by my peers myself."

  "Sure you have," Axel purred. "With plenty of tournament experience, since my son tells me you're twenty-three. But I was wondering, isn't that pretty mature in women's tennis these days?"

  "Dad," Eric interjected, "I'm glad Willy's twenty-three. I wouldn't want to marry a thirteen-year-old nitwit."

  "What's that, son?"

  "I said, the woman you are insulting is going to be my
wife
."

  The subsequent bottle of champagne failed to bring Willy's blood pressure back to normal.

  Relieved to be on their own again, Eric and Willy debriefed on the crosstown bus. It was almost worth submitting to such an evening for the pleasure of dissecting it afterward.

  "Your brothers sure have a lot to measure up to," Willy ventured.

  "They don't, really," Eric objected. "So I've got a college degree, big deal; I'm the oldest. I've been on some school teams; I have a decent academic record. Now I'm on the very outer margins of a long-shot career. What's so intimidating?"

  "They just seem, I don't know, wary. Are you very close to them?"

  "How could I be?" Eric exploded, and the bag lady in a RESERVED FOR THE HANDICAPPED seat looked up. "Steven's too nice a guy to flat out despise me, so Steven I simply depress. Mark's a little gaga, but that won't last; he's shifty, always looking for a shortcut. He's convinced I've mastered some kind of trick, and he wants me to share my secret. He'll be plenty pissed off when he finds out the 'secret' is hard work. As for Robert, he thinks I'm a smarmy, asslicking goody-goody. Christ, he's probably right."

  "You're not exactly James Dean," Willy conceded.

  "I'm not going to screw up my life just to rebel against my obnoxious father. I sometimes even wonder if that's what he really wants. If he's baiting me to go out and be a zero to spite him and so show I'm a real man."

  "It's a shame." Willy sighed. "Those kids could probably use a big brother."

  "My father's taken care of that. Shit, I don't blame them for resenting me. If I were them, with that fucking exhibit in my father's bedroom? I'd take out a contract on my anointed brother. And Dad knows exactly what he's doing. He wants them to hate me. He never wanted the four of us to make allegiances, potentially against him. Divide and conquer, that's his motto, keep them at each other's throats. And damned if it hasn't succeeded. You noticed how he asked you, when we play, who wins? He's trying to stir up trouble, pit us against each other."

  "You know, that story about your friend Yossi surprised me. To be honest, I'd have never expected you to forfeit a contest of any sort."

  "Well," Eric admitted, "the real story's a little more complicated." He pulled the cord for their stop, and suggested they walk uptown from Eighty-sixth Street.

  "Yossi was my best friend for a couple of years," Eric continued up Broadway. "We were always rivals. Towards the end I thought it was all his problem, but by then I'd gotten the edge, so it was easy to feel lofty. Maybe if it were the other way around, I'd have been just as big a pain in the ass—you're never aware of being 'competitive' when you're winning. Still, it got pretty tiresome: who was getting taller, who got the hot-number girls into bed. You know, it was everything but whip it out with a measuring tape. Trite, in retrospect, but it didn't feel like
Happy Days
at the time. I'd make the honor roll when Yossi's GPA missed by .15, and he'd be surly for days, making bitter little digs and pointedly hanging out with the dope-smoking lowlifes in the stairwell."

  Hands in his pockets, loose legs swinging, Eric looked up at the sharp fall sky. Willy would have assumed he was terribly popular, but she realized now that Eric had, until recently, no one to talk to.

  "So when Yossi
had
to go out for track, too, I almost quit the team," Eric carried on, lengthening his stride. "But I needed to work on my conditioning for basketball. The whole feel of the track team that year was contentious, kind of nasty. Everybody was always dropping their times in conversation, and lying, of course, making the other guys nervous they were slow. Yossi and I were both working on the

800 meters. It's a difficult distance—long enough to require pacing, but short enough that you still have to sprint. I knew Yossi's personal best, since he was
always
bringing it up; and I knew mine, which I kept to myself. I had him by several seconds.

  "That race my dad went on about, it wasn't important—a twoschool meet, though that only made it more intense. We cared more about races against teammates than the big state meets. At any rate, my sprained ankle ruse was the product of eleventh-hour disgust. When I pictured leaving Yossi in the dust, I could just see that closed, black, murderous look he'd get when we cooled down. I thought, Let him have it. Maybe I'd had enough of Yossi, period."

  "You don't think you were being nice?"

  "Condescending, maybe. Or sick and tired. Hey, you got my number back there. If I were
nice
, I'd have let him beat me on the track. And you were right: I'd opt out, but I wouldn't lose. I don't think I'm capable of losing for anybody." Eric sounded morose, as if his own constitution depressed him.

  "Besides," he went on, his cordovans scuffing the sidewalk, "I'd feel prouder of myself without the epilogue. Afterwards, Yossi went on about that 800 meters so relentlessly, like he was so glad to have something over on me for once, that I finally told him that I'd faked the injury and given him the race."

  "How'd he react?"

  Eric shrugged. "He called me an asshole—which I
was
—and claimed that he'd have won anyway. But I'd burst his bubble. He didn't brag about the race again. I know I was a prick, but I was a kid."

  His mother's delicate portions inadequate, Eric stopped at a vegetable stand and bought some fruit.

  "What happened to the friendship?" Willy asked.

  "It died fast after that nail in our coffin," Eric confided as he inhaled a banana back up Broadway. "I didn't miss him. Constantly comparing notes, who got this, who won that, it was gross. You never got to be real buddies. And that kind of game, it's only fun so long as it's a toss-up who's ahead. Like, when we met, we'd have races doing the
Times
crossword, and it was neck and neck. But by senior year, I'd handicap myself by referring exclusively to the across clues, while he got to use the downs, too. I'd still beat him by a quadrant. I made him feel like crud. He made me feel sheepish. What was in it for anybody?"

  Willy found this tale unaccountably disquieting, and changed the subject. "Do you think your family was happy as they pretended, that we're getting married?"

  "My mother, sure. She liked you—if only for standing up to my dad. Of course, you must have noticed that my brothers went ashen with dread. Dad will just use the event to make a fuss over me and they'll feel like earthworms in comparison. My father? Can't marry me himself, so I guess he'll get used to it."

  "Has he gone for the jugular of every girl you've brought home?"

  "No, you're the first woman I've shown up with that he's goaded like that. I'm awfully sorry. And I was impressed—you handled yourself great, really kept a cool head. It's just, he tests people. His version of taking you seriously is to take you on. I'm sure it didn't feel like a compliment, but you ought to be flattered. He sized you up as a contender and thought you could take it."

  "But how can he make fun of
my
ranking of 386," Willy puzzled, "when
you're
ranked 927?"

  "Why do you think you got under his skin? You make me look bad."

  "Eric, you just started—"

  "That's what he's telling himself. Too loudly. He's nervous about this tennis thing."

  "Aren't you?"

  "Not especially."

  "Why
not?"

  Eric tossed her an apple. "You know the first thing you learn on the high wire?
Don't look down
."

C
LAMOROUS SWEETSPOT STUDENTS HAVING
sifted off to dinner, the weight room was silent but for the squeal of the shoulder pull and the compressed hiss of exhalation through Willy's teeth. Max's shadow fell from behind her onto the facing wall.

  "You're tilting to the right," Max observed wearily.

  Willy released the bar to dangle overhead. She rested thirty seconds between sets—plenty of time for a single sentence. "My right shoulder is three times stronger than my left; a tilt is inevitable." The wrong sentence.

  "Since my advice is
impossible
to follow, I'll leave you to it." The shadow shifted, bloated, and faded.

  "Wait! See it this is better." Willy clutched the slippery grips and bowed her head. With her eyes shut, the position was prayerful.

  "Yes. That's straight." His voice dragged. When Willy resisted

his coaching he got angry; when she did what she was told he got sad. Go figure. The shadow expanded again. The doorknob clicked.

  "Max, we need to talk." Willy wiped her hands on her shorts, working her shoulders in circles. The left one ached. She swiveled to the upright bench press, adjusted to five more pounds of bullion than she usually raised. But the clink of pins would reverberate unbearably, so she left them as they were. Nestling her back on the padded rest, she grasped the squishy, foam-covered handles.

  Max remained by the door. He wasn't slumped; he never slumped. Still there was a preternatural relaxation about the man that was almost deathly. She had seen it in coaches before. They all struck a been-there-done-that posture, like a soul reincarnated one too many times. Maybe the post-everything otherworldliness was not to be envied. Max looked conclusively like a man who had nothing left to prove, and she didn't understand what you did with your life if not prove something.

  Facing him now, arms open, her pose was frank. She got the impression that he still liked looking at her breasts.

  "Max, I'm getting married."

  The sentence didn't take anywhere near thirty seconds. Since Max's face registered no change, Willy wondered if her dread of this exchange for the last month was pure hubris, and he didn't give a damn.

  "Underwood?" Max asked dispassionately.

  "Oberdorf. I got it wrong. Though one and the same."

  "Good idea, if you're going to take it, to learn his name."