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She takes the card, looks at it for several seconds, then looks up, touched.

How did you know it was my birthday?

I just—know.

Thank you, she says. Really.

She walks away quickly.

T
HE NEXT DAY
she’s coming off the practice courts just as Brad and I arrive. This time there are mobs of fans and reporters all around and she seems painfully self-conscious. She slows, gives us a half wave, and in a stage whisper says: How can I reach you?

I’ll give my number to Heinz.

OK.

Goodbye.

Bye.

After practice Perry and Brad and I sit around the house we’ve rented, debating when she’s going to call.

Soon, Brad says.

Very soon, Perry says.

The day passes without a call.

Another day passes.

I’m in agony. Wimbledon starts Monday, and I can’t sleep, can’t think. Sleeping pills are powerless against this kind of anxiety.

She had better call, Brad says, or you’re going to lose in the first round.

Saturday night, just after dinner, the phone rings.

Hello?

Hi. It’s Stefanie.

Stefanie?

Stefanie.

Stefanie
—Graf?

Yes.

Oh. You go by Stefanie?

She explains that her mother called her Steffi years ago, and the press picked it up and it stuck. But she thinks of herself as Stefanie.

Stefanie it is, I say.

While talking to her I go skiing around the living room in my sweat socks. I schuss across the wood floors. Brad pleads with me to stop, to sit in a chair. He’s sure I’m going to break a leg or tweak a knee. I settle into an easy cross-country motion around the perimeter of the room. He smiles and tells Perry, We’re going to have a good tournament. It’s going to be a
good
Wimbledon.

Sssh, I tell him.

Then I lock myself in a back room.

Listen, I tell Stefanie, back in Key Biscayne you said you didn’t want any misunderstandings with me. Well, I don’t want any misunderstandings with you either. So I need to tell you, I just need to say before we go any further, that I think you are
beautiful
. I respect you, I admire you, and I would absolutely love to get to know you better. That’s my goal. That’s my only agenda. That’s where I am. Tell me this is possible. Tell me we can go to dinner.

No.

Please.

It’s not possible—not here.

Not here. OK. Can we go somewhere else?

No. I have a boyfriend.

I think: the boyfriend. Still. I’ve read about him. Race-car driver. The same boyfriend she’s had for six years. I try to come up with something clever to say, some way of telling her to open herself to the
possibility
of being with me. With the silence stretching to an uncomfortable length, the moment sliding away, all I can come up with is this:

Six years is a long time.

Yes, she says. Yes it is.

If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. I’ve lived that.

She doesn’t say anything. But it’s the way she doesn’t say anything. I’ve struck a chord.

I continue. It can’t be exactly what you’re looking for. I mean, I don’t want to make any assumptions—but.

I hold my breath. She doesn’t contradict me.

I say, I don’t want to be disrespectful, or take liberties, but just, can you just, please, could you, maybe, I don’t know, just get to
know
me?

No.

Coffee?

I can’t be in public with you. It wouldn’t be right.

What about letters? Can I write you?

She laughs.

Can I send you stuff? Can I
let
you know me before you decide if you want to
get
to know me?

No.

Not even letters?

There is someone who reads my mail.

I see.

I knock my fist against my forehead. Think, Andre,
think
.

I say, OK, look, how about this. You’re playing your next tournament in San Francisco. I’ll be there practicing with Brad. You said you love San Francisco. Let’s meet in San Francisco.

This is—possible.

This is
—possible
?

I wait for her to elaborate. She doesn’t.

So can I call you, or do you just want to call me?

Call me after this tournament, she says. Let’s both play, and call me when you finish the tournament.

She gives me her cell phone number. I write it on a paper napkin, kiss it, and put it in my tennis bag.

I
REACH THE SEMIS AND PLAY
R
AFTER
. I beat him in straight sets. I don’t have to wonder who’s waiting for me in the final. It’s Pete. As always, Pete. I stagger back to the house, thinking shower, food, sleep. The phone rings—I’m sure it’s Stefanie, wishing me luck against Pete, confirming our San Francisco date.

But it’s Brooke. She’s in London and asks to come by and see me.

As I hang up the phone and turn, Perry is there, inches from my face.

Andre, please tell me you said no. Please tell me you’re not letting that woman come here.

She’s coming. In the morning.

Before you play the final at Wimbledon?

It’ll be fine.

S
HE ARRIVES AT TEN
, wearing an enormous British hat with a wide, floppy brim and plastic flowers. I give her a quick tour of the house. We compare it to the houses she and I used to rent, back in the day. I ask if she’d like something to drink.

Do you have any tea?

Sure.

I hear Brad cough in the next room. I know what the cough means. It’s the morning of the final. An athlete should never change his routine on the morning of a final. I’ve had coffee every morning of the tournament. I should be having coffee now.

But I want to be a good host. I make a pot of tea, and we drink it at a table under the kitchen window. We talk without saying anything. I ask if she has anything special she wanted to tell me. She misses me, she says. She wanted to tell me that.

She sees a stack of magazines on the corner of the table, copies of a recent
Sports Illustrated
. I’m on the cover. The headline is
Suddenly Andre
. (I’m suddenly starting to hate that word,
suddenly.)
Tournament officials sent them over, I tell her. They want me to autograph copies for fans and Wimbledon officials and staffers.

Brooke picks up one of the magazines, stares at my photo. I watch her stare. I think of that day thirteen years ago, sitting with Perry in his bedroom, beneath hundreds of
Sports Illustrated
covers, dreaming about Brooke. Now here she is, I’m on the cover of
Sports Illustrated
, Perry is a former producer of her TV show, and we’re all barely speaking.

She reads the headline aloud. Suddenly Andre. She reads it again. Suddenly Andre?

She looks up. Oh, Andre.

What?

Oh, Andre. I’m so
so
sorry.

Why?

Here it is, your big moment, and they make it all about me.

·  ·  ·

S
TEFANIE IS IN THE FINAL TOO
. She loses to Lindsay Davenport. She had been playing mixed doubles as well, with McEnroe, and they had reached the semis, but she pulled out because of a bad hamstring. I’m in the locker room, getting dressed for my match with Pete, and McEnroe is telling a group of players that Stefanie left him in the lurch.

Can you believe this
bitch?
She asks to play mixed doubles with me and I fucking do it and then we’re in the semis and she backs out?

Brad puts a hand on my shoulder. Steady, champ.

I start strong against Pete. My mind is going in several directions at once—how dare Mac say those things about Stefanie? what was the deal with that hat Brooke was wearing?—but somehow I’m playing solid, crisp tennis. It’s 3–all in the first set, Pete serving at love–40. Triple break point. I see Brad smiling, punching Perry, shouting,
Come on! Let’s go!
I let myself think about Borg, the last person to win the French and Wimbledon back to back, a feat now within my grasp.

I imagine Borg phoning me again to congratulate me. Andre? Andre, it’s me. Björn. I envy you.

Pete wakes me from my fantasy. Unreturnable serve. Unreturnable serve. Blur. Ace. Game, Sampras.

I stare at Pete in shock. No one, living or dead, has ever served like that. No one in the history of the game could have returned those serves.

He takes me out in straight sets, finishing me off with two aces, two fiery exclamation points at the end of a seamless performance. It’s the first match I’ve lost in a slam in the last fourteen matches, a streak of dominance almost without precedence in my career. But history will record that it’s Pete’s sixth Wimbledon, and his twelfth slam overall, tying him for most all-time among men—as history should. Later, Pete tells me he never saw me hit the ball as hard and clean as I did those first six games, and it made him raise his game, amp up his second serve by twenty miles an hour.

In the locker room I need to take the standard drug test. I so badly want to piss and run back to the house and call Stefanie, but I can’t, because I have a bladder like a whale. It takes forever. Finally my bladder cooperates with my heart.

I drop my bag in the front hall and lunge for the phone as if it’s a drop shot. Fingers trembling, I dial. Straight to voice mail. I leave a message. Hi. It’s Andre. Tournament’s over. I lost to Pete. Sorry about your loss to Lindsay. Call me when you can.

I sit. I wait. A day passes. No call. Another day. No call.

I hold the phone in front of my face and tell it: Ring.

I dial her again, leave another message. Nothing.

I fly back to the West Coast. As I step off the plane, I check my messages. Nothing.

I fly to New York for a charity event. I check my voice mail every fifteen minutes. Nothing.

J.P. meets me in New York City. We hit the town. P. J. Clarke’s and Campagnola. A big ovation when we walk in. I see my friend Bo Dietl, the cop-turned-TV personality. He’s sitting at a long table with his crew: Mike the Russian, Shelly the Tailor, Al Tomatoes, Joey Pots and Pans. They insist we join them.

J.P. asks Joey Pots and Pans how he got his nickname.

I love to cook!

Later we all break up laughing when Joey’s cell phone rings. He flips it open and yells,
Pots!

Bo says he’s having a party in the Hamptons this weekend. He insists that J.P. and I come. Pots is cooking, he says. Tell him your favorite food, whatever it is, he’ll cook it. It makes me think of those long-ago Thursday nights at Gil’s house.

I tell Bo we wouldn’t miss it.

T
HE CROWD AT
B
O’S HOUSE
is like the cast of
GoodFellas
meets
Forrest Gump
. We sit around the pool, smoking cigars, drinking tequila. Every now and then I pull Stefanie’s number out of my pocket and study it. At one point I go into Bo’s house and call her from his landline, in case she’s screening my calls. Straight to voice mail.

Frustrated, restless, I drink three or four too many margaritas, then put my wallet and cell phone on a chair and do a cannonball into the pool, still dressed. Everyone follows. An hour later, I check my voicemail again. You have one new message.

For some reason my cell phone didn’t ring.

Hi, she says. I’m sorry I haven’t called you back. I got very sick. My body broke down after Wimbledon. I had to pull out of San Francisco and come home to Germany. But I’m feeling better now. Call me back when you can.

She doesn’t leave her number, of course, because she already gave me her number.

I pat my pockets. Where did I put that number?

My heart stops. I remember writing it on a paper napkin, which was in my pocket when I jumped in the pool. Gingerly I reach into my pocket and pull out the napkin. It looks like Tammy Faye Bakker’s makeup.

I remember that I phoned Stefanie once from Bo’s landline. I grab him by the arm and tell him that whatever it takes, whatever favors he has to call in, whoever he needs to grease or bully or kill, he must get the phone records for his house, with all the outgoing phone calls from today. And he must do it right now.

Done, Bo says.

He reaches out to a guy who knows a guy who has a friend who has a cousin who works for the phone company. An hour later we have the records. The list of calls made from the house looks like the Pittsburgh white pages. Bo yells at his crew: I’m going to start keeping an eye on you mutts! No wonder my frigging phone bill is so high!

But there’s the number. I write it down in six different places, including my hand. I dial Stefanie, and she answers on the third ring. I tell her what I’ve been through tracking her down. She laughs.

We’re both playing near Los Angeles soon. Can we meet there? Maybe?

After your tournament, she says. Yes.

I
FLY TO
L
OS
A
NGELES AND PLAY WELL
. I meet Pete in the final. I lose
7–6, 7–6
, and don’t care. Running off the court, I’m the happiest guy in the world.

I shower, shave, dress. I grab my tennis bag and head for the door—and there’s Brooke.

She heard I was in town and decided to come down and see me play. She gives me a head-to-toe.

Wow, she says. You’re all dressed up. Got a big date?

Actually, yes.

Oh. With who?

I don’t answer.

Gil, she says, who does he have a date with?

Brooke, I think you should probably ask Andre that.

She stares at me. I sigh.

I’m going out with Stefanie Graf.

Stefanie?

Steffi.

I know we’re both thinking of the photo on the refrigerator door. I
say, Please don’t tell anybody, Brooke. She’s a private person, and she doesn’t like any attention.

I won’t tell a soul.

Thank you.

You look nice.

Really?

Uh-huh.

Thanks.

I hoist my tennis bag. She walks me into the tunnel under the stadium, where players park their cars.

Hello, Lily, she says, putting a hand on the gleaming white hood of the Cadillac. The top is already down. I throw my bag on the backseat.