Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (82 page)

“Do you know what that means?” Andy asked, twisting to look at me. “I sure do. Was the letter sent?”

Andy typed more, got a menu heading, COPLEY’S IN BOX. He highlighted a return memo. The comptroller reported that a letter had been mailed to Gene’s home address (although he hadn’t lived there for a year) return receipt requested. It was signed by Cathy on May 11th, the day before she died.

Andy pressed a pair of buttons. The memo disappeared and the screen turned blue. He typed a command—ERASE: Dragonslayer search—and hit the Enter key. The screen responded: Search erased, Dragonslayer. He leaned forward and turned off the terminal. “The machines Gene built made Stick the owner of this company. When Copley started here, he was just a drone like us.” Andy sprung up from his squat. “Stick’ll give you money if you hold a gun to his head, but he won’t share his power. Never his power. I’m not a fool. I know who I’m dealing with. Gene didn’t.”

“How were you able to show me those memos?”

Andy smiled. He pushed his glasses up, although they were already in place. “I gotta get to work.”

“Could Gene invade the system like that?”

Andy shook his head no. “I told you, I’m not a fool. Unless the Prince of Darkness rips the Dragon network out, I’m in this company to stay.”

“The Prince of Darkness,” I repeated, amused.

“That’s what we call him.” Andy returned to his chair and focused on his troublesome prototype. “That’s what everybody calls him. Except for Gene. He told me that making up nicknames for authority figures just shows you’re really scared.” Andy glanced at me, smiling. “He get that insight from you?”

“Probably.”

Andy put his nose right up to a circuit board, peering through his dirty glasses at a jumble of cables. “Now why aren’t you happy, my little hard drive?” he asked in a Transylvanian accent. He continued to play Dracula, while he added to me, “Nice to meet you, Dr. Neruda. I’d appreciate it if you went out the way we came in. What the Prince of Darkness doesn’t know can’t hurt us.”

C
HAPTER
F
IVE
Final Analysis

W
HEN
I
APPEARED IN THE MAIN LOBBY, WITH AN AIR OF INNOCENCE
, I didn’t have to ask to phone Laura. The receptionist greeted me as I approached. “Dr. Neruda? Mr. Copley is looking for you. Here,” she handed me a phone, “I’ll get his assistant.”

“Hello, Doctor,” Laura said cheerfully, as if we were old friends.

“Call me Rafe,” I said. “I’m a shrink. We’re not real doctors.”

She chuckled. “Oh, you shouldn’t give up your title so easily. Let me get him.”

“Dr. Neruda?” Stick came on instantly. “Did you bring your tennis racquet to New York?”

He had a knack for being surprising. “My tennis racquet?” I repeated dully.

“Edgar mentioned you’re a player. I have a doubles game tonight. Our fourth has dropped out, our backup is out of town, and I hate playing Canadian.”

Without thinking, I answered truthfully. “I haven’t played in years.”

“Oh.” Copley’s disappointment, even disapproval, went unconcealed. “Forget it.”

I recovered. “But I doubt I’ve forgotten how to win. I sure knew how to beat Edgar’s ass.” Saying that so embarrassed me, I turned my back to the receptionist, hoping she wouldn’t hear.

Copley was quiet for a moment. “That’s what he said,” he commented in a low voice. “You know, we don’t throw our racquets or anything, but we take tennis pretty seriously. How rusty are you?”

“If I hit for a half hour before we start, I’ll be fine. Do they have a pro there? He can warm me up.”

Copley jumped on this notion, proposing a variation. He said the game was at the Wall Street Racquet Club (he claimed that my being in Manhattan was why he thought of me) and he would get there at six, an hour before the doubles, to hit with me. He could use the practice, he said, not bothering to make that fib convincing. I was being checked out. And not as a permanent tennis partner, I assumed.

Should he send a car for me? he asked. I declined. Did I have my racquet? I decided against telling him I no longer owned a tennis racquet. I said I hadn’t brought it and would rent one from the courts. Oh no, he said, he’d arrange to have my model there. What did I normally play with? I couldn’t believe I was being caught in such a silly lie. I retreated into the dignity of poverty, assuming a hurt tone. I said firmly, “I can’t allow you to buy me a racquet. I’ll rent one at the courts.”

He wasn’t done with that issue, however. At the very least, he wanted Laura to call the courts to make sure they had my model for rent. (Probably if they didn’t, he would then have bought it.) At last, I found a way out. “You know, I’d rather play with a strange racquet. I’ve noticed it improves my concentration. I get so interested in observing how the new racquet plays that I focus better.”

“Huh,” he said, impressed. “That’s a great marketing idea for tennis. Buy a new racquet every week and win.”

“That’s me. Always trying to get the economy going.”

He said, “Anyway, Laura tells me it’ll have to be a Wilson. That’s all they have to rent.” There hadn’t been a break in our conversation. The magic phone was at work again.

“A Wilson will be fine,” I said.

Our date was set. In the excitement of its arrangement, Copley forgot to ask, or seemed to, about my talk with Andy.

There are places in New York where limousines congregate, their long and squat dark shapes almost blending with the city’s black gutters. They line up outside expensive restaurants from TriBeCa to Elaine’s, park at the right Broadway show on the right night, queue beside the Garden during the playoffs, are almost always present at Lincoln Center, and also, I discovered that evening, at the Wall Street Racquet Club. There were half a dozen docked by the sleek East River, in the shadows of the giant glowing green bubbles that cover Piers 13 and 14. The bubbles aren’t Martian spaceships, but protection for synthetic clay tennis courts, rented at hourly rates that, with twice-a-week use in a year, could cost you enough to build your own. The lockers are made of wood, the showers are multi-headed, there are redwood-lined saunas, the help is soft-spoken, and the customers complain the facilities are second-rate.

I arrived early to inspect the choice of rental racquets so my ignorance wouldn’t be revealed to Copley. When I played tennis regularly most people owned wood racquets. The few who used metal were seeing doctors for tennis elbow. I knew there wouldn’t be any wood racquets, but I was surprised there were no metal ones either. The technology had moved on to composite plastic and graphite models. They are dramatically lighter than the old woodies: it’s like picking up a tin frying pan instead of an iron skillet. I rejected the grotesque oversized head and wide-body types. They seemed like jokes to me, so large I couldn’t imagine how a player would know if he was hitting near the sweet spot. A pro gossiping with two clerks heard me make that comment. He said that with the oversize heads I didn’t have to worry about finding the sweet spot. The new racquets were so forgiving, even a ball struck near the edge of the frame has power. “Of course if you hit it in the sweet spot,” he added, not joking, “the ball will go long.”

“You mean, it rewards mediocrity,” I said.

The two clerks laughed and then covered their mouths as if I had broken a taboo.

The pro nodded and winked at me. He suggested I try the Wilson pro staff model, the closest to the width and thickness of the antique woodies. “This is what Stefan Edberg uses. It’s still got plenty of power,” he commented dryly.

Before making the trip downtown, I had stopped by Paragon on Union Square and, with some difficulty, bought plain white shorts. I couldn’t find a single plain shirt, so I wore one of my white polos. I had wrongly assumed the dress code at a place called the Wall Street Racquet Club would be white. In fact, I saw no other player in white. Copley showed up in a black and purple nylon matching outfit: black warm-up jacket with purple piping over a black shirt with a purple lightning bolt; black warm-up pants with zippers up the legs so they could be pulled off over his sneakers to reveal black shorts with purple piping.

“You changed already?” he said as a greeting.

“I came like this.”

“Do you have a change of clothes?” His tone was curt and commanding, as if I were his child.

For a yes, I showed him my bag.

“Here,” he gestured for me to give it to him. “I’ll put it in my locker.” He turned to the clerk. “We have Court One?”

“Yes, Mr. Copley,” the clerk said, although Stick hadn’t announced himself.

Copley disappeared into the lockers briefly. Returning, he led me onto the courts. When we passed through the rotating doors into the bubbles, my ears popped. Along with the roar of air-conditioning (outside the temperature had reached ninety-five) it felt as if we were in a jet. “How did it go with Andy?” Copley asked. He put his large tennis bag on a wood bench to the side of the net and opened it. He followed the serious tennis player’s equipment recommendation to the letter: he brought two identical wide-body racquets for alternating use to maintain equal string tension in case one broke during play. (It was no surprise, by the way, that he hadn’t offered me his spare racquet. Copley wasn’t the sort of person who would allow another man to handle his phallus, even a spare phallus.) I didn’t answer his question, apparently preoccupied by stretching my legs. He opened two cans of soft-surface balls for us to rally. I was nervous. I had played a lot of tennis as a teenager, but that was a long time ago. Stick watched me, bent over, moaning as I failed to touch my toes. When I didn’t answer right away, he tried again. “You talked to Andy?”

I straightened and nodded. I arched to the left, my right hand reaching toward the opposite shoulder, like an ungainly ballerina.

“And? Was it helpful?”

“It was okay,” I said doubtfully, as if it weren’t.

“He was helpful?”

Again, I seemed reluctant to answer. I nodded and said, “You’ll have to be patient with me for the first fifteen minutes or so. I haven’t hit a ball in awhile.”

He dropped his chin a little and stared up, from the shadow of the bony ledge of his brow, into my eyes. The look was insistent, as if he were trying to instill confidence. He handed me three of the new balls. “We’ll hit and get the rust out.”

He stretched a little on his side before stroking the first ball to me. I hardly bothered to hit it back hard, merely tried to meet the ball cleanly. My swing was late. I put so little weight into it, I expected my shot not to clear the net. Instead, the ball fled from my strings and carried over to the service line. The power in the racquet was astonishing. Stick leaned into my shot. His reply was past me before I knew it. I hit the next two balls into the bottom of the net. The light racquet had me out in front. Copley made no effort to help me. He stepped into every ball, his form graceful, a picture from a primer for topspin tennis: full shoulder turn, racquet face closed, sweeping from low to high. He used topspin to keep the shots in court, but he was also meeting the ball on the rise, his follow-through relatively level. He wasn’t rallying, he was hitting winners.

After ten minutes of humiliation—my shots returned out of my reach to the corners, or my balls sailing long, nearly to the back wall—I abandoned hitting with topspin. I tried the old slice forehand, a shot that I knew (from watching professional tennis) had died out with the new technology of the racquets. Instead of the characteristic high bounce of a topspin stroke, my slice skipped away from Copley, staying low. Off-balance, he smashed it into the bottom of the net. He paused, stared at the mark on the clay where it had landed, and shook his head. He took out another ball and hit it at me. Again, I sliced into it, hard. Sure enough, it sailed out, although by no more than six inches; I couldn’t take a full stride into the slice forehand with the lightweight racquet. In keeping with his behavior that we were playing rather than rallying, Copley didn’t go for the ball. He did, however, pay careful attention to how it bounced on the surface and quickly looked up at me. Now he understood.

He gathered my errant ball, and, to my surprise, as if we were playing a game, avoided the new forehand I had displayed and hit to my backhand. I sliced it back defensively, again refusing to play a power game with him. My shot floated deep into his end of the court, nearly to the baseline. Copley had to wait for it. He prepared early, full shoulder turn, back foot raised slightly, head down. He put all his weight into his shot, trying to bang it back, although he was two feet behind the line. The ball smacked into the tape and fell on his side of the net.

He likes pace.
From then on, I gave him mostly low, softly hit under-spin. I used topspin only for variety. I tried to pace each reply differently. That didn’t prevent Stick from hitting what would be the occasional winner (if we had been scoring) but he also mishit a lot, starting his swing early, stubbornly anticipating the bounce of each ball, trying to drive them with maximum power, rather than judging the movement of each shot and accepting what was given.

After a half hour, I was exhausted. I moved toward the net, intending to leave the court, calling out, “I need a drink.”

“I’ve got water,” Copley said, coming toward me. He appeared cooler and more rested than when we began. He unzipped his warm-up jacket. I admired his strong sinewy arms and bulging pecs. He was in superb shape, not merely for a fifty-five-year-old man, but for any age. I doubt most people, with his full head of hair and lean body, despite the lines of his craggy face, would have thought him more than forty-five. He opened another compartment of his enormous rectangular black and purple tennis bag. He gave me a bottle of spring water packaged in a clear plastic container. The brand was Glacéau. There were four more in his bag. The bottle didn’t have a top that came off; instead, you had to lift a nub at the top and suck through it.

“Like mother’s milk,” I joked, but Copley didn’t get it. Feeling foolish, I pulled the nipple out and fed. He said matter-of-factly, “You’re playing like an old man.”