Love Game - Season 2012 (15 page)

“Were you awake all that time?” Lulu asked.

Sasha nodded.

“Didn’t we make you sleepy enough?” The
cockiness in Lulu’s voice aroused Sasha.

“No,” she replied.

“Oh dear,” Lulu teased with a hushed voice.
“My bad.”

She leaned over slowly hovering with her
lips over Sasha’s.

Too far, Sasha thought. Lulu was too far
away. She grabbed Lulu’s head, flung her legs around Lulu’s hips and pulled her
close, fully aware of what the consequences would be.

There was no way she would get her eight
hours of sleep tonight.

FISHY BUSINESS

Miami, United States

Nervously, Sasha looked at the TV that was
hanging on the wall of the locker room. The screen showed Luella stepping to
the baseline and getting ready to serve. Sasha clenched her fists. Silently,
she prayed for the Galloway twin to get a good first serve in. Lulu really
needed a good first serve.

But what she saw was nothing but
discouraging. After a lame first serve Lulu was soon on the back foot, losing
the rally with a wide forehand. Sasha let her head sink down. Were the secret
meetings with Sasha confusing Lulu? Or exhausting her? Whenever they had slept
together, Lulu seemed to have had a lot of stamina. But it looked like she
couldn’t carry the good form she had shown in bed over to the court. Perhaps
she should talk to Lulu. Lulu was so young and probably a very shy person
hiding behind a facade of loud bluntness and attention-seeking. In fact, she
rarely spoke about herself when they met up.

Yes, Sasha thought, she really should talk
to Lulu. She couldn’t just reap the benefits from their sexual encounters and
let Lulu wear herself out. A young person like her probably just craved some
guidance and assurance. Sasha smiled at the thought that she could be one of
the elders now, even though she was only five years older than Lulu. She had
never engaged with the lesbian circles on tour but stayed on her own, so they
never asked her for advice or chatted with her. But perhaps it was time to skip
the lonely life. Perhaps it was time to find a companion. Perhaps – .

With a loud bang the locker room door was
opened and Sasha quickly turned away from the TV and vanished between two rows
of lockers. A last look at the screen confirmed that Lulu was down 15 – 40
already.

From the other side of the lockers, Sasha
could make out three voices. Chili, Mint and someone else, whose voice Sasha
didn’t recognize, had entered the room. They were engaged in a conversation and
began opening the lockers to take out their bags.

“Honestly, I’ve never really talked to her.
She is such a recluse.”

“Yes,” Chili said. “A bit weird, too.”

Sasha quietly stuffed her visor between her
racquets. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself.

“I’ve dubbed her Miss Nosey,” the unknown
person said with a chuckle.

Sasha frowned. Nosey? She straightened up
and felt her face turn hot. Were they talking about her? The Czech player
suppressed the urge to rub her nose and stepped closer to the lockers to hear
them better. But the three players had already changed the subject.

“We need to check out the pool at the
hotel. It has underwater grottos,” Mint remarked.

“The whole hotel looks like an underwater
world,” Chili added. “Hence the name.
Pisces Palace
. Means fish palace.
It’s
pescado
in Spanish.”

Sasha sat back on the bench. So Kurt had
lied to her! Her nose was not fine. Everybody had noticed that it was bigger
now. They even called her Miss Nosey behind her back.

“The fish in my hotel room died,” the
unknown person said. “They were all floating on the surface. I had to call the
hotel reception to get them removed from the tank.”

The two girls laughed.

Sasha didn’t know if she should be relieved
that the conversation had turned to the interior design of the players’ hotel.
She felt like she should have been glad, but on the other hand she needed to
know what they thought about her – and her looks.

“Your fish were all dead? Did you feed them
some Dutch cheese?” Chili asked.

“Or perhaps some pot? You can tell us,
Michelle,” Mint teased.

They all laughed and zipped up their bags.

Michelle van der Boom, Sasha thought. Of
course. The most beautiful player of the past decade had come back from
retirement to give it a shot at the Olympics with countrywoman Marieke Bender.
Beautiful and adored. Loved by the media. Loved by the fans. Not a recluse. Not
weird. Sasha swallowed at the thought of Michelle’s lovely face.

Then she heard the three players leaving
the room. When the chatter had abated behind the door Sasha realized that she
was clutching her nose – and Lulu had lost her match.

***

“What are you going to do with your coins?”
Elise asked the other girls.

Polly, Gemma and Chili were sitting in the
back of the Supersport Channel van and looking at their little bags in which
they carried their gold-wrapped chocolate coins. A souvenir they had been
presented with at the chocolate factory they had visited for another Supersport
shooting.

“Eat them,” Gemma said. “I have fifteen. So
that should be enough for one at each tournament.”

They all nodded. It was out of the question
that they would eat them all at once. When they arrived at the hotel, they said
good-bye and arranged to meet later at the players’ party.

“Want to swap
Tennis Nurse
novels?”
Elise asked Polly in the elevator.

“Sure. I have
The Queen of Kopenhagen
.”

“I could give you
The Magician of Miami
for it. It’s a really good one.”

“And fitting,” Polly said when she left the
elevator. Elise grinned. The book would be even better when read here in Miami.

In her room Elise sat down on the bedside
and emptied the bag with the chocolate coins onto the sheets. Twenty-two, she
counted. She could eat one coin at each tournament, she thought, and the rest
when the off-season started in October. Or she could eat one coin for each win
as a reward. She closed her eyes and smiled at the thought of the chocolate
coin melting on her tongue. How long had it been since she had had something as
sweet and wonderful as chocolate?

Suddenly a knock on her door derailed her
train of chocolate-covered thoughts. Was Amanda already back from the
tournament site? Her match had started in the afternoon and on the way back
from the chocolate factory, Elise had checked the score. Amanda had just won
against Luella Galloway in two sets. But that had been only twenty minutes ago.
She could not have made it here so quickly.

“Who is it?” she asked through the closed
door.

“It’s me,” she heard her dad say. “I need
to pick up your racquets to get them to the stringer. Remember?”

Shit! Elise jumped up. She had forgotten
about that.

“Just a second,” she yelled at the closed
door and pulled her racquet bag onto the bed. There was something she needed to
take out.

The wooden box with the dildo inside was
hidden in the back corner of her huge bag. She grabbed the box’s edge and pulled
at it frantically. It seemed to be stuck under her racquets and her shoe sac.
Finally she released it, however too hastily, and in one sweep it flung out
from her bag. The box sailed through the air, fell onto the floor and all the
spices spilled over the carpet.

“Damn,” Elise yelled.

“Do you need help?” she heard her father
say through the door.

“No, I’ll be right there,” Elise shouted.

She needed to get rid of the dildo which
had rolled out of the box. She needed to find a hiding place. Why had she
forgotten that her dad would be coming by? Her eyes fell on the chocolate coins
on her bed. Her dad wasn’t supposed to see those either.

“Damn,” she said again, however this time
quietly.

She picked up the
mara
and put it
back in the box. Then she placed the wooden case on the bed, raked the coins up
and threw them into the box to obscure the antique pecker. With her feet she
shoved the spice bags under the bed. Where could she put the box quickly? She
took a look around the room, and found the perfect solution. Ten seconds later,
she opened the door to her father who looked at her a bit puzzled but didn’t
ask what had been going on. He stepped towards the bed and took a look at the
racquets.

“I’ll have two of them strung a bit
tighter. It will be hot and dry tomorrow,” he mumbled. Then he sniffed the air.
“Your room smells of curry.”

“Really?” Elise asked innocently. She
pretended to sniff as well but then shook her head. No, she didn’t smell
anything.

“It’s a very extravagant hotel. At least
your fish are alive,” Robert Renard said with a glance at the aquarium, which
enchanted every room in the hotel with a touch of exotic. “I heard from Freddie
Nordström that one of his fish died.”

He approached the fish tank and took a
quick look. Elise hands began sweating.

“Nice underwater landscape,” her dad
remarked, while shouldering Elise’s racquet bag. “With a treasure chest.”

When her dad had left the room, Elise
checked the fish tank. Everything was alright. The chocolate coins had covered
the wooden phallus completely and two goldfish were curiously eyeing the
timbered box. Elise sighed. Thankfully, Natsumi would be returning to the tour
for the tournament in Madrid to take the wooden troublemaker back. This really
had been going on for too long.

***

The sky was so blue that Gabriella felt she
was staring upside down at one of the Australian Open courts which were painted
a shiny azure color. But this wasn’t the land down under where she had lost one
match after another. This was her home country and while Gabriella had reached
the quarterfinal of the tournament, Luella had just lost her match against
Amanda Auster. Everything was as brilliant as the bright blue sky. Gabriella
blinked, then stepped inside the hotel building.

While in theory it was great that Luella
had lost her match – as Gabriella would gain more ranking points here in Miami
than Luella – there was one little problem

Her sister would probably leave Miami as
soon as possible, perhaps even tonight, to get ready for practicing on clay.
And if Luella left today and Sasha believed she was having an affair with Lulu,
Gabriella would have to act quickly. Really quickly.

She approached the reception desk of the
hotel and smiled at the young man standing behind the counter.

“I would like to book a room for tonight,”
she explained.

“Yes, of course,” the receptionist said.
“Are you not happy with the room you have?”

So, he had recognized her. Good.

“Well, this is my last night here, so I
would like a bigger bed.”

“Sure,” the young man replied. “You are
Miss Galloway, right?”

Gabriella nodded. “Luella.”

The receptionist typed in her name and the
computer gave him the information he needed.

“You currently have a queen size bed,” he
read. “We have a room with a king size bed available. We also have a California
king size bed – it’s extra long. And we have a very nice room with an Olympic
queen size bed.”

He looked up to await Gabriella’s answer.
Gabriella had to smile. After her practice this morning she had taken the time
to read through the catalogue of medications and drugs that were considered to
be doping by the World Anti-Doping Agency and were banned from the Olympic
Games. Gabriella knew that even if a player was clean, they all had to be
careful when they had a cough or a cold. Even harmless medication could contain
substances that were considered performance enhancers, and a regular refresher
on the various substances was a good thing. It was a scary read, covering
steroids, blood doping, hormones and other stimulants.

Thank god, extensive fucking wasn’t listed.
Considering how her game had developed in the last few weeks it could very well
count as a performance enhancer.

“Olympic sounds good,” Gabriella said with
a grin.

The nights with Sasha were probably the
best performance-enhancing drug she knew of, she thought while signing the
hotel receipt with Luella’s signature. Then she took out her cell phone and
sent Sasha a text with the room number and a time. They had three hours before
they had to get ready for the players’ party.

Enough time to get some red blood cells
moving.

***

“How’s the production going?” Monica asked
Paola.

After a long day at the tournament site,
Monica, Agnes and Paola had decided to sit on the garden deck and enjoy the
warm afternoon breeze. Candice had joined them for a quick bite and a wine
spritzer before she had to go back and keep an eye on the hustle and bustle.
They still had over three hours to prepare the hotel’s rooftop for a boisterous
players’ party.

“It’s going great. We did a shoot in a
chocolate factory today. You should have seen how big and dreamy the girls’
eyes were,” Paola said with a smile.