Open (34 page)

He can’t think of anything.

Finally he says: I like the way he travels.

A
T LAST
, A
UGUST COMES
. Gil and Brad and I drive to New York for the 1995 U.S. Open. On our first morning at Louis Armstrong Stadium I see Brad in the locker room, holding the draw in his hands.

It’s good, he says, smiling. Oh it’s so good. AG. All Good.

I’m on Becker’s side of the draw. If everything goes according to Brad’s plan, I’ll face Becker in the semis. Then, Pete. I think: If only, when we’re born, we could look over our draw in life, project our path to the final.

In the early rounds I’m on autopilot. I know what I want, I see what I want, just ahead, and opponents are mere road cones. Edberg. Alex Corretja. Petr Korda. I need to get past them to reach my target, so I do. After each win Brad isn’t his typical ebullient self. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t celebrate. He’s preoccupied by Becker. He’s monitoring Becker’s progress, charting his matches. He wants Becker to win every match, every point.

As I walk off the court with another victory, Brad says drily, Another good day.

Thanks. Yeah, felt good.

No. I mean B. B. Socrates. He won.

Pete handles his business. He reaches the final on his side of the draw and now awaits the winner of Agassi-Becker. It’s Wimbledon all over again, Part II. But this time I’m not thinking of Pete. I’m not looking ahead. I’ve been gunning for Becker, and now the moment is here, and my concentration is so intense, it frightens me.

A friend asks if I don’t feel even the slightest impulse, when it’s personal with an opponent, to drop the racket and go for his throat. When it’s a grudge match, when there’s bad blood, wouldn’t I rather settle it with a few rounds of old-fashioned boxing? I tell my friend that tennis
is
boxing. Every tennis player, sooner or later, compares himself to a boxer, because tennis is noncontact pugilism. It’s violent,
mano a mano
, and the choice is as brutally simple as it is in any ring. Kill or be killed. Beat or take your beat-down. Tennis beatings are just deeper below the skin. They remind me of the old Vegas loan shark method of beating someone with a bag of oranges, because it leaves no outer bruises.

And yet, having said that, I’m only human. So before we take the court, as Becker and I stand in the tunnel, I tell the security guard, James: Keep us apart. I don’t want this fucking German in my sight. Trust me, James, you don’t want me to see him.

Becker feels the same way. He knows what he said, and he knows I’ve read it fifty times and memorized it. He knows I’ve been stewing in his remarks all summer, and he knows I want blood. He does too. He’s never liked me, and for him this also has been the Summer of Revenge. We walk onto the court, avoiding eye contact, refusing to acknowledge the crowd, focused on our gear, our tennis bags, and the nasty job at hand.

From the opening bell, it’s what I thought it would be. We’re sneering, snorting, cursing in two different languages. I win the first set,
7–6
. Becker looks infuriatingly unfazed. Why shouldn’t he? This is how our match at Wimbledon started. He doesn’t worry about falling behind—he’s proved that he can take my best punch and come back.

I win the second set,
7–6
. Now he starts to squirm, to look for an edge. He tries to play with my mind. He’s seen me lose my cool before, so he does what he thinks will make me lose my cool again, the most emasculating thing one tennis player can do to another: He blows kisses at my box. At Brooke.

It works. I’m so angry that I momentarily lose focus. In the third set, with me ahead, 4–2, Becker dives for a ball that he has no business reaching. He gets there, wins the point, then breaks me, then wins the set. The crowd is now wild. They seem to have figured it out, that this is personal, that these two guys don’t like each other, that we’re settling old scores.
They appreciate the drama, and they want it to go the distance, and now it really feels like Wimbledon all over again. Becker feeds on their energy. He blows more kisses at Brooke, smiling wolfishly. It worked once, why not do it again? I look at Brad, next to Brooke, and he gives me a steely glare, the vintage Brad look that says:
Come on! Let’s go!

The fourth set is nip and tuck. We’re each holding serve, looking for an opening to break. I glance at the clock. Nine thirty. No one here is going home. Lock the doors, send out for sandwiches, we’re not leaving until this fucking thing is settled. The intensity is palpable. I’ve never wanted a match so much. I never wanted
anything
so much. I hold serve to go up 6–5 and now Becker’s serving to stay in the match.

He sticks his tongue to my right, serves right. I guess right and cold-cock it. Winner. I crush his next two serves. Now he’s serving at love–40, triple match point.

Perry is barking at him. Brooke is raining bloodcurdling screams down on him. Becker is smiling, waving at them both, as if he’s Miss America. He misfires his first serve. I know he’s going to get aggressive with his second. He’s a champion, he’s going to bring it like a champion. Also, his tongue is in the middle of his mouth. Sure enough he brings a faster-paced second serve straight up the gut. Normally you have to worry about the high bounce and kick, so you move in, try to catch it early before it bounces above your shoulder, but I gamble, hold my ground, and the gamble pays off. Here is the ball, in my wheelhouse. I slide my hips out of the way, put myself in place to hit the coldie of a lifetime. The serve is a click faster than I anticipated but I adjust. I’m on my toes, feeling like Wyatt Earp and Spider-Man and Spartacus. I swing. Every hair on my body is standing up. As the ball leaves my racket a sound leaves my mouth that’s pure animal. I know that I won’t ever make this sound again, and I won’t ever hit a tennis ball any harder, or any more perfect. Hitting a ball dead perfect—the only peace. As it lands on Becker’s side of the court the sound is still coming from me.

AAAAGHHHHHHHHH.

The ball blazes past Becker. Match, Agassi.

Becker walks to the net. Let him stand there. The fans are on their feet, swaying, ecstatic. I’m gazing at Brooke and Gil and Perry and Brad, especially Brad. Come on! I keep gazing. Becker is still at the net. I don’t care. I leave him standing there like a Jehovah’s Witness on my doorstep. Finally,
finally
, I strip off my wristbands and go to the net and stick my hand in his general vicinity, without looking. He gives my hand a shake, and I snatch it away.

A TV reporter rushes onto the court and asks me a few questions. I answer without thinking. Then I look into the camera with a smile and say, Pete! I’m coming!

I run into the tunnel, into the training room. Gil is there, worried. He knows what that victory must have cost me physically.

I’m in bad shape, Gil.

Lie down, man.

My head is ringing. I’m sopping wet. It’s ten at night, and I’ve got to play in the final in less than eighteen hours. Between now and tomorrow I’ve got to come down from this near-psychotic state, get home, eat a good hot meal, drink a gallon of Gil Water until I piss a kidney, and then get some sleep.

Gil drives me back to Brooke’s brownstone. We eat dinner, and then I sit in the shower for an hour. It’s one of those showers that makes you think you should write a check to several environmental groups and maybe plant a tree. At two in the morning I lie down beside Brooke and black out.

I
OPEN MY EYES FIVE HOURS LATER
, no idea where I am. I sit up and let out a scream, a compacted version of my final scream against Becker. I can’t move.

At first I think it’s a stomach cramp. Then I realize it’s much more serious. I roll off the bed, onto my hands and knees. I know what this is. I’ve had this before. Torn cartilage between the ribs. I have a pretty good idea which shot tore it. But this tear must be particularly severe, because I can’t expand my rib cage. I can barely breathe.

I remember vaguely that it takes three weeks for this injury to heal. But I’ve got nine hours before I face Pete. It’s seven in the morning, the match is at four. I call for Brooke. She must be out. I’m lying on my side, saying aloud, This can’t be happening. Please don’t let this be happening.

I close my eyes and pray that I’ll be able to walk onto the court. Even asking for this much seems ridiculous, because I can’t stand. Hard as I try, I can’t get to my feet.

God, please. I can’t not show up for the final of the U.S. Open.

I crawl to the phone and dial Gil.

Gilly, I can’t stand up. I literally can’t stand up.

I’ll be right over.

By the time he arrives, I’m standing, but still having trouble breathing.
I tell him what I think it must be, and he concurs. He watches me drink a cup of coffee, then says: It’s time. We need to go.

We look at the clock and both do the only thing we can do in such a moment—we laugh.

Gil drives me to the stadium. On the practice court I hit one ball and the ribs grab me. I hit another. I yell in pain. I hit a third. It still hurts, but I can put some mustard on it. I can breathe.

How do you feel?

Better. I’m about thirty-eight percent.

We stare at each other. Maybe that will be enough.

But Pete is pushing 100 percent. He comes out prepared, braced for a dose of what he saw me give Becker. I lose the first set, 6–4. I lose the second set, 6–3.

I win the third set, however. I’m learning what I can get away with. I’m finding shortcuts, compromises, back doors. I see a few chances to turn this thing into a miracle. I just can’t exploit them. I lose the fourth set, 7–5.

Reporters ask how it feels to win twenty-six matches in a row, to win all summer long, only to run into the giant net that is Pete. I think: How do you think it feels? I say: Next summer I’m going to lose a little bit. I’m 26–1, and I’d give up all those wins for this one.

On the drive back to the brownstone, I’m holding my ribs, staring out the window, reliving every shot of the Summer of Revenge. All that work and anger and winning and training and hoping and sweating, and it leads to the same empty disappointed feeling. No matter how much you win, if you’re not the last one to win, you’re a loser. And in the end I always lose, because there is always Pete. As always, Pete.

Brooke steers clear. She gives me kind looks and sympathetic frowns, but it doesn’t feel real, because she doesn’t understand. She’s waiting for me to feel better, for this to pass, for things to get back to normal. Losing is abnormal.

Brooke has told me that she has a ritual when I lose, a way of killing time until normalcy is restored. While I’m mutely grieving, she goes through her closets and pulls out everything she hasn’t worn in months. She folds sweaters and T-shirts, reorganizes socks and stockings and shoes into drawers and boxes. The night I lose to Pete, I peer into Brooke’s closet.

Neat as a pin.

In our brief relationship, she’s had lots of time to kill.

W
HILE FACING
W
ILANDER IN
D
AVIS
C
UP
, I alter my movements to protect my torn rib cartilage, but when you protect one thing you often damage another. I hit an odd forehand and feel a chest muscle pull. It stays warm during the match, but when I wake the next morning I can’t move.

The doctors shut me down for weeks. Brad is suicidal.

A layoff will cost you the number one rank, he says.

I couldn’t care less. Pete is number one, no matter what some computer says. Pete won two slams this year, and he won our showdown in New York. Besides, I still don’t give a rat’s ass about being number one. Would have been nice; wasn’t my goal. Then again, beating Pete wasn’t my goal either, but losing to him has caused me to plummet into a bottomless gloom.

I’ve always had trouble shaking off hard losses, but this loss to Pete is different. This is the ultimate loss, the über-loss, the alpha-omega loss that eclipses all others. Previous losses to Pete, the loss to Courier, the loss to Gómez—they were flesh wounds compared to this, which feels like a spear through the heart. Every day this loss feels new. Every day I tell myself to stop thinking about it, and every day I can’t. The only respite is fantasizing about retirement.

Brooke, meanwhile, is working nonstop. Her acting career is taking off. As per Perry’s advice, she’s bought a house in Los Angeles and she’s been pursuing roles on TV. Now she’s landed a plum, a small guest spot in an episode of the sitcom
Friends
.

It’s the number one show in the world, she says. Number one!

I wince. That phrase again. She doesn’t notice.

The producers
of Friends
have asked Brooke to play a stalker. I cringe, thinking of the nightmare she’s endured with stalkers and overly enthusiastic fans. But Brooke thinks her experience with so many stalkers will
be good preparation for this part. She says she understands the stalker mind-set.

Plus, Andre, it’s
Friends
. The number one show on TV. It might lead to a recurring role on the show. And besides the fact that
Friends
is number one, my episode is going to air right after the Super Bowl—fifty million people will see it. This is like
my
U.S. Open.

A tennis analogy. The surest way to make me disconnect from her desire. But I pretend to be pleased, and say the right things. If you’re happy, I say, I’m happy. She believes me. Or acts as if she does. Which often feels like the same thing.

We agree that Perry and I will go with her to Hollywood and watch her shoot the episode. We’ll be in her box, as she’s always been in mine.

Won’t that be fun? she says.

No, I think.

Yes, I say. Fun.

I don’t want to go. But I also don’t want to lie around the house anymore, talking to myself. Sore chest, wounded ego—even I don’t want to be alone with me.

In the days leading up to the taping
of Friends
we barricade ourselves in Brooke’s house in Los Angeles. She has a fellow actor come over every day to help run lines. I watch them. Brooke is keyed up, feeling pressure, training hard, a process that’s familiar to me. I’m proud of her. I tell her she’s going to be a star. Good things are about to happen.