Sudden Death (3 page)

“No. Why would I mind? I never read them. Seth Quintard does all that. I just sign on the line.”

“I’m sure he gets the best deal he can; that’s an agent’s job. But I’m a lawyer, and I’d like to carefully go over everything. I might see something he missed.”

“Fine. Is it snowing again?”

He walked over to the clubhouse window. “Yes. At any moment Santa Claus will appear.”

“Bet it’s hot at home.”

“Guess we should call them tomorrow.”

Miguel put on his parka. “You know, it’s the damnedest thing. Telephones link up everyone in the world. It’s one world technologically but no one can get along with anyone else. I still can’t get over the fact that we went to war with England.”

Carmen wrinkled her nose. She hated politics. Even more she hated war. It made not one bit of sense to her even though she was very patriotic. As far as she was concerned, the Malvinas belonged to Argentina, but war? Why didn’t the leaders of bickering countries pick up tennis racquets and go settle it on the court? Or they could play golf if they were too old for tennis. Winner takes all. There’d be nothing to argue about.

With two days to go before they departed for Washington, D.C., and the Tomahawk Championships, Carmen practiced double time. Miguel, resplendent in new sportswear, accompanied her in the mornings and sometimes the afternoons.

Cursing, Harriet leaned over the ironing board to attack one more recalcitrant box pleat. She liked ironing, but today, ironing didn’t like her. She ironed the wrinkles in as opposed to out. As she smacked the steaming instrument down one more time, she heard the car roll into the driveway. Only one door slammed. Carmen, flushed, danced through the kitchen door.

“Joe is taking Miguel to Syracuse.” Joe was one of Carmen’s practice partners.

“That’s nice.” Harriet missed the import of the news since the shirt demanded her attention.

“They’ll be there at least an hour and a half. Maybe we’ll be alone for two hours.”

“Did you say alone?”

“I did.” She tossed her racquets on the kitchen table.

“Mirabile dictu.”

“Are you going to stand there and iron that shirt?”

“No.” Harriet yanked the plug out of the wall. The two chased one another up the stairway to the bedroom.

Lovemaking suffered under the continued presence of Miguel. By the time Miguel was asleep, Harriet and Carmen were usually exhausted. Harriet never was the greatest fuck-of-the-night to begin with. Her true abilities displayed themselves in the afternoon.

“Will you get in the bed?” Harriet shivered under the covers.

“I better take a shower first.”

“We haven’t time.”

“I’m sweaty from practice.”

“I’ll suffer.” Harriet reached out, grabbed her sweat pants by the waistband, and flopped Carmen on the bed.

“Wait a minute. Let me get out of these goddamned pants.”

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight—”

“What are you doing?”

“Counting up to a minute.” Harriet pulled a now naked Carmen under the covers. “Warm me up. Consider it a charitable act.”

Carmen kissed Harriet’s neck, her forehead, and her lips. Tennis was what Carmen did second best. Her greatest achievement was kissing. Her mouth must have been like Ganymede’s, cupbearer to Zeus, so perfectly formed were her lips. She could take up to an hour simply kissing. Today, they didn’t have that kind of luxury. She slid her body over Harriet’s small frame and worked her way down.

“Undercover work,” Carmen whispered.

Harriet smiled and ran her fingers through Carmen’s silky black hair.

Carmen kissed and licked Harriet’s groin. Suddenly she stiffened. “Ouch!”

“What’s the matter?” Harriet lifted the blankets and discovered two glowing eyes at the bottom of the bed. “Baby Jesus, get out of there.”

Baby, Harriet’s eighteen-year-old cat, burrowed under blankets, then lay flat on her side so she couldn’t be seen under the bedspread. She resented this disturbance of her slumber. Biting Carmen’s heel was the result.

“Come on, Beejee Weejee,” coaxed Carmen.

This syrupy comment met with a snarl of disgust. It was bad enough Carmen stuck her foot in Baby’s face. Having to endure the Beejee Weejee routine heightened the ancient’s foul temper.

“Your mother is speaking,” Harriet commanded. “Out of the bed.”

A suspicious silence followed.

“Shit!” Carmen howled. “She bit my other foot.”

“That does it.” Harriet threw off the covers, picked up the beast and lovingly placed her in her fur-lined sleeping box, replete with catnip toys, scratching post, and stuffed bird. Baby sat in this splendor for less than one minute and then grandly vacated the bedroom.

“I’ll kill that cat someday.” Carmen nursed her heel.

“She has an artistic temperament.”

“Will you look at my foot?”

Harriet noted the small indentation made by two fangs. No blood rose to the surface, but Baby didn’t strain herself overmuch. “Here, I’ll kiss it and make it well.”

“That feels better. Could you move up a little higher?”

Harriet laughed and began to work her way up Carmen’s muscled leg.

Lavinia Sibley Archer, breasts heaving like a flight deck, navigated her way through the sponsor’s opening night cocktail party. Lavinia won Wimbledon in the late forties as well as the U.S. Open the following year. After her illustrious career, she settled down with a man too dull to be born and became both a housewife and the terror of her country club. Wendell, her husband, passed on to his reward in the mid-sixties. She’d forgotten the exact date, but he was convincingly dead.

By this time, women’s tennis, struggling for professional status and recognition, found its young lion in Billie Jean King and now had its business bear in Lavinia. Lavinia did a great deal for the game. For one thing, she gallantly faced the horror of working for a living. Using different titles in different years, Lavinia was really the tennis version of the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She wasn’t God, but she came damn close. You didn’t cross Lavinia Sibley Archer.

Lavinia didn’t like Harriet Rawls and Jane Fulton because they didn’t take tennis as seriously as she thought they should. This kind of intellectual treason tried Lavinia’s famed nerves of ice. She was billed as “nerves of ice” in her heyday. She was also billed as carrying around the biggest tits in tennis, but that was whispered as opposed to set down in type.

Worse, Harriet and Jane once did something both unpatriotic and in bad taste. Tiring of endless renditions of the national anthem—Jane called it our national anathema—they committed their dastardly sin during a tournament in Seattle. The semifinals and finals of every tournament are the nights on which promoters make money. Over eighty-five percent of the gate comes in at that time. Lavinia found a charming mariachi band, which is hard to find in Seattle, to play the national anthem for the semifinals. Lavinia thought it would be good for relationships with third world groups. Where she expected this roaring host of Mexicans to come from in the Pacific Northwest, only she knew, but the mariachi band was
a significant cultural event in her mind. The glittering group of men, waddling under their giant sombreros, stood in the center of the tennis court and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The crowd, as usual, turned to face the flag. As Old Glory was hoisted up the pole and unfurled, a cascade of brassieres and jockstraps delicately floated to the earth below.

Lavinia vowed to find the perpetrators of this horrendous and sophomoric deed. No one would have known a thing except that Jane had tossed in a bra of Carmen’s. This evidence in hand, Lavinia cornered Carmen and ripped her three ways from Sunday. Truthfully, Carmen protested her innocence.

Harriet, of course, neglected to tell Carmen of her plans. How was she to know Jane would grab bras from the dryer down at the locker room? Unfortunately, Carmen’s name was neatly sewn on the strap. Harriet hit the locker room just in time to gleefully confess.

By the time news of this scene reached the press booth, Ricky Cooper was laughing so hard he didn’t know if he could pull himself together in time to broadcast. It reminded him of summer camp. Jane, in a fit of WASPish responsibility, confessed her participation to her husband. Ricky’s initial response was, “Did you use my jockstraps?” Since the answer was yes, Ricky marched her off to Lavinia. Jane’s confession really was too much to bear, a member of the press mocking our national anthem.

Over the last year, Lavinia finally reached the point of cold cordiality with Harriet and Jane. She could bring herself to do no more, but she could bring herself to do no less because for the last six months, Carmen Semana was ranked number one by the computer. Every time Lavinia had to nod her head to Harriet at a tournament, she thought, “Lesbian flag desecrator.”

The cocktail party was obligatory. In the tennis world it ranked on a par with death and taxes. Players showed up
when the main sponsor wanted their asses there. Since each tournament usually had local sponsors as well to chip in on prize money, players shook the hands of bank presidents, furriers, car dealers, and other businessmen too exciting to mention.

In tennis, sponsors are courted. It costs between $100,000 and $150,000 to promote a major tennis tournament. That’s only promotion, not players’ winnings. If a sponsor doesn’t pick up at least seventy-five percent of the prize money, the promoter loses his shirt. Therefore, sponsors, not the Women’s Tennis Guild, really determine the game.

To Lavinia’s credit, she realized this before anyone else. She was the person who cajoled Tomahawk cosmetics into sponsoring the women’s indoor tennis circuit from January to the end of March: The Tomahawk Circuit. Tomahawk needed an image, and Howard Dominick, the new man in charge of Tomahawk, was an old personal friend of Lavinia’s. She convinced him that tying Tomahawk to the women’s indoor tennis circuit would make American women forget Revlon, Clairol, and Max Factor. While women’s tennis didn’t make the buyers forget those companies, they did remember Tomahawk. The girls walked on the court reeking of Tomahawk’s latest perfume. They wore Tomahawk nail polish in an array of blood-curdling colors. Their hair was caked with Tomahawk hair spray until enough of them rebelled for that tactic to pass. Wags had it the ladies even flushed out with Tomahawk’s super douche, TeePee. Howard Dominick and Lavinia Sibley Archer gave women the means to earn a living at their sport. The stars that developed proved the wisdom of their foresight.