The Players (13 page)

Willets stared at him with bitter reproach, and Mike knew he had just been dropped from the young man’s Ten-Most-Admired list. And for what? All his speechifying was not going to have any effect on Cliff Willets’s opinions. Only maturity would do that. Maybe.

Still, Mike felt a curious satisfaction in the encounter. In speaking out he had put into words some deep feelings he had never defined. Possibly he had started to clear up some of his own personal doubts.

He became aware suddenly of a change in the tone of the crowd noises. A murmur seemed to roll across the grounds of the All-England Tennis Club like a slow-moving wave, and people were moving around uneasily.

An AP photographer whom Mike knew slightly hurried by on the path, shouldering his way through the crowd with his camera cradled protectively against his chest.

“What’s going on?” Mike asked him.

“I don’t know for sure, but the word is that something funny’s happening on Centre Court.”

Mike turned to say something to Cliff Willits, but the young man had disappeared. Maybe he’d find a more receptive ear somewhere else. Mike grinned after him for a moment, then jogged off toward Centre Court.

The general movement of people in the direction of Centre Court went unnoticed by Alan Doughty. He was accustomed to having his own matches ignored except by a few friends and relatives. Alan’s steady, workmanlike style of play seldom drew many spectators, and today he was beating the Spaniard too easily to be interesting to onlookers. The match was so easy for him, in fact, that it was hard for Alan to keep his mind on the play and off that deadly word the doctor had chalked on the blackboard.

He knew he must not think about the aneurysm and the doctor’s awful description of it as being like an innertube ready to blow out. With that picture in his mind all the skills gained over long years on the tennis court would be worthless.

With no real contest to demand his attention, Alan concentrated on placing his shots in a specific square-foot patch of the court, or splitting the center line with his first serve. In this way he was able to keep from thinking about the doctor’s warning.

When he could, Alan stole a glance at Hazel standing on the sidelines. She seemed to be watching him with more concern than was usual. Was it possible that she suspected what was wrong? How much had she heard of his conversation with Quinn yesterday at Hurlingham? Alan tried to recall how much he had said about the doctor. It wouldn’t do at all to have Hazel worried.

Alan won the second set and led the match 6–2, 6–3. During the brief recess he walked over to talk to his wife.

“How am I looking, love?” he asked.

“You’re playing beautifully, Alan,” she said. Hazel took the towel from her husband’s hands to mop the perspiration from his face. “How do you feel?”

“Lovely, simply lovely,” he said, wondering why she would ask him a thing like that.

“Don’t let yourself get a chill now.”

“No fear. Did I see that American sportswriter fellow stop by a bit ago?”

“Mr. Wilder, yes. He seems a decent sort.”

“I suppose so. What did he have to say?”

“Oh, just the usual. You know.”

“Yes.”

It was not like Hazel to be vague in her conversations, and Alan looked closely at his wife. He started to say something more, but the umpire signaled it was time to resume play.

“I’ll see you after a little,” he said.

“Good luck,” Hazel said. “And Alan, take care.”

Take care? Damn, everything she said was beginning to take on hidden meanings for him. He was unused to keeping secrets from his wife, and he didn’t much like it. The sooner Wimbledon was over and he could confide in her, the better.

With these thoughts in his mind Alan lost the next set 4–6 before settling down to win the clincher 6–1.

• • •

Tim Barrett had his hands full with the strong-armed New Yorker he had drawn as a first-round opponent. Tim had won the first set 7–5, but dropped the next 4–6, and was struggling in the third with the set score at 6-all.

In spite of trying to ignore them, Tim was acutely aware of the faces watching him from the sidelines. His father and mother sat together on a bench looking uncomfortable. As Tim continued to make errors on shots he normally put away, his father seemed to take it as a personal insult. His mother smiled encouragement as always, but couldn’t hide her disappointment in the way he was playing.

Vic Goukas, scowling like a Turk, crouched at courtside as though he wanted to spring out onto the grass and snatch the racket from Tim’s hand.

Tim double-faulted away his serve in the next game, and the New Yorker held his own to win the set 8–6 and go ahead in the match two sets to one.

Between sets Tim stood at the net post and sipped a mixture of tea and honey. Vic Goukas moved in next to him and spoke in a low tight voice. The coach was obviously struggling for control.

“What’s the matter with you out there, anyway?” Vic demanded.

Tim was unable to meet the coach’s eye. “This guy’s tough,” he said.

“Like hell he’s tough. He’s got a serve that couldn’t break an egg and a backhand like a girl. Lob him, for Chrissake. Move him back. You’re letting him take the net away from you. You should have polished off this beefcake in straight sets, and now you’re down 2–1. Get on the stick.”

“All right, Vic, all
right
. I’ll get him. Don’t worry about it.”

“You won’t get anybody if you don’t get your mind on the game,” Vic growled. “You’re thinkin’ about that broad, aren’t you?”

Tim’s eyes slid over to the bench across from the one where his parents sat. Christy Noone sat there surrounded by young men. Punks, Tim thought disgustedly. Not players, certainly. Not even fans, from the way they were ignoring the match. Tim had intended that Christy sit with his parents, but she had gotten restless early in the first set and started moving around, picking up admirers the way an ice-cream wagon attracts kids.

“Never mind about her,” he told Vic.

“Okay, okay, just get out there and play the kind of tennis you’re capable of.”

Tim trotted back out onto the court. His mother smiled at him, and Tim acknowledged her with a bob of his racket. His father, Tim saw, was frowning across at Christy Noone. When Tim looked over there Christy gave him a cheery wave. Tim grinned back, wishing he could be sure about the girl and her feelings for him.

He played unevenly in the fourth set, and had to go to a tie-breaker to win it 9–8. In the deciding set Tim finally began to play according to Vic’s instructions. He forced the New Yorker back from the net repeatedly with lobs or passed him down the line. He won it 6–2 to take the match, but no congratulatory smiles awaited him at the sidelines.

“I’ve seen you play a lot better, Tim,” said his father.

“You look tired, Timmy,” said his mother. “Have you been getting enough sleep?”

“You were lucky to win it,” said Vic. “If you don’t play any better than that tomorrow we can all go home early.”

Tim agreed with everything they were saying and broke away as soon as he could. He crossed the court to where Christy sat.

“That was simply smashing,” she said when he reached her side. He was pleased to see that her retinue of young men had moved back out of the way in deference to the tennis player.

He said, “I didn’t really play well. Vic thinks I was lucky to win.”

“Nonsense. I never doubted for a minute you’d beat that fellow. He did have a good body, though. Oh, not to my taste, you understand. I prefer my men to be slimmer.”

“Will I see you tonight?” Tim said.

“Let me think now, what did I have planned?”

Tim’s face fell.

“Of course I’ll see you, silly,” she said, patting his cheek. “Come by at half-past seven.”

“I’ll be there,” Tim said. He walked quickly toward the locker room before Vic and his parents could catch up with him.

• • •

For Milo Vasquez the entire universe was compressed into a green rectangle seventy-eight feet by twenty-seven feet, bordered by white chalk lines and bisected by a net three feet high in the middle, and three feet six inches at the posts. He was winning steadily over the tall, balding man opposite him, but not with the devastating power game he used to play.

Although Milo had never seen him before, and had already forgotten his name, he burned with hatred for the man across the net. A paler-skinned, freckled part-time player, he had no business returning Milo’s best serves with the consistency he had this afternoon.

It was not, of course, quite the same cannonball that Milo used to blast flat and hard for ten or more aces in a match. The serve had lost just enough of its blazing speed to allow hackers like this bald grasshopper to get it back.

When Milo’s power first started to leave him, more than two years ago, he refused to believe it. In bis mind he was as good as ever, but on the tennis court he showed the price he paid for the late hours and the liquor and the women.

When he began to lose regularly, all of Milo’s frustration came out in anger. With no other target handy, his anger was directed at his wife, Maria. It made him all the more furious when she refused to fight back. On the day he told her to get out, he never thought she would take him seriously, but she did. She walked out of their house and down to the pier at Santa Monica. She walked to the end of the pier and simply stepped off. Two boys fishing nearby saw her go over, but by the time they could reach her down among the pilings, Maria was dead.

That was when Milo started with the pills. Pills to make him forget about Maria and pills to give him back the strength in his arm. For a while the pills seemed to work. Seemed to. Milo thought he was playing better than ever, and could not understand why he continued to lose. His anger boiled constantly, and he lashed out at everyone around him. He lost control of himself to a point where he was no longer invited to the important tournaments. These were the same tournaments the directors had coaxed and pleaded with him to enter when he was a champion.

It was then Milo turned to the needle. He soon dropped out of sight in the tennis world and hit bottom physically and spiritually. Then, with help from nobody, he had begun the long climb back. Now he was in position to regain the top, be
numero uno
again. He would show them all.

Milo whacked a vicious crosscourt backhand and watched his opponent scramble to reach it. The man barely managed to get wood on the ball, cracking it out of bounds.

“Game, set, and match to Mr. Vasquez.”

The voice of the umpire surprised Milo. In playing each point with deadly concentration he had lost track of the score. The scoreboard told him he had won the match 6–2, 6–1, 6–0, but he felt as wrung out physically as though it had been a five-set marathon.

As he dragged himself off the court a voice in his head whispered that he needed something for the ache in his body, something to make him feel better. Milo closed his mind to the whisperer and trudged toward the locker room and a hot tub.

• • •

Yuri Zenger was annoyed. The people in the stands were not giving him their full attention. For a while he had held them with his usual bag of tricks—clowning with the ball boys, arguing loudly on line calls, over-dramatizing his easy shots. His opponent, a shy boy from Egypt playing in his first Wimbledon, was never in it. Yuri saw at once that he could win as he pleased, so he set about putting on a show fot the crowd.

It did not matter to Yuri whether the people liked him or not, just as long as they were aware of him. Today they had been on his side at first, laughing with him when he comically scolded himself for missing a shot, and applauding when he hit a winner. Gradually, though, the people cooled toward him as his antics grew more brash and he deliberately humiliated his young opponent. Yuri didn’t care. If these fools wanted to pay their good money to watch him play tennis, he would give them something to remember.

He would give that giant blonde, Geneva or whatever her name was, something to remember too. He grinned at the thought of wallowing around in bed with the woman. There was no end to her.

He would insist that the little man keep out of the picture. That should be easy to accomplish by promising to sign his stupid contract. That seemed to be the price he was asking for the woman. Yuri did not care what he promised, but he had no intention of signing anything.

He wondered if the little man was sleeping with the big woman. No, he decided, it was not possible. There was too much of her and too little of him. Yuri would show her what a full-sized man felt like.

Yuri would have liked to have made it that first night, but there was the little problem of Mrs. Keith. He knew she had a surprise present waiting for him at home, and he hadn’t wanted to blow it. Now, though, he figured he had milked the old bag for about all she was going to give. The sessions in bed were becoming a drag too, with the old woman’s loose skin and floppy little breasts. It would be good to get next to something firm and young again.

But what the hell was the matter with these people in the stands. They were buzzing among themselves, not paying attention to his match. Idiots! Didn’t they know they were seeing the best player in the tournament right now? To hell with them.

Yuri finished off the match in a hurry, not losing a point in the last two games. He gathered up his rackets and stalked off the court leaving the Egyptian boy standing at the net waiting for the traditional handshake.

As he pushed away through the crowd Yuri caught snatches of excited conversation. Something was happen ing in Ron Hopper’s match, something that had distracted people from Yuri’s own performance. As he passed the two bobbies guarding the entrance to the men’s dressing room Yuri flipped an obscene gesture in the direction of Centre Court.

• • •

Ron Hopper knew he’d been found out. At first his young opponent had been so overwhelmed at playing his opening match on Centre Court against the defending champion that Ron had been able to win the first two sets merely lying back and waiting for the boy to make errors. The tennis-wise Wimbledon crowd had shown some surprise at these tactics, but apparently felt Ron was saving himself for more difficult matches in the later rounds.

Then, leading 4–3 in the third set, he was moving back under a short lob, poised for an overhead smash, when the thigh muscle went. It tore loose with a popping sound that Ron thought must have been heard in the first five rows of the stands.

He gasped at the white-hot flash of pain and mis-hit the easy smash, knocking the ball far out of bounds. A murmur of dismay ran through the crowd, and the umpire leaned forward in his chair, a question forming on his lips. Ron waved quickly that he was all right and the umpire signaled for play to continue.

Ron’s young opponent was so surprised by the sudden change in fortunes he didn’t take immediate advantage of the champion’s injury. By the time the boy realized he was playing a cripple he was too far behind to catch up, and Ron won the match in four sets.

The reporters surrounded him on his way from the court to the dressing room.

“What happened out there, Ron?”

“Is it your knee?”