Trophy Son Read online

  “What rumors?”

  I was getting Gabe’s point. “Just silly stuff.” I was squirming as though Gabe was a real reporter.

  “Where did you hear the rumors? Who told you?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “You’re blown away,” said Gabe. “A reporter just blew you out of the water.”

  I made a long exhale trying to let out the stress. “Shit,” I said.

  “Let’s run through this. Say that you don’t know the details but you’d be shocked if steroids were involved. Liang was a great player. There have been small incidents of cheating in the past on the tour but the ATP has dealt with that. Tennis is a clean sport and to your knowledge there are zero players cheating today.”

  “Right,” I said. The news started to trickle into me and get personal. Poor Liang. I didn’t know him really. He wasn’t Chinese-American, he was Chinese-Chinese so nobody on the tour really knew him. I bet we had a lot in common. We were both top tennis players and there weren’t many different ways to do that.

  “Bobby, not for nothing, in case this was a bad combination of drugs, let’s triple check what I’m putting in my body.”

  CHAPTER

  33

  One month later I got an invitation to celebrate terrible news.

  ANA STOKKE AND CALEB CASA

  INVITE YOU TO CELEBRATE THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THEIR ENGAGEMENT

  PLAZA HOTEL, NEW YORK CITY

  7:30PM

  Caleb Casa was the first thirty-million-dollar man. More than Jennifer Lawrence, George Clooney, Tom Cruise. I read that if you added the percentage he got on the back end, he made almost $80 million on his last picture.

  The invitation arrived one day prior to the phone call that was meant to soften the blow.

  “Anton.”

  “Hi.” I tried to sound aloof.

  “How are you?”

  “Great.”

  “Are you in Florida?”

  “I got your invitation. Thanks.”

  Long pause. “I’m sorry. I wanted to speak with you first. I wasn’t even sure if I should invite you but I consider you a friend. A dear friend, and of course you would find out about it anyway. Probably naïve, but I’m hoping you’ll be happy, hoping you’ll come if you can.”

  “I’m sure that’s what a dear friend would do.”

  She said nothing.

  “Things were pretty different thirty days ago. In Los Angeles.”

  “I know. I should explain.” She took a beat. “Caleb and I had been seeing each other. The press hadn’t picked it up and we weren’t all that serious but we’d been talking about getting more serious. When I got back from Los Angeles I started to tell him about you. Caleb asked if we could take a vacation together to talk it out and it worked for our schedules so we went to Hawaii. It just went really well. We connected, I guess.” She paused again. “On the last day there he proposed.”

  “Congratulations.” This struck my most raw nerves.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I feel deceived.” I was proud of that statement. It was the truth. I could have said something nasty or I could have pretended it didn’t bother me. Instead I told her how I felt.

  “I didn’t mean to deceive you. What you did in L.A. was sudden, I never expected that.”

  “You knew I liked you, knew I had pushed for us to be doubles partners in the event.”

  “Doubles partners, fine, we’re friends. I didn’t know you were going to pull me into a stairwell and kiss me.”

  “Caleb never came up in conversation when I did.”

  “We were interrupted by your phone call and you left in the middle of the kiss!”

  I was accusing her and that wasn’t productive or fair. “Alright.”

  There was a long minute of silence. I didn’t want to hang up. That felt like letting go of a helium balloon in the park, having to watch it rise away to a speck in the sky. There was going to be no good ending to the call.

  She said, “I didn’t want you to hear about it in tabloids. I didn’t want you to learn about it from the invitation either. I’m sorry. You deserve much better than that.”

  After another long minute I said, “If I’m near New York then, I’ll try to make it.” We hung up.

  * * *

  My masochistic streak won again. Once I had rearranged my schedule and flown to New York, it was very convenient to be there for the party. I got to the Plaza at 8:15pm. If the room was already crowded I could pick my spots and hide if I needed to.

  I took an elevator to an upstairs ballroom. I wore a tailored, charcoal suit, white shirt, no tie, hair combed. It was how I looked when filming Rolex commercials. My stomach was churning, literally making loud noises in the elevator, which never happened, even before matches.

  When the elevator doors opened there was a greeter. She was prepared, knew the names and faces of the guests and she said, “Mr. Stratis, welcome. The party is right this way.” She led me through double doors to a ballroom that was half filled by about a hundred people.

  “Thanks.” I looked for a bar. I didn’t need a drink. I needed something to do with my hands.

  The guest-to-bartender ratio was four to one. I asked for a beer and waited while a man in white jacket and black tie poured from a bottle into a tulip glass.

  A man in his thirties to my left was regaling four others about the process of writing screenplays. He began four consecutive sentences with the words “You see, you have to.…” He seemed to know all there was to know. The others nodded to him, cornered in an open room.

  “Anton.” Not shouted across the room. It was soft, right behind me, then a hand on my shoulder.

  “Hi.”

  “Thank you for coming.” Simple, said only one time, didn’t overdo it, and I knew she meant it.

  I didn’t say of course. That wouldn’t have been true. “You look great.” True.

  She gave me a hug. It was too much too soon. I only half hugged back. It was awkward and I’m sure looked awkward to anyone watching, and it stifled our conversation. She said, “Will you meet Caleb?”

  “What the hell,” I said, then tried and failed to smile.

  He had been close but a respectful few paces away with an eye on us.

  “Anton, this is Caleb. Caleb, this is Anton.” Her voice was nervous. I took some pleasure in that. Small consolation, but something.

  “How ya doing, Anton!” Either delighted to see me, or gloating.

  “Fun party.”

  “Glad you could come.” He was more than a head shorter than me, impossibly great hair and sparse, quarter-inch whiskers that made up a goatee and dirty face that was just less than a beard. Handsome movie star.

  Ana was pulled from us at the worst time. Some woman tugged her elbow to introduce her to some other woman. I knew he and I both felt it because we both looked after her as though she was still one of us and hoped she’d be back to say something in time to save the situation.

  Enough time passed that it was absurd to keep staring at her back. We looked at each other. Caleb smiled and said, “Really. Good of you to come.”

  Translation: you’re magnanimous in defeat. “I really came to ask you how you get your hair to look so good. You blow-dry?”

  “I can read people,” he said. “I know you have a romantic side.”

  “What else do you know?”

  He smiled. “I just hope your romantic side will help you see your way forward to being happy for us.”

  Rubbing my face in it. “I’ll work on that.”

  He nodded, glanced at Ana in another conversation. “I’ve been with a lot of beautiful women. The best.” Obnoxious. He kissed the tips of his fingers then spread them in the air. “Ana’s really something though.” Obnoxious and disrespectful.

  I was losing my cool. I put a hand on the top of his shoulder and looked down at him. “You’re not good enough for her.”

  In a room without a hundred people and security I think he’d have been scar
ed but he acted brave here. “Maybe not. But you know the great thing?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I get the chance to find out.” He put his hand up to shake as a way to make us step back from each other and end the conversation. When you shake hands and connect at the base of each other’s thumb with palm over palm, you have a firm handshake. If you grab the guy farther down the hand, just over the fingers, you can crunch the hell out of his knuckles. Caleb’s hands were small to start with and I wrapped his fingers exactly there. I’ve been swinging a tennis racket for twenty years so my right forearm is about twice the size of my left. I had an easy smile while I watched his eyes bulge and he otherwise took the pain without reaction.

  “What are you two boys talking about?”

  I let him go. “Just getting to know each other a bit.” It was immature, but it was all I could do.

  “Nice,” she said though it was obvious to her that it was anything but.

  “Anton was just saying how many beautiful women are on the tennis tour. He seems to be quite the lady’s man.”

  I looked from him to Ana. “Congratulations on marrying a real prick.”

  Ana couldn’t get a word out, then, “What?”

  “Bye.”

  I walked to the double doors and didn’t look back at anyone. The damn elevator held me up.

  “Anton.”

  I was six inches in front of the closed elevator doors. I turned to her.

  “What was that?”

  “You must know. You must know him well enough by now to know exactly what that was.”

  “What I saw was you insulting me and my fiancé at our engagement party. Which isn’t like you.”

  “You missed a few gems prior to that and anyway I call ’em as I see ’em. That guy doesn’t care about you. Go ask Minkoff the definition of malignant narcissist and tell me it doesn’t line up. He thinks he deserves you and any other girl he wants at the same time because he puts himself first.”

  She was listening close. There had to be a voice in her head saying the same thing.

  I went on. “I may not have my shit together. Entirely together,” giving myself a little credit, “but I would never treat you that way. Never even think of you that way.”

  She nodded. Did I get through? Did she see the light? “I shouldn’t have invited you.” Oh well.

  Caleb stuck his head out the double doors. “Let that jerk go.”

  The elevator doors opened, and she did.

  CHAPTER

  34

  Moving up the thirty spots in rank from fifty to twenty is much easier than moving the ten spots from twenty to ten, and every spot up from ten is hard as hell.

  After a great finish to the year before, I’d started this year the same way. I won the Australian Open. My first major. Of the four, it’s the one that I and the rest of the world care the least about, but it got that monkey off my back. I lost in the finals of the French Open even though clay was not a naturally good surface for my game and I didn’t have it figured out then. I’d entered four other tournaments and won all four.

  Grass court season started next and I entered the Queen’s Club Championships in London, a grass court warm-up event to Wimbledon. I hadn’t dropped a set on the way to the finals. I was healthy, strong, focused. I sat in the locker room before the finals match drinking Bobby’s energy drink, watching the clock to time the candy popper exactly.

  Gabe walked back in. “I just confirmed it with the ATP. If you win today, when they publish the points tomorrow, you’ll be the new number one player. Number one. In the world.”

  I sipped my drink and nodded. “Well, I better win.”

  Gabe smiled. “No pressure.”

  I looked at the clock on the wall. Took the popper. Number one in the world. It was what I wanted. I wanted to add some more wins at majors to that but I wasn’t worried about them coming. They would. I was playing with confidence. Beating the best players. There was nobody whose game I feared. “Showtime,” I said.

  Ben Archer. He was quietly having a good year. He’d cracked the top ten but top five was tennis royalty and he wasn’t there yet. He showed no frustration about that. He was sure of himself, ever-present, plodding along, always dangerous. I’d never known competitive tennis without Ben in the game. He was always there, a constant companion, doing it a little different, like a reflection of me on a warped surface.

  “Good luck today, Anton,” said Ben.

  “I wish you’d be an asshole for once.”

  “Break a leg,” he said.

  It didn’t matter that Gabe had told me I could take over the number one ranking with a win. He only confirmed with the ATP what everyone around the tournament had been saying for a week. Gabe just took the speculation out of it, which I suppose was a good thing, but I started the match tight.

  I knew Ben’s game, knew my game was better, if I played well. He always played the goddamn same. Steady and good. His mental toughness was unnerving, especially when I was already nervous.

  My first serve percentage was low, I sprayed my forehand around though I wasn’t even going for much and I knew that was part of the problem. I couldn’t bring myself to swing out.

  When a player is tight, it’s the same involuntary response that brings blood to the vital organs when a person is cold. Muscles constrict, bringing everything closer to the core. There can be no fluid, full extension. I dropped the first set 6–3.

  The saving grace was that the set ended on an odd number of games so I had a changeover to collect myself. The match was best of three sets. If I didn’t turn my play around, someone else would be number one.

  I burned some energy trying to hype myself up. I was nursing no injuries. It had been an easy week of matches so I wasn’t battling fatigue. I remembered how early in Rafa’s career he would jump around at net in front of his opponent before a match then sprint from the net to the baseline. It was weird behavior and it threw people, like a fighter who stands in his corner between rounds instead of taking his chair.

  At the end of the changeover I did a run with high knees to my baseline then did a set of short sprints along the baseline from side to side of the court. I never looked at Ben but knew he was watching and wondering what the hell I was doing.

  The second set started on my serve and I knew if I could come out serving big it would feel to everyone that I had cast a spell, performed a freak incantation on the court. Turn the match around, magically.

  The running around actually did loosen my muscles up. It also amused and distracted me. My best serve for an ace was power up the middle. I blasted two in a row to go up 30–love.

  Ben smiled. It wasn’t a genuinely amused smile. It was a that-son-of-a-bitch smile.

  The next two serves I sliced wide, both aces. Four swings and a love service game to me. I took the second set 6–2.

  Steady Ben knew I wasn’t a magical creature and knew he was still in the match. He kept coming right at me, playing strong and smart. In the third and final set we were tied at 4 games each on Ben’s serve.

  So much of winning a match is the result of the decisions before the ball is in play. Which way was he going with the serve. Especially with the power serves in the game, it helps to decide, play the odds like at a craps table. Players don’t guess on every serve but they do guess a lot and tournaments are won or lost depending on whether a guy bets the pass line.

  These points are less about the shot-making. At our level we all made the shots most of the time.

  I knew Ben’s game so well. He was a strong enough player that for him to play to his strength was not a stupid plan. He didn’t need to try to surprise people. At 4 all, deuce, in the deciding set, he’d play to his strength, and to the deuce court he liked to spin his serve out wide to take me off the court.

  His toss went up and I slid a step over to the right. He started the whip of his racket up to the ball and I skipped twice farther to the right and began the rotation of my shoulders to be read
y for a forehand. The serve came wide, right to where I was already waiting for it.

  I caught the ball on the rise out of my service box and ripped a straight forehand up the line. Ben never moved for it. He turned to the ball boy behind him, got another ball and prepared to serve again. My ad.

  He served into my body and I fought it off with a backhand return that floated high and deep to his backhand corner. Off the racket I knew it would drop in and with some cheap topspin so I closed into net behind it. Ben never saw me come in. He hit a backhand cross that was meant to be a deep, safe shot but it floated to the net high and soft like popcorn. I hit a smash that bounced up into the stands.

  I had an easy hold of my serve to win the match. Tomorrow morning the world would wake up to a new number one tennis player.

  PART III

  Achievement marks the end of endeavor and the beginning of despair.

  —AMBROSE BIERCE

  CHAPTER

  35

  My older brother was getting married. The reception was in the ballroom of the Philadelphia Country Club, about ten minutes from where I grew up. There’s one week between the end of Queen’s Club and the start of Wimbledon so I made the flight home.

  Panos was marrying a girl who had gone to school nearby at Baldwin but they didn’t really know each other until they were introduced in college and started dating. They’d been living together about six years, since graduation, so the wedding felt like a recognition of a commitment they’d already made.

  I was best man for Panos. He and Kristie had to schedule the wedding for middle of the week in June so it wouldn’t interfere with my play on the tour. The first decision about the wedding was about me, and that dynamic continued. I didn’t spend much time with Dad in those days and he was thrilled to have an event to show off the world’s new number one tennis player to his friends and he would tell them that he had foreseen my current ranking at the time of my birth. He was an insufferable partner in wedding planning for Panos and Kristie. He wanted to make sure they didn’t hog the spotlight from me.

  Panos took it with the same mix of relief and sadness he always did. It hurts not to be chosen by your own father, but to be chosen is worse. Panos preferred to be orphaned, which was a strong motivator to marry and have a life with Kristie. He wanted to start a family because ours wasn’t much of one for him. His relationship with our father had become more like nephew to uncle.