Carrie Soto Is Back(17)

“Hello?”

“Hi, it’s Carrie.” My heart rate was rising; I could feel my face flushing. I kept looking at the door, knowing my father could walk through it at any moment.

“The Battle Axe! Finally!” Lars Van de Berg said. “I have left you countless messages.”

He’d been calling more and more as Mary-Louise’s career began to plateau.

“Yes, well,” I said. “It has been a complicated call to return.”

“Yes, I’d imagine it is.”

“I’m the number two player in the world,” I said. I cradled the phone between my ear and my shoulder. I hunched over, my elbows on my knees. “I should be number one.”

“I agree,” Lars said.

“Javier thinks that being second is a great achievement and I should be proud,” I said.

“Well, he is your father. I have three children, and I want, very much, for them to be happy,” Lars said. “But sometimes I think being the very best is antithetical to being happy.”

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly.” I stood up and carried the phone with me to my balcony. I watched the palm trees sway in the wind. There was a breeze coming through, and I was thankful for it, despite the January chill in Florida.

“Carrie, listen to me. I am one of the best coaches in women’s tennis, you know this. Everyone has known this since I coached Chrissy Salvos to take eight titles in ’62. What Mary-Louise and I have done together is truly spectacular, given her ability. But she is not performing at the level I need.”

“This would hasten the end of her career,” I say. “If you were to leave her now.”

“It might. But you cannot worry about that.”

“She’d be worried about it, if the situation were reversed. She’d be considering my feelings.”

“Yes,” he said, then sighed. “She would. And she wonders why she never reached her full potential. Look, I have never coached a player with as much natural talent as you. And as coaches, we can’t do our best work without the perfect player. I will never know what I am truly capable of until I have the chance to coach someone as good as you. I need you to do my greatest work. I am a sculptor. And you are the finest piece of clay I could ever work with. I saw that back in ’68 when you first played Mary-Louise. And I will tell you now what I told your father then: He has done a fine job honing your talent. And I can take it from here.”

I looked back at the door of the suite. “What are you going to do that my father has not done?”

“Are you ready to have this conversation now?” he asked.

I stared at the people walking on the streets below me. The cars pulling away from the curb into traffic. The family chatting on the corner while they waited for a walk signal.

“It is the only reason I called,” I said.

“Well,” he said. “The gap between the player you are today and the player you want to be—”

“I want to be the greatest tennis player in the world,” I said.

“That gap is not big. We are talking about that vital half-percent improvement. And that’s not found in changing your strategy. It’s in shortening the nanosecond of time between getting to the ball and slicing it across the court. It is going to be found in the minute change you make to the angle of your serve. The details are fine, and they are going to get finer. It is going to be nearly imperceptible, the ways we need to change your game. No one will be able to see it from the outside, but Stepanova is going to feel it. Every time she loses to you for the next ten years.”

I could feel my pulse in my ears; my face felt hot. “Okay,” I said. “How do we do that?”

“Are you cross-training?” he asked.

“I run and do drills.”

Lars laughed. “That’s not enough. Stepanova is right about one thing––you need to lose at least a couple pounds. We need you doing sprints, lunges, weight training. You can jump higher to hit overheads. You rarely do—it’s a weakness in your game, in my opinion. I want to see what happens when you blast off the court into the air. Take out some of Stepanova’s lobs before they hit the ground. We start there and see where we get.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “If we are doing this, I need to know right now that you believe I can bury her. That I can be number one.”

“If I am your coach and you do not become the number-one-ranked player for the year,” he said, “I will be disgusted.”

A shield was forming over me, a hard edge. “Okay,” I said. “I will call you soon to discuss this more. Don’t say a word. To anyone.”

When I turned back into my suite, my father was standing by the coffee table.

He was staring at me, his eyes wide and tearing up. I had never seen this version of him before.

“What have you done?” he said softly. His voice was barely a whisper. It cracked as it escaped his mouth. “Carolina.”

“I cannot have a coach who is less ambitious for me than I am for myself,” I said. My voice was strong and clear despite the fact that I could not look at him.

“You’re misunderstanding me if you think that’s the case,” my father said. “Y lo sabés.”

“I don’t know that,” I said.