Carrie Soto Is Back(30)

I look around the room, thinking, trying to come up with a reason to say no. But the truth is, he is my best shot at refining my game in time. And that has to be the most important thing. That has to outweigh everything else. “Fine,” I say. “Yes. When are you back in town?”

“I play Frankfurt on Monday; I fly straight home to L.A. after. How about the Sunday I’m back, first thing, we can get started. I’ll come to you.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I say. “Javier will join. And what about you? Who’s coaching you now? Still Gardner?”

“Uh, no,” he says. “Pete’s gone on to Washington Lomal, of all people. It’s just me now. No coach.”

I let the silence last too long. Bowe chimes in after a few seconds. “It’s fine. He stuck by me as long as he could. I know what I am, Soto. I’ll see you next week.”

After I hang up the phone, I sit there holding on to the receiver, not yet letting it go.





MID-NOVEMBER


    Two months until Melbourne


I am sitting outside on the court, stretching, at eight-thirty in the morning.

The air is dewy and brisk. The sun has begun to warm up the day. I keep looking over my shoulder at the driveway, wondering when Bowe will arrive.

My father paces by the sideline. “He’s already two minutes late.”

“Maybe this whole thing was a mistake,” I say.

My father whips his head in my direction. “I thought Bowe was a mistake the second Gwen suggested it.”

Another few minutes go by as I stand up and stretch out my shoulders and my arms, glancing at the driveway one more time. My father looks at me. “You’re nervous,” he says. “But you shouldn’t be. You’re serving at a speed that the midtier players can’t hit. Chan, sure. Cortez or Antonovich, I think so. But that’s it. You’re quicker than you were even last week. You’re disguising your shots beautifully. And that’s just off a month and a half of training. You are playing at an elite level already.”

I look at him.

“And each day you’re getting better,” he adds. “Have you noticed that?”

I let go of my shoulder and stand up straighter. He’s right. At some point in my career, I’d stopped thinking that way. I let myself focus entirely on stats and records. But that had never been the real goal. I shake my head, recalibrating, stunned for a moment at just how easy it had been for me to forget the most basic ideals I grew up with.

People act like you can never forget your own name, but if you’re not paying attention, you can veer so incredibly far away from everything you know about yourself to the point where you stop recognizing what they call you.

“Every day,” I say, “I’m playing better than the day before.”

My father nods. “So do not live in the future, cari?o. Don’t play the first match in Melbourne months before you’ve gotten there. We don’t know what kind of player you’ll be that day.”

“I will be two months better of a player than I am today,” I say.

A Jeep pulls into the driveway and Bowe gets out. He looks older and grayer than the last time I saw him, weathered—like a leather wallet that has lightened and wrinkled at the folds. He sees us and waves as he heads toward the court.

My father pats me on the back. “Let’s see what this thug over here has got left in him. He’s already ten minutes late.”

“Be nice, Dad.”

“I will be perfectly nice to his face, you know that,” he says. “But it is my God-given right to complain about him behind his back.”



* * *



—

One of the great injustices of this rigged world we live in is that women are considered to be depleting with age and men are somehow deepening.

But Bowe swiftly puts any of my resentments about that to rest. He looks like shit and I take him in straight sets.

When the match is over, he sits on the ground, staring at the racket in his hand. “You demolished me,” he says.

“My daughter is one of the very best in the world,” my father reminds him.

“Yes, I know,” Bowe says. “But still.”

My father rolls his eyes and goes inside to get more water. I sit down next to Bowe.

“Today went well for me,” I say. “I’m not going to lie.”

Bowe looks up. His brown eyes are so big and wide, and his hair is cut close to his head, gray creeping across his temples. His skin is sun-beaten. It has been a big ten years.

“You played well,” he says. “You’re not all that far from the Carrie I knew.”

I am surprised by his magnanimity. I would not possess it in his position.

“Thank you,” I say. “There is still a long way to go. Still seems like I’m running through mud out there.”

Bowe nods. “I know what you mean.”

“And it is not enough to be good,” I say. “It’s not even enough to be great. I have to be…”

“You have to be better than you’ve ever been,” Bowe says, “to go up against this crop of women. I’ve seen some of them. Chan’s a killer, but Cortez is deadly too.”

“I know,” I say, feeling myself tense up.