Trophy Son(25)

I entered a clay court tournament in Spain that was a tune-up for the French Open. I loved to go to the restaurants and hear the foreign language around me, imagine I was Hemingway who would order Spanish wine, drink, smoke, fight and womanize. I was obviously American.

I went to a centuries-old café full of people that bookend the stages of raising a family. The young, hip and independent, and then the very-much-older whose kids were grown and gone so they were independent again and could sit in cafés like Picasso.

The waiter was thin and in his fifties. He came over, humble, almost apologetic for his native tongue and took my order. He wore a starched black shirt, black tie with a white apron over top. Not a student looking for extra income, but a professional waiter, a lover of wine and cigarettes, maybe from a long line of waiters. I loved Spain because it felt old and I wanted to go to the old cafés. This restaurant was older than the city of Atlanta, maybe older than the sport of tennis. I felt better perspective on life in places like that. That was about the extent of my social life on the road.

I was the third match on a stadium court and I went to the players’ lounge knowing I had anywhere between two and five hours to wait so I brought a book. White Noise by DeLillo.

Rufus Parker was an American player ranked below me and we were friendly because all American players get to know each other a bit. “You reading a book?” he said.

He sounded like this all must be a practical joke I was playing on him. “Yes. Got a few hours to kill.”

“Jeez. Big brain on Anton. Maybe we should get you a tweed coat and a long, skinny brown cigarette, professor.”

Because I’m reading a book? “Rufus, if I knew this would disturb you so much, I would have carried a book out to the court before all our matches.”

He laughed. “It is a little disturbing, though. I’ve been on the tour six years. I haven’t read a book in nine. And that was only the first few chapters of Harry Potter.”

I was seventy-five percent sure he was messing with me. “Serious?”

“Serious.”

He was. I laid the book down and stared at him. “No books at all?”

“You’re the freak, not me,” he said. He looked around. There were seven other players in the lounge. “Let’s take a poll,” he said. He stood and called across the room. “Raise your hand if you read a book in the last year. An actual book, magazines don’t count.” Seven blank faces directed at Rufus. “In the last two years?” Blank faces. “In the last five years?” Several smiles, no raised hands.

I knew most of the players personally but not all. I said, “Does everyone here speak English, understand the question?”

Rufus laughed and someone across the room yelled, “Blow me, Anton.”

My first thought was, Those poor saps, but I later wondered if there was some benefit to that kind of wiring for this kind of life. If the real goal was happiness, I seemed to be doing worse than most.

Gabe was great in helping me adjust to international play. We’d walk the courts together before tournaments started, while the grounds were empty. He’d walk me to the stadium court and measure the height of the net, walk off the distance from the net to the baseline, examine the right angles of the tape. Everything to show that a court is just a court, no matter where in the world, no matter if they speak French, Spanish or German around you. He’d belabor the obvious until it was funny and relaxing, like Gene Hackman taking his bumpkin Indiana basketball team to a fancy stadium for the first time.

I had craved newness and this was new. My body still seemed new as well. My strength excited me and my training had become a more pleasant escape. When frustrations and phobias began to swell, I could go to the gym, let the sweat pour, work my muscles with fury, have the physical me drive out the emotional me, grind myself down and burn out the pain. Cauterize my soul.

Endorphins wear off though and the pains in my mind would come back around and I’d train more, and so would go the cycle to keep things at bay, though never cured. The only cure for loneliness is company. I thought maybe a girl might help but what eighteen-year-old girl could drop her school plans to travel the tennis tour so that we could be together more than just December. I still felt so burned by Liz, even years later, that I had no confidence, and that avenue felt closed to me.

My relationship with my shrink, Dr. Ford, was a joke, and he and I both knew it. We did phone consultations biweekly which were useless. Even when we were in the same town we did the session by phone, which pronounced our relationship a joke officially. I never told him about taking steroids. He knew though, and asked me about it, which means he must have been speaking directly to Dad. Probably fucking illegal to do that. I never checked.

Anyway, I was playing well. My best match to that point was still the loss to Ilya at the Miami Open, but I was playing very well that summer leading up to the US Open in August.





CHAPTER

18

“The hell you are, Anton. You are not going.”

I’d never shopped for clothes for myself before in my life, but that morning I’d gone to Macy’s alone. I had no idea what might look good. Much less what a woman would think looks good, but a cute female sales clerk picked out a shirt, pants and shoes for me. Put the whole thing together. It’s amazing how nice clothes that fit and aren’t for the gym can make you feel different. I was standing in them. “I’m going, Dad. I already told everyone I’m going.”