Trophy Son(34)

I clicked to a photo of Ryan whispering in Ana’s ear and maybe taking a nibble while there. She looked happy. I knew they were starting another film together in Vancouver the following week.

I clicked out of the browser and stretched out on the couch to stare at the ceiling. When English or Australian guys on the tour had something bad happen to them, they’d say “I feel gutted.” That was how I’d felt with Liz. Clicking through each photo for a lengthy study was the most masochistic thing I’d done and I had a fairly high pain threshold.

Adam walked into the hotel suite and saw me on my back on the couch. I didn’t look over.

“What’s up, my man?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“A little down in the mouth, no?”

“Maybe.” I found that I did want to talk about it.

“So what is it?”

“I’m hearing from Ana less and less.” Since we met more than a year ago we’d had two dinners and a hundred phone calls.

“She busy on a picture?”

“About to be. It’s more that I just looked through some pictures of her snuggling with some actor on a red carpet.”

Adam laughed. “You should hear yourself. Really.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Let me be sure I have it right. You’re not getting enough attention from the super-hot-A-list-Oscar-bound actress? You poor thing.”

“Screw you, Adam.”

“I’m just saying. It’s a pretty first-class problem, Anton.”

I sat up. Whenever something goes wrong on the court, I need to lead myself back into play with the right attitude, the right body language. I can’t win if I don’t expect to win. No down-in-the-mouth player wins. “True,” I said.

I was in a hole and needed a ladder out. Ana was a twenty-four-carat ladder but I just needed a way up. A wooden ladder would do the job. Any girl. Any friend. Adam said, “Anton, lots of fishies out there. Guy like you? Like a commercial fishing ship. You’ll fish out an entire coastline.”

“Mmm.” The fish-in-the-sea stuff bounced off me. The truth was I didn’t want a wooden ladder. I liked Ana.

“So is she dating this guy? They’re together?”

“Seems that way, but I don’t know.”

“Could be just publicity stuff for the picture.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“It could also be real,” he said.

“Right.”

“And if it’s real, can you blame her?”

I looked at him.

“You two both travel around the planet, maybe rendezvous a few days a few times each year. And you’re kids. Legally in bars, you’re still kids. For a relationship like that you need to be legally adults. At the least. Probably legally adults plus five years, and maybe a divorce or two thrown in first.”

“So no girls until I’m twenty-six.”

“Not that. It’s just you picked a tough one here. Date someone who’s more free to travel with you. Not travel to everything or you’ll start to think of her as luggage, but someone who can make it a week each month. Or date a girl on the tour. Half the girl players are your age. Or younger.”

Adam was trying to help but the only thing that could help me was to learn as incontrovertible fact that Ana was not sleeping with Ryan Hall. “Yeah.”

“Actresses are tough, Atom Bomb. Her star can go up and down, same as yours, and when hers goes down while yours is up, that’s hard. Vice versa, hard too. And actresses are insecure. I don’t know about Ana, but most of them are. Lots of tennis players date actresses and it never works out. It’s been going on since the dawn of the Open Era and that combination always ends ugly.”

“She’s not insecure.” I sounded like a child. I knew it.

“Well, we’re not picking a wife now anyway. What you need is a date.”

“I don’t want a date.” I actually did, sort of. I just wanted Ana more.

“Okay, no date.” Adam sat down on the chair next to the couch. I thought he was going to turn on the PlayStation but he didn’t. “So let’s send her a note. A handwritten note.”

“I don’t have an address for her. Not for a couple more weeks when she’s settled.”

“Text message it is. Hand me your phone. You’re in no condition.”

I handed my phone to him. I said, “I read everything first. Don’t start firing things off.”

“Okay, let’s brainstorm.”

“Sure.”

“What are you doing for Halloween?” he said.

“I don’t know.”

“What are you going to dress up as?”

“A tennis player.”

“Funny. Seriously.”

“Adam, I haven’t dressed up for Halloween since I was eight. I never do anything for Halloween.”

“I’m taking you to a great Halloween party this year.” Adam started typing on my phone then handed it back to me and said, “Send this.”

It read:



“Jesus.” I deleted it before either of us accidentally hit send.

“Come on. That was perfect. Gets the point across, but not too heavy. Still funny and charming.”