Trophy Son(39)

“Alright,” I said.

“Hell, screw the Mohawk, whatever.” His smile grew. It was forced, but it got big enough to show teeth. “I’m just worried about you, Anton.”

I decided then to abandon the Mohawk. It would take a few weeks but I’d let it grow in. I knew the media would say I’d gotten brash, cocky. They’d say I wanted attention and if I couldn’t get it by winning tournaments then I’d get it another way.

They’d be wrong, naturally. It was the opposite. The Mohawk was a costume, not me but a presentation of me, a way for an actor to play me on the court while the real me could hide away.

It was a bad choice, though. Agassi had one, so it wasn’t the first. James Blake shaved his head bald, though that was in support of his dad getting chemo treatment. But the Mohawk wasn’t me. It was one of the many things I tried on that didn’t fit. Even if I wanted to hide, the presentation of me had to fit with me.

I played one tournament with the Mohawk, then I moved on from that haircut more quickly than the media did. There were plenty of articles with photos. I hoped Ana didn’t see any of it.

Ben Archer won that tournament. Same haircut he always had, wearing conservative tennis whites. Same steady demeanor and steady game, but with that win he was ranked above me for the first time. I was at twenty-three and he moved up to fourteen.

He was a marvel to me. He seemed so damned normal.

The thing about the Mohawk, though, was that it provoked a piece of Dad that was almost normal too. I didn’t see the light or now agree with anything he’d done, but it was the first time I had witnessed something human from him.





CHAPTER

27

I rented a three-bedroom house in Palm Beach Gardens. It was in one of the gated communities that have only two or three architectural plans for the couple hundred houses in the development and most are lived in only during the few months of winter or are rented out year-round to people who come golfing for a week at a time. It was alarmingly un-homey, but big enough for friends to come visit. Miami was known to be the steroid capitol of the world at that time but my choice of home had nothing to do with that fact. Bobby took care of all that. I didn’t know and it was better for me that way.

Manhattan would have been fun. Panos was there. He was a financial advisor at J.P. Morgan, managing rich people’s money. Managing a small amount of Dad’s money and all of my money now that I was a millionaire by myself. He also managed investments for a few tour players he’d met through me and so had started a nice business for himself. But a decent place in Manhattan was a fortune, plus tennis courts were harder to come by. I’d average about forty nights a year in whichever home I picked and I wanted a place where the weather was nice in December. Anyway, most players on the tour lived in the stretch of Florida between Orlando and Miami, so Palm Beach Gardens put me right in the middle.

Dad allowed it. He had backed way off me since the Mohawk, treating me like a rescue dog. He always understood action-reaction but had assumed my reactions to him always resulted in better tennis. Now he saw there were unknowable, unseen reactions that could show up in disturbing ways and that made him feel uncertain and guilty. He was fearful of causing more damage so if I wanted something enough now I could get it.

Gabe took a condo on a golf course in Palm Beach Gardens nearby. We trained on the same schedule as ever, but the air had gone out of both of us. He didn’t talk about the top three players in the world anymore and how we’d catch them, or how the draw looked for getting to the second week in the major tournaments. It was more about day-to-day survival, how we’d manage just to keep it going. Keeping it going had become the routine, and we’d both lost sight of where to.

I floated through the tennis season relying on my serve and my steroids to win enough. No leg work. I knew Dad was upset, thought I was wasting good years, and he was right.

“Anton, let’s go to beach. For valk and for svim.”

I never dated the American players. Almost exclusively Eastern Europeans. Russians in particular because those girls all had childhoods that were way more fucked up than my own. I was semi-conscious of the fear I had of dating an American, that I would be the one judged to be more screwed up, to be pitied. That she would have a background of friendships, going to concerts, birthday parties, favorite songs that reminded her of first dates, first kisses, rather than my experience which was nothing at all except an eight-month fraud at the hands of Liz, and then skipped right to sexual instruction from a girl with far more knowledge than I had. “Sure, for an hour maybe. I have a practice session at one o’clock.”

So no Americans. I was intimidated. Dr. Minkoff helped me to see that. Anyway, Eastern Europe seems to turn out only girls who are 5'11" with a great ass. “Good, I practice at vun also.”

I stood from the bed naked and took an energy bar from a box on the bedside table. Athletes in training eat constantly. I always had food with me and never went more than a single waking hour without eating something. I opened a second energy bar while still standing by the bed.

She grabbed my penis with one hand and pulled me back into bed. “I need bite also.”

It was unclear, but turned out she meant the energy bar. She took a bite, then pulled me over top of her and wrapped her legs tight around me and fed a bite to me. We both chewed while she lowered her hand to direct me inside her. She squeezed her legs in a rhythm to pace our sex. In a moment she reached to the table for another bar to feed us as we sweated and pumped and abused our bodies like animals. It was great morning sex.