Trophy Son(47)

“You haven’t heard about Jian Liang yet?”

“No, what are you talking about?”

“He’s dead,” said Gabe. “It’s all over the web.”

I hadn’t played Jian Liang in almost a year. He was the top-ranked player from China and ranked number seven in the world. He was about my age. “How?”

“There are about ten different stories going around and pretty much all of them involve steroids,” said Gabe.

Bobby’s voice came on the line. “There’s a story that it was a bad transfusion. Another that he was trying a new cocktail of things and it was a bad combination. Stopped his heart. Another that his injection went directly into an artery, killed him.”

“That doesn’t matter right now,” Gabe cut him off. “Right now the media’s going to be all over this and you need to keep low until you decide how to handle it.”

I looked over to the courts fifty yards away where ten reporters and cameramen were moving like bees from stigma to stigma. A reporter glanced up and we made eye contact. He with a microphone in someone’s face, I with a phone pressed to my head, and we watched each other for a moment. Others looked over at me.

I was a strange sight, standing alone on a large green lawn in bright white tennis clothes. A field mouse beneath circling hawks. “I need to get inside.”

I walked back to the lounge and waved to Ana who was talking with Adam and three others who had come to admire her. I went back to the stairwell landing.

“Okay, I’m good,” I said. “Look, I think this is pretty simple. It’s a tragic death, steroids are bad, I don’t do them.”

“They’re going to press you,” said Gabe. “They won’t let it be simple.”

“I can handle it.”

“Okay, Anton. Answer this. Does tennis have a steroid problem?”

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s not a no. So it might have a steroid problem?”

“No, no. It doesn’t.”

“Jian Liang is dead, allegedly from steroids. Have you ever heard of any other steroid use on the tour?”

“Of course there have been some positive tests and penalties, and you hear rumors.”

“What rumors?”

I was getting Gabe’s point. “Just silly stuff.” I was squirming as though Gabe was a real reporter.

“Where did you hear the rumors? Who told you?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“You’re blown away,” said Gabe. “A reporter just blew you out of the water.”

I made a long exhale trying to let out the stress. “Shit,” I said.

“Let’s run through this. Say that you don’t know the details but you’d be shocked if steroids were involved. Liang was a great player. There have been small incidents of cheating in the past on the tour but the ATP has dealt with that. Tennis is a clean sport and to your knowledge there are zero players cheating today.”

“Right,” I said. The news started to trickle into me and get personal. Poor Liang. I didn’t know him really. He wasn’t Chinese-American, he was Chinese-Chinese so nobody on the tour really knew him. I bet we had a lot in common. We were both top tennis players and there weren’t many different ways to do that.

“Bobby, not for nothing, in case this was a bad combination of drugs, let’s triple check what I’m putting in my body.”





CHAPTER

33

One month later I got an invitation to celebrate terrible news.





ANA STOKKE AND CALEB CASA


INVITE YOU TO CELEBRATE THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THEIR ENGAGEMENT

PLAZA HOTEL, NEW YORK CITY

7:30PM

Caleb Casa was the first thirty-million-dollar man. More than Jennifer Lawrence, George Clooney, Tom Cruise. I read that if you added the percentage he got on the back end, he made almost $80 million on his last picture.

The invitation arrived one day prior to the phone call that was meant to soften the blow.

“Anton.”

“Hi.” I tried to sound aloof.

“How are you?”

“Great.”

“Are you in Florida?”

“I got your invitation. Thanks.”

Long pause. “I’m sorry. I wanted to speak with you first. I wasn’t even sure if I should invite you but I consider you a friend. A dear friend, and of course you would find out about it anyway. Probably na?ve, but I’m hoping you’ll be happy, hoping you’ll come if you can.”

“I’m sure that’s what a dear friend would do.”

She said nothing.

“Things were pretty different thirty days ago. In Los Angeles.”

“I know. I should explain.” She took a beat. “Caleb and I had been seeing each other. The press hadn’t picked it up and we weren’t all that serious but we’d been talking about getting more serious. When I got back from Los Angeles I started to tell him about you. Caleb asked if we could take a vacation together to talk it out and it worked for our schedules so we went to Hawaii. It just went really well. We connected, I guess.” She paused again. “On the last day there he proposed.”

“Congratulations.” This struck my most raw nerves.