Trophy Son(59)

Parts of the absence were okay. My body was healing, proving that the damage I’d done wasn’t yet permanent. My back didn’t seize, my knees didn’t ache. I could stretch my muscles, move without pain.

Though as my body came back to me, new mental battles began. This was my first taste of what the end would be like. It was only a faux ending. I knew I’d play again and needed to train, but it was six months to relax with no match pressure. I had days in a row away from the court and the gym. Ninety-six hours sometimes.

Professional athletes are handed a schedule with greater detail than that for a head of state. I didn’t need to decide what to eat and how much, when to go to the gym, for how long and what to do there, when to go to the tennis court and which battery of drills, how many more calories for fuel, how much free time, when to go to bed, when to wake back up and do it again.

It’s not that I had no say. I took advice from Gabe and Bobby, but I had all the say. It was a system and the good thing about systems was they took out variability because you never had to decide anything. The bad thing was when the system went away. I had to wake up in the morning and decide everything. I had no ability to structure my own day. I was lucky to feed myself on the days I didn’t train.

At night I would lie in bed and think about what kind of future this would be for me. I’d think about Joe Montana. How did he relearn to structure his time without a coach blowing whistles at him, giving him a playbook and workout regimen, a locker room complete with teammates and a community that wouldn’t and couldn’t leave him?

So that would keep me awake and I’d try the trick to empty my head for sleep by saying, “Nothing, nothing, nothing,” over and over again and I thought, how fucking ironic. That’s exactly what I’m afraid of.

At 2am Eastern Standard Time, I called her phone, not knowing where on the planet she was. “You awake?”

“Hey, yes,” said Ana. “You okay?”

She already knew about my steroid use so I told her all about my suspension-vacation-absence. “I have a greater understanding of assisted living. Why shuffleboard and bingo are so popular.”

“Bored?”

“Something a few degrees beyond that.” Want to come visit Florida, I thought, then said, “Where are you?”

“Toronto.” Still engaged, still no wedding.

Different country, same time zone though. “I woke you?”

“I was getting up in six hours anyway.”

“What’s going on in Toronto?”

“Film festival. I had a role in a picture that we entered here. A few press appearances to do here and there, otherwise just goofing around.”

Please ask me, please ask me. “Sounds like a good time. Toronto’s a fun town.”

Then it came. “Would you like to come up? Check it out?” She even sounded a little nervous. The good kind, like she was worried I’d say no. “Put all your free time to something useful.”

“Right. Take in some culture.” I felt sleep might come after this call. “I’ll look at flights. Dinner tomorrow night?”

*

I had a car meet me at the Toronto airport to drive directly to The Forth, a restaurant on the east end of the city, to meet Ana, and I texted her that I had landed and was on the way. It was the first time in my life I’d flown alone. It was a nice feeling. Like I was skipping class, getting away with something.

Toronto’s a cosmopolitan city and The Forth was a fancy place. I picked it because it had authentic Canadian food. Whatever that means.

The hostess took me right to the table so I could wait for Ana there. I wasn’t big on fancy restaurants but the people in them tend to leave you alone. I sipped a gin and tonic until Ana arrived. It occurred to me that the last time I dropped in on a woman I cared so much about, things did not go well.

She trailed the hostess, weaving to our table, to me. There was no football punter attached to her backside. As she approached, waves of diners stopped moving and stared, like a rolling blackout across a city, until the entire restaurant was frozen, watching her walk to the table where I stood and kissed her lips, something I’d decided to do during the gin and tonic. Let them write about it in the blogs.

Ana kissed me back as though this was how we greeted each other. Dinner was off to a good start.

Ana saw my gin and tonic, decided it looked good and ordered one for herself. I liked when a date copied my drink order. It signaled she trusted me, felt safe in my hands.

“You look good,” she said. “Some time away from the tennis tour seems to agree with you.”

I’d gained five pounds and probably did look healthier. “There’s plenty of room for agreement,” I said, “with some adjustment.”

“You wouldn’t be bored for long. You can’t really move on now because you’re going to play again. When it’s time to really move on, you will.”

I raised my glass in a toast to that remark and drank. “How’s the festival?”

“It’s been fun, a lot of friends are here. Some good pictures and ours is getting some good reviews. Might pick up an award.”

“Congratulations. Have you had a chance to see some of the other pictures?”

“Yes, most of them.”

“Which are the good ones?”

She leaned back and laughed, sipped her drink then returned it to the table. “Don’t small-talk me, Anton. You flew to Toronto. Out with it.”