Trophy Son(60)

She was dynamite. “You invited me to Toronto.”

“All the more reason that it’s your turn.”

So it was time to lay it out there. “Look, I … You know I’ve cared for you, I think I’ve loved you, for a long time. With your schedule and my schedule, we’d see each other a few weeks a year, even if you were a roadie with me between your pictures, which is a bad idea, that’s the best we’d do. So I’ve always convinced myself that it’s a bad idea, that we’d take something that could be good and we’d ruin it by forcing impossible circumstances.”

I waited a moment, giving her a chance to say something, but she watched me.

“I also had a bad experience with a girl when I was young and maybe that makes me a little tentative.”

“How bad?”

“Bad, humiliating. Another guy.” That was all I would say about Liz until we were old and gray. “But now I don’t want to wait anymore. I might play two more years, three at the most. I’d be free of tennis then, but I don’t want to be a slave to it even that long. I love you and I want that part of my life to start. It gets down to what I said already. I don’t want to wait anymore.”

“I’m engaged.”

She had tears in her eyes. This was either very good or very bad and it was unfair to us both to leave it unresolved. “Ana, I’m going to get up, walk to the bathroom. I’ll linger there a few minutes. When I get back, if you’re gone, you should know that you’ll always have a special place in my heart and I wish you well. I’m happy I’ve had the chance to know you. If, when I get back, you’re still here, I’ll know there’s a chance for us.”

I stood. Seemed like a good plan but my legs were unsteady. I walked to the bathroom with my arms forward and to the sides for balance as though holding ski poles. I didn’t look back.

In the bathroom I bent over the sink and splashed my face, then gripping the sides of the sink and still bent forward I looked up at my reflection, so close I could see the capillaries in the whites of my eyes. I asked what kind of a life are you going to have, Anton? There are butterfly effects that lead to sliding doors, massive determinations in our lives due to faraway forces. We can’t live our lives paying attention to these forces because they are tiny or even unknown, and they’re constant. But this was the tempest, right here, right now.

I closed my eyes, counted to one hundred eighty, frozen over the sink while the bathroom attendant stared and wondered if he needed to call the manager. At one-eighty I stood straight, fixed my hair, took a deep breath. “Please be there.”

The men’s room was down a short corridor from the dining room. I could see the exact tile in the floor where I’d have my first view of our table. I started to regret what I’d done. Why did I put that pressure on her? It was unnatural.

I got to the tile, stopped, didn’t look. Salvation or execution? Not the healthiest way to look at things, but that’s how it felt at the time. I looked over. Two half-full gin and tonics, tiny flower arrangement, candle, flatware, salt, pepper. No Ana. She was gone. Of course she was.

I stood there like a fool, watching the empty chairs, hoping the view would change. I felt sick and couldn’t possibly eat. Maybe I could put some cash on the table for the drinks and the time and sneak out.

A hand came around my waist from behind, then another and a body pressed close against me. Ana whispered, “I’m right here.”

I turned, not understanding, still too deep in the other emotions. I looked her in the eye. “You’re still here,” I repeated her.

She laughed. “Yes.”

I hugged her into me. “Thank God.”





CHAPTER

41

My first tournament back was Houston and Ana travelled with me. She wasn’t with me in the way that new and infatuated couples can’t be apart. She was with me in the way that couples of many years develop an instinct for when their partner needs support.

Houston is a smaller tournament, which I preferred for my return. It was played on clay, which I did not prefer.

Ana had slipped out of bed so I could sleep and she was drinking coffee, reading the paper in the next room of our hotel suite. I opened my eyes and unfolded my arm across the bed where she had been. It was 9am and I’d slept for ten hours.

I slid my legs off the side. “Good morning.”

Ana stepped into the frame of the bedroom doorway wearing an open robe held apart by her breasts and showed blue panties for a bit of color. “You sleep as well as a nine-month-old.”

“Only when things are right.”

She knew I didn’t drink coffee so she carried a bottle of water to me. She straddled my hips, pushing me back on the bed and leaned over me so we were both inside her robe, her warm skin on mine. “After your match today, I’m going to have sex with you.”

“The tennis tour is so much more fun than it used to be.”

I won my match that day. I was physically fresh, mentally rusty and would have lost to a top-ten player. I had great sex with Ana back in the hotel after, reckless, insatiable for each other, moving from room to room, then resting, napping on each other like cats, then sex again.

Ana’s presence at the tournament announced our couple-dom. That same day, the Entertainment Tonight website had named us Anaton and pronounced her engagement to Caleb Casa officially dead.