King Tide

by A. J. Stewart

  “Miami Jones. Like the movie.”

  “But with a tropical feel.”

  “Were you born in Miami? ”

  “New Haven, Connecticut. You?”

  “Lauderdale.”

  “So you’re local.”

  “I guess.”

  “How about you, Sam?” I asked.

  “Nevada, originally.”

  “And you play tennis, too.”

  He held his racquet up as an answer. It wasn’t much of an answer. I hadn’t recognized her before, but on the court I knew I’d seen Shania Dawson’s powerful groundstrokes before. Sam Venturi I didn’t know from a sinkhole.

  “You play professionally?” I asked him.

  “I did.”

  “Did?”

  “Now I’m a coach.”

  “Not in Palm Beach.”

  “Why not?”

  “You were pretty anxious to get off the island, as I recall.”

  “No more than you.”

  “Got that right. Hurricanes aren’t my idea of fun. So where do you coach?”

  “Tampa.”

  I nodded. “Case Academy.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I heard Anton went there. So that’s how you knew him. You coached him?”

  “No, I played with him. We all did,” he said, glancing at Shania.

  “You went there, too?”

  Shania nodded. “Since I was ten. Still go there to practice when I’m in town.”

  “Ten? That’s pretty young.”

  “Not really. In Europe they got camps for four-year-olds. ”

  “Had to be hard. Away from family and all.”

  “My family was there. My dad’s always been with me.”

  “And now you’re on the tour.”

  “I am. You watch much women’s tennis?”

  “Not much. But I’ve seen more women’s than men’s.”

  “That’s pretty sexist.”

  “Not at all. I just happened to have been at a couple of WTA tournaments.”

  “That so. Who’d you see?”

  “Caroline Sandstich, as I recall.”

  “Caroline. She’s pretty.”

  “Pretty good player, you mean.”

  Shania narrowed her eyes again like she was summing me up. I was used to it. It happened a lot. In my experience the process was easy but the final summation was usually a good few degrees off course. She kept my eye and then took another drink and wiped her brow.

  “How about you, Sam? Tour life not for you?”

  “Tour’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Listen, I’ve got a cramp in my calf. I’m gonna go get it worked out.”

  He picked up a bag of tennis racquets off a dining chair and walked out of the ballroom. His shoes squeaked like on a basketball court.

  “You want to hit with me?” asked Shania.

  “I’m not really dressed for it.”

  “Take off your jacket. You’ll be fine.”

  “Be gentle.”

  She handed me a racquet with a purple grip and we each took positions midcourt. She took a ball and hit to me gently and I got the impression she was playing with me in more ways than one. I hit the ball back, and we rallied for a few shots. Then she caught one of my returns in her hand .

  “No, no. You’re holding the racquet all wrong.”

  Shania jogged around the tables onto my side of the court, grabbing a couple of balls from a wire basket as she went. She stood before me and tucked the balls into her Lycra shorts.

  “You wanna hit the ball low and hard, you gotta use topspin. And to get topspin you gotta change your grip.”

  “I was taught to shake hands with the racquet.”

  “Yeah, that’s the eastern grip. That’s old-school. Big, strong guy like you, you could really give it some hammer, but you gotta go to the western forehand grip, like this.”

  She turned the racquet in my hand until it felt like I was holding it backward.

  “Feels all wrong.”

  “You ever play golf?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “How’d that feel first time?”

  “Weird.”

  “Right, so trust me.” Shania stepped in behind me and took each of my wrists. Her arms weren’t as long as mine so she crushed up hard against my back.

  “Now, you come back like this, and whip through, low to high.” She dragged my arm back and ran me through the motion, like my first little league coach had done with a baseball bat a long time ago.

  “Like that. Don’t worry about your body or your shoulder. That comes later. That’s icing. The spin comes from the wrist.”

  She stayed in close behind, slipped out one of the balls from her shorts and tossed it in front of me to hit. I swung through and managed to collect the ball on the frame of the racquet.

  “That’s all wrong,” I said.

  “You got that right. Do it again. ”

  She tossed another. This time the ball hit the strings, but at such as angle that I smacked the ball directly into the parquet floor.

  “Low to high, and whip the wrist, man.”

  She wrenched my hand back and down, and then tossed another ball. I hit through, and snapped my wrist as I made contact, and the ball rocketed over the tables, two inches above the white tablecloth.

  “There you go,” Shania said, matter-of-factly.

  She skipped around the table net and collected her racquet, and then we hit some balls. Most of mine went in unintended directions and I started to doubt my own hand-eye coordination.

  “Why don’t you go back to the eastern grip? We don’t want to take out this chandelier.”

  She was right about that. I’m not sure whose insurance would cover that, but I was pretty certain it wasn’t part of any policy I had. We hit balls for a while in silence, just the pop of the ball on strings and the hum of savage winds outside. I was working up a little sweat, a combination of the atmospheric conditions and the movement, but before it became too much Shania caught the ball.

  “Not enough of a challenge for you, hey?” I said.

  “Every challenge worth your effort comes from within.”

  That one was going to keep me up nights.

  Shania took a towel and poured some water, and we took a drink. I was about to sit down on one of the dining chairs when she spoke.

  “Let’s go take a look at this storm.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I had no intention of venturing out into the storm again, but that wasn’t what Shania had in mind. She draped a towel around her neck and led me out of the ballroom and away from the stairs to a small area on the ocean side of the hotel. It was the kind of useless space you found somewhere in every hotel that made you wonder what the architect was thinking when he was looking at the blueprints. There was a cloth-covered table against the wall with nothing on it, but I could imagine an urn and a tray of muffins, and people in suits taking a break in a conference schedule for coffee and calls. There were large rectangular columns in the middle of the space, which made it unusable for much other than a break area, but which clearly served an important structural role in the building. Which I was glad about. Because beyond the columns were hurricane-proof windows draped in thick curtains that looked out onto one heck of a storm.

  A row of palms was bent low, like they were each picking up a penny for good luck. Beyond them the Atlantic Ocean ripped and swirled and pounded the seawall that separated the lawn from the beach, neither of which was visible. The light cast from the lobby downstairs glinted off whitecaps on the water, pulsing in a myriad of directions. I knew it was raining but I couldn’t actually see the drops. It was as if a single opaque screen had been dropped in front of the view, blurring the picture.

  Someone had put expensive-looking benches by the windows and Shania took a seat and I followed suit.

  “Odd little spot,” I said.

  Shania nodded. “Deshawn took Sam and me through Pilates here this morning. It’s quiet. O
ut of the way.”

  We watched the wind pummel the trees and the water for a time.

  “You got a good eye,” Shania finally said.

  “You got a good forehand.”

  “You played sport before. I can see it.”

  “Bit of baseball, bit of football.”

  “For fun or profit?”

  I wiped my forehead with a towel. “It was always fun. Then it was for profit for a while. And then it stopped being fun, so I stopped playing.”

  “So you know how mean that was, what you said to Sam.”

  “Mean?”

  “You know what you did.”

  I love nothing more than women who speak in riddles.

  “I do?”

  “About the tour. You can add it up. He played with us, but he’s coaching now instead of being on the pro tour.”

  “Why isn’t he on the tour?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “Either he got injured, or he’s not that good a tennis player. And he doesn’t look injured.”

  “So you know how mean that was. ”

  “On the contrary. I know what it feels like to do something you love and not quite make it at the top level. But that doesn’t make it mean to talk about it. How he deals with it is up to him, not me.”

  “You believe that?”

  “Every challenge worth your effort comes from within.”

  She let out a mirthless laugh. “You’re quoting me at me?”

  “Folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Abraham Lincoln. Something like that, anyway.”

  “You know what I think?”

  “I know you’re going to tell me.”

  “I think you’re a phony.”

  A gust of wind hit the window with an invisible thud and it shook in its frame. We both waited for another crash but it never came.

  “A phony, huh?”

  “Yeah. You make out all cocky, but I don’t think you’re as confident as you pretend.”

  “I can guarantee it. But that doesn’t make me a phony. That makes me human.”

  “You say so.”

  “I do. You ever beat someone at tennis that you didn’t think you could beat?”

  “I always think I can win. No point being there if you don’t.”

  “Sure. But there must have been a time. Even when you were younger. Maybe you played an older girl and you really didn’t think you could win.”

  “Maybe. I don’t recall.”

  “Sure you do. It’s etched in your brain. It’s what drives you on. It’s what makes you come to a bachelorette weekend and set up a tennis court in a ballroom to practice. Because you know that feeling. You know if you ever take the court again and you really don’t believe you can win, you won’t. So you tell yourself you can always win, and you prepare in a way that makes it so.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is, you lose sometimes. No one wins every match. Can’t be done. You’re good, so you win most of them, but you don’t win them all. But you keep telling yourself you will win, every time you take the court.”

  “So?”

  “So you’re a phony, too. You have to be. It’s the only way to do what you do. Did you know that the best season ever in major league baseball is a season win ratio of seventy-six percent. Best ever. Chicago Cubs, 1906. That means the winningest team in history lost one out of every four. You think those guys believed they would win every game? You bet they did. But they didn’t win every one. Not even close. They were phonies. Had to be, to get up week after week and lose every fourth game.”

  “You’re saying fake it ’til you make it.”

  “Sort of. It’s part of it. Like you just showed me. Hit the topspin grip, even when it goes straight into the ground. Hit it like you mean it, even when it flies out of the court every time. Hit it like you’re Nadal or Williams. Hit it like you’re the best. Even when you aren’t. And keep hitting it until you are.”

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  “Of course there is. That’s my point. Let me guess. Old Sam there, he was a bright young thing. At Case Academy, right? The blond boy who chased down everything, got every ball back. Wore his opponent down. He was the next big thing.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s in his face. In his attitude. I’ve been there. He won stuff, right? ”

  “He was a team captain at Case. First to win a challenger tournament. First to get an agent. He was Wimbledon boy’s champion.”

  “Right. But then something happened. Looking at him, I’m guessing not injury. I’m guessing genetics. He was taller as a boy, but he didn’t grow. His body didn’t fill out. The other boys became men, strong men. Big serves that pounded him off the court.”

  “He was as good a counterpuncher as you’ve ever seen. Like Michael Chang, Lleyton Hewitt.”

  “Sure. But the game overtook those guys, too. Power, those topspin shots you were hitting. Hitting the ball that hard should send it into the next zip code. But you spin it so much it drops in. Fast. Too fast to counterpunch. Am I right?”

  Shania nodded.

  “So he’s a great tennis player who isn’t suited to the modern game. He went so far and no further. That’s life. I get it. I know how that feels.”

  “You do? Really? I don’t think regular people really get it.”

  “They probably don’t. Regular people are by definition regular. Normal. Middle of the bell curve. To be great at something takes a dedication most folks aren’t willing to muster.”

  “You’re quite the expert. How so?”

  I let out a deep breath. “I made it to the major leagues.”

  “You did? For who?”

  “Oakland A’s. Twenty-nine days I was a major league pitcher. Only problem was, outside of the bullpen I never got to throw a pitch. Then the off-season I got traded, and I never got back to the majors again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “People usually are. But that was then. I’m older than Sam, so I’ve learned some stuff. Maybe he will, too. Maybe not. Some people don’t. You either come to grips with the fact that you went as far as you could—you say to yourself, I did my best, left it all out there, and this was as far as I could go. Or you don’t. And if you don’t, it eats you up from the inside. I’ve seen it happen. Sam’s still young, and he’s bitter that he lost his shot. Hopefully he realizes that maybe he has another shot. Maybe he’ll be a great coach. Maybe he’ll be something else.”

  “You could have said that to him.”

  I shrugged. “What about you? Getting married.”

  She smiled. It was a winning smile. I bet it sold a lot of sneakers.

  “Yeah.”

  “And you met Anton at Case Academy.”

  “Yeah. He was a string bean, but like you say, he filled out.”

  “And he’s French.”

  “Yeah. He’s got that accent going on.”

  “What does your dad think?”

  “What’s my dad think? You mean ’cause he’s white?”

  “No. I mean because you’re his little girl. It’s the dads you gotta watch out for.”

  “My dad’s not the one getting married.”

  “Roger that. So how well did you know Paul?”

  “I wondered when you were going to get around to that.”

  I shrugged.

  “I knew Paul well enough. We base ourselves in Monaco when we’re in Europe, and he was in Bordeaux, so not that far away.”

  “Word is he liked to ride Anton’s coattails.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You know what that means.”

  Shania sighed. “They were close. The three of them. Anton felt a debt.”

  “What did you feel? ”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How did you feel about the fact that this guy was mooching off your fiancé, and that it was likely to continue
after you were married?”

  “I don’t think it was likely to continue.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Because Anton was going to lay it out to him. Look, Paul was an okay guy, when you got to know him. But he needed direction. You’re right, I didn’t want him skulking around, living off us. He needed to get on with his own life.”

  “And Anton was okay with that.”

  Shania nodded, but it wasn’t full of enthusiasm.

  “Are you married, Miami?”

  “Engaged.”

  She smiled again. “That so? To who?”

  “Danielle Castle. She’s in law enforcement.”

  “A cop? What is it with you and cops?”

  “I know, right? She was a deputy sheriff, but she’s now at the academy to become an investigator with the FDLE.”

  “The who?”

  “The Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Kind of like the state version of the FBI.”

  “I’m from Florida and I’ve never heard of them.”

  “Pray it stays that way.”

  She nodded. “Is she pretty?”

  “Danielle? Stunning.”

  “You have to say that.”

  “I don’t have to, but I do. She’s stunning. Period. Other folks can say what they will, but that’s my take on it.”

  “So she’s pretty.”

  “Not pretty. Stunning. Physically, sure. But inside, stunning.”

  Shania shook her head. “She sounds perfect. ”

  “She is.”

  “Miami, no one is perfect. No one.”

  “Each of us sees the world through our own unique set of spectacles. You see what you see, and I see what I see. And in Danielle, I see perfection. Like those old Greek statues. With the arms missing and noses chipped off. Not flawless, but yet perfection.”

  “I hope she can balance on that pedestal you’ve got her on.”

  “Her feet are on the ground. It’s me that needs to watch my balance.”

  I got the sense that Shania was going to say something else, but she was stopped by someone calling my name. It was coming from the direction of the ballroom.

  “Hello!” I yelled.

  I got up and eased around the big column and found Emery Taylor, the assistant general manager of the hotel, striding toward me. She seemed to have gotten her pep back. Or maybe she was just a phony.

  “Miami, I wondered where you had gotten to.”