Strangely, Danielle was smiling too. Not scared, not nervous, but relieved and composed. When she smiled at Wally, he realized it was over. Really over. Over like Firefly or The Unit. She was back. He had her back.
His concentration gone, Wally lost track of everything. Time. Space. The court fixtures.
He hurried back on court, but he was distracted, elated and distracted. Running at top speed, he disavoided the umpires’ chair and tripped like a drunk.
What a place for a chair.
He tried to catch himself, but he couldn’t. He was moving too fast. Endowed from birth with the worst balance this side of cable news, he fell into the net post directly on his left eye, staggered sideways and toppled onto the court. Retchy hit the ball back for an open-court winner and Wally unfolded back up. In his teen falsetto, Retchy asked Wally if he was okay. Wally stood bravely, put up his hand to show he was fine, and it wasn’t a lie. His eye had gotten whacked and it hurt like bad debt, but he was functional enough to finish. None of that mattered anyway. He’d seen Danielle. And even through one eye, she looked beautiful.
He looked up again to find her. Just to make sure. And she was still there. Calm. Smiling. Reassuring. But the four tennis players of Tennonymous were gone. It figured. After all, they were Tennonymous.
Flint, the agents and their camera crew ran down to Danielle. Wally wanted to stop right then and run to up to her. She looked hot, literally. He wanted to stop the match right then and be alone with her someplace cool. But he had to finish the match. They had secured her. She was safe now and she would want him to finish off the spindly Andorran spawn.
How he wished he could have.
But he couldn’t and he didn’t. For two seemingly unconnected reasons. But were they?
First, with only one usable eye, he had no depth perception in an aggressively three-dimensional game, and second, his big time might was suddenly dying, big time. For a reason as mysterious as why it came in the first place, his extreme power was seeping away in the deciding fifth set. He had no fearsome force, no staggering strength, no vexing vigor. Well, okay, he had some, but it was fading as fast as voter interest. A wimpy Cyclops.
Wally and Retchy switched ends and Wally tried to regroup. Back on court, he caught his first serve cleanly and it somehow went in at one-fifty. Not bad for a touring pro, but F-1 simulator boy bombed it back like a GMA interview softball. The Andorran annoyance dealt the same way with the next three, as the mph on Wally’s intrepid weapon drew down to an impressive, but all-too-mortal one-twenty. This was an unfortunate, untimely turn. Wally’s house of cards game was built on aces, and a buck-twenty wasn’t enough to play at this table. Right now, he was a day late and about a Benjamin light.
This was happening now? Seriously?
A racing heart. Super strength. Twitches and toots in a body gone wild. Now an eye poke. Who was his angel, Shonda Rhimes?
It just didn’t make sense. Danielle was finally back and Wally was losing his superpower? Now? Danielle wasn’t his Kryptonite. She was his inspiration, his motivation, his greatest strength. He’d done this all for her. And here he was, on the verge of victory and he was losing it? What did it mean? Maybe it wasn’t a superpower after all, but just some glandular condition. Or maybe it was special and finite and he’d used it all up in the early rounds and now it was gone. Or maybe Retchy Crane was simply the future of tennis.
The million-eight, the Lexus, the Nike contract all passed before his one good eye. So did Retchy’s next four serves. Wally was quickly down 3 – 0 in the fifth with no weapons and urgently in need of a usable plan B. And fast. The predicament reminded him of the one-miracle movies of the nineties. He particularly liked Liar, Liar, although, Big probably described this situation better. In those movies, the hero loses his one exceptional, life-changing high-concept attribute in act three and has to use what he’d learned during the other two acts to complete his character arc. In principal, that could work. Wally’d been through at least two full acts.
Except, really, who actually figures all that out in a real crisis, anyway? Wally had no idea what he had learned or how to use it. He had learned responsibility, but all he’d be responsible for was this loss. All he knew for certain was that at the moment, in the U.S. Open final, when he needed it worse than a payday loan, he had no exceptional attribute at all and that Retchy Crane, the 19 year-old upstart ball-flicker from Andorra was now in complete control of his U.S. Open final.
To make it harder still, Retchy was a semi-seasoned touring pro who’d played his way here with a nine-tool arsenal. Wally, on the other hand, was a creaky, lumbering teaching pro who’d fooled the world for three months with a big serve that had just vanished. This was not going to end well.
All of his years as a player and then as an instructor had given him guile on demand. His power fever broken, Wally tried everything he could come up with– drop shots, high spin, underhand serves, junk – to prolong the match. It wasn’t the worst ploy, but he just had no pace on the ball to back it up. Wally hit every shot he knew and won just four points in the set. Retchy beat him 6 – 0 in the fifth, shook hands, thanked the umpire and posed a few dozen cranes for the paparazzi. It was over like your first crush and no one even knew how to cheer it. The elemental pre-match hush and anticipation had become an ugly and embarrassed wake of bowed heads and averted eyes. The tri-color hats were quietly stowed back in their twin-handle poly bags. The fans had been here for one thing and they’d been denied. It was like an inept early round on American Idol. Or today, American Idled.
The next thing Wally knew, he was standing at the net line with the second-place plate in his hand and Retchy was thanking the USTA, Larry Ellison and Lexus. It was a singular day for Wally Wilson and a singular day for the Andorran sports-industrial complex. And not a bad day for Red Numbers. The hats may still have wanted to put him in stress positions, but the networks and the advertisers wanted to buy him dinner. Red was a rock star. Or as the press would have it, “rack star”. He’d just gotten the call to head up the flashily well-endowed Arena Lingerie Ultimate Frisbee League. After this Open, he was inclined to take it. He’d grown to love indoor sports.
And so with that, Wally’s hero’s journey had washed up like Joseph Campbell’s soup. Like Jack in Titanic. Like a squinty jellyfish. He wasn’t Frodo. He wasn’t Luke Skywalker. He was Johnny Knoxville. Somehow he thought this moment of reuniting with his wife would come with a victory and without the damaged left eye. He was wrong. He was the 2011 U.S. Open runner-up. The handmaid, but not the hand. With an eye now hurting like a quick loss.
Some angel. Some quest. Some letdown.
Still, it wasn’t all slop and crop. On the plus side, he had won $900,000.00 and it would be spiritually wanky to go negative about that. Wally was essentially an optimist, so that’s where he looked. Time to take a tall drink from the silver glass of half-full linings. The hundreds of K’s would pay for a lot. Even in Menlo Park.
But what did anyone do with the plate?
Time heals all wounds. So does no-limits catering, plenty of nectar, a kickin’ DJ and the chance to finally hold the only woman you’ve ever loved, whose been held instead for the last three months by an ever-weirdening procession of lecheratii, misfits and nuts. That night at the PGA West house, Ashley threw a classic, outlandish Margincall after-fete with Wally’s students, his family, the agents, the handmodels, a smattering of Special Operators, some hedge-fund types and a really blond man someone said was the president of Iceland.
And Wally was back with Danielle.
There were a lot of things to discuss and plans to make, but that night she and Wally had the same thing on their minds. And it wasn’t the family budget. The moment they’d touched again, his heart went twin bass pedal. But in a good, normal, lecherous way. Wally and Danielle instantly re-became the best teenaged versions of themselves. After a quick almost-a-victory toast, they went upstairs to get joyously, thoughtlessly lost in the physical expression of how much
they missed each other. Because, really, what was there to say?
On that night of the first U.S. Open Saturday final, at the fully-owned fractional in the desert, time stopped, libation flowed and best of all, for a while, Wally and Danielle were nothing except desperately in lust, in love and in the same room and no one had anything better to do.
They were all just there.
It was a no-guilt celebration and a joyous affirmation. Hedonistic. Maybe even religious. At the very least, down, ragin’ and fully legal. Agent Steel was spinning House and Electro, but that didn’t tell the story. Techno was indoor music. An orderly matrix of beats and drops. This wasn’t that. This night was the essence of rock. Passion. Individuality. And loinal power. Jaw-setting defiance and free-flowing adrenaline. All flowing through a group of people who’d been through something shared, altering and complex, made it back intact and were enjoying the communal buzz. And the best food and drink carried interest could buy.
After their private reunion, when Wally and Danielle did come down to the party, Deuce brought out the chilled beer he’d given his dad for his birthday. This was the after and the beer tasted good. Wally liked beer. He liked food. He loved everyone here. And was he ever glad the Open was over.
This night, this feeling and the nine hundred grand he left on the table, made him long for a moment for a different finish to the final. What if he could have won? What if he could have won it like Federer? A running forehand winner down the line, inches from the net, his feet in the air, his abs exposed as his shirt wound up, hair keeping time to his devastating closer at 120 BPM? But that was dream tennis. In the real world, you had to earn it. And at the end, he knew, he was just a teaching pro with an issue of some kind.
Let it go.
He did.
The party was in full motion. Everyone was dancing. Dr. Fleischman even broke out some sick Krump, as Wally and Danielle tangoed. Addie and Dirk and Ashley and Deuce popped over. When they were right in front of him and Danielle, they all spun and faced them.
The music pulsed on loudly. The floor was alive.
“Hey, dad!” shouted Addie.
Wally turned, and Addie and Ashley each pulled up their shirts. Wally had a flashback. And the sweats. And the fear of a long explanation. But underneath their shirts was another shirt, airbrushed with Addie’s topless FaceBook photo. A moment later, Dirk and Deuce did the same thing. With the same shirts. Wally could only laugh. Even seen with one eye, it was funny. Danielle looked over at him.
He yelled in Danielle’s ear. “Can I tell you later?”
“I think I got it,” she yelled back.
“What?” He couldn’t hear at all.
She smiled and kissed him.
Addie and Dirk lowered their shirts back into place and Addie kissed her dad on the cheek. She looked at him with kind eyes for a few seconds.
“You made me feel good today,” she said.
Wally smiled. He couldn’t hear a thing she said.
“I thought I had it rough in sports. Thanks, dad.”
Wally gave her a hug and kissed her forehead.
Dirk offered his hand.
The music dipped low for a build.
“Congratulations, Mr. Wilson,” said Dirk.
“Thanks, Dirk,” said Wally, relieved to finally hear what someone was saying.
“You surprised a lot of people the last two weeks,” said Dirk. “I’ve got a carbon fiber eyepatch coming just for you.”
“Perfect,” said Wally.
And the beat soared and pounded again.
Dirk was all right.
Though he’d just lost a monumental gift and a two thousand point final and was probably suffering hearing loss, Wally knew right then that he had everything he wanted and that anything could happen. The strength he’d had wasn’t the gift. The after-strength was. It was the way he felt with his wife. It was his family. It was the friends he had around him. It was the chance to pause his life at fifty-four and dream as big as he could. This wasn’t just a party. It was a christening. A baptism. Could he get any luckier? Could anyone? Who cared about winning the U.S. Open?
His life perspective tilt was on full when Zelda rushed in, trailing a large bag of big revelations.
What was this, and why?
She kissed Steel, stayed the vinyls, chilled the beat and took the mic.
“Hi, everyone,” she began. “Sorry, but this is important.”
They all looked at her. The party paused. Time started again. Libation stopped.
Yes?
“Okay, so you remember the Chinese gymnasts in “08? The ones who were younger than they said? Well we’ve got our own scandal at the Open.”
That got ‘em interested.
“And it’s just two words,” continued Zelda. “Retchy. Crane.”
“Retchy Crane?” said Willy.
“Retchy Crane,” repeated Zelda.
“What?” said Wally, “he’s a Chinese gymnast?”
“No,” said Zelda. “Retchy Crane is twelve.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No way.”
“Yes, indeed. Way.”
“I lost to a twelve year-old?”
“Yup.”
“Ouch,” said Wally. “That sucks.”
“But a very good twelve year-old,” said Brett, helpfully.
“Right. Thanks. What was I thinking?” said Wally. “That’s much better.”
“See?” said Brett.
“Not,” said Wally.
Wally’s fleeting Federer fantasy floated farther away.
“But that’s not exactly a scandal,” said Cindy. “It may permanently disable Wally’s self-image, but the ATP Tour doesn’t have an age limit.”
“That’s true,” said Zelda. “The ATP doesn’t. The WTA on the other hand –”
“What? No,” said Cindy.
“Yup.”
“No,” said Wally.
“Yes,” said Zelda.
“Retchy Crane is a chick?” said Willy.
Zelda nodded. “Unh, hunh.”
“Cool,” said Cindy.
“Right on,” said Addie. “Sorry, dad.”
“That’s fine, sweetie,” said Wally. He looked back at Zelda. “I lost to a twelve year-old girl?”
“Sort of.”
“This’ll bake Michelle Wie,” said Brett.
“That really sucks,” said Wally.
“I did not see that coming,” said Willy. “But it explains the locker room.”
“And the voice,” said Zelda.
“And the baggy shirts,” said Brett.
“I knew it,” said Willy, slapping his brother on the back. “I knew no man in the draw could beat you.”
“That’s a strong endorsement,” said Wally.
“But, hey, everyone, tune back to this station for a minute,” said Zelda. “I came here because this is good news.”
“How is it good news?” said Wally.
“It’s good news because of the ruling. You see, Retchy isn’t allowed to play on the women’s tour.”
Zelda waited, but no one got it.
“And therefore” continued Zelda, “Retchy isn’t eligible to play on the men’s tour, either.”
“Really?” said Brett. “The tour’s cooperate?”
“That’s the ruling,” said Zelda.
“And?” said Wally.
“And so Retchy’s disqualified,” said Zelda.
“By what?” said Raj. “Transitivity?”
“More or less.”
“How Pythagorean,” said Cindy.
“Well at least she’s still got her youth,” said Brett.
“Hey, I still lost to her,” said Wally.
“Well, not exactly,” said Zelda. “Someone give me a glass.”
Brett handed her one.
Zelda raised her glass to Wally, “Wally Wilson, with Retchy Crane excommunicated for duplicity, duality and disqualification, the USTA has declared you the winner of
the 2011 U.S. Open, the million-eight and the Lexus. Congratulations!”
“What?” said Wally.
“What?” said Willy.
“What?” said Brett.
“A Lexus?” said Raj. “I’ll trade you back for the GT. You can afford the gas now.”
Cindy squeezed his hand. It really wasn’t the car.
“Wait a minute,” said Wally. “I won the U.S. Open?”
“You won the U.S. Open,” said Zelda, hugging him.
“By disqualification?” said Wally.
“And transitivity,” said Zelda.
“Woofie,” said Wally. “Winning by actually winning it would have been better. Still, the U.S. Open. Really?”
“Really.”
Wally began to warm to the idea. “The U.S. freakin’ Open?”
“The U.S. freakin’ Open,” confirmed his brother.
“The U.S. freakin’ Open,” said Danielle and kissed Wally.
“The U.S. freakin’ Open, 2011,” said Zelda.
The whole party applauded. Even the hunky SEAL’s raised their ripped, deadly eyebrows.
“Bro, I am so vindicated,” said Willy. “And rich.”
“Rich?” said Wally, puzzled. “Well, you’ll get your fifteen percent.”
“Yes. There’s that. And that’s nice. But back in June, I put ten grand on you at fifty to one.”
“You did? Where’d you get ten grand in June?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll pay the school their deposit back.”
Oh, he definitely would. But Wally was touched.
“You bet on me to win?”
“Of course I did. I’ve always believed in you. And you serve it two-fifty.”
“I did,” said Wally.
“There’s one more thing,” said Zelda.
“Besides winning the Open?” said Wally.
“Isn’t that anticlimactic?” asked Cindy.
“Turns out Wally has a secret too.”
“I do?”
“I knew it,” said Brett. “He’s a twelve year-old girl.”
“Evidence would suggest otherwise,” said Danielle, slyly. “He is a twelve year-old boy sometimes.”
Wally kissed her.
“It’s a secret you didn’t know,” said Zelda.
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