I watched her. “Anton, that’s…” She was blushing. “Really beautiful.”
I said, “Have you ever read Lucretius?” I knew this was geeky but she wanted to be a writer and I thought it might work out okay.
“No.”
“He was a Roman, he wrote On the Nature of Things, and he was a follower of Epicurus, a Greek philosopher. Some people think Epicureanism is about indulging and orgies and is anti-religion, but it’s not. One of the main things is that the key to happiness is human relationships, here on earth.”
The blushing was gone. She was over that and on to something else. “I believe that’s true. When I think of my happiest moments, more and more of the recent ones involve other people and that wasn’t the case ten years ago. I’m happier now than I was then.”
Who were those other people she was having happy moments with? Ryan Hall. Damn. “That’s good to hear,” I said. “Ryan must be a nice guy.” I said it. I couldn’t help but bring it up. They’d been dating off and on for years and I had read recently that it was back on.
“He’s a good guy.”
Measured praise? It seemed that way. I hoped. “I’m sure.”
She said, “We’ve had some happy moments, though I have to say we’ve never had a conversation like this one.”
This sounded very good. “What does he like to talk about?”
“Topics might include changes to his gym routine suggested by his personal trainer, new research on nutrition, players the Clippers are evaluating in the upcoming NBA draft.”
“All interesting.” Now we were making fun of Ryan. This was deadly stuff.
“That’s not really fair of me.” She laughed. “He’s smart and interesting. He reads a lot. Maybe not Lucretius, but screenplays, some novels.”
“Of course.” I needed to be gentle with Ryan here. Stay above it. I was pretty sure the damage was already done anyway. Ryan was toast.
“He wants to go from teenage heartthrob actor to serious actor. He might be able to do it.”
I felt a little sorry for Ryan then. He probably had many of the same issues Ana and I did. “I’m sure he’ll figure something out.”
That night I kissed Ana goodnight on her cheek by the elevator in her hotel lobby. I was sure we both wanted more but this was the way to end our night. We had built something strong between us. A human connection of knowledge and trust. It’s possible to come to know a person so that you know just how they’ll be when they’re with you and there’s a happy anticipation of seeing them the way there is for a return trip or repeat holiday.
Days later the US Open started and I was winning with such authority that the media started talking about me as the favorite to win the tournament. I was unbeatable up to the finals when my leg cramped in the second set, then I had to retire the match in the third set.
I would like to say my success on the courts was due entirely to my success at the Waverley Inn but there was another new influence on my tennis in those weeks. Bobby was giving me what he called candy poppers. Small hits of testosterone in a jellybean.
He calculated my weight and metabolism to measure precisely enough for a four-hour hit. If a match ended quickly and I got tested, I needed to hold my pee and watch the clock.
It was risky but it was worth it. Everyone should get to try it once. There was a large boost in energy but more surprising was the boost in focus, even determination. My vision seemed to go from twenty/twenty to twenty/ten. I could hear everything cleaner, make distinctions between all the different tiny sounds, process the information and react. I was a weapon.
Ben Archer had made it to the semis on the other side so I didn’t face him but he put in another good tournament. Steady Ben. Easy Ben. Content Ben, growing bananas. How the hell did he do it?
CHAPTER
31
I would set all meetings with Bobby and Gabe by then. I made it clear that I didn’t want our discussions shared with Dad. I didn’t want him to be involved in any way. There can be no influence if there’s no knowledge.
Dad had gotten resentful that he was out, off the team. He’d joke with me that I had fired him and he’d say he wondered where was his severance package. He’d taken up trying to coach local kids at the high school and the club, looking for another pro prospect.
But I needed Dad out. The Anton Stratis enterprise would rise or fall with me in charge. I took this role on and not without anxiety, but I had to take it. I couldn’t be a champion on the court and someone’s lieutenant off it.
The US Open was the last major of the season. The majors wouldn’t start again until the Australian in January, so I went into the rest of the hard court season at twenty-five years old never having won a major.
I said to Bobby, “It’s working. My body is still adjusting but the candy poppers definitely work.”
“How do you feel?”
Gabe never joined the meeting when we talked about drugs. Of course he knew and he probably rounded back with Bobby later to make sure he was fully in the loop with my training. He just didn’t want to be in the meeting. Whatever made people feel a little better about things was fine with me. I said, “I need to get stronger.”
“We’re through the busiest part of the season. If you skip the November tournament, we can get almost eight straight weeks off to devote to training. We’ll adjust the conditioning program, focus on building up some muscle.”
I nodded. “Stronger than that.”
“Okay.” He trailed the word into a question mark.
“I want to accelerate the whole program. Everything,” I said. Bobby had been pushing a broader drug program for a while and I had been resisting up to now.
“Alright. I can lay out some options for you.”
“I know the option I want.”
Bobby wasn’t certain what I meant. His face said clue me in.
“I’m not doing anything half-assed now.” I pointed at his chest. “You do whatever it takes.” There, I said it. Whatever it takes.
It was a moment between us, something to build on and remember when the work got hard, an exchange of words to print up on T-shirts. I could hear the Rocky training music start playing in my head and I watched Bobby, wondering if he’d say, “What are we waitin’ fer,” like Burgess Meredith.
Instead, he said, “There’s a mix I’ve been looking at that’s having some success out there. It’s three elements but we’d do it in a single shot, oil-based so we need a wide gauge needle. I’ll dose it out so we need one hit per week. Side of the upper butt and we’ll alternate sides so there should be no issues.”
Right to business. He had been ready for this. “And the tests?”
“Everything in the mix will be under the radar.”
“This mix gets results?”
“You’ll be a beast.” He smiled. He liked doing his job well.
I didn’t feel sad at all. I’d become numb to considerations of morality in sport. I wanted advantage. “Good,” I said. “Let’s dial it up.”
I had a mental slip then and returned to the what-if question I’d had before. What if I was never meant for tennis, this was all a mistake, a lie, but here I was worshipping at the altar of my false tennis gods, sacrificing, self-flagellating.
Then I regained balance from my mental slip, beat the questions away. I told myself this was time-limited and I could do anything if it was time-limited. My usual logic. “I need to see Gabe now. Thanks, Bobby.”
I slid off the training table in the back room of the Florida gym where Bobby and I met for strength training. I drove to the tennis club where I had a practice session scheduled with Gabe.
He was standing midcourt, leaning on the net post when I swung open the wire door. “Ready to work?” he said.
“I am.”
He straightened up and twirled his racket. I said, “I just had a good meeting with Bobby.”
“Oh?”
I put a hand on Gabe’s shoulder. He was so much shorter than me. He was shorter
even when we first met but I wasn’t a boy anymore. Our relationship had changed. He had gone from a sort of camp counselor to a professional colleague, and I was the boss. He provided a service for which I paid. I said, “This is our year, Gabe. It happens now.”
He knew exactly what Bobby and I had met about.
CHAPTER
32
Making the finals of the US Open raised my profile. I followed up the Open by winning the next two hard court tournaments so I was back in the conversation of top players to watch. My world ranking was eleven and moving in the right direction.
My agent signed two endorsement deals, one for razor blades and one for an energy drink. Good money, and the camera crews flew to me to make quick and easy TV spots. There are step-change moments in fame that a person can feel happening. More double-takes and whispers happen on the periphery, an entire ecosystem shift, like moving as a guest from a Holiday Inn to the presidential suite of the Four Seasons where everyone had memorized my name and said it with a slight bow.
I went to parties, the same kind of parties I’d gone to for years, but people decided I was a different person. I used to hug a drink to my chest and pull out my phone to pretend there were emails that needed attention so that I wouldn’t appear to be a friendless mute. Now I couldn’t handle the incoming, couldn’t find time to break away for another drink. My face had been on enough American TVs during the Open that people recognized me and wanted to congratulate me. There’d be five or six people waiting in semicircle formation for their turn, and there were famous people. Actors, musicians, politicians, and they wanted to talk to me, treated me as though I were the celebrity, not the other way around. It gave me a sense of not belonging. Someone else belonged here and if I ever became that someone else, how much connection would there be to the old me?
Andre Agassi invited me to play in a pro-am in Los Angeles to benefit his foundation. I’d have said yes anyway because I liked what I knew of Agassi and wanted to meet him. He’d also asked Ana to be one of the celebrity amateurs. There was a strong current going my way.
We played the event on the courts of the UCLA campus where Agassi sold tickets to watch and auctioned off lunches with his celebrity friends. Some calls from my agent secured Ana as my mixed doubles partner and we played against Steffi Graf and some guy from Dancing With the Stars.
Ana got to the court after me, wearing a pleated white tennis miniskirt and a white jog bra, and she started stretching by the net. I stood like a kid on the beach of Cape Canaveral watching a shuttle launch. I’d have been caught staring except no one was looking at me. We were all watching the same thing, even the women.
You can know the whole of a woman’s body from seeing her calves and shoulders. If those are great, everything between is great too. Ana had perfect lines of feminine muscle along her thighs and hamstrings to a skinny knee then a rounded calf muscle and slim ankle.
“Hey partner,” she said.
“Of all the gin joints, etc., etc.,” I said.
She laughed. “Don’t give me that. Your agent’s request was passed on to me for approval. Or disapproval.”
“Glad you approve.”
“Well, I plan on winning this thing. Steffi’s past her prime.”
Ana played very well for a social player. She had the natural form people get only if they’ve had lots of lessons at a young age. It gave me hope that she’d been concealing what a fan of tennis she was.
Steffi was composed and kind and as the gracious hostess, she let us win the match, despite Ana deliberately hitting her serve into my back three times. Really the paying ticket holders wanted to see Ana leap up and down in victory and at an event like this you’ve got to give the people what they want.
We had two hours before a cocktail reception that Andre was hosting and after that day I had no idea when I’d see Ana next. The four of us in the match took photos at the net then I said to Ana, “Come with me.”
Ana had an assistant and a security guard who met her at the side of the court but I took her hand and said, “We have urgent business.”
“I’ll see you later,” she told them, and I led her off in a jog so people couldn’t stop us for autographs. Agassi had converted the lobby of an administrative building near the courts into a player lounge away from the crowds. It was a five-story building of offices and I had hopeful and perverted thoughts of what might happen tucked away in one of them.
“Where are we going?”
Years of playing it cool up in smoke, an explosion of a pent-up, childish crush. “Somewhere quiet to talk.”
We came through the lounge still hand in hand and jogging because I couldn’t stand the idea of anyone stopping us. There were some hellos that I brushed away with a wave and kept running like a halfback at half speed, ready to accelerate to the opening when it appeared.
There were double doors at the end of the room with the kind of latch that released by pressing on the horizontal bar. I rammed through and we slowed to a walk on the stairs.
“Are you okay?” Ana said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m great.” We were still holding hands. “You played really well. I had no idea.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“I’m serious. You looked great.”
She smiled. “Why are we running around an office building?”
We were on the landing, halfway between the first and second floors. I pulled her hand and brought her into me like a waltz partner and my other arm went around her lower back. She pressed her hips and stomach against mine. Different answers sprinted through my head. Because I need to kiss you. Because I need to hold you. Because I need to tell you that I love you. I brought my hands up so that my palms went along her cheeks and jawline, barely touching, just enough for the tender act of contact the way an archeologist would lift the Holy Grail, and I kissed her. First soft, then harder, then harder still as she kissed back and brought her arms around my shoulders.
I tasted the salt of her drying sweat and lowered a hand down her back to her tennis skirt and pulled her in tighter.
“This was a long time coming,” she said.
“Yes.”
She affirmed the moment by kissing my cheek then neck and held my shoulders.
The door just below us swung open and banged into the wall. It was Adam.
“Hey,” he said, staring, unmoving, embarrassed but not embarrassed enough to retreat. “They,” he paused, “said you came through this way.”
“Correct,” I said, pissed off that he hadn’t left yet.
“I need to have a word.” He held up his phone. “It’s Gabe and Bobby.” Adam had travelled with me to the pro-am. Gabe and Bobby were back in Florida. I’d never before had a conference call with the two of them.
“Ana, I’ll be right back.” I realized how absurd it would be for her to wait in the cement stairwell. “I’ll see you in the lounge. This should be only a few minutes.”
I walked down and took the phone from Adam. “I’m here.”
“Are you someplace you can talk privately?” said Gabe.
His tone pushed aside my annoyance over the interruption. “One minute.” I walked through the lounge to the lawn outside. “Okay. Shoot.”
“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. “Ri
ght 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.”
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