Open

by Andre Agassi

  I cut it for a part, she says.

  In what? Bad News Bears?

  Her mother appears from nowhere. We shake hands. She’s cordial, but stiff. I get a strange vibe. I know, instinctively, regardless of what happens, this woman and I will never get along.

  I drive Brooke to dinner. Along the way I ask, Do you live with your mother?

  Yes. Well, no. Not really. It’s complicated.

  It always is with parents.

  We go to Pasta Maria, a little Italian joint on San Vicente. I ask to be seated in a corner of the restaurant, so we can have privacy, and it doesn’t take long before I forget about Brooke’s mother, her haircut, everything. She has remarkable poise, and charisma, and she’s surprisingly funny. We both laugh when the waiter comes to our table and asks, Have you two ladies had a chance to look over the menu?

  Might be time for a haircut, I say.

  I ask about the movie Brooke just wrapped in Africa. Does she like being an actress? She talks with passion about the adventure of filmmaking, the fun of working with talented actors and directors, and it strikes me that she’s the polar opposite of Wendi, who never knew what she wanted. Brooke knows exactly what she wants. She sees her dreams and doesn’t falter in describing them, even if she’s having trouble figuring out how to make them come true. Five years older than I, she’s more worldly, more aware, and yet she also gives off an airy innocence, a neediness, which makes me want to protect her. She brings out the Gil in me, a side I didn’t know I had.

  We say most of the same things we’ve said by fax, but now, in person, over plates of pasta, they sound different, more intimate. There is nuance now, subtext, body language, and pheromones. Also, she’s making me laugh, a lot, and making herself laugh. She has a lovely laugh. As with my wrist surgery, three hours pass in a millisecond.

  She’s exceptionally kind and sweet about my wrist, examining the inch-long pink scar, touching it lightly, asking questions. She’s also empathetic, because she’s facing surgery too, on both her feet. Her toes are damaged from years of dance training, she says, and doctors will need to break them and reset them. I tell her about Gil standing guard in the operating room with me, and she asks, joking, if she can borrow him.

  We discover that, despite our outwardly different lives, we share similar starting points. She knows what it’s like to grow up with a brash, ambitious, abrasive stage parent. Her mother has been her manager since Brooke was eleven months old. The difference: her mother still manages her. And they’re nearly broke, because Brooke’s career is slumping. The Africa movie was the first big job she’s landed in a while. She does coffee commercials in Europe just to pay the mortgage. She says things like this, startlingly candid, as if we’ve known each other for decades. It’s not only that we’ve softened the ground with faxes. She’s just naturally open, all the time, I can tell. I wish I could be half as open. I can’t tell her much about my own inner torments, though I can’t avoid admitting that I hate tennis.

  She laughs. You don’t actually hate tennis.

  Yes.

  But you don’t hate hate it.

  I do. I hate it.

  We talk about our travels, our favorite foods, music, movies. We bond over one recent movie, Shadowlands, the story of British writer C. S. Lewis. I tell Brooke that the movie struck a chord with me. There was Lewis’s close relationship with his brother. There was his sheltered life, walled off from the world. There was his fear of risk and the pain of love. But then one singularly brave woman makes him see that pain is the price of being human, and well worth it. In the end Lewis tells his students: Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. He tells them: We are like blocks of stone … [T]he blows of His chisel, which hurt us so much, are what make us perfect. Perry and I have seen the movie twice, I tell Brooke, and we’ve memorized half the lines. I’m moved that Brooke too loves Shadowlands. I’m slightly awed that she’s read several of Lewis’s books.

  Well after midnight, lingering over empty coffee cups, we can no longer ignore the impatient stares of the waiters and restaurant owner. We need to go. I drive Brooke home, and on the sidewalk outside her house I have a feeling that her mother is watching us through an upstairs curtain. I give Brooke a chaste kiss and ask if I can call her again.

  Please do.

  As I walk away she notices a hole in my jeans, at the small of my back. She sticks her finger through the hole, scratching my tailbone with her nail. She flashes a sly grin before running inside.

  I drive my rental car along Sunset Boulevard. I’d planned to head back to Vegas, never dreaming the date would go so well or last so long, but it’s too late to catch a flight. I decide to stop for the night at the next hotel I come to, which turns out to be a Holiday Inn that’s seen better days. Ten minutes later I’m lying in a musty room on the second floor, listening to traffic hissing along Sunset and the 405. I try to review the date—and, more importantly, to reach some conclusions about it, about what it means. But my eyelids are heavy. I fight to keep them open, fight as always the loss of control, which feels like the ultimate loss of choice.

  15

  MY THIRD DATE WITH BROOKE is the night before her foot surgery. We’re in Manhattan, in the ground-floor sitting room of her brownstone. We’re kissing, on the verge, but first I need to tell her the truth about my hair.

  She can sense that I have something on my mind. What’s wrong? she asks.

  Nothing.

  You can tell me.

  It’s just that I haven’t been completely honest with you.

  We’re lying on a couch. I sit up, punch a pillow, take a breath. Still searching for the right words, I look at the walls. They’re decorated with African masks, eyeless faces with no hair. They’re eerie. Also, vaguely familiar.

  Andre, what is it?

  This isn’t easy to admit, Brooke. But, look, I’ve been losing my hair for quite some time and I wear a hairpiece to cover it up.

  I reach out, take her hand, put it on my hairpiece.

  She smiles. I had a feeling, she says.

  You did?

  It’s no big deal.

  You’re not just saying that?

  It’s your eyes I find attractive. And your heart. Not your hair.

  I stare at the eyeless, hairless faces and wonder if I’m falling.

  I GO WITH BROOKE to the hospital and wait for her in the recovery room. I’m there when they wheel her in, her feet bandaged like mine before a match, and I’m there when she wakes up. I feel an enormous surge of protectiveness, and tenderness—which ebbs when she gets a phone call from her close friend, Michael Jackson. I can’t fathom her continuing friendship with Jackson, given all the stories and accusations. But Brooke says he’s just like us. Another prodigy who didn’t have a childhood.

  I follow Brooke home and spend days at her bedside while she recuperates. Her mother finds me one morning on the floor beside Brooke’s bed. She’s scandalized. Sleeping on the floor? It simply isn’t done. I tell her that I prefer sleeping on the floor. My back. She walks away in a huff.

  I kiss Brooke good morning. Your mother and I are getting off on the wrong foot.

  We look down at her feet. Poor choice of words.

  I need to leave. I’m due in Scottsdale for my first tournament since the surgery.

  See you in a few weeks, I tell her, kissing her again, holding her.

  I HAVE AN EASY DRAW IN SCOTTSDALE, but this doesn’t make me any less fearful. Here comes the first real test of my wrist—what if it’s not healed? What if it’s worse? I have a recurring nightmare about being in the middle of a match and my hand falling off. I’m in my hotel room, closing my eyes, trying to visualize the wrist being fine and the match going well, when there’s a knock at the door.

  Who is it?

  Brooke.

  With two broken feet, she rallied to be here.

  I win the tournament, feeling no pain.

  WEEKS LATER, Pete and I agree to do a simultaneous interview with a magazine repor
ter. Pete comes to my hotel room, where the interview is to take place, and he’s shocked to meet Peaches.

  What the hell? Pete says.

  Pete, meet Peaches. She’s an old parrot I rescued from a Vegas pet store that was going out of business.

  Nice bird, Pete says mockingly.

  She is a nice bird, I say. She doesn’t bite. She imitates people.

  Like who?

  Like me. She sneezes like me, talks like me—except she has a better vocabulary. I crack up every time the phone rings. Peaches yells, Telephone! Tel-ephone!

  I tell Pete that back in Vegas I have a whole menagerie. A cat named King, a rabbit named Buddy, whatever it takes to fend off the loneliness. No man is an island. He shakes his head. Apparently he doesn’t find tennis as lonely as I do.

  We do the interview, and suddenly I feel as if I’m in the room with two parrots. At least when I bullshit a reporter, I do it with some flair, a little color. Pete sounds more robotic than Peaches.

  I don’t bother telling Pete, but I consider Peaches an integral part of my team, which is ever growing, ever changing, a constant experiment. I lost Nick and Wendi, but I’ve added Brooke and Slim, a bright, sweet kid from Vegas. We went to grade school together. We were born a day apart—at the same hospital. Slim is a good guy, if a lost soul, so I put him to work as my personal assistant. He watches my house, lets in the pool guy and the various handymen, sorts the mail, and answers fan requests for photos and autographs.

  Now I think I might need to add a manager to the team. I pull Perry aside and ask him to take a look at my current management, see if they’re overcharging me. He reviews the contracts and says that indeed I could do better. I put my arms around him, thank him—then get an idea. Why don’t you be my manager, Perry? I need someone I trust.

  I know he’s busy. He’s in his second year at the University of Arizona Law School, busting his ass. But I ask him to please consider taking this on, at least part-time.

  I don’t need to ask twice. Perry wants the job, and he wants to start right away. He’ll work between classes, he says. Mornings, weekends, whenever. Aside from being a great opportunity, the job will enable him to whittle down what he owes me. I loaned Perry the money for law school because he didn’t want to ask his father. He sat before me one night, telling me how his father uses money to control people, especially Perry. I have to break free of my father, Perry said. I’ve got to break free, Andre, once and for all.

  There are few pleas I could find more compelling. I wrote him a check on the spot.

  As my new manager, Perry’s primary task is finding me a new coach, someone to replace Nick. He draws up a short list of candidates, and at the top of the list is a guy who’s just written a book about tennis: Winning Ugly.

  Perry hands me the book, urges me to read it.

  I shoot him a dirty look. Thanks, no thanks. No more school for me.

  Besides, I don’t need to read the book. I know the author, Brad Gilbert. I know him well. He’s a fellow player. I’ve faced him many times, including weeks ago. His game is the opposite of mine. He’s a junker, meaning he mixes speeds, uses change of pace, misdirection, guile. He has limited skills, and takes a conspicuous pride in this fact. If I’m the classic underachiever, Brad’s the consummate overachiever. Rather than overpowering opponents, he frustrates them, preys on their flaws. He’s preyed on me plenty. I’m intrigued, but it’s not feasible. Brad’s still playing. In fact, due to my surgery and my time away from the game, he’s ranked higher than I.

  No, Perry says, Brad is nearing the end of his career. He’s thirty-two, and maybe he’s open to the idea of coaching. Perry repeats that he’s deeply impressed with Brad’s book and thinks it contains the kind of practical wisdom I need.

  In March 1994, when we’re all in Key Biscayne for the tournament, Perry invites Brad to dinner at an Italian restaurant on Fisher Island. Café Porte Chervo. Right on the water. One of our favorites.

  It’s early evening. The sun is just disappearing behind the masts and sails of the boats at the dock. Perry and I are early, Brad is right on time. I’d forgotten how distinctive looking he is. Dark, rugged, he’s certainly handsome, but not classically so. His features aren’t chiseled; they look molded. I can’t shake the idea that Brad looks like Early Man, that he just jumped from a time machine, slightly out of breath from discovering fire. Maybe it’s all his hair that makes me think this. His head, arms, biceps, shoulders, face are covered with black hair. Brad has so much hair, I’m both horrified and jealous. His eyebrows alone are fascinating. I think: I could make a beautiful toupee out of just that left eyebrow.

  The maître d’, Renato, says we can sit on the terrace overlooking the dock.

  I say, Sounds great.

  No, Brad says. Uh-uh. We have to sit inside.

  Why?

  Because of Manny.

  Excuse me? Who’s Manny?

  Manny Mosquito. Mosquitoes—yeah, I have a real thing about them, and trust me, Manny is here, Manny is out in force, and Manny likes me. Look at them all! Swarms! Look! No, I need to sit inside. Far from Manny!

  He explains that mosquitoes are the reason he’s wearing jeans instead of shorts, even though it’s a hundred degrees and muggy. Manny, he says one last time, with a shudder.

  Perry and I look at each other.

  OK, Perry says. Inside it is.

  Renato puts us at a table by the window. He hands us menus. Brad scans his and frowns.

  Problem, he says.

  What?

  They don’t carry my beer. Bud Ice.

  Maybe they have—

  Got to have Bud Ice. It’s the only beer I drink.

  He stands and says he’s going to the market next door to buy some Bud Ice.

  Perry and I order a bottle of red wine and wait. We say nothing while Brad’s gone. He returns in five minutes with a six of Bud Ice, which he asks Renato to put on ice. Not the refrigerator, Brad says, because that’s not cold enough. On ice, or else in the freezer.

  When Brad is finally settled, half a cold Bud Ice down his gullet, Perry starts.

  So, listen, Brad, one reason we wanted to meet with you is, we want to get your take on Andre’s game.

  Say what?

  Andre’s game. We’d like you to tell us what you think.

  What I think?

  Yes.

  You want to know what I think of his game?

  That’s right.

  You want me to be honest?

  Please.

  Brutally honest?

  Don’t hold back.

  He takes an enormous swallow of beer and commences a careful, thorough, brutal-as-advertised summary of my flaws as a tennis player.

  It’s not rocket science, he says. If I were you, with your skills, your talent, your return and footwork, I’d dominate. But you’ve lost the fire you had when you were sixteen. That kid, taking the ball early, being aggressive, what the hell happened to that kid?

  Brad says my overall problem, the problem that threatens to end my career prematurely—the problem that feels like my father’s legacy—is perfectionism.

  You always try to be perfect, he says, and you always fall short, and it fucks with your head. Your confidence is shot, and perfectionism is the reason. You try to hit a winner on every ball, when just being steady, consistent, meat and potatoes, would be enough to win ninety percent of the time.

  He talks a mile a minute, a constant drone, not unlike a mosquito. He builds his argument with sports metaphors, from all sports, indiscriminately. He’s an avid sports fan, and an equally avid metaphor fan.

  Quit going for the knockout, he says. Stop swinging for the fences. All you have to be is solid. Singles, doubles, move the chains forward. Stop thinking about yourself, and your own game, and remember that the guy on the other side of the net has weaknesses. Attack his weaknesses. You don’t have to be the best in the world every time you go out there. You just have to be better than one guy. Instead of you succeeding, make
him fail. Better yet, let him fail. It’s all about odds and percentages. You’re from Vegas, you should have an appreciation of odds and percentages. The house always wins, right? Why? Because the odds are stacked in the house’s favor. So? Be the house! Get the odds in your favor. Right now, by trying for a perfect shot with every ball, you’re stacking the odds against yourself. You’re assuming too much risk. You don’t need to assume so much risk. Fuck that. Just keep the ball moving. Back and forth. Nice and easy. Solid. Be like gravity, man, just like motherfucking gravity. When you chase perfection, when you make perfection the ultimate goal, do you know what you’re doing? You’re chasing something that doesn’t exist. You’re making everyone around you miserable. You’re making yourself miserable. Perfection? There’s about five times a year you wake up perfect, when you can’t lose to anybody, but it’s not those five times a year that make a tennis player. Or a human being, for that matter. It’s the other times. It’s all about your head, man. With your talent, if you’re fifty percent game-wise, but ninety-five percent head-wise, you’re going to win. But if you’re ninety-five percent game-wise and fifty percent head-wise, you’re going to lose, lose, lose. Again, since you’re from Vegas, put it this way. It takes twenty-one sets to win a slam. That’s all. You need to win just twenty-one sets. Seven matches, best of five. That’s twenty-one. In tennis, like cards, twenty-one’s a winner. Blackjack! Focus on that number, and you won’t go wrong. Simplify, simplify. Every time you win a set, say to yourself, That’s one down. That’s one in my pocket. At the start of a tournament, count backward from twenty-one. That’s positive thinking, see? Of course, speaking for myself, when I’m playing blackjack, I’d rather win with sixteen, because that’s winning ugly. No need to win with twenty-one. No need to be perfect.

  He’s been speaking for fifteen minutes. Perry and I haven’t interrupted, haven’t glanced at each other, haven’t sipped our wine. At last Brad drains his second beer and announces: Where’s the head in this place? I have to take a leak.

  The moment he’s gone I tell Perry: That’s our guy.

  Absolutely.