“I said thank you, didn’t I? Fuck.”
Bowe laughs. “Yes, you did.” He slaps his hand on the table. “All right, I’ll bite. Do me now.”
“It doesn’t have to be tit for tat,” I say.
“No, I want to know. I want a win, Carrie,” he says. “I want a big one. I want to do something this season. I want to…” He looks me in the eye but then immediately looks away. “I want to prove I was right to stay in the game this long. If I do something great this season, everyone will say, ‘Thank God he stuck around,’ instead of…what they say now.”
“?‘Why hasn’t he given up?’?”
“Yes, thank you,” Bowe says.
I think about it and then chew a piece of ice left in the bottom of my glass. “You take too long to warm up. If you play somebody like O’Hara or Garcia who comes out of the gate hot, you’re gonna be down a set before you know it.”
Bowe nods. “I know,” he says. “You’re right.”
“Your serve is better now that you’re using the platform stance. But you don’t disguise your shots enough. I can always tell where you’re going.”
“How?” Bowe asks.
“Your right foot turns in or out depending on how wide you’re going.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he says, blinking and shaking his head.
“Yes, it does.”
“That’s insane.”
“It’s still true.”
“Okay,” he says. “That’s…thank you.”
“I’m not done. You’re way too lazy out there. You should be running down more balls. I can squeak any ball past you just by going wider than you feel like running. Everyone playing you knows you’re old. They know your back gives you trouble. The first thing they’re gonna do is hit it wide every time. You have to conserve energy, and I get that. But if you actually want to win something, you have to be willing to die to get to the ball, Huntley. And you’re not willing to do that. So you’re not gonna win any match that matters.”
Bowe’s jaw clenches; his lips are tight. He looks like he’s about to get up from the table. I feel a flash of disappointment, because like most men, he can dish it out but he can’t take it.
“It’s not my fault if you can’t handle the criticism,” I say.
Bowe looks down at the table. He stares at the water ring his drink has made on the cardboard coaster advertising a beer he can’t drink.
“Thank you,” he says, finally, when he looks up at me. “Sincerely. Thank you.”
“Oh,” I say. “Okay, well…yeah, you’re welcome.”
Bowe leans into the table and keeps his voice low. He says, “I want to fucking win, Carrie. I want the crowd screaming my name. I want to know that for one moment, I am the best in the world. One last time.”
I can’t help but smile. “You are taking the words right out of my mouth.”
Transcript
Sports Australia
SportsLine with Stephen Mastiff
Stephen Mastiff: Pivoting to women’s singles for a moment, who are we keeping an eye on here, mate?
Harrison Trawley, editor of SportsPages Australia: Well, Nicki Chan, obviously. Everyone is expecting her in the final. But also, I’m looking at Ingrid Cortez, I’m looking at Natasha Antonovich. I’m excited to see some quick, daring moves from her. And I think power hitters like Odette Moretti out of Italy will have a good showing.
Mastiff: I notice you’re not mentioning Soto.
Trawley: [laughs] No, nobody’s looking at Soto for this. But if we want to talk about Americans, I think perhaps Carla Perez could seize the moment.
MID-JANUARY
The night before the Australian Open
My father and I are sitting on the patio of my hotel suite, looking out over the city, discussing the draw, which was announced earlier today. I’m in section 7. In my first match I’ll be playing a twenty-two-year-old Czech serve-and-volley player named Madlenka Dvo?áková. We are playing day 1 at Rod Laver Arena, the highest-profile court.
“It is not an accident,” my father says. “That they have you center court against a low-ranked player. You’re unseeded, but they are behind you.”
I shake my head. “They just know it will make them money. To keep me in the tournament as long as they can.”
I look out over the small slice of Melbourne that we can see from my hotel, including the Yarra River as it crosses through the city. I have sat outside looking at this river so many times in my life—as a rookie, as a challenger, as a champion. Now it’s as a comeback. I am both stunned to find myself here again and positively sure I’ve never left.
“You’ll go out there tomorrow,” my father says, “and you’ll beat her, no le vas a dar tiempo ni de pensar.”
I inhale sharply—imagining the opposite of what my father is describing. What if tomorrow I lose in the first round? What if this whole thing is over before it’s even begun? The idea of it is so humiliating, I feel nauseated.
The phone rings, and the clang of it startles me. I walk into the bedroom to answer it. “Hello?”
“Good luck tomorrow,” Bowe says.
“You too.”
“Fucking crush her. Make her bleed.”
“Will do,” I say. “You too.”
“We can do this,” Bowe says. “At least, you can. I know it.”
“Thank you,” I say, almost choking on the words. I am suddenly embarrassed at how transparent the emotion in my voice is. “I guess this is it. No turning back now.”
“No, I suppose not,” he says. “But you wouldn’t turn back even if you could, Soto.”
THE 1995
AUSTRALIAN
OPEN
When I wake up in the morning, I feel a hum in my bones that I have not felt in years. It is startling, the buzz of unexpected joy.
It is still early as I get out of bed. The sun has not yet risen. I feel a sense of control that I sometimes get when I wake up before the rest of the world. I have the feeling that the day’s events are mine to determine, that I hold everything in the palm of my hand.
I get up to get ready for a short run. I throw on dolphin shorts and a T-shirt, a pair of sneakers. I go down to the lobby. But before I can get out the front door of the hotel, the woman behind the check-in desk stops me.
“Ms. Soto?” she says.
“Yes?” I want to get running. “What is it?”
“A package arrived for you,” she says.
She hands me a padded envelope with a return address from Gwen. I rip the end off. Inside, there is a gift box not much bigger than a book. On top is a note in Gwen’s unmistakable cursive.
If anyone can do this, it is you.
Track One —G.
I open the gift box to see a Discman with a pair of headphones plugged in, a CD already in it. It is Elton John’s Caribou. I look at the first song and laugh.
“Ms. Soto?” the woman says, clasping her hands together.
“Yes?”
“Would you mind terribly if I asked for an autograph?”
I sigh, but then I remember there are a lot of people who wish I would crawl into a hole right now. So I’ll take a kind face over that. “Sure, yes, of course you can,” I say.
She hands me a piece of paper and a pen. “Oh, wow, Ms. Soto, this is…this is just amazing,” she says. “Thank you so much.”
I take the pen and I scrawl Take ’em all down, Carrie Soto across the paper and hand it back to her.
“Thank you so much, Ms. Soto,” she says. “I’ve been a fan of yours since I was thirteen and you won here back in ’85. I was there in the stands with my father. He loves you too.”
“You don’t mind that I’m an arrogant, ambitious bitch?”
She laughs. “No, I do not,” she says.
“I’m going to win today,” I tell her.
“I have no doubt,” she says.
I nod at her, take the Discman out of the box, and put the headphones on. I tap the desk and smile at her as I make my way back toward the door. I press play and start running out of the lobby.
Instantly, I hear the familiar stinging riff of “The Bitch Is Back.”
I run on the sidewalk past the hotel. I breeze past people out for coffee, parents with strollers moseying down the street. When I turn the corner and Elton John gets to the chorus, I know—I can feel it in the way the blood is pumping with intention through my veins—that Madlenka Dvo?áková is dead in the water.
* * *