My eyes soften as I look at him. Sorry, he mouths. I nod.
I move my eyes back to the court. Cortez serves high, with a topspin and force that make it hard to predict. Still, I manage to get to the ball on the rise and return it deep to the baseline, a full two feet past her backhand.
The announcer says, “Game is Soto’s.” Bowe gives me a fist pump.
Over the next nine games, I take the set.
* * *
—
During the changeover, I look over at Cortez. She has talked such a big game of not being afraid of me, and I’ve pummeled her in the first set. I expect to see some anxiety or concern, a sign that she understands what she’s up against now.
Instead, when she catches my eye, she smiles. As if none of this has worried her in the slightest.
During the second set, Cortez’s groundstrokes become harder and faster. Her serves sting in my arm as I return them. I adjust quickly, reducing my shots just like I did back in the eighties up against Stepanova. I’m pulling out the Soto Slice.
It works, but she keeps pressing. She won’t even take her winners where she can. She lobs the ball back over. Our rallies go sometimes as many as fifteen, sixteen shots.
I overshoot a couple groundstrokes, send a few cross-court backhands a hair too wide. Fuck.
The heat bears down on me. I can feel it on my neck and shoulders.
Out of the first five games in the second set, Cortez takes four.
At the changeover, I do not look into the players’ box at my father or at Bowe. I bury my head in my towel and think. The momentum has shifted.
Grab control of the court. Don’t slow down now.
I go back out there. Cortez gets more intense by the second. I’m trying to hit them back with as much fire as she has. I’m throwing my entire weight into my shoulder, my elbow heavy with the strain of it all. When I return one of her forehands, my racquet cracks in half.
The crowd screams.
As I get a new racket, I breathe out. If she takes the set, she can take the match back. Don’t let her take the match back. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
Cortez takes the second set.
I am breathless, drenched in sweat. My elbow is killing me. My knee has started to twinge. I pour half of the bottle of water over my towel and then put my towel over my head, cooling myself off and blocking the world out.
I have to win the next set. If I don’t, the whole thing is over. And the whole thing cannot be over. Not yet.
This is what you’ve always been good at.
I put the towel down and stand up. I shake my head vigorously, shake the tension out of my arms and shoulders. I focus in. Get back on the court.
I serve the ball with the spin and precision that I am known for. It flies right past Cortez. An ace. The crowd cheers. And I pump my fist. I am clawing my way back.
* * *
—
It’s 5–5 in the last set. I wipe the sweat from my face and try to stretch out my legs without telegraphing to Cortez how much my knee is aching. She isn’t even sitting down during the changeover. She’s bouncing on her toes, as if eager to get right back out there. My gut drops as I watch her—it’s all coming into focus now. She ran me around in the second set, let me wear myself out. And now I’m slowing down when she is just getting started.
I squeeze the ball in my hand. How could I have played this so wrong? How could I have been so stupid? So green! You did exactly what she wanted! And now you’re just as tired as everyone expected you to be!
I get myself back on the court, and Cortez’s shots start coming at me again, no sign of slowing, running me left to right, playing each one she can to my backhand, knowing I don’t have the energy to run around the ball to play the forehand.
I run, I hit hard. I get points off her. But it doesn’t matter. I can’t break her serve.
We’re now at 5–6. If she wins this game, she wins the match.
CARRIE, DO NOT LOSE THIS.
I take the next point. 15–love.
Her point. 15-all.
Her point.
Her point.
Match point.
I serve it low. She returns it down the line. Don’t let them all be right about you.
I hit a drop shot. I can bring this back from the brink.
She returns it short. It bounces once. I run, but before I can reach it, it bounces again.
I’m overwhelmed by a downpour of dread—as if the sky has opened up and rained shame.
Cortez wins. I am done at the 1995 Australian Open.
“You got to the round of sixteen your first tournament back, hija,” my father says. I’m lying in the trainers’ room with an ice pack on my knee. “That is something to be proud of!”
“Since when was losing something to be proud of?”
In a moment, I’ll have to shower and head to the press room for an interview. Cortez is already in there—gloating, I’m sure. Which is her right. She won, after all.
I’m the fucking loser who has to go out there and face all of them, knowing I’ve been both outsmarted and outplayed. And what makes it worse is that I know, I know, that she is not a better tennis player than me. That is the full weight of my failure.
“You have no patience,” my father says, shaking his head. “And I know it is not my fault, because I tried to instill it in you. But you still don’t understand that you can’t have everything the second you want it.”
“I’m going to ignore you right now,” I say, sitting up and taking the ice pack off. “And go talk to the press about throwing away my chance at a title. But feel free to remember that lecture word for word and give it to me later.”
“Carolina—” my father says.
“I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”
My father keeps talking, but I’m not listening. I walk away, into the locker room—past all the other players—and straight into the shower.
At the post-match press conference, the cameras and reporters are all over me.
“Cortez is a strong opponent, but one who probably could not have beaten you at your height,” a female reporter says before I’ve even sat down. “How does that feel?”
“I did not play my best today. And I have to live with that.”
“After three successful matches marking your return,” a man says, “does this loss today take you by surprise? What are you feeling in this moment?”
“I am feeling like I played poorly and a bunch of reporters are asking me questions about how it feels to suck. I’m not happy right now. Obviously. I will use it as fuel to play better in the future, as I always have.”
“But at some point,” another man says, “everyone’s game declines. Is that what we are seeing here?”
“Why don’t you go ask Dvo?áková, Flores, and Perez if they think my game is declining?”
“What will you do now?” a woman asks.
“I will go home and get back to work, ready to win in Paris.”
“Yes, but, clay is historically your toughest surface,” this woman says. “You’ve only won the French once, in 1983.”
“Yeah, well,” I say. “Watch me win it again in ’95.”
They continue to ask questions, but I get up from the table and walk out the door.
* * *
—
Back at the hotel, I get in the elevator and head to my room. But as I round the corner, I see Bowe standing in the hallway with his suitcase.
I stop right in my tracks.
“I wasn’t sure if you’re a ‘wants company when they lose’ sort of person or an ‘everyone get away from me’ sort of person,” he says.
I say, “I’m an ‘everyone get away from me’ person.”
Bowe nods. “Roger that,” he says as he grabs his suitcase. “I’ll be going.”
I walk toward him. “You didn’t have to move your flight,” I say.
Bowe looks at his suitcase and then back up at me. “I did, actually,” he says. “I…I didn’t stand a chance against O’Hara. But I wouldn’t have stood a chance against any of the players I’ve beaten in this tournament if it hadn’t been for you.”