Everything on the Line
Praise for Everything on the Line
Everything on the Line
By Bob Mitchell
Copyright 2013 by Bob Mitchell
Cover Copyright 2013 by
Ginny Glass
and Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.
E
verything on the Line
By Bob Mitchell
“
Everything on the Line
has a line about everything—it’s a fanciful, exuberant valentine to tennis and the people who play it.”
—Mary Carillo, CBS, NBC, ESPN commentator, winner (with John McEnroe) of French Open mixed doubles title, Peabody Award winner
“Although few novelists have touched pro tennis, knowledgeable Bob Mitchell makes a big splash with
Everything on the Line
, filled with surprises and humor, set in a future Obama presidency (Malia’s). In a fierce rivalry for No. 1, an American and an Italian (he with a Stradivarius racket!) battle across the planet.”
—Bud Collins,
Boston Globe
, ESPN, Tennis Channel, dean of American tennis writers, member International Tennis Hall of Fame
“Bob Mitchell’s novel,
Everything on the Line
, is a complex, rich, challenging story weaving together the author’s vast knowledge of tennis, history, art, and poetry.”
—Peter Bodo, senior editor and chief columnist,
Tennis
magazine
“An eclectic intellect, a generous heart, and a distinctive passion for art and sports make Bob Mitchell a true ‘Tennaissance Man.’ Check out this book and see for yourself.”
—Joel Drucker, ESPN, author of
Jimmy Connors Saved My Life
“A great, futuristic read on the way the game of tennis is headed.”
—Marty Riessen, five-time member of U.S. Davis Cup team, winner of U.S. Open and French Open doubles titles
To Susan Love, whose name not only evokes tennis,
but also what I feel for this amazing woman.
There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights
are stronger in the contrast.
—
CHARLES DICKENS
You are not next to God if you win. And if you lose,
you are not next to the devil.
—
BORIS BECKER
1
Showdown
IT IS UTTERLY CONCEIVABLE—WHO COULD PROVE OTHERWISE?—that between busting his hump creating all the land beasts plus man and woman on the sixth day and catching some z’s on the seventh, the Almighty somehow found the time to fashion a little patch of heaven on earth in district SW19, borough of Merton, just south of London, England.
Wimbledon.
From above, the eye slow-zooms down toward, and rivets its view upon, the crown jewel of this verdant paradise, a multifaceted emerald that goes by the name of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.
Circumscribed by Church, Somerset, and Bathgate Roads, the regal complex beams up to the heavens its splendor, as the pair of eyes that are Centre and No. 1 Courts, together with the mouth-shaped lake in adjacent Wimbledon Park, cherubically form between them the appearance of a gigantic, man-made Smiley Face.
* * *
Motionless, both bodies lie prostrate on the lawn, barely two metres from each other. On one side of the net, dressed entirely in black, lies Jack Spade, the twenty-three-year-old American phenom. On the other, clad entirely in white, sprawls Ugo Bellezza, the twenty-three-year-old Italian wunderkind.
The two greatest superstars of all time have just consummated the most delicious rally in the long and storied history of tennis to necessitate a fourth-set tiebreaker in the gentlemen’s finals at Wimbledon. One hundred twenty-three times, improbably, the yellow felt-surfaced ball has crossed the net until, in a paroxysm of balletic thrusting and parrying, the antagonists terminate the exchange—first with Bellezza lunging parallel to the ground to retrieve Spade’s dying cross-court drop volley and dumping a delicate volley of his own that barely clears the net, then with the American diving heroically to strike a second magical cross-court volley into the open lawn just vacated by the Italian.
Hair is standing up on the backs of 13,998 necks and shivers are traveling down 13,998 spines, as if the spectators seated here today had just stuck their index fingers in 13,998 electrical sockets.
On this hot, sultry Sunday afternoon of July 6, 2053, there is only one word, culled from the some 616,500 in the English language, that could adequately describe the struggle being contested within the lines of this very special 78’ x 27’ rectangular patch of grass.
Titanic.
Suspending credulity, the score, indicated on the green scoreboard with gold numbers, now reads:
From every possible criterion—it is the closest, most fiercely contested, and longest in duration and in games and points played through nearly four sets of any Open-era Wimbledon finals ever—this match, even before its climactic ending, has turned into an extraordinary spectacle.
But this particular spectacle on this particular day on this particular revered rectangle of grass is more than simply out of the ordinary. To everyone present—spectators, linespeople, ball boys, ball girls, netcord judge, chair umpire, players—it feels as if this competition were almost preordained, as if these two net prodigies were somehow destined from birth to be meeting on this monumental stage right here and right now, as if there were something almost transcendent about this titanic struggle that is rendering it more meaningful than merely a fierce rivalry, and of greater stature even than the game itself.
It is almost as if something way beyond bragging rights and a golden trophy and the official title of number one in the world and the unofficial title of Greatest Player of All Time were at stake.
2
Wager
HIS POINTY, LOBSTER-RED NOSE
HOVERS
above the elegant Riedel wineglass, the cavernous nostrils twitching and greedily sniffing the sensuous bouquet of a $10,000 Barolo. As his gnarled but dainty left hand rotates the glass with erotic swirls, he grins lustily, the ghoulish smile exposing his forked tongue and all twenty-eight of his ghastly yellowed teeth.
At long last, Satan takes a sip.
“Damnation, this is
fine
!” he chortles with his best Jack Nicholson impression, winking to the august white-bearded gentleman seated across the table from him.
Clad in His finest formal white linen robe with purple and gold piping, God winks back solicitously and sips His San Pellegrino.
The two antagonists are dining tonight—a blistering Thursday evening in October, 2043—at a cute little Italian place in Purgatory, an agreed-upon neutral site. The sign above the door outside the trattoria, badly scorched by millennia of flames and smoke, says
SPERANZA E POMODORO. EST. 3333 B.C.
An unthinkably buxom blonde sashays up to the table. “May I take your orders, gentlemen?” she coos.
Satan’s beady red eyes wander from his wineglass to the waitress’s bounteous décolletage, a globule of drool forming in the left corner of his mouth.
“
Hell,
yes!” Old Horny answers. “I’ll have my usual, a plate of raw Bhut Jolokia peppers to start out with, and then the Devil
in carne
—”
“That’s the raw liver, fava beans, and…a little Chianti on the side,” the waitress recites from memory. “
E per Lei, signore?
” she continues, casting her eyes upon God.
“Uh, I think I shall go with the
pasta e fagioli
this time, then a nice little
insalata mista
.”
“Still the ever-righteous eater, eh?” Satan asks God rhetorically.
“Yep, wouldn’t want any of My creatures slain on My account.”
“So, how
’bout
them Cowboys?” Satan asks, flicking a piece of errant ash off his bright scarlet Salvatore Mondobasso turtleneck shirt.
“Well now,” God answers, “since they moved from Dallas to Sioux Falls in 2034, they have certainly come upon hard times.”
“How the mighty have fallen,” Satan sighs.
“Spoken like a true expert!” God retorts, with a sly wink.
“You always have to get that dig in, don’t you?” Satan says, his left eye twitching like the devil.
The bodacious server reappears with the soup for God and the peppers for Lucifer, who stuffs one of the scorching red-orange beauts—clocking in at over a million Scoville Heat Units—into his gaping maw. His already vermilion face deepens from lobster to beet.
“Which brings us to our favorite topic of conversation,” Satan says, rubbing his fire engine
red hands together.
“Ah, yes,” God agrees. “Good or evil: Which will ultimately prevail on Earth?”
“So,” Beelzebub says, “as I was mentioning last time we chatted, leave it to humans to allow the basest in them to bubble up and infect the world. It never fails, even with the best of people. Which is why good will never, and evil will always, prevail—”
“With all due respect,” God interrupts, “as you well know, man is born good into this world. Have you not read the writings of one of My celestial children, Jean-Jacques Rousseau?”
“Mais si, bien sûr,”
Satan protests. “But have you not read the writings of one of my tenants of the nether regions, Thomas Hobbes?”
“Listen, going on like this is pointless,” God says. “Is it not clear to you, after all these millennia, that man, whom I Myself have created with My own hands, is a noble creature, full of love and compassion and hope and humility and—”
“Well then, smarty-pants,” the Devil ripostes, “if man is so good, then why in hell is there such evil and hatred and vice and mean-spiritedness that constantly run rampant throughout planet Earth?
Huh?
”
Scratching His head and sipping His mineral water, God parries, “I admit that there are always some rotten apples in the bunch down, er, up there on Earth, but, by and large, man is good. Take, for instance, My blessed child, Jesus of Nazareth—”
“Then how about Attila the Hun?” Satan retorts.
“Buddha!”
“Genghis Khan!”
“Joan of Arc!”
“Hitler!”
“Florence Nightingale!”
“Charlie Manson!”
“Gandhi!”
“Mussolini!”
“MLK!”
“Stalin!”
“Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu!”
“What the
hell
?—”
“Gotcha! That was Mother Teresa!”
“Hardy-har-har,” Satan bellows. “So then, Mr. Perfect, how ’bout we settle this thing once and for all?” he continues, draining an entire glass of Barolo in one gulp to douse the conflagration started by the last of his Bhut Jolokias. The curvy waitress reappears, clears the table, brings the
secondi piatti
.