Everything on the Line (23 page)

But this barn still has burning to do, and how.

New Yorker Jack Spade is up two sets to one, but the whiz from Florence has begun to figure out his opponent and has clawed his way back from the two-sets-to-none precipice of defeat to the present cusp of equilibrium.

In boxing, they say that style makes fights, and in this heavyweight bout, the old saw has plenty of teeth. Ugo is prototypically Italian, with the body of Michelangelo’s
David
and the mind of Leonardo; Jack is American to the bone, a Vince Lombardi/George Steinbrenner-type winning machine. (“The Florentine Flash” vs. the “Gotham Gorilla,” as the great Bud Collins might have monikered them with a wink.) Ugo possesses astounding finesse and touch and defensive skills, as well as an eerie sense of anticipation; Jack’s game is based essentially on pure power and sheer will. Ugo’s graceful movement, creativity, and lightning reflexes contrast with Jack’s brawling, bulldog, grinding style. Ugo is in your heart while Jack is in your face. The match also features righty vs. lefty, glider vs. freight train, ice vs. fire. In fact, it has, thus far and unsurprisingly, turned into a ferocious battle reminiscent of the greatest exemplars of pugilistic contrast: Robinson vs. Basilio, Leonard vs. Duran, Ali vs. Frazier.

At the pre-tiebreaker changeover, instituted in 2050, Ugo Bellezza, a towel draped over his head, is dressed head to toe in an all-white outfit, out of respect for the time-honored Wimbledon tradition, all articles of his retro attire respectfully sporting the laurel wreath of the great Fred Perry, the last Brit to win the Wimbledon gentlemen’s singles title, a breathtaking 117 years ago in the year of our
Signore
1936.

He sips his Robinson’s Barley Water, takes a gander up there at his friends’ box in the stands. His
mamma,
Gioconda Bellezza, looks back at him lovingly with that knowing Mona Lisa smile of hers. Coach and hero Giglio Marotti throws him his fervent support by slowly mouthing the word
sprezzatura
. Soul mate Antonella Cazzaro flashes him a look of profound caring with her gorgeous periwinkle eyes.

Jack Spade, a towel draped over his head, is dressed head to toe in an all-black outfit, the brainchild of manager Odi Mondheim, who, with Ira Spade, just two days ago had marched into the meeting with the Wimbledon Apparel and Comportment Committee and threatened the right honorable British gentlemen with a goddam lawsuit if they didn’t allow Jack to wear whatever color he goddam chose to wear ’cause that was his frigging constitutional right as a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen of the United States of America,
amen
.

In Jack’s friends’ box, Ira Spade’s left eye is twitching uncontrollably as he mutilates his program in his small, sweaty palms and mumbles
c’mon, you sonuvabitch!
to his son under his breath. Avis Spade looks sadly at her husband, this intense, driven incarnation of a husband sitting right here next to her, recalling in her weary mind the kinder, gentler version who used to open doors for her and bring her roses and whisper sweet nothings in earlier years. Short, fat, bald, chinless Odi Mondheim smiles nervously at Ira and takes a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and peruses it and grins wickedly.

Ugo spends his entire five minutes of repose thinking about what his mentor Giglio has stood for and taught him through the years, bringing him to this special moment. Winning as a by-product, not an end in itself.
Sprezzatura.
Creating
le
belle cose.
Gaudí pushing the envelope. Leonardo’s
Notebooks.
Rodin’s
The Hand of God
and the power of metaphor. Roland Garros and Einstein. Aesop’s fable of the wind and the sun. Benchley’s telegram from Venice.
Per aspera ad astra
and learning from obstacles. The story of Bernini and Borromini and the true nature of competition. The importance of fingerprints.
O jogo bonito.
The importance of process.
Australia and sportsmanship.
Non c’è rosa senza spine.
Ronsard and Goya and Beethoven and Edison. And about how grateful he is to Jack Spade for helping him be the best Ugo Bellezza he can be.

Jack spends his entire five minutes of repose thinking about what his father Ira has stood for and taught him through the years, bringing him to this special moment. Knight, Lombardi, Steinbrenner, and winning. The boiling lobsters who were losers. Darwin and Survival. Kissing your grandmother, with her teeth out. Winning ugly. The “To Hell and Back” drills. The power of the color
black
. Why lefties are sinister. The video of the lion killing the antelope. “I am the
greatest
!” Those games of “Winner/Loser.” Jim Morrison’s tomb. The deaf sign for
stupid
. No more Mister Nice Guy. The King Midas dream. The “25 Greatest Players Ever” list and the foul, bourbony breath.
Win or die.
Woody Hayes and winning.
Win or tie.
America and winning. All the dirty tricks to be used against this little Italian sonuvabitch. This little Italian sonuvabitch’s sandbagging letter.

Before taking the court again, Ugo takes a final chug from his bottle of Robinson’s Barley Water and gazes down at his racquet, the gift of love from his mentor, his
mamma
, and his Antonella, looks at the lovely spruce overlay, this wood harvested in Cremona from the same trees the Italian genius Stradivari used for his extraordinary violins, and it is all the strength and motivation he needs for the tiebreaker.

As the players cross paths and return to the court, Jack tosses Ugo a supercilious sneer. Ugo smiles back respectfully.

Ugo initiates the opening point of the crucial tiebreaker by cracking an angled serve that hits the sideline squarely, throwing up a soft puff of chalk (which, in 2047, replaced titanium paste as line material) and drawing Jack way out of court but Jack, being the quintessential digger and grinder and by dint of his absolute refusal to surrender, throws up a towering defensive lob that Ugo has to let bounce and it does, smack on the baseline, and the two exchange a dozen blistering cross-court groundstrokes and they are two ball machines, Jack rifling pinpoint backhands to Ugo’s forehands and vice versa, and so many lines have been hit that the bright yellow ball is now the color of straw and as if to put Jack Spade out of his misery Ugo Bellezza whales a winning forehand down the line that barely clears the net and just clips the chalk and sends the crowd into a frenzy.

Walking to his receiving position in the ad court and ahead in the tiebreaker, 1-0, Ugo Bellezza thinks to himself:
Piccoli passi
, little steps! You won that point,
certo
, but you’re not getting to the ball quickly enough. Cut out those long strides.
Piccoli passi!

Jack Spade bounces the ball eight, nine, ten times on the baseline as he prepares to serve, trying to get into the mind of his opponent, but the elegantly tranquil Bellezza will have none of these shenanigans. Looking up at his father in his friends’ box, Jack is reminded of the Tom Seaver quip Ira had shared with him for the umpteenth time just before the start of the match: “There are only two places in the league—first place and no place.” Ira looks daggers at his son and mouths a firm
C’mon!
with his lips and grits his teeth. Jack grits his teeth, too.

Jack puts a wicked spin on his left-handed serve and the gyrating ball hits both lines, the intersection of sideline and service line, and the madcap spin forces Ugo way out of court—just the type of nasty wily lefty serve that has driven opponents batty for the past century or so from the likes of Drobny and Larsen and Fraser and Laver and Leconte and Korda—and Ugo, with the creativity of the maestro from Vinci, fashions a return from out of the instinctive blue, low and screaming and
under
the net from a ridiculous angle that sends the ball just past the net post, and the sideline chalk flies, but equally incredibly the American wills his way there to strike a stupendous backhand half volley with a soft wrist reminiscent of and even surpassing the brilliant net magic of fellow lefty John McEnroe, and no sooner is the ball deposited barely over the net than the fleet Italian, whose anticipation is unparalleled, is all over it and pushes a deft half volley of his own diagonally across the net, but Jack Spade
will not permit himself to lose this point
and gathers himself and cuts off the shot and returns it into the yawning open court and sneers once again at his opponent and pumps his fist with a vicious uppercut and slaps his thigh and turns his back and returns intensely to the service line.

Jack Spade, serving at 1-1, launches an ace of Richter proportions, a flat lefty bomb with no spin whatsoever that reminds the tennis historian of Roscoe Tanner or Goran Ivanisevic or Greg Rusedski at their best and way beyond, and that measures 256 kilometers (160 miles) an hour and splits the
T
and sends chalk flying and leaves even one as nimble as Ugo Bellezza frozen at his baseline post.

At 1-2, Ugo, amid all the tension and down two sets to one and as cool as a
cetriolo
, fires two aces of his own.

Bling.

Bling.

Ugo’s serve is a skosh more limited in power than Jack’s, but his mind is not: Jack had been expecting to hit a forehand return in the ad court and a backhand return in the deuce court, respectively, but instead, both pinpoint serves hit squarely on the line, smack on the
T
, in precisely the same spot.

Suddenly it is 2-3 Ugo’s with Jack serving, but they are still on serve, with not a sniff of a minibreak in the air.

Before the match begins, Jack and Ira Spade are looking up at the sign over the locker room door, at the Rudyard Kipling quote:

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same…

“Bullshit,” Ira erupts, looking his son straight in the eyes. “What a
loser
this guy Kipling was!
Winning
is all that counts. You know it and I know it and the only impostor around here is the goddam moron who doesn’t have the guts to admit it!”

Ira pumps his fist in Triumph. Jack does, too.

Before the match begins, Ugo and Giglio are looking up at the sign over the locker room door, at the Rudyard Kipling quote.

“
Capisci?
Get it? That’s what we’ve been talking about all these years,” Giglio says, gesticulating purposefully. “Play your game, be faithful to yourself, do your best, and the rest will follow.”

Ugo smiles lovingly at Giglio.

Jack pipes a scorching serve to Ugo’s midsection, and the Italian pivots quickly and blocks an underspin backhand return at the onrushing American’s feet. A half volley and a forehand drive later, the two are at the net, within shouting distance. And then
bing! bing! bing!
and the rally ends with Jack smacking an eye-high volley right at Ugo’s body, aimed with great purpose at his most prized Florentine possessions, but Ugo instinctively twirls to avert the danger, and the winner whizzes by harmlessly. Barely three feet away from his opponent, Jack pumps his fist perilously close to Ugo’s face and shouts
Take that!
, a glob of projectile spittle exiting between his teeth and wobbling across the net and depositing itself onto Ugo’s right cheek.

Ugo calmly wipes it off with his wristlet and walks over to the other side of the court after this sixth point. He is thinking positive thoughts, about how he is hanging in there and making inroads on Jack’s monster serve and playing beautiful tennis and about the flatbread with rosemary and sage of his
mamma
and Giglio’s wisdom and affection and the soft, warm skin of the lovely Antonella.

Jack Spade crosses Ugo’s path, throws him a sneer, and is thinking about putting this little Italian sonuvabitch out of his misery and ending the match right here and right now in this tiebreak and about how he’s gonna be hoisting that golden trophy high in the air pretty soon and what he’ll be saying in his acceptance speech right here on Centre Court.

“…and most of all, I’d like to thank my coach, Ira Spade, for, well, for making me what I am…which is…
the Greatest Player of All Time
!”

At 3-3, Jack serves ace number thirty-three, takes the second ball out of his shorts and bangs it over the net, nearly hitting Ugo in the hip.

At 3-4, Ugo takes a deep breath and serves a bomb of his own and chalk flies and now we are knotted at four. And after a gorgeously simple service on the sideline and a crisp backhand volley into the open court, Ugo again forges ahead, 5-4.

“‘If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing your grandmother, with her teeth out,’” Ira Spade hisses, quoting the words of baseball great George Brett to his son before the match. “Now for your grandmother’s sake, go out there
and don’t lose to that sonuvabitch
!”

“‘
Ma Nino non ha paura di sbagliare un calcio di rigore,
’”
Giglio quotes to his protégé before the match. “‘But Nino isn’t afraid of missing a penalty kick.’ Remember that line from the Francesco De Gregori song? So,
ragazzo,
don’t be afraid to be bold, to fail, to take risks when you need to. In the Bible, perhaps the meek shall inherit the earth, but on the tennis court, fortune favors the brave.”

Jack bounces the ball thirteen, fourteen, fifteen times on the baseline before serving, but Ugo refuses to be rattled. Ace number thirty-four is followed by an unbearably brilliant rally, the point ebbing and flowing from defense to transition to attack mode, featuring every conceivable arrow in the players’ quivers—flat, topspin, and sliced groundies cross-court and down the line off both wings, volleys, half volleys, drop shots, drop volleys, bunts, offensive topspin lobs, soft defensive lobs, overhead smashes, moonballs—and ending unexpectedly when Ugo loses his always dependable footing on a slippery patch of brown and Jack, smelling blood, teases Ugo by tapping back a volley just beyond his seated and racquetless opponent’s reach.