Everything on the Line (25 page)

Miraculously and for the first time truly, Jack Spade is comprehending that the purpose of it all is for him to become the best Jack Spade he can be.

Bouncing the ball one final time, Jack is feeling all his inculcated and calculated bloodthirstiness, his killer edge, his years of being taught Darwinian tactics by coach Ira flowing out of his veins, like some glorious, salubrious bloodletting. He is thinking, with no small sadness, of all the years of humiliation and repression and stress and false feelings of superiority upon which his ability to win tennis matches depended. And now they have vanished into the thin air of Centre Court at Wimbledon.

And, here and now, Jack Spade decides to abandon all his ugly tactics and to play the game of tennis differently.

Just like Ugo Bellezza plays it.

From the stands, Ira Spade sees the change in his son’s eyes and in his demeanor and he also sees that Jack is smiling and he
never
smiles on the tennis court! and Ira bites his upper lip until it bleeds and his left eye is twitching like there’s no tomorrow.

Jack cranks a serve down the middle at 160, but Ugo rips a backhand return that just nips the netcord and dribbles and wobbles and wavers and, at the last second, somehow decides to remain on Ugo’s side of the net.

Advantage to the American.

Another sizzling serve wide and it is the fastest serve Jack has ever struck and he seems to be urged on now by some odd, unfamiliar force, a force that is pushing him to excel and not to bash in the brains of his opponent.

And a stunned Ugo can barely take his racquet back and the ball, a streaking yellow fuzzy comet, is behind the Italian before he can say
Michelangelo Buonarroti
. And now it’s 6-7, 6-7, 7-6, 7-6, 78-79 and Ugo will be serving to survive and on the way to his seat Jack looks at Ugo with admiration and awe and says, “It is an honor and a privilege to be a part of this,” and from the friends’ box Ira Spade can read lips and his program is once again origami.

No one in the stands really believes the tennis can get any better, but how wrong they are. The first six points of the 158
th
game are long and grueling and complex and tactically brilliant, each one producing a clean winner, each one requiring every shot in the combatants’ quivers, each one demanding the ultimate in power, finesse, and endurance.

And it is deuce and Ugo Bellezza is two points from losing the Big Showdown of All Time, but also two points from extending this extraordinary match, and Jack Spade is calm and content and playing like a new man and thinking to himself that he has never played better and knowing deep down that it is because the pursuit of excellence is more satisfying than the pursuit of prey and for the first time in his life he is feeling truly liberated.

Ugo scorches a serve right down the middle at 160 and it clips the
T
and Jack’s lunging forehand barely touches the xanthous orb and his weak, defensive bunt just nips the netcord and dribbles and wobbles and wavers and, at the last second, somehow decides to roll over, unreturnable, onto Ugo’s side of the net.

And now Ugo is on the brink of defeat, but no matter, this is fun, and both Ugo and Jack are having the time of their young lives.

Advantage Jack Spade and championship point and everything’s at stake and Ugo spins a tricky serve down the middle and wide to Jack’s lefty backhand and Jack drills a gorgeous return deep to Ugo’s backhand and the two exchange four, eight, sixteen groundies, half of them hitting square on sidelines and baselines, and chalk is flying and
this is it
and neither player is holding anything back and they’re both hitting out and going full tilt and on the seventeenth stroke, it is Ugo who decides to end things once and for all and he unloads on a running forehand and rifles it down the line, straight as an arrow all the way, and it just clips the outer edge of the sideline out of Jack’s reach, but no, there is no visible puff of chalk in the air and no one in the stands is sure if the ball was good or not and now chair umpire Howard Ggor of Maidenhead, Berkshire, speaks into the microphone, “The ball was wide. Point, game, set, and championship to Mister Spade.”

Centre Court is as quiet as a tomb, not just for Ugo but for everyone, and Ugo does not protest or demand a video review and the crowd is still stunned and Ugo walks calmly toward the net to congratulate his worthy opponent and then the unthinkable happens.

In an unprecedented, unimaginable gesture, particularly at this crucial stage—match point!—of the Big Showdown of All Time…
Jack actually awards the point to Ugo.

Despite the umpire’s out call, Jack feels in his innermost being that the ball had just barely clipped the outside of the sideline, and, for the first time in his life truly, he chooses honesty and sportsmanship and unselfishness and reverses the call himself and awards it to his worthy opponent, even though he knows it could possibly cost him the championship and the Big Showdown of All Time, and to prove his point he retrieves the ball from the ball girl and examines it for any trace of fresh residue of white chalk on its yellow felt surface.

Nothing.

Jack Spade looks sheepishly at the chair umpire. He knows he did what he could to be fair, but rules are rules, and without any prima facie chalk evidence and because on a grass surface there are no ball marks, the chair umpire returns Jack’s sheepish look, a look that signals to Jack that he is honor-bound to overrule the American’s noble gesture.

“Point, game, set, and championship to Mister Spade,” Howard Ggor repeats.

Jack Spade has just won the longest and most glorious match in the long and glorious history of tennis, 7-6 (10), 7-6(10), 6-7 (10), 6-7 (10), 80-78. Every last tennis expert had thought that the epic first-round Wimbledon match way back in 2010 between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut that ended up with Isner winning 70-68 in the fifth would never, ever be eclipsed, not in a trillion years, but now this match—and in the finals and between the two greatest players in the history of tennis, no less—has done it.

And how.

And at the announcement of the final result, the two combatants crumple simultaneously to their knees on the lawn, on either side of the net, their tanks empty and with not a drop of energy left to give. Their grimy faces, necks, arms, and legs are caked with sweat, the beads transformed into so many glistening diamonds by a sun that has suddenly burst triumphantly through the south London clouds.

They are two bull moose who have just engaged in an excruciating, pressure-packed, everything-on-the-line, no-holds-barred, life-and-death battle for survival, with neither mortally wounding the other and each, tested to the limit by the skills of his formidable adversary, surviving with dignity to fight another day. The players are exhausted physically and mentally from the fierce struggle and trying desperately to fill their lungs with the air that has been sucked out of them during the match’s final throes.

The two proud and fallen figures seem frozen in time, but after a full minute of genuflection, Ugo Bellezza and Jack Spade slowly rise and meet at the net. This time, there is no sneering or snubbing or snarling or supercilious stares from Jack, and the two combatants embrace, with affection and respect, then look deeply at each other, and these are not just simple glances, but profound and nuanced gazes that pierce the other’s eyes and descend right to his soul, wordlessly communicating sentiments like “I am honored to have shared this with you” and “You have made me a better tennis player and person” and even “I love you as a brother.”

Ugo is humble, as always, in defeat, and Jack, for the first time in his life truly, is humble in victory. A single stream of liquid descends Jack’s right cheek and enters the corner of his mouth and he can taste it and it is very salty but it is not the familiar salt of sweat.

It is the salt of a heartfelt and cleansing tear.

Up in the stands, there is pandemonium, and Ira Spade is about to go bananas, he is about to burst into one of his hysterical and obnoxious victory rants in front of the other 13,997 fans assembled at Centre Court.

But
a really strange feeling comes over Ira, and you could call it an epiphany if you like.

Out of the blue, he sees the light and he suddenly realizes what has just happened and as a proud father sees not victory but instead the nobility and selflessness of his son’s gesture—
and at match point, no less
—which has in and of itself, as if miraculously, subverted his entire universe of Darwinian survival and winning at all costs and allowed him, Ira Spade!, for the first time in his life truly, to feel liberated.

Ira’s eye stops twitching, his veins contract and disappear inside his forehead, his fist unclenches. And a soft glow emanates from Ira’s transformed face, a glow that you could almost call divine, a glow of contented dreaminess like the one on the subject’s face in Titian’s
Man with the Glove
.

A reborn, sobered, and humble Ira stands up and begins to clap slowly and graciously and appreciatively, and a stunned stadium—well aware of his boisterous, devious, inglorious past—follows suit, one attendee at a time, until the applause is rhythmic and deafening.

And Jack Spade and Ugo Bellezza at last finish their hug of affection and mutual respect and return to their seats courtside.

And Jack looks up to his friends’ box, just like many champions do in search of their fathers who have given so much of themselves to make their children who they are and to allow them to perform on this lofty tennis stage, and he does find his father there and their eyes lock and they exchange affectionate smiles, for the first time in their lives truly. And to his surprise, Ira Spade feels an unfamiliar tear of joy trickle down his leathery right cheek.

And Jack’s moistened eyes pan to the left of father Ira and they lock on his mother’s, the mother who bore him and never got the chance to nurture him like she would have wanted to, like she was meant to, and he smiles lovingly at her and she smiles back lovingly at him and now her eyes are moist, too, and, for the first time in a long time, neither of them has the slightest desire to pop a Xanax and both of them are grateful that they have the rest of their lives to make up for lost time.

And Ugo Bellezza looks up to his friends’ box, just like many champions do in search of their beloveds who have brought them so much joy with their unselfish love, and he looks into Antonella’s gorgeous periwinkle eyes through the blur of tears and sweat filling his own and signs to her, “Will you marry me?” and Antonella signs back,
“Certo! Of course I will!”

And love is in the air and Giglio and Gioconda are watching Ugo’s proposal and Antonella’s acceptance, and Giglio turns to Gioconda and looks into her Mona Lisa eyes and asks her, at long last, if she would like to spend the rest of her life with him as his
moglie
, his wife, and Gioconda’s heart skips three beats and then stops momentarily and she says,
“Certo! Of course I will!”
and instantly her perfect little life has become even more perfect.

And magic is in the air and in the stands total strangers are hugging one another and fans who were rooting for Ugo are high-fiving Jack backers and peace and harmony and charity are permeating Centre Court at Wimbledon.

And in Jack’s friends’ box, Odi Mondheim has an uncharacteristically funny, almost kindly grin on his face, and he rips the new ten-year, $2 billion Nike contract into smithereens.

And Ira Spade turns to his right and gives his wife a long, deep, loving look the likes of which she hasn’t seen in nearly twenty years and a tear rolls down her right cheek and she is instantly transformed from Avis into Hertz.

And Ira looks behind him in the crowd and sees approaching him the one person he thought he’d never see again, the young lady from Mahoney’s Bar, Lola Gold, the woman he had instructed never to darken his door again, and instead of creating an ugly, hurtful scene he smiles at her as she approaches and hugs her tight and introduces her warmly to his wife as a former business colleague and all is forgiven and forgotten.

And through the loudspeakers above Centre Court of the staid, proper Wimbledon, the rebellious rascal John Lennon’s classic “All You Need Is Love” booms and reverberates.

And in the midst of this jubilant Wimbledon celebration, abruptly interrupting all the euphoria, a deafening, ear-shattering groan thunders from somewhere down below, from somewhere deep down beneath the Earth’s surface, from a place way down there in the distant bowels and underbelly of the planet. It is a fiendish, diabolical, visceral, stentorian bellowing, an anguished, woeful, grief-stricken, lugubrious moan that fulminates and discharges its toxic self up into the air of the Earth and that everyone can hear, everyone in the stadium, everyone in the village of Wimbledon, everyone in the neighboring suburbs, everyone for kilometers around, everyone in the nearby city of London, everyone in the United Kingdom, everyone on earth.

Everyone, including Ugo Bellezza, who is hearing sound for the very first time in his life.

Acknowledgments

I fell madly in love with tennis in the early fifties and have remained in love ever since. I played tennis (very!) competitively between 1952 and 2008, was a teaching pro for two years, and have followed the sport as an avid fan and student for over six decades. So it certainly came as no surprise to me that I ended up writing a novel about this amazing game that has played such a major role in my life.

This is the part of the book where authors are supposed to give thanks to all the people who love and support them and who contributed to the genesis and the writing of the work. Although I am an iconoclast by nature, I have no desire to break the sacred “Acknowledgments Rule.” Hence…

For starters, I feel compelled to express my gratitude to the inspiring mentors who encouraged me to excel in and to appreciate the beauty and stunning strategic nuances of tennis: Bill Thompson, Martin Buxby, John Nogrady, Ernie Fleishman, Morty Goldman, Julie Copeland, Bob Bell, and Clarence Chaffee.