Love Game - Season 2012 (3 page)

“I want a medal,” she said vehemently. She
almost hissed the words. “I deserve a medal. This is my last chance and I am
going to take it.”

She let her fist sink onto the table,
suddenly looking exhausted. Then she finally picked up her fork and pierced it
into a cherry tomato.

Obviously, participating in the Olympic
Games meant a lot to Bernadette. It would be her fourth attendance and also her
last. She was already thirty-six. Polly was nevertheless surprised to see the
ambition in the older player’s eyes. Bernadette was a journeywoman on the tour,
who had had her peak in the singles competition in her early twenties when she
had reached a couple of fourth rounds at Grand Slams and when she had had a
career high singles ranking in the Top 20. Polly couldn’t remember any of
Bernadette’s big matches. They had happened long before she had started
following the game. For the last ten years she had specialized in doubles,
which was a good way of making a living but wasn’t prestigious at all. Most
Canadians wouldn’t be able to recognize her. Perhaps that was the reason
Bernadette liked the Olympics so much, Polly thought. Because it emphasized the
attention drawn to fellow countrymen and women.

Polly took another look at Bernadette. All
of a sudden, nothing in the woman’s demeanor gave a hint at her burning
ambition. Pensively, the Canadian was shoveling salad into her mouth while her
long, dark hair fell into her face.

***

Just as Monica Jordan and Agnes Lion
entered the stand reserved for players and officials the scoreboard switched to
the names of the players due on court next. Natsumi Takashima’s name, along
with the embarrassing scoreline next to it was replaced with the names of
Gabriella Galloway and Sophia Thrassa.

“What on earth was wrong with Nats?” Agnes
wondered, still looking at the scoreboard.

Monica shrugged. “Haven’t heard that much
from her during the off-season. Maybe she has a new love interest and is
missing her?”

“She would have told us about that,” Agnes
grinned while making her way down the stairs.

“She can’t keep things like that a secret,
can she?” Monica laughed. “Probably it was just the pressure of being the top
seed.” Then she pointed to a row of free seats a little further away. “Let’s
sit down over there.”

The seats were at the far edge of the
reserved area and opposite the player’s box where coaches and family sat during
play.

“You don’t want her to see us?” Agnes
wondered, following Monica through the rows and apologizing to the spectators
who had to get up to let them through.

“I never liked it when friends were
watching,” Monica mumbled.

“You’ve forgotten that you were weird when
you were young,” Agnes teased her.

“I was?” Monica shot back, but not without
winking at her old friend. She turned her attention back to the court. The
stadium was filling quickly with spectators, who had taken a break after the
previous match.

“I only want to see how this new prospect
unfolds,” Monica said, pointing to the player’s box where Gabriella Galloway’s
new coach, Fredrik Nordström, had taken a seat. “They worked pretty hard in the
off-season and he told me he had a good feeling about Gabriella.”

Under polite applause the players entered
the court and started their warm-up. Agnes leaned over to Monica.

“It’s strange not to see her twin in the
box,” she whispered as the chair umpire announced that play would start. “Did
Gabriella say what exactly happened?”

Monica shook her head. “She just said she
needed a change. But I assume the reason behind it is that she couldn’t bring
herself to tell Luella that she likes girls. Gabriella knows for ages, but you
know Luella. Always the one who gets her way.”

“Oh dear,” Agnes sighed. “That’s pretty tough
considering that they are twins. Only a year ago they used to be inseparable.”

“Tough for whom?”

“Gabriella, of course.”

Monica nodded, but didn’t say anything.
Twenty minutes later Monica and Agnes were both sitting on the edge of their
seats. Gabriella Galloway had easily taken the lead with a combination of
powerful groundstrokes and clever shotmaking.

“She is mixing it up beautifully,” Monica
whispered. “I must congratulate Freddie on his work.”

It was 5-2 for the curly-haired American
and she was serving for the first set. But after ten minutes Monica and Agnes
began scratching their heads. The American player had had several set points,
but couldn’t make the deciding point in her favor. Once again Gabriella was one
point away of wrapping up the set– and squandered it with an easy forehand into
the net.

“Deuce,” chair umpire, Camilla Sanchez,
said into the microphone.

“Oh, dear,” Monica moaned quietly. “She’s
choking.”

“Yes,” Agnes said more to herself than to
her friend. “That was the third set point. I always lose concentration after
the third, because it makes me angry I missed my chance again and again. And
then my serve gets broken.”

In fact, down on the court Gabriella looked
visibly frustrated. She grabbed new balls, stepped up to the baseline and
nervously served the ball over the net. It went wide. The second serve was hit
so timidly that Sofia had no problem smacking the ball so hard to Gabriella’s
backhand side that there was no way for the young American to reach it.

After three good opportunities to decide
the game, Gabriella had suddenly given Sofia a break point. Turning to the back
of the court the young player closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

“Yes, so much for the game,” Monica nodded
knowingly.

With an easy error Gabriella’s serve was
broken.

***

“What do you do with all the plants?”

Lynn Welch looked up from her dinner plate
in surprise. Alice Chevallier, a rookie on the PR and service team, sat down
opposite her and stared into the clear evening sky. Her question had come out
of nowhere.

“What plants?” Lynn asked.

“I heard you always win potted plants at
the end of the year,” Alice explained to the chair umpire.

Lynn laughed. Last December she had been
crowned Queen of the Love Game, a game all the chair umpires played. Every
umpire had four guesses at which players would come together as a couple. At
the end of the season, during the Year End Championships, the umpire who had
guessed right won a prize. It was always a potted plant. Lynn had won it the
previous year and the year before. All in all she had won it many times. She
simply was the best at spotting prospective love birds.

“I usually give them away for Christmas,”
she admitted. Alice nodded. Life on the tour never really allowed for making a
home with a garden or pets. Or relationships.

“How do you plan to defend your title?”
Alice asked and Lynn smiled at her use of tennis terminology.

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” she said. “We
still have until the Australian Open to place our bets.”

The screech of a moving chair made them
look up. Anastasia Stea, another chair umpire, made her way through the table
rows and waved to them. Lynn checked her watch. Anastasia had umpired the
evening match between the top seed, Natsumi Takashima, and the Canadian, Polly
Duke. It had started only about an hour ago.

“That was quick,” Lynn stated when
Anastasia sat down with them. She would have expected a closer match, but one
hour suggested a very fast dispatch of the Canadian. “Natsumi must have been on
fire.”

“Nope,” Anastasia sighed. “She got bageled
in the first set and lost the second 3-6. It was pretty horrible to watch.”

“Oh dear,” Alice said. “Hope she will do
better in Sydney.”

Even though the players trained hard in the
off-season to stay fit, it wasn’t uncommon for them to have a slow start.
Upsets were characteristic of the first tournaments of the year.

“So, where were we?” Alice turned back to
Lynn. “Who do you have in mind for the Love Game?”

“Yes,” Anastasia threw in. “Give me a hint
so I have a fighting chance.”

Lynn grinned smugly. “I really don’t know
yet. But I have an eye on Sasha.”

“Sasha?” Alice frowned. “Certainly her
engagement disqualifies her.” Lynn bit her lip. Of course, Alice was unaware of
Sasha’s preferences. Only a few people knew about the player’s interest in women
let alone Anastasia’s intermezzo with Sasha half a year ago. Anastasia moved
uncomfortably in her chair.

“You’re right,” Lynn said quickly. “I just
tried to fool Anastasia.”

Both Alice and Anastasia chuckled and Lynn
relaxed, while her thoughts wandered back two months to an evening in Istanbul
during the Year End Championships. Sasha had stormed through the full room,
throwing herself on Candice’s apprentice, Tom Richardson, and had screamed
wildly about pictures. Her fiancé, Jaroslav Bradka, a defensive football player
for a British premier league team, had run after her, slipped on the spilled
fruit punch – and had knocked out his soon-to-be wife with a kick in the nose.
After that they had rushed Sasha to the hospital, and the Czech player hadn’t been
seen for the rest of the off-season.

Lynn wasn’t sure what she was looking for.
She wasn’t sure what was going on. But something was. She just had to keep her
eyes open.

***

Heavily, Gabriella sat down on the locker
room bench. The metal of the locker door was cold on her back but she
was too disappointed and exhausted to move away from it. This hadn't
happened in months, if not years! Ousted from a tournament in the first round.
By an aging player ranked way below her. Moreover, Sofia Thrassa had sustained
an ankle injury in the Asian swing three months back and word had it that she
hadn’t started training until mid-December. Gabriella on the other hand had
begun her off-season training as soon as she had moved to Florida, first
hitting with Elise and Amanda, then working scrupulously with Fredrik Nordström
on a few things to improve her game.

She had felt fantastic upon coming to New
Zealand.

But now she sat in the locker room and
buried her head in her hands, close to tears. She had lost the first match of
the season. It had gone well until she had to serve for the first set. She was
up two breaks, leading 5-2. Until then, she had held serve easily and she had
felt good about her shots and her movement. She had also felt that Sofia still
lacked confidence on the court. The Greek had missed months of proper training
and match practice which had shown in her shot selection and her movement.

How could she have lost this set and
eventually the match? What had gone wrong with her? She never had problems with
these big points before. She was known for holding her nerve when she had to
serve out a set or a match, and had done so many times in the past – once even
in a Grand Slam final. Why couldn’t she do it here in a small tournament?

Gabriella opened her locker, still puzzled
about the loss she couldn’t comprehend, and took out a fresh towel and her
spare clothes. Then she stopped. A horrible notion was creeping up her spine,
closing in on her. She had won those big points, those big matches with her
twin by her side. She had won them for their twin pact, for their plan to
conquer the world together, to climb and fall together. This had been her
purpose and motivation. And now Gabriella was alone.

Gabriella slammed the locker door shut,
imprisoning the treacherous thought. She didn’t need Luella. She didn’t need
Luella’s fault-finding, her pomposity nor her clever ways of letting Gabriella
work for Luella’s ranking. Everything Gabriella did from now on she would do
for her own sake. Every win would be her own.

Gabriella stepped into the shower, closed
her eyes and dipped her dark long hair under the stream. The patter of a
million drops echoed through the empty locker room. After Luella’s Wimbledon
success, all eyes were on her sister and nobody had paid attention to
Gabriella. Her new-found independence had motivated her in the second half of
the previous season. Why did it feel so different now? Nothing had changed,
Gabriella wondered. Or had it? Since she had put together a new team, she had
been asked about her coaching situation, her goals, her training regime. She
was her own entity now, independent of Luella and she had clearly demonstrated
that she wanted to step out of her sister’s shadow. Now she had to prove that
she was able to and in her first attempt she had failed.

If that was what independence felt like she
didn’t like it.

***

Turning a corner, Tom Richardson held on to
the thick stack of paper under his arm and looked out for the room number he
had been given earlier on when he was still at the tournament site. He was on
his way to an important appointment for which he was well prepared. Much
better, in fact, than he used to be for interviews or video shoots. He
chuckled. But then he stopped himself. He needed to be serious. This was
serious. Tom sighed. For the last two months he had avoided ruminating about
the photos he had clandestinely taken over the course of the last season. They
showed a few of the female players in delicate situations and they had been
causing headaches as they had first been lost and then apparently found by
someone unknown who sent prints of the pictures to said players.