Love Game - Season 2012

by Gerard, M. B.

  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.

  Tom stopped, having found the right room, and knocked on the door which opened immediately. Elise waved him inside.

  “Have you got everything?” she asked while heading to the table standing near the window of her hotel room.

  “Yes,” Tom answered. He followed the German player and dumped his bag on a chair. Over Christmas he had done some special research with the help of Candice, going through lists and tournament schedules for hours and hours, finally printing out the relevant information from two tournaments, the U.S. Open and Luxembourg. At these tournaments several players had been slipped prints of the pictures under their hotel room doors. It could only mean that the person who had the pictures had been at both tournaments and that it was most likely to have been one of them – a staff member, a player’s team member or even a player herself.

  Tom took out a carefully sorted pack of papers, but suddenly his eyes caught a framed photograph standing on the nightstand. He went over and picked it up.

  “I’m really sorry for all the trouble.”

  Elise smiled shyly. “I’m actually glad you took it
. I love the picture so much.”

  “You two look very beautiful in it,” he said.

  “Did you take other pictures of us?”

  Tom shook his head. “No, just on this occasion. It was a coincidence that I was there at all.”

  Tom looked at Elise and realized that the girl looked almost disappointed. He put the picture down on the nightstand again and stepped back to the table.

  “Look, these are lists of the staff members I got from Candice,” he explained, putting a pile on the table. “And here are the players.”

  “I want to do the players,” Elise said, suddenly excited again. She sat down and pulled up the paper heap. It contained entry lists with players’ names, draw sheets for the days the pictures were discovered and hotel lists of the players.

  Elise grabbed the hotel’s writing pad and a pen and spread several sheets out in front of her. Tom had to grin. The young woman displayed the same excitement as he felt. They were playing detective, finding out who had gotten hold of the pictures. Even though they were aware of the potential havoc the pictures could cause it was fun. Moreover, so far nothing bad had happened to the players. Nobody had been blackmailed. None of the pictures had been leaked to the press either. Not yet. Tom sat down beside Elise and grabbed the other pile. Hopefully they would be able to break down the group of suspects to only a couple of people.

  For quite a while they worked silently, bent over the sheets of paper and scribbling down names.

  “There were not many players left in New York,” Elise finally said. “Ted lost the pictures on the evening before the women’s final, so the only singles players left were Amanda and Sasha, as they played the final.”

  The day of the U.S. Open final, Sasha had been secretly slipped a picture of herself looking at one of the Galloway twins the day of the U.S. Open final. Amanda had never received one of the pictures personally, but a photo of Elise and Amanda had been given to Elise in Luxembourg. Tom nodded. It eliminated both Amanda and Sasha from the list of suspects, as well as Antonia and Martina who received a picture in Luxembourg.

  “There are only the doubles finalists left,” she said. “Monica and Agnes were one team and they were in Luxembourg, too. But I just can’t see them doing this. The other finalists were Bernadette Le Blanc and Sofia Thrassa. But only Bernadette was in Luxembourg, as Sofia got injured in Osaka. Bernadette played Luxembourg with Polly Duke.”

  “So the only player we have is Bernadette LeBlanc?”

  “No, the only U.S. Open finalist who was in both New York and Luxembourg is Bernadette. But a lot of the players could have stayed longer in New York,” Elise said. “We have to take a look at the players who perhaps lost within a couple of days of the final.”

  Tom leaned back and sighed. Suddenly, it seemed unlikely that a player would do this to other players. Perhaps they should concentrate more on the staff and team members. Suddenly he realized something and this time he groaned in desperation.

  “I forgot the umpires,” he yelled. “They also travel with the tour.”

  Tom looked at the sheets. The more they investigated this matter the longer the list became.

  ***

  After Tom had left, Elise cleared the table and took a look at the list she and Tom had compiled. It was rather long, she had to admit, and she couldn’t think of anyone listed doing such a thing. Why would they? After changing into her nightwear, she lay down in bed as she had an early match tomorrow morning. Elise was scheduled first on court, so she would get up at around 7 a.m. and practice. But she didn’t want to go to sleep yet. Earlier, Amanda had promised to call her tonight after a sponsor dinner she had to attend. Elise checked her watch and sighed. Amanda must have forgotten about the slight time difference between Australia and New Zealand. She slipped her hand under the blanket and fished out the novel she had hidden when Tom had knocked on the door. She had been reading the whole afternoon and she had almost finished The Magician of Miami.

  Ten minutes later she turned over the last page of the book, and just then Amanda rang in and with a big smile Elise grabbed her laptop and answered.

  “Did you go to an all-you-can-eat restaurant or why did it take so long?” she teased Amanda as soon as the Australian appeared on the screen.

  “No,” Amanda grinned. “But on the way back to the hotel I started reading the Tennis Nurse novel you gave me and I needed to finish the first chapter before I could call you. I forgot how addictive these books are.”

  “I know,” Elise said. “I just finished mine and now I don’t have anything to read.” Suddenly she regretted leaving the other Tennis Nurse novel with Amanda.

  Amanda cracked up laughing. “Do you want me to read the next chapter to you?”

  That actually sounded like a good deal, Elise thought. Also, she could listen to Amanda’s hot Australian accent. Elise nodded.

  “The first chapter is only so that the reader understands that Jane is in Japan,” Amanda explained. “She’s just escaped some bad Yakuza girls and has now returned to the tournament in Osaka as if nothing had happened.”

  Then Amanda began to read and Elise slipped down into the warm cushions watching her lover’s concentrated face.

  Jane, the nurse, had finished her duties at the tournament when she received a mysterious message.

  “The messages always seem to be random notes on the locker room wall or the scoreboard, and only Jane understands their meaning,” Amanda illustrated looking up to the screen at Elise.

  “I know,” Elise grinned. “I’ve already read eight books. Keep on reading.”

  Immediately Jane packed up her first-aid kit and sneaked outside, waiting at a side entrance. It was already dark. Soon a hooded figure stepped through the door and Jane followed her. When the woman passed by a street light Jane was able to recognize her. It was French player, Dorothée Margeaux.

  “Oh, wait,” Elise interrupted Amanda. “I’ve never heard of this character before.”

  “Me neither,” Amanda shrugged. “Have you only read old novels so far?”

  Elise nodded. “Yes,” she said, then pointed to the book Amanda was holding up on the screen. “That’s the first novel I ordered myself. It’s brand new.” Then Elise sat up on her bed.

  “Don’t you think that could be Morgana?” she wondered. “Dorothée Margeaux. Morgana Doré. Both are French players. Yes, the author must mean Morgana.”

  Amanda nodded slowly.

  “Oh, Morgana will be delighted that she has her own character now. She is obsessed with Tennis Nurse,” Elise smiled, bouncing on the bed. “Keep on reading.”

  Amanda picked up the book again and continued. Nurse Jane followed the player through the city and finally into the back of a restaurant. In the kitchen Dorothée took a quick look around, then walked to one of the cooks, while Jane waited a few feet away. Without saying a word Dorothée slipped her hand into her jacket, took out a brown envelope and handed it to the Japanese cook. He just nodded.

  Hiding behind some exotic plants Nurse Jane watched the French player sit down in the back of the restaurant while still keeping an eye on the cook who then began preparing a big fish. A blowfish.

  “Blowfish is very poisonous,” Elise mused aloud. “Did she pay to kill someone?”

  Amanda looked up. “How would I know?”

  “Why would she do this?”

  “I’m pretty sure it will be explained at some point in the story.”

  “It doesn’t make sense!”

  Amanda shook her head at her obnoxious girlfriend. “Maybe later it will.”

  “Keep on reading!”

  Amanda laughed. “No,” she grinned and closed the book with a snap. “That was the end of the chapter and we have to go to bed. I’ll read you the next chapter tomorrow.”

  “Oh no,” Elise giggled but accepted it. For a while they kept looking at each other on their screens.

  “If you had glasses, that would be funny,” Elise said sleepily. “You need glasses to be an authen
tic reader.”

  “And you need sleep. You talk nonsense,” Amanda whispered, then she blew Elise a kiss, waved and they ended the transmission.

  IN THE AIR

  Sydney, Australia

  With cameraman Lars in her wake, Paola rushed across the tournament site for the tenth time looking for Sasha Mrachova. Where was the Czech? She would be training on the last practice court, Sasha had told her over the phone. But where was the last practice court? Paola had wandered over to Court No. 15, but there was nobody there. She then had gone to the other side of the practice courts – to no avail. Paola moaned. She was running around the site like a headless chicken. It was a relief that no visitors were on site yet, blocking the paths. She would be late anyway. But really, this time it wasn’t her fault. What was going on with the Czech? Had she forgotten about their interview appointment? It wouldn’t be surprising. Lately Sasha Mrachova had been displaying a new, displeasing behavior as the tour diva. From Candice Crantz, Paola had heard that without explanation Sasha had cancelled the photo shoot she was assigned to as one of the five top players, right after her loss at the Year End Championships in Istanbul. The player’s management had then called off the next appointment for shooting a Christmas message video. There were hushed whispers that Sasha had had an accident, that there had been trouble with her football fiancé, but none of the speculations had been confirmed. A few days ago, Sasha had published a couple of pictures on her homepage that showed her under a Christmas tree holding up presents, looking goofy and happy with Jaro. Her sudden reappearance stirred the thought that Sasha had simply gone on a spontaneous love trip, forgetting all about her duties as a Top 5 player. Paola had been surprised. This was not like Sasha, who had the reputation of being highly professional about her off-court assignments. But this time love seemed to have gotten in the way of reason.