Out of breath, Paola finally settled down on a bench and took out her cell phone. It was best to call Sasha’s management. But after dialing the number, all she heard was the phone ringing on the other end.
“Take the morning off, Lars,” she told her cameraman, who packed the gear and headed to the media center. Paola got up and began walking around Ken Rosewall Arena. On the other side there was a kiosk that sold cold beer and she really needed to cool off before continuing with her tight schedule. While on her way, Paola went through the list of things to do. She still needed to organize the location and setting for the new show Supersport Channel was about to launch with some of the younger, upcoming players. It would allow tennis fans a look behind the scenes while pushing the popularity of these soon-to-be top players. It was initially intended to be a couple of clips with the Galloway twins that showed their life on the tour and the cities they visited. But the channel had broadened the idea over the off-season and would produce videos with some other players as well, even though Paola was sure that the twins’ good looks helped to put them in the spotlight more than the others. One week ago, however, Paola had learned that – unlike in previous years – Gabriella and Luella had planned completely different tour schedules. Initially, Paola was surprised, as the twins were known to stick together. Even a slight distinction in ranking should not have derogated their union. But then she remembered the conversation she had had with Gabriella at the end of last year’s season, and in the off-season Gabriella had moved to Florida and had gathered a new team around her.
The new information only confirmed that there had been a dispute between them, and the Austrian journalist was confident she knew why. Luella had already won a Grand Slam and had entered the Top 10 while her sister was still waiting in the wings to prove herself. Paola grinned. This year would see drama, she was sure of it. And she would be there to catch it with her camera and her microphone. Thank god the off-season was over.
At 9:45 in the morning there wasn’t much traffic at the watering hole and with a glass of beer in her hand Paola happily sat down on one of the nearby courts to watch Martina and Antonia hit some balls. When they finished practice Paola decided to go, but the sudden sound of squealing tires made her turn around. A black tournament car sped through the entrance at the back of the park and down a little side path next to the courts. It stopped in front of an outside court where a play area for kids was installed. Peeking through the fence, to her surprise Paola could make out the slender figure of Sasha Mrachova coming from the kids zone court. Surrounded by her team and a handful of bodyguards Sasha approached the car. Paola snorted. Sasha had indeed forgotten about her appointment. Or had she given Paola the wrong information on purpose? And what on earth was Sasha wearing on her head? Admittedly, the Australian sun was lethal and Sasha had fair skin, but the visor seemed disproportionately huge. Paola wondered if the Czech could even see the ball when she tossed it up for the serve.
***
“No, no, no,“ Ted muttered. “This is ridiculous.”
He stared at the long list on a sheet of paper which Tom had just handed him. “Over thirty people,” he counted. “How are we supposed to find out if one of them is the person we are looking for?”
Tom nodded and sighed. In defeat he sunk into the broad sofa that occupied most of the hotel room. It seemed to be the only luxury he had right now. “I don’t know,” he groaned, burying his head in a cushion. “But at least we narrowed down the list of suspects.”
Ted continued looking at the paper. Elise and Tom had done a good job figuring out who had been both at the U.S. Open and the Luxembourg tournament.
1 2 Supervisors + 4 staff members (players’ service)
2 Candice Crantz + 2 staff members (communications)
3 2 Chair umpires (Stea, Sanchez)
4 2 Physios (McManus, Reichelt)
5 Marieke + 2 team members
6 Morgana + 2 team members
7 Carina + 3 team members
8 Angela + 2 team members
9 Ivana + 1 team member
10 Monica/Agnes + 1 team member
11 Bernadette
12 (Martina/Antonia)
“Antonia and Martina are in brackets because they are recipients, right?” Ted asked and Tom nodded. But suddenly Ted raised an eyebrow.
“By the way, you forgot someone,” he remarked. Tom looked up in surprise.
“No, Elise and I were absolutely sure,” he said, shaking his head. “We thought of everyone. We even included those players who lost in the quarter- and semifinals of the U.S. Open, as there was a chance that they were still around on finals day.”
“Right,” Ted smiled. “But you forgot someone who lost in the first week and was still in New York on finals day. Not for shopping or sightseeing. Instead she was sitting in Amanda’s box blowing her kisses.”
Tom sat up straight. “We forgot Elise,” he realized. He looked at Ted and shook his head. “But like Antonia and Martina she got one of the pictures herself. It can’t be her.”
“Well, honestly I don’t think it was her,” Ted assured Tom. “But we should put her on the list for the sake of completeness.”
Tom nodded. It didn’t make it any easier that the list had grown again.
“Ok, let’s recap this whole thing again,” Ted said pensively. “Pictures were given to Sasha in New York and a few weeks later to Elise, Martina and Antonia in Luxembourg. At least these are the players we know of. Sasha’s print showed her looking at one of the Galloways. Pretty harmless, in fact, whereas Elise and Amanda are smooching, and Martina and Antonia are going for even more.”
“If these are the only prints given to players so far, I don’t understand why?” Tom pondered. “I don’t understand the motive behind this.”
Ted looked up at Tom. “Good keyword, boyfriend,” he exclaimed. “We should be looking for a motive. That’s how they do it in the movies. That’s how you convict the villains.”
Tom chuckled and patted the couch cushion for Ted to sit down next to him. Snuggled against each other they took a look at the list again.
“It can’t be blackmail,” Tom stated. “There haven’t been any demands so far. It must be something else.”
“We need to find out if there are any connections, rifts or secret histories between our photo models and these suspects,” Ted said excitedly.
“Well, Sasha got the picture only a couple of hours before her final. If you remember, she had serious problems concentrating in the match and at one point resorted to insulting the chair umpire.”
“Anastasia,” Ted threw in. She was also on the list and he made a mental note to take a closer look at her.
“It’s fair to say that Sasha probably would have played much better if she hadn’t received this picture,” Tom concluded. “The one person who benefitted from it was – Amanda.”
Ted and Tom looked at each other uncomfortably. They didn’t want to believe that Amanda and Elise had lied to them. “Well, Amanda helped you get the pictures from my room. She knew what you were looking for,” Tom said. “And it would have been easy for her to slip it under Sasha’s door. They were staying at the same hotel.”
“I can’t believe she would do that.”
“Me neither,” Tom sighed. “But a Grand Slam title is a motive, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is.” Ted looked away for a short moment and Tom squeezed his arm. Ted hadn’t won a Grand Slam yet, even though he had come close. But he had lost all three finals he had been in so far. What wouldn’t he do to win a major?
“So, what about the picture of Elise and Amanda?” Tom asked to take Ted’s minds off the fact he had never won a Grand Slam. “She could have lied and told us she got it anonymously. We cannot prove she told the truth.” Ted shrugged.
“She also loves the picture,” Tom remembered. It was a really great shot, with perfect light and an even more captivating subject. “She framed it,” he said with a little smile, proud that his picture recei
ved the attention it deserved.
“It’s a great shot, so she wanted to keep it,” Ted speculated. “That’s why she said somebody slipped it under her door. That makes me think of Antonia and Martina’s picture. They are friends with Amanda. Perhaps Elise gave them the picture because she wanted them to have something to frame, too.”
“They were having sex against the wall in a dark hallway,” Tom blurted out. “I cannot see Elise being the type of person who thinks a picture of this kind should be framed.”
“No, she’s a bit uptight, isn’t she? So, that’s probably a dead end.” Ted sighed.
However, they couldn’t deny that a Grand Slam was a good motive.
***
So far she had avoided drawing any attention to herself, even though her demand to be taken for the short drive around Sydney’s Olympic Tennis Park from the Kids zone to the main parking lot had caused some chuckles from the bodyguards and the drivers. But Sasha decided not to worry about it. Much worse was the short moment when she had to cross the players’ lounge and the locker room. She hadn’t talked to any other player yet, but felt the sideway glances that followed her. Everybody seemed to look at her nose, until Sasha noticed them. Then they quickly looked away and pretended to keep on going with their conversations.
Sasha peered into the locker room and gratefully noticed that it was empty. All this trouble because of a mild curiosity. Why couldn’t she have stayed away from Luella Galloway? Sasha took out her belongings from the locker and smacked the locker door closed, but the impetus only made it swing open again. The Czech player suppressed the urge to kick the locker and instead slowly closed the door once again. It really was her own fault. Sasha just hoped that she could avoid Luella as long as possible. She hadn’t seen her since that fateful night in the hospital in Istanbul. But she had thought about the hard-hitting twin every time she looked into the mirror. There was nothing she could do or say about Luella’s assault, otherwise the Galloway would tell everyone about Sasha’s advances.
What a joke her off-season had been. She had spent one week in the hospital in Istanbul while everyone else had gone on vacation already. When she finally left the city at the Bosporus and flew back home, hitting balls would have been the only way to get the incident and the thought of the Galloway twins out of her head, but she had to pause from training for another two weeks. The idleness and being stuck at home had resulted in a severe obsession with her nose and her looks. Even though everyone constantly told her that she looked fine, the truth was her nose had been feeling bigger since the fracture, and she could see the tip from the corner of her eye. Once in a while she caught herself leering at it. One day her eyes would get stuck staring at her nose. When she finally was able to go out and train again, she insisted on playing on a separate court with blinds. Nobody should be allowed see her.
Sneaking out of the locker room and through the player area Sasha quickly boarded one of the tournament cars and ordered the driver back to the hotel. She had an appointment with her manager, Kurt, who was already waiting in the hotel restaurant, sipping on a glass of red wine.
“I’d rather not,” she said, sitting down at the table.
Kurt looked up and raised his eyebrows. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t want to do the photo shoot.”
“Why?” he asked slowly. But they both knew the answer. When Sasha didn’t say anything Kurt leaned forward.
“Listen, Sasha, your nose looks fine. I’ve told you a hundred times. Nothing to worry about.”
Sasha clenched her teeth. What did Kurt know about it? It wasn’t his nose. She knew that it was bigger now. Even though nobody else seemed to notice the fact, it made her uncomfortable in her own skin, and this was a feeling she had never experienced before. She used to be immaculate. Her legs, hips, boobs, and shoulders were perfectly proportioned, topped off with a face that had already graced the cover of every prestigious magazine.
“Can we postpone it?” she asked.
“No, not again!” Kurt leaned back, waving his hands. “Really, what is going on with you? We’ve cancelled Brisbane, we’ve cancelled the sponsor meeting two days ago, you wear this huge visor which looks absolutely ridiculous – I’m getting asked about it all the time. And all this for no good reason, because there is nothing – I repeat – nothing wrong with your nose.”
He leaned forward again and took Sasha’s hand. “I wouldn’t send you out there if there was a problem. You understand?”
Sasha looked at her manager. In the last six years since they had been working together his hair had gotten thinner and his body had grown stout. Soon he would be a big, bald man.
“Yes. Understood,” she said.
Yes, he would be really bald and really big while she only had an imaginary big nose.
***
“So?”
“So what?”
Gabriella looked up at her twin sister who was sitting opposite herself and tried to look bored. They had been waiting in the offices of Supersport Channel for almost ten minutes now – without speaking to each other.
“So, will you tell me what’s going on?” Lulu almost yelled. “You move out without explanation. You don’t answer my calls. You get a new team. You play Auckland. Something you want to tell me maybe?”
“No,” Gabriella answered flatly. “I just needed a change.”
“Is it the Wimbledon title?” Lulu spat out. “Are you still jealous?”
“I don’t care about that title. I know that it was me who actually won it. I don’t need that dish in my living room to remind me of how well I played.”
“Gaga, please, you sound like a ridiculous, huffy cow. You didn’t like the dish in our living room because it bears my name. That’s why you moved out.”
“Firstly, don’t call me Gaga anymore. My name is Gabriella. Secondly, I moved out because I don’t like your attitude. Thirdly, I don’t need you anymore. Unlike you, I have friends now.”
With satisfaction Gabriella noticed that her last comment had struck home.
“Great friends you have,” Lulu remarked, but she had toned down her voice. “Elise Renard. I hear she is a lesbian.”
Gabriella felt her head grow hot. “I don’t care about rumors.”
“And not surprisingly your new best friend Sasha Mrachova is also a rumored lesbian. She didn’t say a word about what really happened in Istanbul.”
Now Gabriella looked up in surprise. She restrained herself from moving uncomfortably in her chair or biting her lip. Why would Lulu think she was friends with Sasha?
“I’m not friends with Sasha.”
“You seemed really concerned about her well-being.”
“You knocked her out, Lulu!” Gabriella was getting annoyed. She didn’t want to talk about Sasha. For most of the off-season she had successfully managed to avoid thinking about her. Moving to St. Petersburg, hanging out with Elise and Amanda and the little love affair with Kiara over the Advent season had pushed the Czech to the back of her mind. Of course, the first thing Lulu did was bring all the memories back. Her sister had a knack of being one huge pain in the ass.
“It was self-defense, you know that,” Luella snapped. “She tried to make a move on me.”
Gabriella sighed. Lulu really believed everybody was after her. If she’d known about Gabriella’s little history with Sasha, she’d probably even be jealous. The best thing to do would be to redirect the conversation away from the Czech.
“What do I care about your problem with Sasha?” Gabriella shrugged. “I care about my ranking and I won’t let you get in my way.”
“Get in your way?” Lulu snorted, taking the bait. “I’m twelve ranking spots above you. There are eleven other players in your way and if you get past them we can talk again.”
“I’ll surpass your ranking after Wimbledon,” Gabriella said, surprised that the words came out of her mouth sounding like a fact. But it had the desired impact. Lulu seemed baffled. She had to defend two thousand
ranking points along with the title on grass. Not an easy task, and she knew it.
While Lulu was still pondering over her ranking, a young woman entered the room.
“Hey, girls,” she said with a broad smile and waving two sheets of paper. “I’ve got the first assignment for you.” She winked and handed them the paper before leaving the room again.
Gabriella read through the first page, then let the sheets fall down.
“Trampoline?”
Gabriella looked up. Her sister was also baffled and they both stared at each other in surprise. The first task they had to film for their planned show on Supersport Channel would be a game of tennis. The net would be stretched between two poles in the air and the twins were supposed to jump high on a trampoline while making and returning their shots.
“That’s totally screwball,” Gabriella and Lulu blurted out in unison. The unexpected accordance in words made them laugh. Sometimes it was amazing how similar they were. And suddenly Gabriella missed the connection she shared with Luella. Why had such a deep rift formed between them?
“Our first match against each other this season,” Gabriella smiled at her sister in reconciliation.
“I’m the favorite for this one,” Lulu grinned.
“Oh, and why is that?” Gabriella demanded to know.
“I’m half an inch taller than you,” Lulu said smugly. They both laughed, then fell silent again. Too many things were left unspoken and they knew it.
***
When Polly Duke stepped into the elevator she felt a sudden hesitation rising in her chest. As if it wasn’t right what she was doing. As if she shouldn’t accept all the good things that were happening to her lately. The fact was that Polly could have never afforded the hotel and she knew that Bernadette would pay for the dinner tonight, like she had done every night the previous week in Brisbane. Ever since they had started playing together in Luxembourg last year, Bernadette had been very generous paying for all sorts of expenses. In Brisbane she had booked Polly the same hotel she stayed in, and even though Polly had protested Bernadette had insisted on it.
Love Game - Season 2012 Page 4
