Cin City

"That's not for you to say."

"It's not?"

"Absolutely not. And you know that."

The call home was supposed to be about my dad's birthday. It soon became about tennis and about Luci Wijn. He'd watched Luci live on ESPN. A brilliant first set followed up by emptiness where Luci did nothing other than show up. I wanted to defend; I wanted to find some aspect of the deciding sets that could redeem her. There was nothing. On the bright side, Piet had fucked off. On the not so bright side, my fight to keep my mouth shut wasn't going well. So my dad's birthday got sidetracked for a bit.

I wanted some deep insight, some piece of tennis philosophy to impart on Luci, something to lift the scales from her eyes. My dad had been doing his video analysis, seriously doing it, because retirement bored him. Honestly, it was no big deal. So he wasn't a stranger to what Luci could do. And he was a deep thinker on the game, very deep. What I got was set straight.

"It's between her and her coach."

"That's my point."

"Shannon... it's between her and her coach."

Do they ever lose the ability to make an adult feel like a child? Does that ever go? My father had scolded me. Yes me. I pleaded. "So what do I do?"

"You be her friend. You be her Marianne."

When talk shifted to Jackson I shifted too. We'd already talked about his final in Washington. About his strengths, the old players that Jackson reminded my dad of; old players like Agassi and Sampras. I told my dad that Jackson reminded me of Agassi too. And we talked about how Jackson would go today. It was kind of surreal talking about Jackson and not objectifying him at the same time. I didn't tell my dad that I knew him. I was happy to name drop other famous players that I had seen, like being in the same elevator as Federer. Not Jackson though, I didn't want to trivialise Jackson.

I made other calls too. To Jimmy and to Marianne; who was looking at flying home through Chicago – if that would work for me. It would, I'd make it work. I'd take a shot of Marianne right now. She'd done so very much for me. I was thinking on what my dad had said about being a Marianne when Luci dragged her bags into my room.

"I have a gift for your father."

"Thanks."

"It is Belgian chocolate. From when my grandmother lives."

"From where your grandmother lives?"

"Yes."

"Thank you, Luci."

She held a bar in each hand. "We can test one, to make sure it is good enough to go postal with it."

"Yeah, we should. Is it good luck in Belgium to eat chocolate before a match?"

"Actually, to eat some is good luck... maybe I have made that up."

So we had chocolate for breakfast, me and Luci, Belgium style. We also had a second breakfast downstairs at the hotel. I hadn't seen Jackson. Our paths hadn't crossed. Was he at a different hotel?

Cincinnati's stadium was the same as Washington's, but different. And it wasn't in Cincinnati at all. We were so far out in the suburbs that the tournament's name was meaningless. There's a temporary feel to permanence that American cities achieve around their edges. Where the hotels and eateries look the same. Where business hubs spring up from the earth as if an interstate connection was some kind of fertiliser. Christchurch has that feel on its southern edge. As if the location is more valuable than the buildings that sit there.