Slice [On Hold]

Chapter 3: Brodie

I'm down a game in the third set but I've won the first two sets which means I don't have that tingling sensation between my shoulder blades that I get when I feel things turning against me. Luigi is going to drag this out but I'm still going to win this match. I've played enough games to read the energy of the court, to know when it's shifting and when it's just being stubborn. Right now it's being stubborn. I return Luigi's serve, the powerful smack of the racket like white noise in my brain and I panic for a moment when I realize that I want this to be over more than I want to win. Point: Luigi Boisvert. 30,15. I return to center court, hop twice, then move left trying to clear my mind.

The logic goes like this. I want this to be over. If it's not going to be over quick, then I want to win. I have to win. I squat low and win a point on my return of his serve. Point: Brodie Archie. 30 all. In the real world, to break a man is to hurt his family, to hurt his pride. In tennis, to break a man is to break his serve. I want to win this match in three sets. Just three sets and I get to go to the hotel, which isn't home but also isn't here. Luigi might win this set, which means we go to a fourth and then it's really game time. Because my back is screaming and my mind is reeling and I can't let this match go to five sets. Not for the fans, or the drama of the US Open Finals, or the sport itself. Maybe another night, any other night, but not tonight. Not when I keep seeing Erin's face in my mind, the way she used to laugh at my antics on the court, the coppery glint in her thick auburn hair under the Florida sun–

Point: Luigi Boisvert. 40, 30. I'm losing it. At this level, any sport is a mental game. The rest is muscle memory, luck, how well you slept the night before. These factors fill in the edges of your performance. But the meat in the middle, the thing that determines the energy of the game, is your mind. Better to lose a limb than your cool. I glance up at my coach which is a mistake. Val shakes his head once at me. To anyone else watching they wouldn't even notice the subtle movement. This single nod means, 'you're throwing it here, you reckless coward.' I smirk back, not really at him, maybe more for the crowd. It had been a long time since I'd turned from the court to find actual comfort and reassurance in Val. Now it's almost routine, just a tick that players do. But I don't hate Val and I never have. He knows this, and he knows what this means coming from a person like me. That's always been enough for us. Any more, and it would just be too much. I don't do more, not even for the man who holds my career in his hands.

I bounce again twice and adjust the strings in my racket. The man who strings my rackets knows how I like to pluck at them and he designs this into their tautness so I don't inadvertently throw off my game. Every habit is studied, every tick optimized against. I'm going to give Luigi this game and it will be his last. It's not that I'm technically superior to Luigi. He's beat me before and he will again. The suave European is damn good, even if an elitist ass. But tonight I'm on home court, I'm cockier. These things help. However the real underbelly of why I'm going to beat Luigi Boisvert tonight is because I need to get the fuck out of here more than he needs to win, and every inch of drive, every competitive fiber of my being, every ball I've ever hit in my life...if all of that is channeled in a single direction, the synergy perfect, no one can beat me. I visualize it as I lose the point, giving the game to Luigi. I visualize all the forces in my life, the chaos and the pain and the hate, coming together for just another thirty minutes, maybe an hour tops, and the match will be mine.

B. Archer    6 6 5 6

L. Boisvert  4 3 7 2

The crowd is cheering so loudly I can feel the vibration of the sound in my body. I drop to my knees near the service line, seeking relief in my back. I press my forehead to the hardcourt, looking like a man in prayer instead of a man in agony. For a moment I worry that I won't be able to stand back up. That Val will have to pick me up like a baby and sling me over his shoulder until he can shovel me face down into the backseat of a waiting car. My back is rearing forcefully to life a bit too quickly. Maybe the doctor didn't get as close to the cluster of nerves as he thought. I somehow find strength, my stomach curling with nausea at the suppression of trying to appear at ease, as I make my way to the net to shake Luigi's hand. Fucker just had to drag this out, to amplify the pain. And for what? He squints his eyes at me, his mouth firm. I feel myself nearly leaning into him for support, but he quickly draws his hand away after the photos have been snapped. We don't like each other. Not just during the game as in any healthy competition, but after and before the game as well. He thinks I'm a disrespectful rebel with a penchant for violence and I think he's a stuck up old-school snob. Still, no one else in the world understands me better than him. No one else knows the routine, the sacrifice, the bone crushing pressure, the superhuman glory. Our rivalry is the most intimate relationship of my adult life.

I raise my right hand up above my head, tapping its heel against the center of my racket, giving the American fans what they came to see: Brodie Archer, all American, winning the US Open. I wipe off my sweaty tattooed arms with a fluffy white towel, drinking deeply from the water bottle cocktail of electrolytes and supplements designed exactly for my post-game needs.

When I'm standing on the podium, kissing the metal trophy for the fourth time in my life, the lights from the cameras and the stands blinding, I feel the wetness around my eyes. I feel it like I do on the padded leather table of the doctor's office. Like it's coming from somewhere else, from someone else, and it's only just appeared on my skin. I smile through it, acting as a man overwhelmed by the full glory of his accomplishment. Tears of gratitude, exhaustion, excellence. But I'm not crying for the match, for the win, or for the pain in my back. I'm crying for Erin. And when I walk off the court and the cameras follow me through the tunnel and to the interview stage, I wipe my eyes with a towel, an indistinguishable mixture of sweat and tears and all American athleticism. It's not until I'm face down in the backseat of the black car SUV that is my transition vestibule between the lonely world of center court and the even lonelier world of the hotel, that the tears start again. This time in earnest. The racking of my body splits my back, my breathing erratic. Val doesn't say anything. He can read my body, my emotions and my reactions better than I can. He'd been the one to tell me the news, after all.

"Congratulations, Brodie. The doc will be at the hotel, he will give you something to help your back and to help rest." I grunt out a response, something between a 'thank you' and a 'thank fuck.'