Cin City

Lexington

"It's Good." I shouted at that girl, at that no-name player. And in my head I wrote questions for her: Are you for real? Are you really going to do this? Then I shouted some more. "It's good... fuck. Fuck."
When I say shout I don't mean out loud. I said not one of those words out loud. Not one of them. I hardly opened my mouth. It's not that I didn't want to say anything. I always want to. Me, I always want to join in.
That I couldn't is my curse, and my curse meant that my place was off to the side - off on my own where sometimes I see things that other people don't see. If I had joined in and sat over there with the handful of spectators then I wouldn't have seen it. I would have been safe from it. And it was good, in fact it was the shot of the day.
I couldn't join those people. Not after their looks at my hair; at what I was wearing. Not after their uninterrupted conversations told me of their indifference; told me that I didn't even register.
It's not that I expected to register with them. I mean, why would I? What am I to them? Another player is what I am, watching another match - on another town's back court. Watching and waiting for my turn. Truth was I preferred it out on my own. Truth was they had given me what I wanted.
Their ignorance of me was easy. Whereas an interest: hey, take a seat, join us - where are you from? What's your name? An interest would have been harder, much harder.
So I sat alone and apart, and about where a line umpire would have sat if there had been one. I sat as apart from that congregation as I could without drawing attention to myself. Quiet me through the first one sided set. Invisible me through the second set. I was happily enjoying the sunshine day at tennis until that call, the amazingly, bewilderingly bad call. I stood with that call, a call as bad as the shot was good. Sometimes I understood players who hate-loved tennis.
People like me hit a tennis ball hundreds of times a day - sometimes thousands of times. We hit at least five days a week, most every week of the year - and that's not hard to do. We build up the years from when we're scarcely taller than the racket to when we're allowed to be fourteen thousand kilometres from home - and we understand the flight of a ball. People like me understand when a top-spin lob looks good, even if we don't see it fall. We understood flight and arc. Me. The chair umpire. Both players. The beautiful gathering of support. We all understood that the ball looked good.
I saw it though, I actually saw it. There was me, the cheater, the obscured chair umpire - the three of us all in a row; all in a line. I stood with my hands guarding my open mouth - to stop the world from forcing itself in. I stood and watched the congregation hold their applause for the cheat.
And when they did applaud it was too late, because their heartbeat of hesitation meant that they knew too. So I stood in solidarity with the cheated. And as always I did nothing other than be quiet. They said it was a choice. They said I could join in.
As I stood I watched the chair umpire defend herself.
"I didn't see it bounce."
"There's no way that was out."
"I didn't see it bounce. 40-30"
She pointed at me, with her racket, with her aggrieved racket. "Ask her."
Oh please don't ask me. Please don't.
"Player's call. 40-30."
"Godverdomme."
"What did you say?"
A shrug. A shrug was all the chair umpire got from the aggrieved player. It's hard, I guess, for a chair umpire to comment on words they don't understand. It'd be as hard as making an obvious call because you haven't seen it bounce. I saw it though. I saw the cheater, the cheating cheat. I saw her avoid me because I was the only other person in the world who knew the truth of it as a certainty. The rest, the beautiful, the chair umpire - they suspected the truth of it, or hid from it. I couldn't blame them for hiding, I was hiding from it too.
The cheat served for match point. She tried for the T. Off, way off. I could have handled it, I would have handled it differently. The return came straight down the middle and deep. A hard ball, a heavy ball. And returned with as much power as the cheater could muster.
"Cross court." Another straight down the middle and deep. Then a fifth rally. A sixth. "Go cross court." A seventh. An eighth. My hands at my mouth. My words silent. "No."
That cheat. She had luck. I'll give her that. Her weak ground shot strummed the net tape and fell for her, fell for a victory against a player ranked so very far ahead of her. A player fresh with jet-lag was my guess. Yet a player who could still make something as beautiful as that top-spin lob.
I should have said something. I should have shown some sort of reaction. What I should have done is turned my back on it. Or walked off. I should have walked off. If I had walked past that umpire, those people - then my walk off would have told the truth to everyone. Told about the cheater who had destroyed something beautiful. I told no one. I couldn't even bring myself to shake my head.
When the congregation walked off with the cheating slapper they told the truth of her victory:

6-2 7-5.

Mostly they didn't notice me. One of them did. The tallest of them took a quick glance at me. He and I exchanged in a glance that he knew I had done nothing. I would have liked it more if he had never looked my way. I would have liked it more if I had never agreed to play doubles, or ever asked to come to Lexington. I could have gone to Indiana or Texas. Why didn't I go to Texas instead? Texas would have been easy.
He was beautiful, the man that glanced at me. The curl of his mouth as he said so much without words. The penetration of his eyes. The flawlessness of his complexion at odds with the glare of the day. He'd worn sunglasses for the match. I had seen him at the beginning. I had seen all of them. His sunglasses were off by the time he glanced through me. It didn't help that he was taller than the beautiful gaggle, taller than God - and here's me like a headless chook after life has run out. His height and grace an unwanted beacon for my uselessness. His beauty familiar and miles away at the same time. Fuck.
The chair umpire passed me too. Her face set, a scratch of her hand to her eyebrow; score sheets under her arm. She spoke as if to pre-empt me. And in pre-empting me she showed how little she knew of me.
"I know."
"Player's call," I said, to myself.
I stepped down to the exact spot where the ball had bounced - there was no evidence of it except for my memory. And I walked around the net to where the only other person left on court had hunched herself over her bag. I ran through the words I'd use to tell her she'd played well, that she was right to question the call, and how sorry I was. I'd say those words as soon as I could, as soon as she'd finished working a roll of tape with her fingers. It'd be rude to interrupt her. She parted two short strips of tape for a callus on her left hand's little finger. Her words came while she worked.
"Is there something that you want?"
"I'm..." I had to clear my throat. My first real words since how long? Since the credentials desk? "I'm... My name is Shannon Smith... I'm your doubles partner."