Mural
Eight
“FOCUS!”
Another shot hit me square in the chest as my racquet swished at empty air.
“Get your head in the game or I’m going to put the next one right down your throat.” Lissa really growled at me. I’d never seen her so intense. I didn’t even expect her to be here today. I don’t normally come in on Wednesday. She gave me a wicked serve right back along the wall and it barely touched the floor before it came off the back wall low in the corner.
By some miracle, I caught it with the tip of my racquet and even though it wasn’t in the sweet spot, I got enough on the ball to slam it into the end wall without lifting it more than six inches off the floor. This time Lissa growled as she scrambled back to her original spot and slammed the ball back to me again. My head finally snapped into the game and I was just ‘there’ when the ball came back. I gave it enough back spin on my return that it hit the front wall and died. There was no way Lissa could get to it. She screamed like it was her victory.
“Yes!” I looked at her like she was crazy and the look in her eyes told me she might just be. She set up to serve again without hesitating. I was ready for the heat this time and drove the ball off two corners and down to the floor. She sent it back to me just as hard and I had to take it off the back wall. She spiked. I returned. She came in low and I dropped the ball dead by pulling my racquet back just at the moment I made contact. She dove at the ball and returned it, but it bounced back off the wall and hit her for an interference call. No point.
The rest of the match followed the same pattern. When I had come onto the court, I was still thinking about what the dean had told me. I was surprised to find Lissa there. She said she always played on Wednesdays and snapped me up when my name came up on the rotation. I wasn’t doing well processing things for the first several volleys. There was too much going on in my life. I looked at Lissa in a whole new way and she got irritated with me. God! I was in that gorgeous woman’s bed this weekend. In her.
The last time she yelled at me, somehow it got through to me and suddenly I couldn’t see or hear anything but the little blue ball as it flew around the room. I was the ball. It was wherever I was. I simply couldn’t miss.
I think it is the first time I ever beat Lissa in a match. And I was sure she hadn’t held back. When she called out the final score it didn’t even register in my brain that I’d won. When she wrapped her arms around me for a hug, we squished together like a couple of wet sponges. Then it hit me. I’d just won. Man I felt great! I could just do this forever.
We left the court and two guys I didn’t recognize were standing outside. I hadn’t really been aware of them before, but I vaguely remembered seeing them when I went onto the court. They must have watched the whole game. One was wearing the white polo shirt and blue warmup pants of the club trainers. The other was in jeans, but wore a plaid shirt and tie with a corduroy sport coat. Lissa brought me up short as I was headed for the showers by grabbing hold of my arm and hauling me straight in front of the suit.
The guy looked me up and down. I was still breathing pretty hard, but I stood up straight under his scrutiny. I wasn’t sure what he was, but he seemed important. The club trainer had a clipboard and they glanced through the notes there and then back up at me.
“What’s going on?” I asked. I think I was asking Lissa, but I was looking at these two guys.
“Tony, this is Mr. Jacobson, athletic director at SCU,” Lissa said.
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Jacobson,” I said, holding out my hand to shake. He took it and shook it firmly.
“I think you can call me Sam. If all goes well, we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. Let me introduce John Gilbert. John is a personal trainer here at the club.” We shook hands.
“What’s this all about?” I asked. I had a suspicion, but… Gee!… I’d only had my conversation with the Dean a couple of hours ago. What was the rush?
“Tony, you talked to Dean Peterson a little while ago. I’m not exactly sure you understood what he was offering you on behalf of both Pacific College of the Arts and Design and Seattle Cascades University. I was sent down to assess your potential for the athletic portion of your scholarship and to discuss your training program. SCU doesn’t have a racquetball club yet, so bringing on an athlete in that area is a stretch for us. It means that we don’t have coaches or other staff that could help you. And, while you will have access to SCU facilities, we can’t really provide training staff in time for you to get ready for this year’s competition.”
They were really acting like this was all a done deal. An athletic scholarship? For an artist? Get real. I liked racquetball, but it’s not a varsity sport. I looked at Lissa and began to shake my head.
“I’m training for a return to Opens in the fall,” Lissa said. “The best workout I get is from you. I’ve agreed to work as your coach for the Intercollegiate in exchange for you helping me get ready to defend my title.”
“I don’t think I have time for this…”
“We’ll talk about your time, Tony,” Lissa said, “First listen to the offer. John is my trainer here at the club. He’s agreed to take you on as well. The trainer is not the coach. John will get you through three days a week of weight and flexibility training, including Pilates. It does absolute wonders for your reach.”
“The weight training is limited,” John broke in, “because we don’t want to tie up your speed in bulk. It’s focused on increasing your power, not building up additional muscle. As for aerobics, you’ll get enough of that three days a week when you train with Lissa.”
“Three days a week? I’m already fucking overwhelmed with school!” I blurted out. “Now you want to add three more days of training and longer workouts?” I was near tears. The fantasy Dean Peterson painted for me was just that—a fantasy. The reality was just a lot more stress in my life. I turned away. Lissa caught me before I got to the locker room door and caught my arm.
“Just dress and get back out here,” she commanded. “We’ll shower and take a hot tub at my place.”
“I’ve got homework.”
“Bring it with you. I’ll help. Pull your head out of your ass and focus on me.” I looked up into her intense blue eyes. I was still pissed and felt like shit. But I couldn’t look away from her. “We’re going to get you through this. We’re going to do it together. Tony, this isn’t just about you. I don’t have a coach and I need your help, too. Now get dressed and be out here in five minutes.” I just nodded and went into the locker room.
“There’s thirteen different weights of muslin and canvas, the primary material used in studio and theater,” I said. “I’m supposed to have a description of each one and its uses for a class presentation in Fundamentals tomorrow.” Lissa was stretched out in the tub next to me. We were both naked, but it wasn’t sexual this time. In fact, I was having a hard time even thinking of her sexually. We were sharing a hot tub like any other two athletes would after a match. We each had a large bottle of cold water and were drinking steadily. I sweat so much during a hard workout that I can lose as much as three pounds in water weight. That’s three pints of water I need to replenish to avoid dehydration.
“And why have you waited until tonight to start this project?”
“I was kinda busy this weekend.”
“God, Tony! You can’t blame not getting your homework done on having two insatiably horny women around!” I looked over at Lissa. We held a straight face for almost five seconds before we both spit our drinks out of our mouths and broke down laughing. I laughed so hard it almost felt like an orgasm. I had visions of myself sitting at a desk writing a paper while Melody and Lissa made out naked on top of it. Yeah, sure. I could do that.
I felt so much better after laughing that I just sank down in the tub and laid my head back on the edge.
“What do you like best about school, Tony?”
“Mmmm… I like my girlfriend. And my… um… coach.”
“All right. Number one on Tony’s ‘why I like school’ list is sex. We got that. What else.”
“I like painting. I mean really painting or even drawing. When I sit down at my easel, or when I pick up a sketch pad, I enter my own world. I could do it forever. That’s why I thought I’d like art school. I’d be able to spend all my time in that zone. Like when I sketched you this weekend. I loved all the sexy things we were doing, but when I was sketching, it wasn’t sexual. I was lost in the shadows. Did you know that when the light is right, there is a little extra shadow on your throat, right here?”
I stroked the line of a vein along the right side of her neck from her jaw to where it disappeared beneath her collar bone. She shivered a little, but I was so caught up in remembering that one little detail and how lovingly I’d rendered it on paper that I scarcely noticed.
“Did you know they say that an artist falls in love with every model? It’s not that they want to have sex with every model—I’m sure not interested in old man Johnson’s johnson—but drawing creates such an intimate connection that you see things that no lover would notice.” Lissa took a deep breath and sighed.
“I’m going to have a completely different attitude the next time I model,” she said. “So, number two on the list is drawing and painting. What else. What has made you happiest since you’ve been here at school? What do you look forward to?” I paused for a few minutes and began going down the catalog of my classes. I really did like Art History, even though the class itself was boring. There were moments in Fundamentals and Concepts that I felt excited. Usually when I was mixing paint or had my hands in clay. But those all paled compared to drawing. There was one thing, though, that I really looked forward to two or three times every week.
“Racquetball. It’s funny. I just realized that when I’m on the court I get into a zone, just like when I’m painting. Did you know that on court two there’s a black scuff on the end wall about two feet off the floor and eight inches from the left corner? It’s about three inches long. When I’m centering myself before a serve, I look at that black scuff mark. Everything in the room has a relationship with that one small point. When I hit the ball, I know how far and in what direction from the mark it will hit. I see an opponent’s shot come off the wall in relation to where that mark is. I can feel the speed and direction of the ball and know where I need to be to get to it.”
“Fuck. You have got to teach me that.”
“Me? Teach you?”
“I don’t think there are more than a hundred racquetball players in the country who would understand anything you just said,” Lissa said. “Probably only a dozen who can do it. If it can be taught, I want to learn it. So, number three on your list is racquetball. Anything else?” I thought for another minute, but I couldn’t think of another thing I look forward to each week. I shook my head.
“Okay, then. Here’s the hard part. What do you hate?” That was going to be the hard part?
“Everything!”
“Wrong. You just listed three things that you love.”
“But two of them don’t have anything to do with college.”
“Sure they do. They might not be curriculum, but they are as much a part of college life as Art History. Now, what specifically do you hate?”
“I’m depressed all the time. I hate myself. I hate my life. I hate school. Everybody there is talented and knows what she’s doing. I’m a big fraud.”
“Tony, look at me.” She pulled my chin so I had to face her and get lost in the blue depths again. I wondered if she knew there were black flecks in her irises—all tiny streaks that point toward the center of her pupil. “Tony!” She snapped into focus and I pulled away from the draw of the zone. “Depression is a real, physical malady. It has causes and symptoms. And it can be cured.”
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