Rhapsody Suite
Eight
HE MUST HAVE SAID IT LOUDER than he intended because the ref’s whistle was blowing before the ball hit the front wall.
“Technical foul. Poor sportsmanship. Deduction of one point. No serve.”
Holy shit! In racquetball if you get called for a technical foul you lose a point, even if you don’t have a point to lose. I didn’t expect the refs here to be so hard on people. If he heard the comment, I figured it would merit a warning, but not a foul. We hadn’t really started the game yet and I was leading zero to minus one. Wally was really going to be pissed if he lost by that point. I couldn’t figure out why the hell he was so upset. Sure, there was a drawing of him posted on the board, but it was a good drawing, damn it. What’s with the faggot shit?
He came back strong with his next serve and evened the score at zero-zero. I had to put his trash talk out of my head and get with it or this would be my last match. We played hard with the score rocking back and forth, but when he had me down ten to nine, I could tell he was regretting the point he lost with his profanity. I saw his muscles bunch as he went into his service motion and knew before the ball left his racquet exactly where it was going to come to me. The ref called “side out” and I stepped up to serve. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure he was ready and could see the sneer on his face. Yeah? Well eat this.
Two aces later I was up one game to none in the match.
Wally was good—the strongest I’d faced since my disastrous first round. He nailed me in the second game and after a five-minute break he was back in the service zone. He pushed off for a drive serve and I was right behind him, five feet back at the safety line. We played hard for over twenty minutes until my last serve came scooting back against the wall three feet away from me and he flubbed the return. He turned and argued with the ref for a hinder, but the line judge put thumbs down and the match was mine. He still ignored my offered hand and stormed off the court. I stepped out and Lissa grabbed me to head in the opposite direction. That’s when I noticed I had a little fan section. Bree and Allison were cheering for me and chanting my name. Jim, the guy I beat yesterday afternoon was there, too. A couple of the other women I’d sketched yesterday who weren’t playing in the morning match were clapping. What surprised me, though, was that beside Coach Jacobson, I saw my dad.
I ran up and gave him a hug.
“Dad! When did you get here? Did Mom…?”
“Just me. We looked up the scores and the competition clips last night and I decided to catch a plane down from Omaha early this morning. Sorry I didn’t get here for the start of the match. I heard there were some fireworks.”
“Yeah. It was nothing intentional. I think it did more to throw him off than me. It’s just these two…” I pointed at Bree and Allison.
“We’re sorry, Tony. I had no idea they’d create such a mess,” Bree said.
“I told her about them and I just thought they were so cool that people should see them. But we took them down,” Allison said. Both of them were looking up at Coach Jacobson and he nodded. I had a feeling he had something to do with the removal. Bree handed me my sketchbook with the loose drawings inside the cover. I introduced Lissa to my dad, and while Dad was congratulating her on my win, Sam pulled me aside.
“Tony, show me some good sportsmanship. You represent our school,” he whispered.
I didn’t have time to ask if I’d done something wrong when somebody cleared his throat behind me and said, “Excuse me.” I turned to find Wally behind me. I might have cringed a little, not knowing what to expect, but if anything, he looked contrite. Behind him I could see his coach with his arms folded glaring, not at me, but at Wally.
“I just wanted to say ‘sorry,’ man. You’re a good competitor and I lost my cool. There was a bunch of trash talk about you in the locker room and I let it get to me. Anyway. Congratulations.” He held out his hand and I shook it gladly.
“It wasn’t my idea to have any of that stuff displayed,” I said. “I’m sorry if you were offended or if you took any crap because of it. I hope we’ll meet on the court again.” He nodded. Then I had a sudden inspiration. “Hey. Would you like the drawing? You can do whatever you want with it then and you won’t have to worry about anyone else seeing it.”
“Really?”
“Sure.” I leafed through the loose pages in my book and pulled out the picture of him. He took it and looked at it closely. His eyes came up and met mine and he smiled. He pushed the page back at me and I thought he was refusing.
“Sign it?” he asked. We all laughed and I grabbed a pencil out of my bag, scrawled my name on the bottom, and handed it back. “Thanks. Good luck for the rest of the tournament.”
“Now,” Dad said. “Come and tell me about how things are going and introduce me to all your fans here.”
“How about if I shower and change first? I’ve got to rinse out my clothes and get them dry before my noon match.”
“Here, Tony,” Sam said. He handed me a bag. “With the schedule today, I figured you might need a fresh change. Just put your dirty uniform in the bag and Bree will go wash it.”
“What?” the cheerleader screamed.
Coach turned to her and said firmly, “And it had better not come back faded or shrunk, understand, Brianna?”
“Yes, father,” she said.
“Wait. Coach Jacobson is your dad?” Bree nodded while Sam just laughed.
“And she can be quite a handful; but I think you already know that.”
“Yeah. But… I mean, nothing happened, Coach. Really.”
“So I’ve heard,” he chuckled. He waved me off toward the showers and turned to talk to my dad.
My next match was with a guy who’d suffered his first loss that morning to the same Rob that had trounced me in my first match. We sized each other up on the court, but I didn’t detect any antagonism. We’d both lost to the same guy, so it was like a race for second place between the two of us. The matches were getting longer as the competition got tougher. We played three games and were never more than two points apart. I felt like it was sheer luck that I nailed my last serve and pulled out the match. It seemed like there was less and less time between matches now as the field narrowed. Bree handed me a clean uniform on my way into the locker room and took my dirty one on the way out to lunch.
“I can do my own laundry, Bree,” I said.
“No way. If dad found out I didn’t comply, I’d never hear the end of it. He is the athletic director, you know.” She leaned in close to me and whispered in my ear. “You are so going to owe me when this is over, though.” I swear, the swivel in her hip when she turned and walked away from me could have knocked me over from across the room. Maybe if I left now, I could be back home before she knew I was missing.
We had a light lunch and dad was enthusiastic about my prospects. He obviously liked Lissa—who wouldn’t?—and was amused by the unending line of girls who came by asking if they could have my sketch of them and if I’d sign it. Sam Jacobson was steering the conversation around to National Singles and said that if I was in the top tier the school would send me. “We want to see you in the final bracket, but whatever happens, we’re glad to have you as a member of our team. The founding member, as it happens.” I finished the last spoonful of the rich, meaty soup Lissa had ordered for me. All I had to drink was water. I was drinking like I’d never seen water. The Ektelon National Singles Tournament. Wow! It was really a possibility.
When Bree came to the table, she brought Allison with her and both girls seemed a little less sexually aggressive toward me. I suppose that had to do with Lissa, Dad, and Sam all being there.
“You seem to have cheerleaders, too,” Dad said, looking at Bree and Allison.
“Yeah. Much as I like ’em around, though, I don’t think racquetball is really going to become a cheerleader sport.” I joked. “Just isn’t enough room for their… uh… gymnastics.” I grinned at Bree. I was willing to joke and tease them, but I was staying glued to Lissa’s side. For some reason, I think Dad noticed.
My next opponent was a kid from SoCal. He was good, fast, and had a backhand that sizzled. Once you dropped to the lower bracket—as in having lost once—games were only to eleven points instead of fifteen until semifinals. We played three hard games and I ended up winning eleven to eight on the last game. He just sort of fizzled in the last ten minutes. It was like sudden death. One minute a guy’s a contender and the next minute he’s out of the competition. I had to figure out how to stop feeling so bad about those who lost. I was sure most of them wouldn’t be that upset if I went down.
The next crisis appeared at seven o’clock that night in the form of my opponent in the semifinals. While I’d dealt with the guy from Memphis State, Rob Snyder had fallen to the defending National Intercollegiate Champion, Karl Higgendorfer. So, the semifinal match was going to be a replay of my first match of the tournament. This was not going to be fun. Lissa led me away after last match and shower at five and just gave me water and a power bar for dinner. We talked strategy and she took my music player from me. After scanning through my playlists, she set one playing and put my headset over my ears. I was told to stay put until warmup time.
The music was mostly dubstep with a mix of grunge tossed in. It had an underlying edge and strength that just filled me up. She’d started the list with “Fire and Ice.” By the time she called me to warm up, I was listening to Alice in Chains pounding out. “We pay our debt sometime.”
Rob won the toss—I hadn’t won one since the tournament began—and elected to serve. The ref called “first serve” and Rob looked over his shoulder to make sure I was ready. I had my racquet held up over my head as I scuffed at an imagined wet spot on the floor then stepped back across the receiving line while I slowly counted to five and lowered my racquet. When the ref calls the serve, the server has ten seconds to put the ball in play, but he has to wait for the receiver to be ready. Racquet held over the head is a sign to wait. If I took too long, I’d be called for a penalty, but waiting five seconds gave Rob only five seconds to center and serve. As soon as he turned away from me, I moved to the right. I knew just where this ball was coming and when it whistled down the sidewall toward me, I sent it back so hard and so close to Rob’s head that he ducked instinctively. Before he’d regained his balance, the ball came off the front wall and bounced off his foot. “Side out!” the ref called. I picked up the ball and moved to the service area.
“Now let’s play racquetball,” I said lowly as Rob passed me. He jerked toward me with a scowl on his face, but he didn’t raise his racquet, so as soon as his toes were behind the receiving line, I made a driving serve to the left. He returned, but it was weak and I came back for the point.
Rob is a hell of a competitor and he adjusted fast to my more aggressive strategy. Before we’d finished the first game, it was beginning to get physical. You see action photos in magazines and the players are always diving across the court with racquet outstretched. Their bodies are parallel to the floor and you know that in less than a second that player is going to smash down on the hardwood and burn the skin off his whole body. Well, that’s how our match was turning out. It wasn’t just me diving, either. I was keeping the ball low and hard and Rob was spending a lot of time bending and scooping in order to keep the ball in play. I won the first game, he won the second. I was in control in the third leading by two points and only two points from victory when the unthinkable happened.
It was legit. There was no evidence that he was doing anything but going for the ball, but he took my legs out from under me when he hit me and I did an almost complete backflip before I came down. Almost complete. My right ankle was turned awkwardly when I hit and I felt the pain lance up all the way into my hip. I screamed and heard the ref blow the whistle and yell “Time out!”
Lissa and Sam were on the court before Rob had managed to leave it. They were quickly followed by the tournament doctor and an ASU trainer who’d been assisting all athletes. The doctor pulled my shoe off and felt around my ankle. It was tender but I was determined to get back on it. Sam and the trainer hooked themselves under my arms and helped me off the court. I didn’t put much weight on it as I moved off. Dad was there as soon as I was down on a bench with his hand on my shoulder asking me how I was. I couldn’t focus on him, though. I had to listen to the doctor as he poked and prodded. I saw Lissa look at him and he sort of shrugged. She took my face in her hands and forced my head around to look her straight in the eyes.
“Tony, how badly do you want to go to Ektelon Nationals?” she asked.
“Lissa, I can do this. I want to do this. I can take him. I just want to get there. It’s important.” She looked deep into my eyes as if she could read how committed I was and then she looked up at Sam and motioned for him to follow her.
“Trust me, Tony,” she said as she left.
“You should stay off of this,” the doctor said, checking under the ice pack. “No tournament is worth permanent injury.”
“It’s okay, son,” Dad said, but I shook them both off and turned to the trainer.
“Tape it,” I said. He looked at the doctor and the doctor shrugged again. The trainer pulled out a roll of athletic tape and began quickly wrapping my ankle and crossing below my arch. The tightness of the tape would support the injury and hold the swelling down until I finished the match.
I was getting nervous. I could only catch glimpses of Lissa and Sam talking to the ref and line judge. They’d called a guy in a suit over who I recognized as the tournament director. In a match, you get a maximum of fifteen minutes to recover from an injury and resume play. I was fidgeting around trying to get my sock and shoe on so I could return to the court. I knew I only had a minute or two left. Dad was still touching my shoulder, trying to just pour his strength into me. I stood up and felt the twinge in my ankle as I put weight on it. The ref had returned to his microphone with Sam, Lissa, and the tournament director following him. I’d taken only one step toward the court when he spoke over the public address system. Almost 200 people gathered in front of the court for the semifinal went silent.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Competitor Tony Ames of Seattle Cascades University concedes the game because of injury. Game and match go to Rob Snyder of Louisiana State University.”
The scream in my throat turned to a sob before it reached my mouth and I collapsed against my dad.
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