Love Game - Season 2012 (19 page)

After the clay tower construction Gabriella
had rushed back to the hotel, cleaned herself of the blue dust which had
covered her from head to toe and booked a new room as Luella Galloway. Under
the shower, she had developed a plan for another architectural masterpiece. To
the detriment of the hotel’s restaurant sous-chef, she had demanded an array of
little local delicacies to be brought to her room and prepared on a mountain of
stacked silver trays.

Grapes, figs, slices of melon and pineapple
lay arranged next to small pastries and Spanish tapas.

“Oh, Lulu!” Sasha exclaimed, amazed by the
extravagant and lavish spread.

Luella’s name sounded like a horrible
scratch on a lovely record. Gabriella bit her lip, but then braced herself.

“I didn’t make them myself,” she smiled,
walking around the table. “I forced the cook to make some pies for us. They
were really busy but I charmed them into producing something special.”

“The advantage of being a Grand Slam
champion,” Sasha giggled. “You get people to do anything, right?”

Again Gabriella swallowed, but nodded
bravely. Soon she would have her own Grand Slam, she was sure of it. Sasha
kicked off her shoes and advanced to the bed while Gabriella pushed the tray to
the end of the bed.

“We have fruits en masse, Spanish tapas as
well as peanut pudding cake and coconut pie” she presented the dinner, while
Sasha flung herself onto the cushions.

For a while Sasha observed Gabriella while
she stood with her arms spread.

“You’re such a sweetheart,” Sasha finally said.

Gabriella let her arms sink. Suddenly,
there was so much more between them than just a serving table with a sweet
picnic. The softness of Sasha’s voice still lingered in the air, snuggling
against Gabriella’s ear. What did Sasha expect her to say? Why had she said
that? And did Gabriella really want to know?

Wasn’t it much nicer to pretend that Sasha
really liked her? Her, Gabriella, and not just the idea she had of someone she
thought was Luella Galloway, the Grand Slam champion.

Carefully, as if not to whisk the softness
out of the room, she climbed into bed and pulled the table closer.

“What would you like to try?” she asked
quietly.

“Everything,” Sasha replied. “But first I
want a kiss.”

She pulled Gabriella closer and bit her
softly on her bottom lip.

Gabriella had begun to crave these moments.
When she had a moment on the practice court, under the shower, when she was
alone in her hotel room, she yearned for the touch of Sasha’s lips and the
softness of her hair. And she loved the fact that the Czech couldn’t get enough
of her. Even now Sasha had a hard time letting go of Gabriella, still nibbling
on her lip.

The Galloway pulled away slowly, grabbed a
peanut pudding cake and let Sasha have a bite.

“It’s delicious, Lulu,” Sasha mumbled after
a while. She leaned forward to give the American another kiss, but Gabriella
had turned away. There it was again. The loud scratching that stopped a lovely
tune. Lulu. Luella. Lu. How she hated it when Sasha said these words. The more
they saw each other the worse Gabriella felt about it. And she couldn’t even
blame the Czech. It was her own fault that Sasha believed she was Lulu.

Gabriella turned to Sasha, who was now
munching on a coconut pie, and gave her a light kiss on the cheek. She had to
tell her. She had to tell her that she wasn’t Lulu. But how to do that,
Gabriella didn’t know. It wasn’t that easy. How would she explain to Sasha that
she had been lying to her for three months? Nor did she want to elaborate on
that problem now. Sasha had begun to remove her top and coconut rasps fell onto
her breasts.

“Oh no,” Gabriella grinned. “Let me get
this.” She leaned over and picked up the coconut pieces with her mouth. It was
just the distraction she needed.

DOING THE SPLITS

Paris, France

Elise checked the road sign and sighed a
little. 300 km to go until they reached Paris but it felt like their road
adventure had almost come to an end. Amanda too had felt the slight dampening
in their mood when they had packed their bags into the car this morning, and
after passing through Dijon she had suggested taking a side road. This way they
had more time before they reached Paris, more time for each other and the view
was better, too.

In the last four days which she had spent
with Amanda alone, Elise had realized how little time they actually had to
themselves even though they were traveling together constantly. 

They had left Rome early in the morning
after their last match and had made the long haul to Milan, along the coast,
stopping to enjoy lunch next to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Over the following
two days they had visited Lausanne and Bern, and had initially planned to drive
up to Strasbourg to finally hand over the Japanese
mara
to Natsumi. But
yesterday Natsumi had lost in the first round of the Strasbourg tournament and
had informed them in the evening that she would take an early flight to Paris
to hit the practice courts as soon as possible. So, once again plans had
changed and the woodpecker was still in their possession.

“I’m a bit relieved that we won’t be
meeting Natsumi until tomorrow,” Elise said, while looking down onto her lap.
She had unpacked a plastic bag and taken out the wooden Japanese box. With her
finger she lightly felt the corners inside the box. “It’s still a bit damp.”

“Didn’t you blow-dry it the other day?”
Amanda asked, without taking her eyes off the road.

Elise nodded. “To no avail. It smells a bit
weird, too. Not like curry, however.”

Now Amanda frowned and turned her head to
check the box. One quick look and she knew what had happened.

“It’s mold!” she yelled. She almost drove
into a tree when she slammed on the brakes and parked the car at the side of
the road.

“Why are we stopping?” Elise asked, but
Amanda had already jumped out of the car, run around and flung Elise’s door
open.

“Mold!” she yelped. “We need to get rid of
it!”

She grabbed the box out of Elise’s hands
and held it far away from her body, then made a few steps into the little
forest on the side of the road.

“You want to throw the dildo away?” Elise
couldn’t believe it. They were almost in Paris where they would finally give
Natsumi back the pesky travel companion.

“Not the pecker,” Amanda explained. She
carefully took out the wooden phallus and examined it. “The pecker seems
alright. But the box doesn’t. There’s mold everywhere. That’s highly dangerous
for our health.”

She took the
mara
out of the box and
handed it to Elise.

“What if the box is valuable?” Elise
gasped.

“Then Natsumi should have paid for a
guaranteed parcel delivery service,” Amanda said grimly. “She had the chance.”

Then she swung her arm and hauled the box
far into the woods.

They both looked towards the trees where
the box lay on the ground. Elise nodded. “True. It’s really unbelievable that
she’s made us carry that thing around for months and months now.”

They hopped back into the car and sped down
the road toward Paris. Even though it most probably meant that Natsumi would
have a nervous fit, Elise was relieved that the smelly box was gone. She
stuffed the remaining woodpecker into her small backpack where she kept all the
souvenirs she had collected along their road trip. Several packs of Italian
cookies, two huge salamis – one of which she wanted to give to her dad – and a
small, multi-functional Swiss Army knife, a present from Amanda.

Suddenly she wasn’t that sad that their
road trip was almost over. Soon Amanda and she would stroll the streets of
Paris, the city where they had kissed the first time.

***

“Lulu? Are you ok?” Sasha looked at the
Galloway twin who had turned her back towards her and had closed her eyes.
“Luella?”

“Yes.” She almost sounded annoyed by
Sasha’s inquiry. “Yes, I’m fine.”

Unsure what to make of that brusque answer,
Sasha leaned over and placed a kiss on the twin’s black hair. Lulu had been
unusually quiet this afternoon. Admittedly, she never talked that much but
today it almost felt like she was completely absentminded.

“Lu?” Sasha asked again, this time even
more gently.

“Please.” The twin turned her head for a
short moment, looked at Sasha and sighed, making it perfectly understood that
she wasn’t willing to talk about whatever was bugging her. But this time Sasha
wasn’t ready to let go. Something was clearly wrong with Lulu. And if they
weren’t going to have sex, they could at least talk.

“Is it your sister?” she asked.

Lulu’s head spun around. “What? What about
her?”

“Well, you two always seemed very close.
Inseparable. And these days you never even talk to each other.”

The twin turned away again. For a long
while she just stared at the wall, then she shrugged. “We have different
agendas. That’s all. Besides that, it’s not true that we never speak. We are
doing the Supersport show together.”

Sasha grinned, not only because of Lulu’s
cheap attempt at downplaying the mysterious rift that had come between the
Galloway twins, but also because she remembered the latest episode that was
airing on Supersport at the moment.

“You look great with a shovel and a bucket.
All that was missing was a hard hat,” she purred, giving the twin another kiss
on the neck. “But I have to say, all those clothes were really unnecessary.”

But Lulu didn’t smile. Instead, she kept on
staring at the hotel room wall and Sasha wondered what on earth she could do to
cheer the Galloway up. After another silent quarter hour, just when the Czech
decided that it was perhaps for the best that she get up and leave Lulu alone,
the twin slowly turned around.

“Do you like Gabriella?” she asked, looking
at Sasha.

“Well, I hardly ever talk to her,” Sasha
answered, curious where this was going. Lulu seemed to be thinking hard about
the next question.

“I mean, do you think she’s nice?”

“Yes,” Sasha said cautiously. “She seems
very nice.”

“If it wasn’t for me, could you imagine
being with her?”

Now Sasha raised an eyebrow. Was Lulu
afraid Sasha would ditch her for her estranged sister? “But I’m spending time
with you. And I’m perfectly happy with the way it is. Why would I spend time
with her?”

“Well, we look the same. We talk the same.
We are basically the same. Right?”

Sasha hesitated. Yes, the twins looked alike
and it was hard to tell them apart, but they couldn’t be more different in
manner, at least in public. “I don’t think you are the same, Lu.”

She sat up and took Luella’s hand. “See,
it’s not about looks. It’s not even the sex – which is great, by the way. I
just like spending time with you. Not your sister. Besides – Gabriella is
straight.”

Lulu looked at her for a while but she
didn’t pull her hand away and Sasha took it as a positive sign that the
Galloway wasn’t offended or intimidated by Sasha’s approach to talking about
emotional matters.

“No,” the twin said finally, solemnly.
“Gabriella isn’t straight.”

“But – ,” Now Sasha was confused. Hadn’t
she spent hours and hours watching the twins during the last season, finally
coming to the conclusion that Lulu was gay and Gabriella straight? The last
three months since she had started her affair with Lulu in Dubai only confirmed
this observation. Something else confused her. Something about the emphasis of
Lulu’s answer seemed a bit off, but Sasha couldn’t put her finger on it.

“Are you saying you are both gay?”

Sasha must have given Lulu the weirdest
look as suddenly the twin started roaring with laughter.

“No, that’s not what I was saying,” she
laughed, then pulled Sasha closer. “Nevermind.”

Sasha closed her eyes when she felt the
twin’s lips on hers, still trying to make sense of these questions and answers.
But at the next kiss she gave up.

“Nevermind,” Lulu whispered again. It
sounded like a mantra.

***

Mint turned from Rue Suzanne Lenglen into
the alley behind Court Phillipe Chatrier and entered the first practice court
to the right. Her practice partner for today was already waiting and waving
from across the court when she saw Mint.

“Mint, honey!” Natsumi Takashima was
grinning at the American and gave her a warm hug when Mint reached the chairs.

“It’s been way too long,” Mint stated.
“Good to have you back.”

Natsumi nodded. “Yes, I hated not being
able to play. Still struggling to find my form though.”

“Strasbourg didn’t go too well, did it?”

“Don’t even ask,” Natsumi said, shaking her
head in disgust. Mint grinned. She knew that in the first set in Strasbourg
Natsumi had received a bagel, and even though the Japanese girl was able to
find to her game in the second set she eventually lost the match 6-2 7-5.

“I wish I had signed up for Strasbourg,”
Mint smirked. “Now that you’re out, I might have had a chance.”

“Why didn’t you play it?” Natsumi asked.

Mint shrugged. “Evelina. She likes Paris
better.”

Natsumi shook her head and looked the
younger player over. “You really have to do something about her, Mint.”

“Whatever.” Mint shrugged once more. There
was not much she could do about her stepmother who – as her personal sponsor –
had a firm grip on Mint. “What happened in Strasbourg?” she asked in order to
divert attention from her stepmother problem.

“The problem was that I felt unsure about
doing my splits,” Natsumi explained. “It’s absolutely vital for my game,
especially on clay.”

Mint nodded. Natsumi’s splits were
spectacular and dreaded by her opponents. With this athletic trick she was able
to reach almost every ball. Due to her great movement, splits and sliding she
had had good runs in the clay court tournaments in the past years.

“I have to practice the splits again,”
Natsumi continued, taking the racquet from her bag and checking the strings.
Then she gave Mint a huge grin. “I would really appreciate it if you went for
the lines today.”

She gave Mint a pat on the shoulder and
sprinted to the baseline. They exchanged a couple of forehands and backhands to
warm up, then Mint began to hit her shots closer to the sidelines. Natsumi
carefully began to slide into her return shots, going lower and lower to the
ground with every ball.

She really had to practice her own sliding
more, Mint thought to herself, watching Natsumi from the other side of the net.
She had grown up playing on hard court surfaces, trained almost exclusively on
hard courts and always found the earthy surface tricky. But the French Open was
played on clay and all the lead-up tournaments as well. To do well on clay you
had to handle the necessary differences in movement and develop additional
techniques and approaches.

She hit a couple of inside-out forehands to
push Natsumi deep into her backhand corner, then hit a backhand down the line
to the other side of the court. Natsumi sprinted along the baseline, reached
out with her racquet and slid into the splits. Her right foot was leaving a
impressively deep skidmark in the red dirt and it probably would have been just
as impressively long – if it wasn’t for the fixed line mark. Natsumi was
stopped abruptly when her right foot got caught in the sideline’s white plastic
strip and she rolled over her ankle. Letting out a piercing scream, she fell
onto her side and didn’t get up again.

***

“What was that?” Polly put her racquet in
her bag and looked up.

The scream had come from the court next to
them and now she could hear yelling coming from behind the stands. Someone was
running.

“We should have a look,” Polly said to
Bernadette. “There’s something wrong.”

Bernadette and she had just finished a
practice session and were packing their bags.

“I have an appointment in five minutes,”
Bernadette answered. “I really can’t look after everything.”

Polly frowned. There was more agitated
chatter on the other side. “Ok, I will go over and have a look.”

Walking along the pathway, Bernadette said
goodbye and made her way towards a little garden area that was situated behind
Court Philippe Chatrier. Polly wondered if Bernadette had a meeting with a sponsor
or the press – at least this was the only reason which seemed important enough
to leave without checking on a fellow player. But then again, Bernadette didn’t
have a lot of sponsors and the ones she had didn’t consider her an important
brand ambassador. And Polly couldn’t remember a single press interview
Bernadette had given in the past months since they had started playing
together.