Love Game - Season 2012 (24 page)

***

This time she had taken a car. Buses were
nice, but you never knew if the weather would stay sunny and bright. Morgana
thought back one year to a time when she had taken the road with Sasha
Mrachova. It had started raining the moment they stepped out of the bus. How
absurd it seemed twelve months later that she had recruited Sasha for such a
mission, but back then the Czech had provided Morgana with an interesting
detail. Up until a few years ago,
Tennis Nurse
novels had to be ordered
by mail from an address in Brighton, United Kingdom. Their joint efforts to
find the author had ended in misery when Sasha got drunk in a lesbian bar and
Morgana had to search for clues on her own.

Morgana shook her head, thinking about the
Czech. There had been hushed whispers since the French Open that Sasha was
about to get married to a football player. Morgana never gave much thought to
locker room gossip but this time she knew what to think of it. When the young
girls went crazy talking about wedding dresses and that good-looking fiancé of
Sasha’s, Morgana had silently chuckled. Sometimes she really believed that of
all people she knew best about who was gay and who wasn’t on the women’s tennis
tour. Even though there were players who masterfully kept their sexuality and
preferences a secret, who were never seen in public without a hot guy and who
looked like Stepford Wives – they all had a secret craving. And when they
needed a new
Tennis Nurse
novel the best address for a quick and
discreet delivery was Morgana.

“They should pay me hush money,” Morgana
said to herself when she turned onto a little street that led her to the
address she was looking for in Brighton. “How about twenty percent of their
annual income? That wouldn’t be too unfair, would it?”

Especially in Sasha’s case that would be a
nice discretionary earning for Morgana. It was common knowledge that the Czech
made more money off the court with endorsement deals and advertisements than on
the court with prize money – and the latter wasn’t a low number.

Morgana parked the car on a side street
some hundred feet away from the little house she had visited first a year ago.
Last time, an old man had opened the door, but Morgana knew that a woman was
living there as well and that woman had been visited by Monica Jordan. There
was a good chance that this woman was connected to the group known as the
Secret
8
and that she was the author of the
Tennis Nurse
mystery series.

Morgana had decided not to approach the
woman. Every direct approach seemed to end in a dead end street. Last year
Agnes had stayed dead silent when Morgana asked for details about
Tennis
Nurse
, and now Bernadette was reluctant to talk and her new source only
answered once every light year. Also, she didn’t know how serious these people
were but she had already received a warning to stay away from – yes, from what
exactly? That was the question, and Morgana promised herself that she would
find out, but she needed to be smart. Firstly, she wanted to get a real name
and put a face to the anonymous writer. This way she could find out more about
her while the author and her accomplices remained oblivious to her research.

Morgana jumped out of the car, put on her
jacket and walked down the street to the intersection. The house she wanted to
observe was at the cross street, so she was able to sit in the little corner
café, drink English tea and wait for something to happen.

But before she could take a seat and begin
her observation the red door of the house opened and a hooded figure stepped
outside. Morgana held her breath. This wasn’t an old man, but the body shape
suggested it was a woman. She turned into the main street and quickly walked
down towards the centre of the seaside town.

She would have tea later, Morgana rejoiced.
That was luck. It was meant to be!

She hurried after the woman and pulled out
a small point-and-shoot camera she had bought at Heathrow Airport, turning the
little wheel to get ready for the first photo. When the woman came to a stop at
a red light, Morgana tested the camera and took a snapshot of the hooded woman
but it was really hard to tell whether she was close enough for a good shot.

“I have to get closer,” she whispered to
herself. Also, she should try to get ahead of the woman in order to get a
picture of her face. She began jogging. When she passed the woman, she didn’t
look over to her. Her heart was pounding. This was highly dangerous detective
work. Morgana tried not to think of deadly blowfish. She tried to focus on her
mission. She would run to the next intersection, stop and fake shortness of
breath, then shoot a picture from her hip when the woman was approaching.

That was the plan and, even though it was
hard work for a fit athlete like Morgana to simulate breathlessness, everything
seemed to go well when she pulled out the little camera from her pocket. The
woman walked towards her. It was now or never. Morgana pressed the release –
but nothing happened.

“
Merde
,” Morgana mumbled. She had
forgotten to turn the little wheel.

The woman had stopped and was looking at
her. She was thirty feet away. Morgana couldn’t see her face as the sun was
behind her, but she could see the woman slowly clenching her fists. She pulled
the hood further down her face, turned around and hurried back up the hill.

***

Polly was panting. A drop of sweat was
making its way from her forehead down her cheek. She felt it running across her
throat and into her shirt. Four more. Polly pulled the elastic rope from behind
until she had stretched her arm from above her head to the front. Three, two,
one.

Her serve was a strength but there was
always room for improvement, as Bernadette used to say. It had to get better.
This was a very important week for her and Bernadette as it was one of the few
grass court tournaments before Wimbledon and the Olympic Games.

In order to get Polly fitter and to reduce
the risk of injury, Bernadette had developed a demanding fitness and training
schedule for Polly. Depending on the tactics needed to beat their next
opponents Polly sometimes practiced serves or volleys especially, sometimes
returns. But she also had to work on all the muscles that made a big serve or
quick movement possible. Twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, she
worked out in the gym.

She sat down on the grass and leaned
against the net post, her arms and legs akimbo. She breathed heavily.

“No pain, no gain,” a voice behind her
said. Bernadette put her racquet bag down on a chair and clapped her hands.
“Come on, get up again.”

Polly jumped to her feet and walked to her
bag. Pulling out her phone, she quickly checked the scores for the ongoing
matches. The doubles teams usually practiced after the singles players, and
they also played late in the afternoon. Polly and Bernadette were scheduled
fourth on an outside court. The second match had started only twenty minutes
ago but it was turning out to be a very one-sided affair.

“Mint is down two breaks,” Polly declared
while shouldering her racquet bag.

“Oh, well,” Bernadette muttered. “I don’t
feel sorry for her.”

“Why would you say that?” Polly looked up
in surprise.

Bernadette smiled a little bit. “She is not
a very friendly person. That is all.”

“I think she is can be quite friendly
actually,” Polly replied. She didn’t like Bernadette’s smug tone.

“She has a tendency to use people for her
own ends,” the older player said resolutely. Polly bit her lip. She had heard
that before.

“Well, she has been really nice to me so
far,” she nevertheless said in Mint’s defense, but somehow her own words
sounded doubtful.

Bernadette shrugged. “I won’t tell you what
to do. Perhaps she is just one of those typical Americans. Uneducated in an
offensive way but oblivious to the fact, therefore completely full of
themselves. From a professional point of view I wouldn’t waste time with her.
You wouldn’t learn anything as she doesn’t have any talent. She has money
though. That helps, of course, to make it on the tour.”

Polly had to admit that the stereotype fit
Mint quite accurately. The American often seemed bigheaded and brusque with
other people. Yes, Chili had warned her, too. She also remembered what Elise
had told her when they were strolling through the Galeries Lafayette. On the
other hand Polly remembered the morning in Melbourne when Mint gave her two
pristine books for her old and dog-eared
Tennis Nurse
novel. She
couldn’t believe that the American only did that to irritate Chili. It had been
a very generous gesture.

Something else seemed quite generous.
Letting a person in on your dead mother’s drug issues offered Mint no
advantage. Or was it only a clever maneuver to lure Polly into commiseration?
But what for? Wasn’t it rather a sign of trust to be so open?

Polly sighed, taking her racquet out of her
bag and walking to the baseline. So far she herself had had no bad experiences
with Mint, but where there was smoke there usually was fire.

***

“I don’t want to know what Natsumi’s gotten
herself into,” Amanda mumbled. “None of this makes any sense, unless the pecker
is very, very valuable.”

Elise looked up at her girlfriend. They
were sitting in a little café on Marine Parade in Brighton. Elise checked her
watch. It was already ten minutes after the arranged time.

“I told you, it’s really old,” she said to
Amanda.

Amanda nodded. “But all this time and
effort to transport a wooden phallus to England is odd. There are easier ways.”

“We’ve talked about this already,” Elise
scolded Amanda. “Stop with the conspiracy theory. Natsumi wouldn’t do anything
illegal.”

Elise saw Amanda raise her eyebrows but not
say anything. She herself wasn’t convinced by her evaluation of Natsumi’s
character. From everything she had heard about Amanda’s Japanese friend she had
to come to the conclusion that if there was one person up to doing forbidden
things left, right and centre it was Natsumi Takashima.

“It’s already late,” she informed Amanda.

“Not everybody is as punctual as tennis
players,” Amanda grinned.

That was true, Elise thought. Their life
was a succession of schedules, a new one for every day. They were picked up at
certain times from the hotel, had their practice courts booked for a definite
time period and they had to catch buses, trains or flights every week, only to
get to a new place with a new schedule. Their life was so rigid that even the
belatedness of another person made them nervous.

Elise let her shoulders hang. No wonder she
was so rigid herself. Especially when it involved talking about desires or her
fascination with the woodpecker. Elise peeked over to the handbag in which they
carried the Japanese phallus. Why couldn’t she be as relaxed about these
matters as Natsumi or even Amanda?

Perhaps it really took some time, Elise
wondered. She should have felt grateful for Amanda’s sympathy but in fact it
embarrassed her that Amanda had detected her insecurities. But why did she feel
embarrassed in front of Amanda? Elise looked at her girlfriend and felt bad.
The Australian would never ridicule her or talk about this with anybody else.
And she was the most patient person on earth.

Amanda was stirring her tea, watching the
other patrons of the café. A red streak of hair had come undone and fallen over
her cheek. Elise took it and tucked it back behind Amanda’s ear, then she
leaned over quickly and gave Amanda a kiss on the cheek.

The Australian looked up in surprise.

“This is probably the only place on earth
where we can do this,” she whispered to Elise. “I think in Brighton gays are
such a common sight I don’t feel that anybody cares or even looks.”

Elise agreed. Just walking through the town
gave them the feeling that suddenly they belonged to the majority of people.
They had a good laugh when they crossed Dyke Road and even took a picture with
the road sign behind them.

Suddenly full of derring-do, Elise leaned
over again and gave Amanda another kiss, but then she stayed close to her
girlfriend’s ear.

“The thing gave me all kinds of weird
ideas,” she mumbled, nodding in the direction of the handbag.

“Okay.”

“But I don’t want to fuck you with it,”
Elise gulped.

“Okay,” Amanda said again, watching her
girlfriend.

“I wouldn’t mind though if you did.”

Elise bit her lip and waited for Amanda’s
reaction. The Australian looked her over, then she frowned.

“I don’t like the idea, Elise.”

Elise’s felt her head grow hot with
embarrassment. Damn, why couldn’t she shut up? This was even more embarrassing
than the moment when her mother had caught them in the act. But then she heard
Amanda chuckle.

“My main issue with the idea is that,
first, this thing is really old and we have no idea where it’s been before or
what Natsumi did with it before – but you know Natsumi – and, second, don’t
forget it was stored in a moldy, rotten box for quite a while and, third, even
though I’d love a quickie with you in a public privy, someone we don’t know
will come in soon to pick up the pecker and with our luck we’d probably lose it
in the loo. So, no. I don’t like the idea.”