Love Game - Season 2012 (38 page)

Elise turned to Amanda. She was still
living with her parents and it would have been more logical to actually keep
the apartment, so Elise could move in with Amanda.

“Right?” she said again, and Elise nodded.

“Congratulations,” Agnes beamed. “That’s a
very important step in a relationship. Just remember to give each other enough
space.”

Elise and Amanda smiled awkwardly. There
was hardly enough space in Elise’s room for the two of them. Also, they still
had to tell her parents about the new situation.

***

“Lovely work, Tom.”

Candice watched the ending of the video Tom
had produced with a couple of players who had stood out over the last couple of
months and whom the WTA wanted to promote on their website.

Tom thanked her but couldn’t help wondering
if Candice really meant it. She hadn’t smiled once during the presentation of
the film.

“Is everything alright?” he asked.

“Yes, yes,” Candice replied and smiled
quickly. So, nothing was alright, Tom thought. He had witnessed a similar
behavior in Candice when Sasha had gone missing. In that week she had been
grateful that Tom and Alice had taken over the daily chores while Candice took
on the task of saving Sasha’s reputation.

Perhaps it was a good time to ask Candice
for a favor – however, he would make it look like he was in fact doing her a
favor.

“With the Year End Championships coming up
I know you probably want to have a feature of the singles players competing,
don’t you?” he asked innocently.

Candice nodded. “Yes, do you want to start
producing it now?”

“Yes, the sooner the better,” Tom stated.
“I would also like to include the doubles teams this time. There are some
interesting stories in there.”

“Who do you have in mind?” Candice said.

“Oh, for example Antonia Sapore and Martina
Rodriguez,” he explained. “Antonia rose up the rankings, but never stopped
playing doubles. She is one of the few Top 10 players who is also highly ranked
in doubles. That’s a pretty good achievement.”

“True,” Candice admitted. She had begun to
warm up to the idea. “Polly’s story is even better, regarding the drama with
her mother. I would concentrate on her.”

Tom smiled. This was what he had hoped for.
An exclusive assignment with Polly – and Bernadette. The older Canadian player
was actually the one he wanted to get a grip on. Shooting a video about the
doubles team meant he could follow them around quite easily without arousing
suspicion.

“Bernadette probably has interesting
stories in store, too,” he pondered aloud. “She has been on the tour so long,
you probably know her quite well, don’t you?”

Candice squinted her eyes. “No. Not
really.”

She got up and Tom watched her walk over to
the coffee machine.

“Too bad. I always like to have some
background information before talking to a player,” Tom said innocently. “Who
could I ask about her?”

He heard Candice sigh. “I have no idea,
Tom. Bernadette keeps to herself mostly. I recommend concentrating on Polly for
the video. We want to promote the younger players, you see. Polly has made
ground in singles, too. She is the story.” Tom understood that this was an
order.

“Coffee?” Candice turned around and Tom
nodded, giving her a broad smile.

He would produce a wonderful video with
Antonia, Martina and Polly, while Bernadette would pass through the frame a
couple of times. He would also keep an eye on the veteran player from Canada.
She was the only person on the list of suspects Ted and Tom hadn’t dismissed,
and Candice’s strange reaction and her obvious attempt to keep Tom from
interviewing Bernadette made him even more suspicious.

***

Hidden in a courtyard maze of a restored
factory, the restaurant Gabriella was looking for was in the heart of a
nightlife district not too far from Beijing’s gigantic Workers’ Stadium.

“This is it,” she said to her companions
and opened the door to enter.

After her Chinese lesson, Gabriella had
waited for Luella to finish her match. Then she had picked up her sister and
Sasha so they could spend the whole afternoon together exploring downtown
Beijing.

“Please, behave,” she had begged Lulu
before knocking on Sasha’s hotel room door. Inside, she had whispered the same
into Sasha’s ear.

Even though Gabriella was happily reunited
with her lover as well as with Lulu she had dreaded the first encounter between
her sister and Sasha. Beijing was the first tournament they would all play
together since Gabriella and Sasha had made up at the U.S. Open. The lovers had
skipped Tokyo – or rather, as the tournament press release announced, had come
down with a mysterious and sudden flu – and had thrown in a clandestine
vacation on Bora Bora to make up for the missed months since Wimbledon. They
had arrived fresh and happy in the Chinese capital but the horrible incident in
Istanbul a year ago, when Lulu had knocked out Sasha and broken her nose, was
looming over them and so far they all had avoided addressing it.

Before they fell asleep the night before
Gabriella had asked Sasha to come out to dinner with her and Lulu. The Czech
had hesitated but then had agreed.

Admittedly, the handshake in the hotel
corridor had been a bit awkward and in the beginning Sasha and Lulu had tried
to get around having a conversation with each other. But when the group had
stepped out of the cab in front of the Workers’ Stadium, Sasha had begun to
tell the twins about the Olympic competition in 2008 and the football matches
she had seen in the second largest stadium of the city.

“You injured your shoulder at the games,”
Lulu remarked.

“That’s true.” Sasha was surprised that the
twin knew about that fact. She had lost in the second round of the 2008 Olympic
Games and had to have surgery a couple of weeks later.

From then on they had chatted about the
various injuries they had had to endure in their careers – an issue most
players could tell endless stories about – and had made their way through the
Sanlitun district to the restaurant.

Inside the crowded diner Gabriella managed
to have Lulu and Sasha seated next to each other. They didn’t protest and
Gabriella relaxed. She studied the menu but then made an announcement.

“You choose your drinks, but I will order
the food.”

Lulu and Sasha looked at each other and
shrugged.

When the waitress arrived Gabriella braced
herself. She pointed a finger at herself and slowly spoke the words she had
been memorizing since this morning.

“
Wǒ shì yī ge
běijīng kǎoyā.”

The waitress nodded slowly.

Gabriella pointed her finger at Lulu. “
Nǐ
shì yī ge féi de běijīng kǎoyā.”

Then she said the same, pointing at Sasha.

Again the waitress nodded slowly. “Three
Peking ducks?”

Gabriella smiled and confirmed it.

The waitress gave her a wry look but
finally vanished into the kitchen. Still proud of her linguistic proficiency,
Gabriella flinched when Sasha cracked up laughing. A couple of Chinese guests
turned their heads at the Czech player, so loud was she.

“What’s the matter?” Gabriella asked.

“So, you think Luella is a fat Peking
duck?”

Luella raised her eyebrows. “What?”

Sasha nodded. “Gabriella called you a fat
Peking duck. Didn’t you see the look on the waitress’s face?”

“I ordered Peking duck!” Gabriella
protested.

“No, you called me and Luella fat,” Sasha
chuckled. “
Nǐ shì yī ge féi de běijīng kǎoyā
means ‘You are a fat Peking duck’.”

“How would you know Chinese?” Gabriella
replied.

Sasha winked. “Long story.”

Gabriella was dumbfounded. The whole day
she had repeated the wording for ordering dinner but her triumphant display of
Chinese language skills had gone wrong. However, she realized that something
else had taken a rather positive turn. Lulu had placed one arm around Sasha’s
shoulder. She shook her finger at Gabriella.

“Sis’, are you kidding us? Fat? Look at
us!” she grinned, while Sasha was still laughing. “You better go back to
Mandarin school.”

For the rest of the evening, they teased
Gabriella whenever a waitress passed their table with plates of Peking duck.

***

The wood seemed like a never-ending green
ocean with giant, choppy waves rolling in.

Mint squinted her eyes against the sun and
looked at the mountain ridge top. The long winding wall they were standing on
began somewhere in the trees and, when she turned around, it descended and
finally vanished again in the green sea.

“Amazing that this was built so many
centuries ago,” she told Polly who nodded, just as mesmerized by the masonry
parapet that meandered through the vastness.

They had booked a day trip to the Great
Wall of China with a tourist group and were now standing on the top of a wall
tower. The guide was explaining the construction history to the group who had
gathered in one corner of the tower roof, but Polly and Mint had retreated to
the other side and were looking over the treetops.

Mint still found it incredible that Evelina
had allowed her to go alone with Polly, but the Canadian apparently had made a
good first impression on her stepmother. Admittedly, Polly was hard to compare
with Mint’s usual gang of friends at home who were comprised of some loudmouth
and ballsy girls who followed Mint around. Polly was quiet and very polite, and
Evelina seemed to tolerate her.

Mint also liked Polly – more and more. Her
reticent attitude was compelling. On the one hand it forced Mint to listen more
closely and to weigh her own words. On the other hand it relaxed her as Polly
didn’t expect Mint to entertain her or play the leader of the pack. The
Canadian was very much content on her own. She simply liked being with Mint.

Since their arrival in Beijing Mint had
been waiting for a good moment to talk to Polly about something that was
spinning in her mind. Now it seemed the right time to do so.

“Can I show you something?”

Polly nodded and turned towards Mint who
took out her cell phone. She opened the picture folder and enlarged the first
picture showing Elise and Amanda in Wimbledon.

Polly opened her eyes, examining the photo.
“You took photos of them?”

“No, no,” Mint shook her head. “Not me.”

“Who then?”

“Ted.”

Polly looked her over in disbelief. “Ted
Curry?” she wondered.

“Yes.” Quickly Mint told Polly the story of
Ted falling onto the hotel balcony and losing his flash drive.

“There are even more pictures,” Mint
explained and showed them to Polly.

The Canadian shook her head. “This is
unbelievable. Why would he take photos of them.”

“I don’t know, but it’s definitely weird.
Apparently he has an obsession with the lesbian players on the tour. Who knows
whose photographs he’s gotten since last year. These pictures may only be the
tip of the iceberg.”

The guide waved at them to signal that the
group was moving further down the wall and Mint and Polly began to follow the
tourists.

Polly looked through the pictures and
handed back the phone, but didn’t say anything. For a while they silently
walked behind the chatting group.

“What do you think?” Mint eventually asked
her while they stepped down a long stone staircase.

“Could be that Ted is a perv,” she
pondered. “But we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. This whole story seems very,
very strange. What was he doing on your balcony?”

“As I said, he jumped down onto it.”

“Don’t you want to know what he was doing
in the hotel in the first place?”

“Sure,” Mint shrugged. It seemed like a
good idea to find out more about Ted’s malefactions. “How should we proceed?”

“I have an idea,” Polly said pensively.

***

Natsumi looked Elise and Amanda over.

“No food for you guys? Are you sick?”

Amanda shook her head. “We were at Mrs.
Li’s Dumpling Palace for lunch. We are stuffed.”

“So, why are you taking me out then when
you are not hungry?” Natsumi asked. She had just ordered a large meal in her
clunky Chinese which had made the waiter giggle. Amanda waited until the young
man had left the table, then she opened her bag and pulled out a little sheet.

She put it down and slid it over the table.

“What is this?” Natsumi asked. “A check?”

She grabbed it, then her jaw dropped.
“870.000 dollars? For me? Why?”