Open (15 page)

I walk slowly, taking my time. I stop at the door to Nick’s office and with a thin smile I remember.
Nick the Dick
. You’ll be missed, Roddy.

Nick is sitting behind his desk, leaning back in his tall black leather chair.

Andre, come in, come in.

I sit in a wooden chair across from him.

He clears his throat. I understand, he says, that you were at Busch Gardens yesterday. Did you have fun?

I say nothing. He waits. Then clears his throat again.

Well, I understand you came home with a very large panda.

I continue to stare straight ahead.

Anyway, he says, my daughter apparently has fallen in love with that panda. Ha ha.

I think of the little girl on the bus. Nick’s daughter—of course. How could I have missed that?

She can’t stop talking about it, Nick says. So here’s the thing. I’d like to buy that panda from you.

Silence.

You hear me, Andre?

Silence.

Can you understand?

Silence.

Gabriel, why isn’t Andre saying anything?

He’s not speaking to you.

Since when?

Gabriel frowns.

Look, Nick says, just tell me how much you want for it, Andre.

I don’t move my eyes.

I know. Why don’t you
write down
how much you want for it?

He slides a piece of paper toward me. I don’t move.

How about if I give you $200.

Deep silence.

Gabriel tells Nick that he’ll talk to me later about the panda.

Yeah, Nick says. OK. Have a think about it, Andre.

Y
OU
’
LL NEVER BELIEVE THIS
, I tell Perry at the barracks. He wanted the Panda. For his daughter. That little girl on the bus was Nick’s daughter.

You’re kidding. And what did you say?

I said nothing.

What do you mean, nothing?

Vow of silence, remember? Forever.

Andre, you misplayed that. No, no, that’s a miss. You’ve got to revisit this, quickly. Here’s the play. You take the panda, you give it to Nick and tell him you don’t want his money, you just want an opportunity to succeed and get out of this place. You want wild cards, bids to tournaments, different rules to live by. Better food, better everything. Above all—you don’t want to go to school. This is your chance to break free. You’ve got real leverage now.

I can’t give that fucking guy my panda. I just can’t. Besides, what about Jamie?

We’ll worry about Jamie later. This is your future we’re talking about. You have to give that panda to Nick!

We talk until long after lights out, arguing in heated whispers. Finally Perry convinces me.

So, he says, yawning, you’re going to give it to him tomorrow.

No. Bullshit. I’m going to his office right now. I’m going to let myself in with the master key, then put the panda on Nick’s tall leather chair, ass up.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, before breakfast, Gabriel comes for me again.

Office. On the double.

Nick is in his chair. The panda is now in the corner, leaning, staring into space. Nick looks at the panda, then me. He says, You don’t talk. You wear makeup. You wear jeans in a tournament. You get me to invite your friend Perry to the tourney, even though he can’t play, he can barely chew gum and walk at the same time. And that hair. Don’t get me started on
that hair. And now you give me something I ask for, but you break into my office in the middle of the night and put it ass-up in my fucking chair? How the fuck did you get in my office? Jesus, boy, what is your problem?

You want to know what my problem is?

Even Nick is shocked by the sound of my voice.

I shout,
You
are my fucking problem. You. And if you haven’t figured that out, then you’re stupider than you look. Do you have any idea what it’s like here? What it’s like to be three thousand miles from home, living in this prison, waking up at six thirty, having thirty minutes to eat that shitty breakfast, getting on that broken-down bus, going to that lousy school for four hours, hurrying back and having thirty minutes to eat more crap before going on the tennis court, day after day after
day
? Do you? The only thing you have to look forward to, the only real fun you have every week, is Saturday night at the Bradenton Mall—and then that gets taken away!
You took that from me!
This place is hell, and I want to burn it down!

Nick’s eyes are wider than the panda’s. But he’s not angry. Or sad. He’s mildly pleased, because this is the only language he understands. He reminds me of Pacino in
Scarface
, when a woman tells him, Who, why, when, and how I fuck is none of your business, and Pacino says, Now you’re
talking
to me, baby.

Nick, I realize, likes it rough.

OK, he says, you made your point. What do you want?

I hear Perry’s voice.

I want to quit school, I say. I want to start doing correspondence school, so I can work on my game full-time. I want your help, instead of the bullshit you’ve been giving me. I want wild cards, bids to tournaments. I want to take real steps toward turning pro.

Of course none of this is really what I want. It’s what Perry tells me I want, and it’s better than what I’ve got. Even as I demand it, I feel ambivalent. But Nick looks at Gabriel, and Gabriel looks at me, and the panda looks at all of us.

I’ll think about it, Nick says.

H
OURS AFTER
P
ERRY LEAVES FOR
V
EGAS
, Nick sends word via Gabriel that my first wild card will be the big tournament at La Quinta. Also, he’s going to get me into the next Florida satellite. Furthermore, I’m to consider myself hereby dismissed and excused from Bradenton Academy.
He’ll set up a correspondence program of some sort, when he gets around to it.

Gabriel walks off, smirking. You won, kid.

I watch everyone else board the bus for Bradenton Academy, and as it rumbles away, spewing black smoke, I sit on a bench, basking in the sunshine. I tell myself: You’re fourteen years old, and you never have to go to school again. From now on, every morning will feel like Christmas and the first day of summer vacation, combined. A smile spreads across my face, my first in months. No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks. You’re free, Andre. You’ll never have to learn anything again.

I
PUT IN MY EARRING
and run down to the hard courts. The morning is mine, mine, and I spend it hitting balls. Hit
harder
. I hit for two hours, channeling my newfound freedom into every swing. I can feel the difference. The ball explodes off my racket. Nick appears, shaking his head. I pity your next opponent, he says.

Meanwhile, back in Vegas, my mother begins correspondence school on my behalf. Her first actual correspondence is a letter to me, in which she says that her son might not go to college, but he’s damn sure going to graduate high school. I write back and thank her for doing my homework and taking my tests. But when she earns the degree, I add, she can keep it.

In March 1985, I fly to Los Angeles and stay with Philly, who’s living in someone’s guest cottage, giving tennis lessons, searching for what he wants to do with his life. He helps me train for La Quinta, one of the year’s biggest tournaments. The guest cottage is tiny, smaller than our room back in Vegas, smaller than our rented Omni, but we don’t mind, we’re thrilled to be reunited, hopeful about my new direction. There’s just one problem: We have no money. We subsist on baked potatoes and lentil soup. Three times a day we bake two potatoes and heat a can of generic lentil soup. We then pour the soup over the potatoes and voilà—breakfast, lunch, or dinner is served. The whole meal costs eighty-nine cents and keeps hunger at bay for about three hours.

T
HE DAY BEFORE THE TOURNAMENT
, we drive Philly’s beat-up jalopy over to La Quinta. The car produces enormous clouds of black smoke. It feels like driving in a portable summer storm.

Maybe we should stick a potato in the tailpipe, I tell Philly.

Our first stop is the grocery store. I stand before the bin of potatoes and my stomach rolls. I can’t face another spud. I walk off, wander up and down the aisles, and find myself in the frozen-food section. My eye lands on one particularly enticing treat. Oreo ice cream sandwiches. I reach for them like a sleepwalker. I take a box of ice cream sandwiches from the case and meet my brother in the express lane. Slipping behind him I gently set the ice cream sandwiches on the conveyor belt.

He looks down, then looks at me.

We can’t afford that.

I’ll have this instead of my potato.

He picks up the box, looks at the price, lets out a low whistle. Andre, this costs as much as ten potatoes. We can’t.

I know. Fuck.

Walking back to the frozen-food case, I think: I hate Philly. I love Philly. I hate potatoes.

Woozy with hunger, I go out and beat Broderick Dyke in the first round at La Quinta, 6–4, 6–4. In the second round I beat Rill Baxter, 6–2, 6–1. In the third round I beat Russell Simpson, 6–3, 6–3. Then I win my first round in the main draw against John Austin, 6–4, 6–1. Down a break in the first set, I come storming back. I’m fifteen years old, beating grown men, beating them senseless, churning my way through the ranks. Everywhere I walk people are pointing at me, whispering.
There he is. That’s the kid I was telling you about—the prodigy
. It’s the prettiest word I’ve ever heard applied to me.

Prize money for reaching the second round at La Quinta, is $2,600. But I’m an amateur, so I get nothing. Still, Philly learns that the tournament will reimburse players for expenses. We sit in his jalopy and make up an itemized list of imaginary expenses, including our imaginary first-class flight from Vegas, our imaginary five-star-hotel room, our imaginarily lavish restaurant meals. We think we’re shrewd, because our expenses equal exactly $2,600.

Philly and I have the balls to ask for so much because we’re from Vegas. We’ve spent our childhoods in casinos. We think we’re born bluffers. We think we’re high rollers. After all, we did learn to double down before we were potty-trained. Recently, while walking through Caesars, Philly and I passed a slot machine just as it began to play that old Depression-era song We’re in the Money. We knew the song from Pops, so we felt it was a sign. It didn’t occur to us that the slot machine played that song all day long. We sat down at the nearest blackjack table—and
won. Now, with the same swagger born of naïveté, I walk our list of expenses into the office of the tournament director, Charlie Pasarell, while Philly waits in the car.

Charlie is a former player. In fact, back in 1969 he played Pancho Gonzalez in the longest men’s singles match ever at Wimbledon. Pancho is now my brother-in-law—he recently married Rita. Another sign that Philly and I are in the money. But the biggest sign of all: one of Charlie’s oldest friends is Alan King, who hosted the very same Vegas tournament where I saw Caesar and Cleopatra and the wheelbarrow full of silver dollars, where I worked as a ball boy with Wendi, where I first stepped onto a professional tennis court in an official capacity. Signs, signs, everywhere signs. I place the list on Charlie’s desk and stand back.

Huh, Charlie says, looking over the list. Very interesting.

Sorry?

Expenses don’t usually work out so neat.

I feel a hot flash.

Your expenses, Andre, are exactly the same amount as the prize money you’d be able to collect if you were a pro.

Charlie looks at me over the top of his glasses. I feel my heart shrivel to the size of a lentil. I consider making a run for it. I imagine Philly and me living in that guest cottage for the rest of our lives. But Charlie suppresses a smile, reaches into a strongbox, and removes a wad of bills.

Here’s two grand, kid. Don’t grind me for the other six hun.

Thank you, sir. Thank you very much.

I run outside and dive into Philly’s car. He peels out as if we’ve just held up the First Bank of La Quinta. I count out $1,000 and throw it at my brother.

Your cut of the loot.

What? No! Andre, you worked hard for this, bro.

Are you kidding?
We
worked. Philly, I couldn’t have done this without you! Impossible! We’re in this together, man.

In the back of our minds we’re both thinking of the morning I woke up with $300 on my chest. We’re also thinking of all those nights, sitting in the ad court–deuce court of our bedroom, sharing everything. He leans over, while driving, and gives me a hug. Then we talk about where we’re going to eat dinner. We’re drooling as we bandy names of restaurants about. In the end we agree that this is a special occasion, a once-in-a-lifetime occasion, which calls for something truly fancy.

Sizzler.

I can already taste that rib eye, Philly says.

I’m not going to bother with a plate. I’m just going to shove my head into the salad bar.

They have an all-you-can-eat shrimp special.

They’re going to be sorry they ever came up with that idea!

You said it, bro!

We gnaw through the La Quinta Sizzler, not leaving a single seed or crouton in our wake, then sit around and stare at the money we have left over. We line up the bills, stack them, stroke them. We talk about our new buddy, Benjamin Franklin. We’re so drunk on calories, we break out the steam iron and run it lightly over each bill, gently smoothing out the wrinkles in Ben’s face.

I
CONTINUE TO LIVE AND TRAIN
at the Bollettieri Academy, with Nick as my coach and sometime travel companion, though he feels more like a sounding board. And, honestly, a friend. Our makeshift truce has turned into a surprisingly harmonious working relationship. Nick respects the way I stood up to him, and I respect him for being true to his word. We’re working hard to achieve a common goal, to conquer the tennis world. I don’t expect much from Nick in the way of Xs and Os; I look to him for cooperation, not information. Meanwhile, he looks to me for headline-generating wins which help his academy. I don’t pay him a salary, because I can’t, but it’s understood that when I turn pro I’ll give him bonuses based on what I earn. He considers this more than generous.