Sudden Death (29 page)

“Lavinia has arranged a reasonable sum.”

“Without consulting me? I forbid it!” He forgot to control his fury.

“You forbid nothing. You took a Jaguar in exchange for my endorsement of a charity I knew nothing about, as well as the car dealer. I never made the endorsement, Miguel. You forged it!”

He winced. She’d better never find out what else he forged. “You must never make a business decision without me, never,” he said.

“It’s a good deal.”

“I’ll be the judge of that after I investigate your mail-order husband.”

Carmen explained why Lavinia thought it would work. Miguel listened impassively. He saw the sense of it, but he just hated to pay this jerk a yearly salary. However, that was preferable to losing all the endorsements. The plan was not without merit.

“I still want to investigate. It may be a solution, but never again commit yourself to anything before coming to me. You didn’t sign anything, did you?”

“No.”

“This is insane.”

“Harriet can stick close to you or Jane and Ricky. We’ll be in a private house, so who will know what room she sleeps in. And I want her with me.”

“No.”

“The article about my marriage will throw people off the track.”

“Oh, Migueletta.” He threw up his hand in disgust.

“I love her and I want her with me. I need her. Don’t fuck around with me during Wimbledon.”

His face softened. “I’m trying to protect you. You’re pinning a lot of hope on this marriage article.”

“Lavinia will back me up and so will the sponsors.”

“For now, perhaps.” He stroked his chin. “But we’re in Europe and this is Wimbledon. The sponsors aren’t in the driver’s seat for Wimbledon.”

“I love Harriet.”

“I know you do, but you should send her home.”

“I won’t do it.” Carmen was torn. She didn’t want to be alone. She needed Harriet. What she couldn’t admit about herself was that she couldn’t be alone for over a week. If she shipped Harriet back, what would she do? Many athletes, like other entertainers, rely on reaction. Without an audience, even an audience of one, they become frightened. They need other people to approve of them, to tell them who they are.

Carmen met Harriet three years ago. She’d gone to Syracuse University to see a doctor of sports medicine for stiffness in her elbow. Harriet was a guest lecturer and she wandered into the hall and that was that.

Carmen was impulsive about love. She thought each lover would last forever. She quickly disengaged from her lover at the time, a pretty girl her own age. And when she met the pretty girl she left an older woman lawyer who cared for her. After Susan Reilly dumped her, Carmen vowed to herself never to be dumped again. Her affair with Harriet lasted three years, and Carmen wasn’t tired of her although she was getting there. The tension of professional tennis, the pressure of Kuzirian’s article crept in. Harriet was exciting when she was a professor, but in following Carmen, she lost some of her excitement. Carmen didn’t exactly know that, but she did know things weren’t as intense and passionate as when they were first lovers. But she wasn’t ready to give Harriet up just yet.

In England, the men are very masculine, but then the women are, too. Harriet liked the people, but found them perverse. The English have a natural impulse toward kindness and spend the rest of their lives brutally restraining it.

Devonshire Park in Eastbourne glittered an inviting green. The grounds of this Wimbledon warm-up tournament outclassed the Big W itself. Pink, yellow, and red flowers dazzled passersby. Elms lined the edges of the court. The desire under those elms was purely athletic.

Eastbourne, a favorite with the players, was also a favorite tournament of the cucumber sandwich set. Out they trooped in their natty dresses, sensible shoes, carrying the ever-present symbol of British life, the umbrella.

If the greatest minds of the nineteenth century controlled the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon, then the promoters of Eastbourne were to be congratulated—or scolded, depending on your attitude—for having advanced to the twentieth century.

Eastbourne was Carmen’s nemesis. She often lost in the early rounds, although a few times she did make it to the finals. Instead of pitching a fit and falling in it, she began to think, if she lost Eastbourne, she would certainly win Wimbledon. Anyway, it was a tune-up, so why get bent out of shape?

The British press warmed up at Eastbourne as well. Harriet, ever accompanied by Miguel when she went out in public, became adept at melting into shadows. Both women knew the reporters would save the big guns and their store of potent venom for Wimbledon.

Reporters wrote snide little articles about the “undesirable element in tennis,” namely Harriet, but really Carmen. Photos of their home in Cazenovia made the papers, which soon would wrap fish and chips but not soon enough for Harriet. These would be laid out next to fawning articles declaring Page Bartlett Campbell as a “credit to her sex.” Page
hated it, too. If one is to be praised, one would like it to be for something one has achieved. Page was born a woman. Why praise her for that? She liked Carmen, and she loathed being used against her.

Lavinia did plant the marriage news. She eagerly awaited for it to appear and the reporter promised it would be before the end of Wimbledon.

“Do you want to stay with us?” Jane asked while driving the Rolls-Royce she and Ricky rented. Ricky, Harriet, and Jane shared a profound weakness for English cars. They couldn’t afford a Rolls in the U.S. so it was great fun to rent one in England.

“I don’t think so.”

“There’s plenty of room.”

“Thanks for the offer, but we’ll stay farther away from London. Carmen’s a maniac at Wimbledon. This is my third one, and it looks like a killer. Between the press and the pressure to grab number two on the Slam, I think she’ll be bouncing off the walls.”

“She has been unusually tense, except she goes back and forth. She’s either loose as a goose, or she’s not there.”

“I’ve seen a lot of the ‘not there’ lately.”

They passed a smooth pond with two black swans majestically sliding on the surface.

“Oh, juicy gossip.” Harriet’s face brightened. “You have to guess.”

Jane whipped around a curve. “Sex on the circuit?”

“Uh-huh.”

“One of the players?”

“Of course.”

“Rainey Rogers’ coach?”

“That’s right. Gary Shorter and fill in the blank.”

“Harriet, I can’t stand this. Tell me right this minute.”

“Alicia Brinker was seen leaving that hulk’s room late, very late, last night.”

“No!” This was scandal too good to be true. “How’d you find out?”

“Happy Straker.”

“Happy Straker doesn’t talk to you. She hates you.”

“Well, I know it, but she does talk to Susan Reilly and Happy made the mistake of telling Susan what she saw last night while a third party was changing for practice.”

“Who heard it?”

“Carmen, my precious peach blossom.”

“What?” Jane sheered another hairpin curve.

“She was in the can, heard them come into the locker room and drew her feet up on the seat. She said she didn’t know why she did it, but she did it. Carmen heard every syllable.”

“Alicia Brinker! Being in his room doesn’t mean she slept with him.”

“Ha. He’d fuck a dog if it shook its ass right. If she walked in that room, she’d not get out intact.”

“What’s she up to? Susan will kill her.”

“I always thought of Alicia as a limpet. I may revise my opinion.”

Jane slowed the car. “Before this year is over, we’ll all have revised opinions.”

Bonnie Marie Bishop was a senior in college. She and a group of girls from American colleges were touring Europe during the summer. Bonnie Marie was tall, skinny, and nondescript.
She had no athletic ability of her own, but an appreciation for it in others.

Despite administrative cries to the contrary, most gifted athletes take basket-weaving courses, get shoveled through the schools, and are then left in the world with no skills other than dribbling, hitting, or running. Bonnie Marie was spared this. She did want a good education in business. She burned to set up her own company immediately upon graduation. Of course, it would have something to do with women athletes, but just what, she wasn’t sure yet. What she was sure of was that she wanted to be rich. She was true to her generation in that way.

She was also a lesbian. Her fear over being discovered was intensified because if women are at a disadvantage in business, then a lesbian is at a double disadvantage. Poor Bonnie Marie. One had only to look at her to see a storybook dyke. She manfully tried to be a lady, but femininity was not her strong point, good looks not her blessing. However, she possessed a pleasing personality. She publicly hung on the arm of whatever man she could dredge up and verbally her heterosexuality was reassuring. Not that anyone believed her, but people went along with it to make her feel better.

Bonnie Marie showed up at Eastbourne along with some of the other girls. They were conspicuous by their American T-shirts and their sneakers. English ladies do not wear sneakers. English dykes may, but English ladies don’t. In this world, there are lesbians and dykes. The two have nothing in common. Lesbians are women who love women. Dykes are women who imitate men.

Harriet and Miguel passed the pack as they sneaked back from Carmen’s match. Carmen was now in the quarterfinals, sharpening her grass game with every stroke. Harriet inwardly groaned, whisked past them, and didn’t look twice. Sadly for Harriet, Carmen did look twice.

True to form, Carmen whiffed Eastbourne. She won the doubles, a pleasant sensation but singles brings in the endorsements, not doubles, and her endorsements were in enough jeopardy. No one noticed that Carmen was a better doubles player than a singles player. She liked teamwork. Singles was for pride, doubles for the love of the game.

The two of them stashed their clothing in a little rented house in the London suburbs. The decor approximated English cozy—old furniture and damp as hell. Harriet preferred it to tinted Levelor blinds, fake Bauhaus furniture, and wall-to-wall carpeting. Harriet declared she could never love a woman who believed in wall-to-wall carpeting.