The Players (3 page)

Mike Wilder opened the door and stepped out to look up and down the hallway. He thought he had heard someone moving out there, but the hall was empty now, the door of the elevator just sliding shut. Mike went back into his room and closed the door. He sat down at the small desk and picked up the telephone. He gave the hotel switchboard operator the number Paula Teal had left. He heard the number being dialed, then the series of rapid bips that signaled a busy line on London telephones.

Mike replaced the phone and doodled on a sheet of Regency House stationery while he waited to call again. He smiled at himself when he noticed that he had sketched a lopsided valentine heart.

He thought about the gathering in New York a year ago when he had met Paula. As a rule Mike hated conventions—the tasteless dinners, the interminable speeches, the mandatory guest politician. Whenever he could he avoided them like poison ivy. This time, however, Worldwide made it clear to Mike that as the star of their most successful book, he was expected to be there. His assignment, frankly, was to romance the news dealers, those anonymous people who can make or break a magazine, depending on what kind of display they give it on their stands.

By the final day of the convention Mike was sure he had permanently distorted his face from the constant smiling, and his right hand was bent with candidate’s cramps. At an afternoon seminar on postal regulations he decided he could stand it no longer, and chose a moment when no one was looking to slip out the side door. Paula Teal had picked the same emergency exit, and they nearly bumped into each other on their way out. Mike had seen the pert, auburn-haired English girl earlier at various meetings, but had never really noticed her. Now they felt like co-conspirators.

Mike suggested hiding out at a small, quiet bar he knew on Third Avenue, and Paula happily agreed. They had sipped cocktails and talked easily together long past the end of the seminar, and returned to the convention hotel rather embarrassedly just in time for the evening’s closing ceremonies.

The following night, Paula’s last in town, they had gone out on an official date—dinner, a show, dancing afterward. They had talked constantly … about writing, about places they’d been or wanted to go, about old movies, about the ironies of life … but little about themselves. Mike was going through the early stages of a divorce at the time, and didn’t much want to talk about it. Paula, whose marriage had also ended in divorce, said only that there were emotional scars that had not yet had time to heal.

There came a point in the evening when Mike felt it was time to make the standard pitch for sex.

“Listen, how would you like to see the view of the park from my room?”

“Do you really think it’s better than the view from mine?”

“No, but I thought as an opening remark it wasn’t too bad.”

“We don’t have to play word games, do we, Mike?”

“No, I guess we don’t. Maybe I’ve seen too many old Rock Hudson-Doris Day movies.”

“Let’s start again, and this time you be Mike instead of Rock.”

“Okay. Would you like to go to bed with me?”

“I might like to very much, but I’m not going to. Not this time.”

“What is it, am I using the wrong toothpaste?”

“There you go again being light and amusing and utterly false.”

“I’m sorry. Let me put it another way. What’s wrong with two people who like each other and have no outside obligations going to bed together?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it. Nothing at all. I rather approve of sex, as a matter of fact. It just happens that I’ve had some rather ugly experiences in that line not very long ago, and I’m still a little bit afraid of it, that’s all. I need some time to get over it. Do you mind awfully?”

Mike gave her a mock scowl. “Hell yes, I mind. What do you think I spent all that money on you for, lady, to shake your hand?”

Paula picked up her cue and sighed dramatically. “It’s just as dear mother told me, you men are after only one thing. Seriously, Mike, am I being awfully stuffy?”

“Sure you are, but that’s the way with all you English, isn’t it?”

Paula relaxed and laughed with him. “You have us pegged, all right, though I’m surprised you Americans have the time to learn these things what with constantly chewing gum and getting into fist fights with each other.”

The tension was broken for good then, and the evening wound up relaxed and comfortable as Mike walked Paula to the door of her hotel room.

“How about if I write to you?” he said.

“Do you want to?”

“Yes, I do, for some unaccountable reason. I haven’t written letters to a girl since I was in high school, but I’d like to write to you. I don’t want us to lose track of each other, Paula.”

She had looked up at him for a long moment, her eyes moist and bright. He kissed her. It was a long, warm kiss that promised there would be more to come. Much more. Paula had written the address of her London flat on the back of her business card and pressed it into his hand. She had touched his cheek lightly with her fingertips and disappeared into the room.

• • •

Mike smiled now, remembering the coolness of her touch, the elusive flower scent of her rich auburn hair. He had written her half a dozen letters in the past year, and she had answered each of them promptly. Their intimacy had grown steadily from letter to letter, and seeing Paula again had given Mike something to look forward to on this trip to London.

He picked up the telephone and gave her number to the switchboard operator again. This time he heard the beep-beep signal that meant the other phone was ringing.

“Hello?”

“Paula, this is Mike.”

“Mike, how good to hear your voice. Are you at the hotel?”

“Yes. I just got your message. How soon can we get together?”

“About that, there’s been a bit of a hitch.”

“Oh?” Mike was surprised at the depth of his disappointment.

“Nothing serious, I’ll just be a bit late. They’ve changed some page layouts on me, and I’m fighting a deadline that will keep me in the office another hour or so. You ought to know how that goes.”

“Sure. Don’t worry about me, I’ll just settle in here and try to recover somewhat from the jet lag until you can make it.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Paula said. “This is your first night in London, and I won’t have you wasting any of it sitting around an old hotel room. Now, subject to your approval, I’m sending along a substitute to start you off until I’m able to join you.”

“Substitute? What kind of a substitute?”

“Ahem, well, her name is Christy Noone, and she’s something of a knockout. A photographers’ model. I suppose I am taking rather a chance on losing you before I even get my innings, but this way at least I’ll know where, you are. It was all Christy’s idea, actually. She has the flat above mine, and I was telling her how badly I felt about not being able to meet you until later. She suggested that she fill in for me until I can get there.”

“You said something about all this being subject to my approval.”

Paula laughed deep in her throat. “You would be the first man, to my knowledge, ever to disapprove of Christy. Unless, that is, you don’t like cute little blue-eyed blondes with figures like early Bardot.”

“My preference is for brown-eyed ladies with hair that smells like flowers,” Mike said, “but I’ll try to make do with the blonde doll until one shows up.”

“Just hold that thought, mister. I should be out of here by ten. I told Christy we’d all meet at Caesar’s.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a discotheque. Don’t worry, Christy knows how to get there.”

“She does, eh? Don’t get there too late or I can’t answer for my behavior with your blonde neighbor.”

Paula laughed again. A good laugh, Mike decided. He liked a woman with a good laugh.

“Christy will be there in about an hour. I’ll make it as soon as I can, darling. Be strong.”

Mike hung up and grinned at the telephone. He felt like a high school kid going on his first date with the prom queen. Since his split with Lorraine Mike’s contacts with women had been of the hello-goodbye type, with the sex perfunctory and non-involving. He was not sorry that he and Paula had not gone to bed last year in New York, but he was damn sure they were going to make it this time. Who could tell, it might even lead to something.

The bellhop arrived with a bottle of good Glasgow Scotch and a bowl of ice cubes the size of Las Vegas dice. Mike dropped a handful of ice into a glass, filled it with Scotch, and took it into the bathroom to sip on while he soaked away the ache of jet travel.

Fifteen minutes later there was a knock at the door. Mike climbed out of the tub, wrapped a hotel towel around his middle, and padded out through the room.

He opened the door and looked down at a girl with fluffy blonde hair and sparkly eyes. She wore dressy black pants that stretched satiny smooth across her trim rounded hips, and a top of light blue silk with a neckline that plunged toward her navel.

“I’m Christy Noone,” the girl said. She ran her eyes down Mike’s body, letting her gaze linger at the towel that was his only covering.

“I seem to be early,” she said, smiling brightly up at him. “Or did you have something special in mind?”

Having sex with Geneva Sundstrum, thought J. J. Kaiser, was like sailing on a golden sea of flesh. Make that a magnificent golden sea, he amended as he plunged into her depths. A magnificent sea of firm, buttery, beautifully apportioned flesh.

Geneva’s exquisite, endless legs rode up and crossed behind his shoulders, drawing J. J. deeper into the vortex between her thighs.

“Oh, Lord, honey,” she cried, “don’t stop! Don’t ever stop!”

For several more beats J. J. concentrated his will on holding back, then he gave up and let himself whirl down into the wet slippery womanness of her.

They lay on the bed cleaved together, their bodies slick with sweat. Six feet three inches of blonde sumptuous Geneva, and five-feet-six of dark wiry J. J. Kaiser. Gradually their harsh, open-mouth breathing slowed to normal. J. J. eased his arm out from under Geneva’s broad, smooth back and stole a look at his wristwatch.

“We’d better get going, we have work to do.”

“Can’t we just lay here a while longer?” the big girl asked. Her voice was soft and breathy, almost a whisper; not at all the booming contralto one would expect to issue from those splendid lungs.

J. J. rolled his body off of Geneva’s and gave her a businesslike slap on the rump. “‘Lie here’ is what you mean,” he said, “but laying or lying, we’ve done enough for one evening. Go take a bath and get yourself all sweet and sexy smelling.”

“Don’t I smell sexy now?”

“To me, yes, but the tennis players are the ones we want to pay attention. Put on something to titillate. Maybe that metallic gray number, the one cut down to here that shows off the boobs.”

“If I do, will you bite them?” she teased.

“Later, woman, later. Good Christ, you just took all the starch out of me, or didn’t you notice?”

Mmm, I noticed. Bet I could put some of that starch back in.”

He gave her a shove toward the edge of the bed. “Up, up, dammit.”

“Oh, all right.” Geneva stood up and stretched to her full luxurious length. She raised her arms in the classic woman’s gesture to fluff out her thick blonde hair, and smiled down at J. J. She leaned down to kiss him on the mouth, letting the pale melons of her breasts squash lightly against his chest. She glanced down at his reviving organ and stood up again with a giggle of triumph. Before he could protest, she marched away from him toward the bathroom.

J. J. tried to think up a sarcastic remark to toss after the girl, but he gave it up and smiled instead at her retreating buttocks, round and firm as a matched pair of moons. Damn, if he weren’t careful he was going to get hung up on the big broad, and wouldn’t that be a fine how-do-you-do.

He swung his legs out of bed and stood up, using a towel he had thoughtfully placed there beforehand to blot the perspiration from his compact body. He walked naked to the far side of the room where one entire corner was filled with new tennis rackets, cans of balls, eye shades, sweat bands, and other equipment associated with the game of tennis. Each item bore the script “G” that was the trademark of the Gilfillan Sporting Equipment Company, the current employer of J. J. Kaiser.

The reason J. J. was in London for Wimbledon this year was that the Gilfillan “G” was not nearly the familiar symbol the company officers and stockholders wanted it to be. It had nowhere near the recognition factor of the block “S” of Spalding or the “W” of Wilson. It was J. J.’s mission to get Gilfillan equipment into the hands and hearts of some of the top-ranked tennis players. Much depended on how well he succeeded, J. J.’s job, for one thing.

• • •

It was twenty-seven years ago, at the tender age of twelve, that J. J. Kaiser embarked on his first promotional hustle. He had picked up a box of slightly damaged candy bars at a discount from a burned-out market and carried them from door to door representing himself as being from Father Flanagan’s Boys’ Town. It took a cold heart indeed to say no to the skinny little kid with the huge sad eyes behind the magnifying lenses. In less than four city blocks his supply of candy was gone and his pockets were heavy with the inflated prices he charged in the name of charity. It was then that J. J. Kaiser had the first vague notions of what his future vocation would be.

Hustling was something he could do better than his bigger, more attractive classmates. Maybe he couldn’t make any of the teams, and maybe the popular girls wouldn’t go out with him, but J. J. had a quick mind and a quicker tongue to compensate.

Unfortunately, not all of J. J.’s promotional ventures had gone as well as the Boys’ Town candy bar caper. In fact, he had hardly done as well in the intervening twenty-seven years. There had been the pyramid-type marketing scheme for an obscure line of health food products. That one almost landed him in jail. Then there was the “wilderness resort” real estate that turned out to be unreachable except by helicopter. There was the discount travel club that never seemed to get its airplane and its passengers together at the same airport on the same date. Finally, there was the Hollywood “acting school” that held its classes in an empty warehouse. One by one these promotions, none of them quite on the up and up, but none strictly illegal, folded. After that J. J. had done some flackery for the movie studios in California and hired out as a p.r. consultant to political candidates and a number of shaky sports ventures.

The specter of final failure was close on his footsteps when J. J. talked his way into a job with Gilfillan by claiming close personal friendship with dozens of athletes who didn’t know him from Rumpelstiltskin. It was made clear to J. J. before he left the country that his future with the company depended on how well he did signing up endorsements of the product at Wimbledon. A good showing at Wimbledon meant a player was newsworthy for at least a year, and the company would be most pleased if whenever the player was photographed he displayed the script “G” somewhere. One such casual news photo was worth more than a full-page ad in
Sportsweek
.

• • •

J. J. leaned down now and retrieved an attaché case from among the stacked tennis rackets. He zipped it open and took out a sheet of paper with the typewritten names of the seeded players. Although he had the list, memorized by now, he ran his eye down the names once again.

Ron Hopper, the defending champion and number one seed, could be ruled out. Every product he used or wore or drank or sprayed on his hair was tied up in long-term contracts. That’s the way it was with most of the really big names, and it was not going to be easy for Gilfillan, a relative newcomer to athletic equipment, to get a foot in the door.

Tim Barrett, the kid from California, was a hot prospect this year. He was only eighth seed, but he was given a good chance to make the semi-finals. That was the cutoff point for the big-money endorsement contracts. If you finished lower than fourth your name wouldn’t sell beer at a teamsters’ picnic. J. J. made a mental note to get on the good side of the Barrett kid early. He had the good looks and the crowd appeal to be a blond Mark Spitz, and if he did make the semis the other promoters would swarm down on him like flies on a gumdrop.

The number four seed, Brian White, was always well up in the rankings, but there was little interest in signing him to a contract. He did not have the charisma that the wheeler dealers were looking for. None of this mattered to Brian White, since he was the son of wealthy parents, and had all the money he would ever need. He had never signed up with any of the competing professional groups, and just went amiably along winning his share of the smaller tournaments. They called him the last of the gentleman tennis players. Brian White would never win the big ones because he wasn’t hungry enough.

The hungriest player of all a few years back was Milo Vasquez, the Mexican-American from Los Angeles. He exploded on the tennis scene like an angry Latin skyrocket and won everything worth winning, including Wimbledon. Then three years ago the rocket fizzled. Nobody could explain what happened to his game, but suddenly it was gone. The trademark scowl was still in place, but without the howitzer serve and the ferocious net game it no longer intimidated opponents. For commercial purposes Vasquez was all washed up. Still, it was always possible he might regain his old form, so J. J. Kaiser resolved to keep an eye on him. Maybe he would drop a few friendly words early on to let the Mex know who his friends were, just in case.

J. J. returned to the name that topped his personal list of prospects: Yuri Zenger. Until very recently players from the Communist countries had stayed well away from any actions that might be construed back home as cozying up to capitalism. A Russian player who was photographed drinking Coca-Cola, say, between sets would have some heavy explaining to do to the beefy “trainers” who accompanied them everywhere. This year, however, things were loosening up, what with the
détente
and all. Furthermore, some of the so-called Iron Curtain countries were looking for little, safe ways to be just a tiny bit independent of the Big Bear. The word was out that Yuri Zenger could be had.

As the number two seed, the Hungarian had a real shot at winning it all. If J. J. could manage to put a Gilfillan racket in his hand, his future at the company would look a lot brighter. Zenger was said to be a bad actor, on and off the courts, but J. J. had dealt with some of the worst. The Hungarian was also rumored to consider himself quite a cocksman. That’s what Geneva Sundstrum was along for.

Not that J. J. liked to think of it in just that way; and he certainly hadn’t put it to Geneva in those terms. Just below his consciousness level the word “pimp” kept trying to push its way to the surface like some malignant toadstool. J. J. fought it back down by reminding himself that this sort of thing had always been an accepted part of his business. Of lots of businesses. Besides, Geneva was being damn well paid for whatever she might be called upon to do. J. J. had seen to that personally.

“Can you come in and scrub my back, honey?” the big girl called from the bathroom, making J. J. start guiltily at his thoughts.

“Be right there,” J. J. called, pulling on his shorts. He walked across the room and opened the bathroom door, letting the steam billow out.

Geneva smiled at him from the tub. Her long legs were drawn up so that her knees rose like rounded volcanic islands above the soapy water. She leaned toward him and made a kiss in the air.

“Cut it out,” J. J. said. “I thought it was your back you wanted scrubbed.”

“It’s all right with me if you want to start somewhere here in front and work your way around.”

“Later,” he said, trying hard not to stare at those tremendous breasts.

Geneva gave a little sigh of resignation and turned her hack to him. J. J. lathered up a wash cloth and began to soap the broad golden back with a circular motion. Geneva made small sounds of pleasure.

It had been a stroke of luck finding the big blonde girl right there at Gilfillan. They had her working as a mail girl, of all things, in the advertising/p.r. section. Her true function was apparently to keep up the morale of the male employees.

It took all of J. J.’s persuasive powers to convince the company executives how valuable Geneva might be on his mission to Wimbledon. Finally they had agreed to pay expenses for the two of them, but J. J. in an uncharacteristic burst of chivalry had insisted on an additional bonus for Geneva. He had stuck to it even when it meant his own allowance would be cut. Whatever the cost, he thought while kneading the firm muscles at the base of the girl’s neck, it was going to be worth it.

“What’s the name of the place we’re going to tonight, J. J.?” she asked.

“Caesar’s.”

“A restaurant?”

“Kind of a discotheque, they tell me.”

“How neat! You’ve never taken me dancing before.”

“We probably won’t have much time for dancing. There’s supposed to be a lot of the players hanging out there, and maybe we can spread a little good will, if you know what I mean.”

“Sure, I know what you mean, J. J.,” Geneva said without turning around. “Don’t worry about me, I know my job.”

Now what was that supposed to mean, he wondered. Was the broad sending him hidden messages? No, he decided, she’s too damn dumb for that. Big and beautiful and good-hearted as all get-out, but face it—dumb.

It had been surprisingly easy to sell her on the London trip. But then J. J. always did have a way with women when he wanted to turn on the charm. That is, it worked with women who didn’t examine his motives too closely, or didn’t stay with him too long. J. J. Kaiser did not wear well.

He had never married, though he came close a couple of times. It was usually with a sense of mutual relief that J. J.’s romances ended. The women he had gotten most deeply involved with were female versions of himself: quick-thinking, fast-talking, sophisticated, and hip. For a while they would stimulate each other, but before long it always became a strain.

Geneva Sundstrum was different. Sophistication and deceit were foreign to her. As far as J. J. knew she had never had a smartass thought. Although he was subject to the storied yearning of small men for large women, Geneva was definitely not the type he would have chosen for personal fun and games. It disturbed him now that an uncommon tenderness seemed to creep inside his emotional shell at times when they were together. That did not fit in at all with the plans he had made.

“Okay, sweetheart, you’re not going to get any cleaner,” he said, giving her a whack on the lower back.

Geneva stepped out of the tub and turned to face him, a vast expanse of beautifully packaged dripping wet blonde woman. Something caught in J. J.’s throat. He turned away.

“Let’s move it,” he said. “I don’t want to miss anybody important.”