“Thirty-love!”
I lay on the hard court in a fetal position, completely dazed. Soon I felt a foot kick lightly into my behind, and I heard the crowd crack up.
“He’s who you’re gonna be like?” Mike called to Howie, just between celebs.
“Go figure,” Howie answered. Then I heard him counting, loudly, like a fight referee. “One!… Two! … Three!”
On four, to belly laughs, I stumbled to my feet. It felt like a match was being played inside my head now. I couldn’t remember who Danny Kaye replaced in White Christmas. Was it Fred Astaire?
“Come on, Fred Astaire,” Howie said. “There’s only two sets and five games to go.”
When I was erect again, I saw the blurry form of a pale-faced man in the stands, pointing a camera at me. Maybe this was who I’d been fearing all along!
Another ball crashed into my crotch then. Pain and nausea filled my frame, as I turned to the side, falling to my knees.
“Forty-love!”
I only had the strength to lift my head and try to check the stands. The photographer was pointing his camera down, below the bleachers, and was feverishly snapping something.
It was a man in white face, making his escape—and, I guessed, a good photo, too.
The crowd was laughing again. I saw that, on the other court, Mike and Thor were doing funny seventies disco dancing, in tribute to their time of fame. In a second, Howie, my own partner, had jumped the net to join them.
I didn’t even bother rising from my knees for the next serve, which kissed the line, far from my feet, groin, and face. Howie had served it himself.
“Game to Terrible and Thor!” the announcer yelled. “And Howie!”
My patron had ganged up against me, but I didn’t care. I was busy checking out the photographer, to memorize his position. He was sitting beside a lean and beautiful black woman, her face covered by big sunglasses.
I was going to need his film.
“HEY, WAIT FOR ME!”
Howie wouldn’t even drive me back.
Pumped up by the match, he sped off alone in his car, waving to adoring fans. I was left standing by myself, as the parking lot emptied out. Finally, I flagged a limo, which was among the last to leave.
In my sweaty whites, I was crushed on a huge backseat, in a gaggle of beautiful hangers-on, roadies, and toadies. Across from me, his head on a model’s shoulder, was Thor Ludwig. Showered and dressed, exhausted by what was apparently his first exertion in years, he was dead asleep, snoring quietly.
I sat between two sports fans, a stunning black woman of thirty-five with a thick German accent, and a platinum blond gay man, also foreign. They talked over me in many tongues.
It was only when I noticed the fancy leather bag on the man’s lap that I knew: It was the woman from the stands and her photographer friend.
“Excuse me,” I got up the courage to say.
The woman, in mid-monologue, stopped talking. She looked over at me, quizzically. Then, with a long leather boot, she lightly kicked at the shin of sleeping Thor, across from her.
“Who’s he?” I think she asked, in German.
Thor’s eyes fluttered open, very slightly. It took him a second to place me. Then, speaking English, he said, “A friend of Howie’s.” He added a word in German that I think, from the snort that accompanied it, meant putz.
The woman shrugged, as if to say, so what? A vote of confidence, I thought. Meanwhile, Thor kept speaking, as if I weren’t there.
“Howie’s trying to find some film. The Day the Clown Died.”
“Cried,” I said, quietly, but no one cared. I was exasperated that Howie had been telling everyone about it.
Thor went back to sleep, snuggling on a fur shoulder. The German woman looked over at me, with surprising interest. “What’s this, this movie?”
I waited to respond, calculating how much to reveal. Then I figured, what the hell. I began telling her the story of the film and, as usual, went far beyond the central facts.
“In later years, Ingmar Bergman didn’t use Harriet Andersson so much. His leading lady, of course, was usually Liv Ullmann. In his 1978 picture with her, The Serpent’s Egg, David Carradine replaced Richard Harris. A year or so before, Harris had been replaced by Oliver Reed in Burnt Offerings …”
I only kept going because the woman didn’t interrupt. She also didn’t yawn, laugh, or direct her attention elsewhere.
“I prefer Richard Harris,” she actually said.
I was speechless, hearing this. I stammered out, “Yes, I guess, on balance, I do, too.”
There was a pause. She smiled at me, her long eyelashes going hypnotically up and then down. Encouraged, I went on.
“Liv Ullmann was so big in the early Seventies that she was cast in Forty Carats. It was supposed to be Elizabeth Taylor, which would have made more sense.”
Amazingly, she was still attentive. I could feel her leather pant leg pressed against my bare thigh. Then, in her accent, she spoke with the pleasant suggestiveness of a Marlene Dietrich.
“I don’t meet so much,” she said, “the nerd.”
I nodded, very slowly, looking at her long, smooth, copper-colored neck. Obviously, I was tempted to keep the conversation going. Still, she was probably just a bored socialite trying to kill a limo ride. And the unexpected intimacy afforded me another opportunity.
