The Players (7 page)

“Then how does it happen you didn’t … you know?”

Christy giggled behind her hand. “I believe he simply didn’t know how to get on with it and got embarrassed. If he hadn’t rushed off so suddenly I’d have bloody well shown him what to do, but he was down the stairs and off before I could grab him.”

“Bad luck,” Paula said. Then as an afterthought, “Maybe the boy’s in love with you.”

“Do you really think so? My, what a lark. I think I’d quite enjoy having a fellow in love with me. D’you think he’ll send me flowers and all that? He did ask me to go to Hurlingham with him tomorrow and meet his folks. That does sound rather serious.”

Paula’s thoughts had wandered, and she tried to pull herself back into the conversation. “Er, I’m sorry, what was that you said?”

Christy sobered and looked closely at her friend. “What happened between you and the journalist tonight, dear? Nothing good, I’d say, from the look on your face.”

“No, actually we had quite a pleasant evening,” Paula began, then she found she could get no more words out, and she began to cry. She dropped onto the settee and put her head in her hands and sobbed.

Christy, quickly switching roles to that of an older sister, sat down beside Paula and put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

“There we are, Paula,” she said, “men can be utterly beastly sometimes. Even the nicest ones.”

“No, no,” Paula got out between sobs. “It wasn’t that he did anything I didn’t want him to. Oh, God, how I wanted him to. But again I just couldn’t do it in bed. It was just like the other times, only this time it was with a man who really mattered to me.”

“Did you tell him about your ex-husband? The things he made you do?”

“No. I couldn’t talk about it before we went to bed, and afterward it would have sounded like I was making excuses.”

“God, I really did walk in at a bad time, didn’t I.”

“It didn’t matter any more then. The damage was done and Mike was just looking for an excuse to get out the door and away.”

“If he cares for you he’ll be back.”

“I doubt it. None of the others came back.”

“Maybe this one is different. Would you like me to sit up with you for a bit?”

“No, thanks, I’m all right now. You run along to bed.”

“Very well then,” Christy said doubtfully. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good night, Christy.”

Paula closed the door after the blonde girl and stood for a moment with her back pressed against the panel. She felt completely drained, as if her insides had been wrung out. It had been foolish of her to think she could have a normal relationship with a man again. She had failed consistently ever since Eric. Still, she had so wanted it to be right with Mike Wilder. And for a short time it seemed to be working out that way.

Mustn’t think about it any more. Paula walked to the bathroom, took a sleeping pill, and went to bed.

• • •

There were few cars on the road at this hour, and the man with the knife drove very fast. His head hurt him badly, but his mind was clear. He knew now that he had made no mistake about Mike Wilder. He had seen them together. He would have killed the bastard tonight, but his growing headache and physical exhaustion increased the chances of botching the job. He would go home now, take his medicine, and sleep for several hours. Early tomorrow he would be refreshed and alert. Then he would kill Wilder
.

The taxi was still several blocks away from Tim Barrett’s hotel when he told the driver to stop and let him out. He wanted to walk the rest of the way and let the cool night air wash over him. He also wanted to collect his thoughts before facing his coach, Vic Goukas.

As usual, Vic had chosen a small, quiet hotel for Tim and himself, one well away from the distractions of the city. This year most of the players were staying at the Gloucester, and many of the officials and the press and other followers of the tour were at the Regency House. A few of the top players, mostly the married ones, leased a flat for their stay in London. Others still followed the old practice of “staying with people,” a hangover from the simon-pure amateur days when wealthy tennis buffs would make their homes available to the touring players whenever they were in town.

Vic’s arrangements for this year were adjoining rooms for Tim and himself at the Beverly Court, a modest house on a quiet street in the Kensington area. If the other residents were aware that a star tennis player was living among them, they gave no sign, keeping discreetly to themselves as always.

The light mist that haloed the street lamps did nothing to dampen Tim’s spirits as he walked jauntily toward the Beverly Court. In the nineteen-plus years of his life nothing quite like Christy Noone had ever happened to him. Sure, he had dated girls before, but not very often. Vic had not told him in so many words that girls would ruin his tennis game, but he had certainly implied as much. Listening to his coach, Tim had formed a mental picture of a girl tapping his vital juices the way a Vermont farmer tapped a maple tree to let the sap run into a bucket. Tim laughed to himself as he recalled the image.

Other girls Tim had gone out with—all screened by Vic or by Tim’s parents—had been shallow-minded teenagers ether stupefied into silence or gone all giddy at the idea of being with a genuine tennis star. How different it was with Christy. She was a full-grown woman, and as far as Tim could tell, she liked him solely for himself.

He had felt immensely proud tonight every time he and Christy walked into a different place and he saw the admiring and envious looks from the other men. There at Caesar’s Christy could have had about any man she wanted. Tim was delighted and a little mystified that she had chosen him.

The whole evening had been magical. Always shy around girls, Tim had found himself talking freely with Christy about the things that really mattered to him. For her part, Christy never pressed him or made him feel he had to be entertaining. She honestly seemed to enjoy just being with him.

Out of sheer exuberance he gave a little leap into the air, then pulled up sheepishly when a strolling bobby gave him a curious look from across the street. He was acting, Tim told himself, like a goofy teenager involved in his first love affair. Well, what the heck, he
was
a teenager technically, at least for another couple of months.

Sometimes it was hard to remember. It seemed to Tim that he had been an adult from the time he left elementary school and his family had moved for the sole purpose of enrolling him in a junior high school noted for the tennis players it produced. Somewhere along the line his youth had been misplaced.

The one thing about the evening with Christy that bothered Tim a little was the way it ended. Should he have pushed things more, he wondered? Invited himself into her apartment? He certainly hadn’t wanted to leave her at the time, but he was afraid of being too forward and spoiling the whole thing.

Tim was not greatly experienced, but neither was he a virgin. There had been sex with two different girls. Once cramped into the back seat of a Chevrolet Impala, the other time nervously on the girl’s living room sofa while her parents slept in a rear bedroom. Both times had been vaguely pleasurable, but not the transcendental experience he had been led to expect. Tim tried to imagine how it would be with Christy. Something shared and beautiful and complete. He wanted it to be perfect.

Tim hoped he had done the right thing in not forcing the issue the first night. Sometimes Christy talked as though she were quite experienced sexually, but Tim suspected it was a pose to go along with her swinging Londoner image. Underneath she might be as confused and searching as he was.

As he neared his hotel Tim made an effort to pull his thoughts away from Christy and to concentrate on what he was going to say to Vic Goukas. There was no doubt in his mind that the coach would be waiting for him, expecting an explanation of where Tim had been until so late. Vic did not exactly set a curfew, but he did expect Tim to be in at a reasonable time. And to the coach, “reasonable” meant any time before midnight.

Tim paused for a moment before the Beverly Court. It was a narrow four-story building on a street of narrow four-story buildings. Only a discreet bronze plaque identified it as a hotel. How Vic ever found these hideaways was a mystery to Tim. He drew a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and walked in.

A seam of yellow light shone between the bottom of the door and the maroon carpet. Tim used his key and entered. Vic Goukas sat in a straight-backed wooden chair next to a table with a lamp. He held a copy of
Tennis World
before his face in a reading position, but from his attitude it was apparent that he had just snatched up the magazine when he heard Tim’s key in the lock.

“Hi, Vic,” Tim said, making it as casual as he could.

“Hi. Have a good time?” Vic said in a rumbling bass. He was a browned leathery man with a skullcap of bristly white hair. He had a great prow of a nose and eyes squinted to slits from staring into the sun.

“I had a fine time,” Tim said.

“That’s nice. What time is it, anyway? My watch must be running fast.”

“Vic, why don’t you just chew me out and get it over with? I don’t feel like going through a whole routine tonight.”

Vic dropped the magazine and abandoned all pretense that he had been reading it. He stood and faced his young protégé. At sixty Vic Goukas was still trim and muscular, his weight the same to the ounce as when he had played on the American Davis Cup teams in the years before World War II.

He said, “Have you been drinking?”

Tim stiffened. “No, I haven’t. Do you want me to walk a straight line for you?”

“What is it then?” Vic leaned closer and peered at him. “There’s something different about you tonight.”

Tim felt his face grow hot. He wished he could talk to Vic about Christy, about how he felt about her, but he knew he could not make the coach understand what had happened to him tonight.

He said, “I was out with some of the Australians, that’s all. We got fooling around and I lost track of the time.”

“Uh-huh. And which one of the Aussies is wearing lipstick now?”

Tim’s hand went to his mouth reflexively, then he dropped it and took a step back to look his coach in the eye. “All right, I was out with a girl. They tell me that’s normal for guys my age. If you’re about to give me the usual lecture on the evils of women, forget it. And don’t ask me any more questions, because I don’t want to talk about it.” He was breathing hard when he finished, surprised by his own outburst.

Vic Goukas was surprised too. He held up his callused hands in a gesture of peace. “Hey, all right, Tim, I’m not going to give you any lecture. Especially not about the evils of women. Nobody knows better than me the things a woman can do
for
a man as well as
to
him. After all, I was married to three of them.”

Vic smiled. It was a remarkably appealing smile, almost beautiful in that tough brown face. Tim felt the tension leave him, and he smiled back.

“And believe me,” Vic went on, “I’d a lot rather see you out with an honest-to-God woman than hanging around the locker room snapping towels like a few of the players we both know. The only thing that concerns me is your tennis game. I don’t have to tell you how important concentration is to playing winning tennis, and what I’m worried about is that this girl, whoever she is, will hurt your concentration here at Wimbledon.”

“Vic, this girl can only be good for me,” Tim said. “You’ll get a chance to meet her tomorrow. I asked her to come out to Hurlingham with me.”

The coach rubbed his heavy jaw thoughtfully. “Do your folks know about her?”

“Not yet, I only met her tonight for the first time. Mom and Dad will meet her tomorrow too.”

“Well, I hope it works out,” Vic said. “Taking her with you tomorrow is all right, I guess, but once play starts on Monday I hope you’ll have your mind strictly on tennis.”

“Sure, Vic,” Tim said quickly. Then to switch the conversation to another topic he said, “Some guy named Kaiser wanted to talk to me tonight about a deal for a signature racket.”

“Kaiser? Kaiser? I don’t think I know the name.”

“He said he was with Gilfillan.”

“Oh, them. The last one of their rackets I tried wasn’t fit for backboarding on a playground. What did you tell him?”

“I told him he’d have to talk to you.”

“That’s good. I don’t want you tied up in any contracts yet. You’re a good player, Tim, and you’ve got the physical equipment to be a great player. When you get a couple of big tournament wins on your record people are going to recognize the fact, and then you’ll be able to name your own price for commercial contracts.”

“You know, that’s one part of this game I really don’t like too much,” Tim said. “You sign contracts with people promising to wear this and drink that and play their brand of balls. You get your picture taken for magazine ads selling everything from chewing gum to power lawn mowers. We’re getting to be like Indianapolis racing cars with advertising space for rent all over our bodies.”

“Sure, it’s commercial as hell,” Vic agreed, “but the money is a damn sight more honest than when I was playing. We were all ‘amateurs’ then. No prize money, no endorsements, no shaving commercials. Of course, we didn’t starve. Some ‘friend’ always took care of our meals and lodging, and somehow envelopes with money inside used to find their way into our lockers. How much money was in your envelope depended on how well you did in the tournament. It wasn’t prize money, you understand. We were ‘amateurs.’”

Tim sighed heavily. “I know it’s a fact of life, Vic, and I know that without the extra money from ads and endorsements a lot of the players couldn’t afford to stay on the tour. But I still don’t like to think about it.”

“Don’t think about it,” Vic said. “That’s what I’m here for.” He yawned and stretched his muscular arms. “Guess I’ll hit the hay. You better get some sleep too.”

“I will. Good night, Vic.”

“Good night, Tim.” The coach went out through the door between their rooms and closed it behind him.

Tim went to bed at once, but he lay awake for a long time thinking. Thinking of the laughing blonde girl and the way her body felt when he held her close to kiss her good night.