Page 56 of The Challenger
I side-eye him. “What does that mean?”
He nods his chin at Chavez shooting the breeze with a group of players on the court. “What’s the story with him? Why’s he playing the Challengers?”
"There is no story. He's playing tennis, like everyone else here."
“C'mon,” he says, elbowing me like we’re old friends. “Everyone’s talking about it. Eight months off the tour. Making no money. You think he’s going to make it through the first round?”
“I don’t know. Are you?” I gaze at him coolly and he shrugs.
“We might play each other in the first round. Depends on the draw. I’m just sayin’, if that happens, we can make a quick buck. Seventy-thirty on the odds. Seventy for you two.”
I fight to keep it under control, but I am deeply offended. And pissed. “You realize what you’re asking me?”
“What am I asking?” he says, brazenly holding my stare.
“You’re asking for trouble.”
“From what I see, you’re pretty okay with trouble. Isn’t there like, some code of ethics coaches have to follow? You know, not fuck their players.”
My fists ball in my lap. Cruel was always their default with my kind of different. It still makes me feel unworthy.
“You can leave now. Thank you.”
“What else are you coaching him on?” he asks, an endless, annoying bag of hot air. “Not to mack on the girlfriends of other players?”
It’s a trap. I know he wants me to take the bait and I do. I blame my emotional state. “Like who?”
He calls out to his friend. “Georgie! Who was Arlo’s girlfriend? The Russian skank?”
“Vanya the Velvet Vagina.”
Nathan chuckles like he made up the classy name himself. “You didn’t see those two on Insta last year? You can still find the pics online. Check ’em out. Why do you think Arlo hates him so much?”
Arlo. Arlo. Arlo. Python mentioned the name when he and Chavez were hitting together in LA. It has to be Arlo Märklin. The current number five player, and a 6’4” slab of Hungarian meat who has no business being a tennis player when he’s built like a linebacker. He’s a heavy favorite to win the Australian Open, a topic Chavez and I haven’t talked about. I get the sense he doesn’t want to be reminded that he should be there instead of here.
“Just wanted to give you fair warning,” Nathan says, nonchalantly. “I’m sure I’ll see you around in the next few days, so if you change your mind…” He rubs his thumb against his fingers, indicating money. “Doesn’t have to be the whole match. One set.”
What a dipshit. He has no clue about Chavez’s financial situation and assumed I’d be desperate enough to entertain his crackpot, and illegal, idea.
“One more word out of you and I’m talking to the officials.”
His features darken at my unexpected pluck and he stands up, muttering, “You don’t have to be a bitch about it.” He motions to his friend to head out but not before he makes a V in front of his mouth with his index and middle finger, waggling his tongue through it. “And if your uptight cunt wants some real action, call me.”
I wait until they and their sniggers are gone before I slide out my phone. My cheeks are aflame, and my thumping heart screams I should not be doing this, but what choice do I have?
I can’t get past Vanya the Velvet Vagina.
If only for the alliteration.
The photos are buried, frozen in time on page twenty of a trash celebrity site. Grainy but clear enough to gut me. Aside from Sofia, his eighty-three conquests have been nameless and faceless. Abstracts. But these images are chunks of hard concrete landing on my baby toes and cannot be ignored. A gorgeous Russian ice princess pushed up against a wall with one half of Team D groping her double D’s. Their mouths fused. A mini skirt so short it’s like, why did she even bother?
I set the phone down with an awful taste in my mouth. This morning he’d suckled me and said,Your boobs are perfect.I know my emotions are running amok, and that time of the month is muddying my ability to not be affected by this, but how can he love mine when they are tiny bumps compared to hers? I glance again at the obscene amounts of flesh oozing through his fingers and feel hollowed out. I tell myself the guy who sewed on my button while sitting naked on the bed and got engaged to a woman to make his parents happy is not this guy.
But it is.
Seconds away from spinning down the oh-so-familiar path of self-destruction, a text message suddenly appears with an attached photo. I might not have opened it had the image of Vanya and Chavez not been on my screen, haunting me.
BD: Good luck in Italy! I'm rooting for you.
