Obsession: Part #2

(Read part #1 here!)

Strangely enough, the consequences for his meltdown were not as dire as he had feared. He was banned for a month by the Player Council, but it was soon forgotten. Perhaps if it had been Girona that had reacted that way, it would have been more of a scandal, but it was roguish, temperamental, handsome Scolo. Tennis needed personalities, right?

Even the journalist who had asked the question was not immune to his wiles. He remembered her face distintinctly. Shock, initially, at the unexpected violence, but then there was glee. Yes, glee. He distinctly recalled the hint of a smile breaking out at the corner of her lips, out of place in the confusion and anger and fear on the frozen mask of her face. Scolo knew that most journalists craved the chance to truly eviscerate someone, to impale someone with acid barbs and no fear of rebuke. This was her chance, and not only could she do it without worrying about payback, but this would probably even shoot her into tennis journalism’s stratosphere. 

So, Scolo did what Scolo did best and pre-empted her by offering to do an exclusive scoop. When she agreed, and when they met and he saw the cold, tight outlines of her face, her folded arms and distant expression, he knew he would have to turn up the charm to change the narrative. But this was just another game he knew he could win. The journalist was tough, but she was no Girona. Scolo mixed genuine humility and contrition, with flashes of humour and rakish charm. When his eyes weren’t downcast with shame, they stared directly into her eyes as if in naked confession, until he watched the journalist’s defences melt away. A couple of weeks later, there was an article in Tennis Week: ‘I forgive you’, and a lengthy defence of Scolo’s behaviour, arguing that heartfelt attempts to better oneself must be appreciated, not mocked.

His tennis life fell into a familiar routine that somehow felt less satisfying than it used to. Forehand drills, wins over lesser opponents, trophies, backhand drills, everything seemed to meld into a single monochrome image. The only thing that sharpened his focus and infused his life with colour was the thought that he was the only one who knew about Girona’s cheating, and he would be the one to bring him down. 

And yet, he managed to keep his obsession with Girona in check, or so he thought until something happened that would reignite the flame. The day before it happened, Scolo was talking to Coach about Girona’s chances against Patel. 

“Styles make fights, “ Coach said. “And Patel’s style is hard for Girona. Which is why he has a two match winning streak against him.”

Scolo did not even look up as he said, “This time though, Girona is going to win in straight sets. Bet on it?” 

The next day, as he warmed up in the locker room for his own match, he saw Girona for the first time since the meltdown. Before he could even make sense of his own emotions, Girona had smiled and waved at him politely. Scolo fumed. It was like he had never even been called a cheater. How could someone be this equanimous? Perhaps it was the drugs, it had to be. Girona probably felt eyes on him, because he paused in the middle of rummaging through his kit bag to nod at him.

Scolo, perhaps to distract himself from his black mood, looked at Girona with fresh eyes. He was tallish, but below average for a tennis player. He had good posture, but it wasn’t impeccable. There was the hint of a slouch, imperceptible for anyone but Girona who had an eye for this kind of thing. A thick head of hair was conservatively parted to one side, but liberally gelled to survive the rigours of a tennis match. He was handsome in a conventional, athletic way - with lean, angular, well defined features, but Scolo felt that there was an openness, an amiability to his face that made him less attractive than a surlier aspect would.

Then Scolo did something unusual: he finished his warm up and sat down in the lounge to watch Girona’s match. Was this the action on which his destiny hinged? Perhaps it is natural for human beings to seek, especially in the wake of an inexplicable catastrophe, a sharply defined moment in time that, even if not quite an explanation, at least separates the before from the after. The truth is rarely that simple. Anyway, as Scolo watched Girona quickly turn the tide against Patel, winning four games in a row to take the first set, his mind drifted away, jumping from thought to thought, as he distractedly scrolled through his social media feed.

In an instant, he was alert, because he noticed soft light spilling from a nearby doorway. It was Girona’s private locker room, and he had forgotten to lock it behind him. Almost before he could think, he was up on his feet and inside the room. Rifling through open bags, and unlocked cabinets, he looked for anything that could prove that Girona was cheating. Working himself into a mad frenzy, he was halfway through a particularly large drawer, when it occurred to him that there might be cameras. It was too late to worry about that now. The most he could do was rearrange everything so that they would have no reason to look at the camera footage. He continued searching, methodically replacing everything he moved, not pausing to think about what he was really looking for, afraid that his nerve wouldn’t hold.

Suddenly, he could hear footsteps outside the room, and he had only a second to put away the bag he had open, before Girona swept in, flushed, breathing heavily, and happy. 

“I knew I could.. “ He paused, confronted with an unexpected sight. “Scolo..?”

“May I help you?” Scolo scanned his face for hostility, or suspicion, but he couldn’t see anything. What could he possibly say? It was hopeless.

“I… dropped a ball I was warming up with and it… rolled into.. er.. your locker room.”

“Did you find it then?” Girona asked, without the slightest trace of sarcasm. Scolo nodded and shuffled out of the room, wondering if his excuse was better than he realized, when he saw Girona’s coach standing beside the doorway. Naked hostility was plain to see on his face. He knew Scolo had been up to no good, and his lips moved as if he was about to say something, but he held his tongue. Girona had moved on, there was no point making a scene.

Back in the safety of his locker room, Scolo let out the breath he had been holding for a long time, and unclenched his fists. He probed his mind for fear, or second thoughts, but there was only a burning determination. He had not felt this alive in a long time. 

Scolo began to be polite to Girona. He struck up conversations every time they passed each other, and Girona started to open up to him more and more. No one else but Girona would even entertain the idea of considering a professional rival a friend, but he laughed again at his naivete. (So the drugs didn’t make him immune to his charm.) Even when they played, and Scolo inevitably lost, he managed to do the hardest thing: smile gracefully and congratulate his opponent. 

There were dinners and parties. At one dinner, Scolo was with Cara and Girona with his girlfriend, whose name he couldn’t remember. As Girona narrated one anecdote after another, he could see Cara begin to warm to him. After all, everything she knew about Girona was through Scolo’s eyes. The fake amiability, the drugs, the cheating, the drugs, the smarmy oily falseness that she expected just was not there. All she saw was the most successful tennis player in the world sitting in front of her, without a trace of pride, treating her like an absolute equal, narrating embarrassing stories from his childhood. Scolo stayed silent for a long time, as he could feel Cara’s eyes on him. Perhaps she didn’t believe him anymore. 

Scolo stopped taking Cara along to parties. He told himself that it was because he was only using the parties as an excuse to find out Girona’s secret. But why did he not tell Cara what he was doing? He saw the unasked question in Cara’s eyes all the time. The truth was on the tip of his tongue, but he could not bring himself to say it out loud. 

“I’m sorry, Cara,” he muttered like a chant in his mind as he hovered from one glittery person to another at one such party, making his way to Girona’s bedroom. This was the first time he was at a party at Girona’s place, and he was not going to let an opportunity like this pass. He spotted a few kit bags by the window, and started to make his way to them, when he heard a voice call out to him.

“Scolo, lost again, looking for the bathroom?” It was Girona. Resisting the urge to turn sharply, he looked back to see a friendly smile. 

“Yes, yes, of course! How silly of me, must be all the wine I have been drinking.”

Remarkably, every time he snuck into Girona’s rooms and found nothing, his resolve only strengthened. As everything else in his life began to fall apart, this mission - and he had begun to see it as one - clarified into an almost holy one. 

His form suffered. It wasn’t just Girona he began to lose to. At this peak, he had a presence that repelled conversation as he strutted through the locker rooms. He spoke to no player, and no player spoke to him. That fort he had built around himself began to crumble, as whispers of veiled concern impinged on his conscious mind. They thought he was crazy? He would show them they were all wrong - WRONG - when he found incontrovertible proof of Girona’s shame, and they would bow down in front of him. He redoubled his efforts. Sometimes, he walked into Girona’s private locker room without invitation, and while his back was turned, pocket shower gels, vitamin pill boxes and the like. 

One day, he received an email from Coach that he was quitting. It was as amicable as it possibly could be. They had a great run, but he had taught him all he could, and now he needed something different. A brief white hot flame of fury rippled through his body, but then it was gone. All this meant that he would have to finish his mission sooner. He began to nudge Girona into hosting parties at his place more frequently. 

But Coach leaving was nothing compared to what happened next. When he got home after another tame training session, Cara was waiting to speak to him. She firmly rejected his protestations of tiredness, and said it would only take a minute.

“Are you cheating on me?” She asked without evident anger, gently, too gently, as if dealing with a mentally ill person.

All his frustrations, all the pent up anger, all his failures converged for a moment into an act of madness. Scolo screamed at Cara, and before she could react, shoved her to the floor.

“SHUT UP!”

In an instant, his anger was extinguished, and there was shame and guilt. Painful, stomach churning amounts of them that he knew would take a long time to dissolve. That was before he saw that Cara was bleeding from a cut on her temple where she had struck her head. 

Cara left the next day.

There was a brief moment of introspection. His behaviour had been suspicious: not talking to Cara anymore, going to all those parties, returning late at night, and not saying a word about what he did. It clearly must have looked like he was reverting to Playboy type. All he had to say was anything at all - the truth - and Cara would have supported him. But he hadn’t. And now he had another party to go to. 

There was one cabinet he hadn’t searched yet. That had to be it. 

At the party, out of the smoky darkness, a gold bedaubed vision from heaven appeared in front of him. For the first time in a long time, he really took in the sight of another woman. He admired her supple, athletic form. The dress hugged parts of her body, revealing and hiding at the same time, hinting at unexpected curves. She was speaking to him. He responded, she laughed a practised laugh, and in a heartbeat they were kissing. 

Girona was there. He was saying something.

“... you want to do this? Are you sure you want to do this, Scolo?” Concern filled his face.

Scolo didn’t say a word. He pushed away the woman sitting in his lap, picked up the lamp by the side of the sofa, and swung hard, as hard as he could at Girona. The woman was screaming, he was screaming, the nature of the noise all around them changed. But he missed. Girona, agile as a cat, skipped out of the way, shock and betrayal on his face.

And that was it. Scolo’s long and brilliant career was over that instant. After a lengthy ban, he returned to playing tennis again, but he barely won a match. Someone pressed charges, but he lawyered up and got away without jail time. Cara did not report his attack, but he never heard from her again. Occasionally, he would see her perfect face on advertising hoardings, and he would smile for her.

__________________________________________

He was nervous, but not for the reason he expected. There was no doubt in his mind that Girona would have forgiven him for the way their friendship ended, none at all. Instead, he wondered what he would think when he saw the broken husk of a man Scolo had become. He tried to puff out his chest, and walk straighter, but that messed up his gait, and he looked clumsy. Sighing, he untied and tied his shoelaces one last time, and walked into the locker room.

Girona was practically unchanged. Of course he must have been, given that he had not stopped playing, but the sight still took his breath away. The tennis player is the perfect athlete, and the athlete is the human being pushed to physical perfection. There were more lines on his face, and he wasn’t as lean anymore, but the contrast to his own withered form was as clear as night and day. Intense nostalgia flooded through him and roared in his ears like thunder. He could see concern briefly flit across Girona’s face, but it was wiped away, and he smiled and said something, but Scolo could not hear a thing. 

A hand on his shoulder snapped him out of his reverie. 

“Before we play, “ said Girona, “I want you to have something.” Then he pressed something into the palm of Scolo’s hand. It was a bright, blue pill.

“What is it?” Scolo asked robotically. There was a strange expression on Girona’s face.

“It is an implant that resets your memories. I have used it all of my career to forget the sensation of losing.”

Scolo did not say anything in response.

“My problem was always mental. If only I could forget the sensation of losing, I would be the perfect player, I thought. And then I discovered this. It works by… “

“... you were right all along Scolo. I’m sorry, I really am but I suppose it doesn’t matter now anymore.”

“Then why tell me now?” Scolo asked dully.

“Because I want you to find peace.”

And Scolo knew right away that he did find peace. It was like a physical weight was lifted off his shoulders. He knew, and probably Girona did too, that he would not report this to the authorities. All he wanted was to be right, and he was. It had cost him everything, but he was right, and he knew he could finally move on with the pieces of his life. He smiled at Girona, genuinely for the first time in his life, and walked out alongside him to play the last tennis match of his life.