Obsession: Part #1

In the dimly lit bookshop, an old man shuffled wearily from shelf to shelf, dusting the tops of books ineffectively. His eyes, if there was someone around to see them, were glazed as if focussed on something inward. Midway through his chore, he seemed to give up and slump into the solitary chair in the shop. A stray beam of sunshine lit up his face, and brought with it a surprise: the old man was thirty five years old at best. The rounded shoulders, the tired demeanour, and the unnaturally haggard droop to his cheeks conspired to fool the casual observer, but Scolo was definitely a young man. His eyes were still glazed over, and in his mind, he was doing what he did every day of every year since the time his other life ended. 

This was a memory so polished from repeated replay that it almost glinted at the edges like a shiny HD video. It was the memory of a tennis match; no, two tennis matches actually, with a point from each playing side by side, frame by frame in his mind’s eye. The opponent in both matches was his great rival Girona, his downfall and nemesis, but on the left side, he wore a fearful grimace on his face, while on the right side, an angry scowl. Yes, this wizened old-young man had been one of the best tennis players in the world. 

Scolo served. Left Girona and right Girona played a rally ball back. Both halves were so in lockstep, it was like they were the same match. Except for Girona’s face, of course, which seemed to resolve into hyperreal clarity. The rally went on back and forth for a few more shots, until Scolo sensed a tipping point - a tingling in his racket fingers that suggested that something was about to give. Scolo just knew in that moment what he had to do. Taking the pace off his shot, he massaged it straight back at Girona. Left Girona grimaced and shanked an easy forehand way out of the court, but right Girona - his nemesis and downfall - stepped in to smash it away for a winner. Confusion overwhelmed his thoughts - it should have worked! It had worked before! - confusion from the match bleached into the present like no time had passed at all, and he held his head as if willing it to go away.

It was always the same. If not this rally, if not this match, it was something else. But Girona, the man who everyone thought was a saint... the vicious spiral of his thoughts was interrupted by the tinkle of a bell. A visitor?

Old man Scolo shuffled to the door. It was the postman. Muttering to himself about unwanted advertising, he opened the unmarked envelope to see this letter.

“Dear Scolo,

I’d like to play an exhibition doubles match with you before I retire. For old times sake. And to bury the hatchet. Don’t turn me down.

Girona

“

Viscous rage flowed into his veins, rough from a lack of use, but familiar like a close friend that had drifted away. The nerve of that man! But he knew, even in that moment, that he was going to say yes. He hadn’t struck a ball in years, but he was going to say yes.

In retrospect, it had all started falling apart at that press conference. It was after a third consecutive loss to Girona. He had just lost his number one ranking, and every question in the press conference stung harder than ever before. He still didn’t know why he did what he did next, but he hung around in a small, darkened room by the main press area after his conference was done, to watch Girona’s press conference. None of the journalists knew he was still there - oh what a scandal it would be, he thought impishly - but made sure to leave the door slightly ajar.

“What did you make of your performance?”

He watched Girona shade his eyes, a tic he knew all too well, using that moment to reset his thoughts and reply with the bland stock filler answers tennis players give.

“I am happy. There are little things that maybe I can improve, but this opponent.. I have full respect.. One of my toughest opponents… Very happy.”

Stock question after stock question followed, and pat came the inoffensive, cliched responses, and Scolo began to switch off. He wondered what Cara was up to. She was probably much more busy than he was. She definitely was, considering he was lurking in a dark room daydreaming. But presently, his eyes snapped back to the press room, as if alerted by some supernatural instinct.

“Girona, in the early part of your career, despite being widely acknowledged as possibly the more expansive talent, you lost nearly every match you played to Scolo. And now you’re on a winning streak. What’s changed? What’s the secret? I’m sure Scolo would like to know.” Amused chuckles filled the room.

“Scolo hasn’t tailed off, not really. His record against almost every other player is still as good as it ever was. It’s you. What’s the secret?*

To Scolo’s utter surprise, Girona did not immediately respond with a press friendly cliche. (“Oh, I’ve been lucky a couple of times, I’m sure Scolo will fight back”, “At the highest level, tennis matches hinge on a handful of decisive moments that are hard to pinpoint.”) A very awkward pause filled the room as Girona stared straight back at the journalist. Eventually,

“Could you repeat your question?”

And when the journalist did, Girona still seemed frozen. Wondering murmurs spread among the throng, but still Girona said nothing. The press coordinator leaned in to whisper in Girona’s ear, nodded at his response, and proceeded to announce to the journalists that Girona was suddenly taken ill with a dizzy spell and would have to cut the press conference short. 

The buzzing drone of stifled conversation slowly dissipated as all the journalists filtered out, but Scolo stood there in the dark for a long time. He was shaking and his eyes were aflame with sudden revelation, because he knew, he knew with absolute certainty that Girona was cheating.

To understand Scolo’s conviction, you had to understand the kind of tennis player Scolo was. Yes, he was very talented, fairly hard working, in decent shape, but so was everyone else in the top twenty in the world. Where he stood out, and what allowed him to be the number one player in the world for two years, was an almost divine sense of intuition that guided his game. It wasn’t just that he knew each player’s weakness and could target them, again, probably every player in the top twenty could.

It was that he knew to millisecond precision what shot each player was going to play in each given situation. Again, this was nothing as naive as saying that this and this player played more forehands down the line than cross court, but much more sophisticated than that; he would know with certainty that at a given point in a rally, at a given point in a match, given the way his opponent had played thus far, given the way his opponent was feeling mentally, given how tired - or not - his opponent was, he would know with certainty that he would next play a down the line forehand.

Scolo couldn’t explain the formula to you if he tried. Instead, he embraced his gift and trusted it and rode its power to the top of the world. Girona was, in the beginning, one of the easiest kills for his spider sense. He was only six months younger than Scolo, and everybody - even Scolo himself - freely admitted that Girona was probably the most talented player the sport had ever seen. But faced with Scolo’s unerring anticipation, his beautiful shots fell apart to almost amateurish proportions. Occasionally, Girona would cling to his game long enough to steal the shorter matches, but the head to head was embarrassingly one sided. Scolo 12 Girona 2.

And then Girona had begun to cheat. It had to be that!

A faint, faraway whine resolved itself into the voice of Coach. A very annoyed voice that made it very clear that it was repeating itself for the four hundredth time.

“Running forehand drills?”

As he smacked ball after ball back at the brightly lit moving laser targets on the opposite court, Scolo’s mind drifted to the Girona question again. It had to be drugs. How often was Girona tested? Players didn’t know one another’s testing schedules, but he was fairly sure there was a lot of out of competition, random testing. Yet, clearly, Girona was somehow beating the system. He was - 

“Ouch!”

Coach had just smacked a vicious forehand drive straight into his midriff.

“What are you playing at, Coach?”

“No, what are you playing at? Where’s your mind at? You’ve never been the most industrious pupil but this is ridiculous.”

“Have you even noticed that the targets have been moved up to the net for you to practice your passing shots?”

Scolo looked up in mild consternation. Yes, they had been moved, and yes, he hadn’t noticed. And Coach, a normally mild mannered man who had to be pushed to say a word, was furious.

“Sorry, Coach. So, here’s the thing.”

“I think Girona’s cheating.”

Scolo paused for the full import of that statement to sink in, but Coach didn’t even blink.

“It is possible, and I won’t even ask why you think what you think, and I don’t care. It’s forehand drill day, and that has nothing to do with Girona or cheating. Let’s get on with it.”

Scolo was jolted out of his thoughts. He didn’t know what he was expecting Coach to say, but it wasn’t this. He was instantly grumpy but finished his drill before it got too dark. 

He seemed to get over his dark mood in the coming days. Racking up win after win, and not playing Girona definitely helped, but it was probably more Cara. Cara always helped. She was gentle and sympathetic, but always impartial and slow to judgment. She had always helped. After a whirlwind lifestyle as a young professional, with numerous flings with actresses and supermodels, page three scandals, and money and endorsements and more money, Cara came into his life. She was a supermodel too, so it wasn’t like that movie where the dashing hero romanced stunning woman after stunning woman before finding out that the homely neighbour was where his heart lay all along. No, Cara was a stunning woman herself. He was a handsome, young tennis player with a charisma that enveloped everyone in his presence and lifted them into a higher plane of existence, a heady, exalted plane that made them feel special. Cara was not immune to his wiles, and he added her to his list of conquests. 

Or so he thought, because to his everlasting surprise, he actually fell in love. Cara became a homebody supermodel, and he, the almost comically quintessential Casanova figure with the roving eye almost never flirted again. Yes, Cara, lovely Cara, had been sympathetic to his suspicions about Girona, but merely warned him to keep a hold of his emotions and not say something in public he would come to regret.

Famous last words.

Both Girona and Scolo reached the final of the Madrid Open. Scolo knew this might happen the moment he saw the draw, but the rapid rate at which his hard won good feeling fell away, to be replaced by a black, knotted rage surprised even him. Hours before the final, he skulked his private locker room area and muffled screams slipped from his lips from time to time, despite himself. He punched a wall so hard he wondered if he’d broken a finger. He had never done that before. It didn’t help. Despite losing the first set, Girona came back to take the next two and win the match.

He could barely look Girona in the eye during the post match handshake. Girona probably didn’t notice that he was trembling, that man was so amiable that he was practically blind. He knew he should take a breather for five minutes before the press conference, but he walked straight in.

Somehow, he survived the first round of banalities. But then the red mist descended in an instant when a journalist asked him about his losing streak against Girona.

“Do you think Girona now has a mental edge against you, and that is why he is winning against consistently?”

“He’s winning because.. He’s a CHEATER. HE’S A FUCKING CHEATER!” His voice rose to a scream. A shocked silence fell over the room. The journalist who asked the original question recovered and began to speak again.

“What do - “

“SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!” Scolo picked up the water bottle in front of him and hurled it at the journalist. Without looking to see what happened next, he stood up and stomped out of the room.