Лоуренс Блок - Catch and Release

TV covered tennis reasonably well, but it was much better in person. The court was small enough so that, from a halfway decent seat, you were assured a good view of the whole of it. And, of course, watching in person had other benefits that it shared with other sports. There were no commercials, no team of announcers droning on and on, and, most important, it was exciting in a way that televised sport could never be. You were there, you were watching, it was happening right before your eyes, and your excitement was magnified by the presence of hundreds or thousands of other similarly excited fans.

He’d been here for the entire tournament, and was glad he’d come. He’d managed to see some superb tennis (as well as some that was a good deal less than superb) and he’d made a point of watching all of Miranda DiStefano’s matches. The blond girl won her first two matches in straight sets, and he’d sat there beaming as she dispatched both opponents quite handily. In the third round, his heart sank when she double-faulted to lose the first set tiebreaker, then had her serve broken midway through the second set. But she rallied, she summoned up strength from within, and broke back, and went on to win that set. The final set was no contest; Miranda, buoyed by her second-set comeback, played brilliantly, and you could see the will to win drain out of her opponent, a black-haired Croatian girl who was five inches taller than Miranda, with muscles in her arms and shoulders that hinted at either steroids or a natural abundance of testosterone.

And Miranda crushed her. How his spirit soared to see it!

Now she was playing in the quarterfinals, and it looked as though she was going to beat the bigger, taller girl on the opposite side of the net. A strong player, he thought, but lacking finesse. All power and speed, but no subtlety.

A lesbian, from the look of her. He hadn’t heard or read anything to that effect, but you could tell. Not that he had anything against them. They were as ubiquitous in women’s sports as were their male counterparts in ballet and the design trades. If they played good tennis, he could certainly admire their game.

But he wouldn’t leave his house to watch a lesbian, let alone travel a few hundred miles.

He watched, his heart singing in his chest, as Miranda worked the ball back and forth, chasing her opponent from one side of the court to the other, running the legs off the bigger girl. Running her ragged, crushing her, beating her.

He was there two days later, cheering her on in the semifinals. Her opponent was one of the sisters, and Miranda gave her a good fight, but the outcome was never in doubt. He applauded enthusiastically every time she won a point, cheered a couple of difficult returns she managed, and took her eventual loss in good grace — as did Miranda, skipping up to the net to congratulate the girl who beat her.

A good sport, too. The girl was one in a million.

He knew better than to write to her.

Oh, the impulse was there, no question about it. Sometimes he found himself composing letters in his head, but that was all right. You could write anything to anybody in the privacy of your own mind. It was when you put your thoughts on paper and entrusted them to the mails that things could go wrong.

Because there were a lot of lunatics out there. An attractive young woman could find herself an unwitting magnet for the aberrant and the delusional, and a letter from a devoted fan could seem as fraught with potential danger as one threatening the life of the president. There was a difference, you wouldn’t get in trouble writing a fan letter, but the effect on its recipient might be even greater. The president of the United States would never see your letter, a secretary would open it and hand it over to the FBI, but a young tennis player, especially a relative novice who probably didn’t get all that much fan mail, might well open it and read it herself.

And might take it the wrong way. Whatever you said, however you phrased it, she might read something unintended into it. Might begin to wonder if perhaps this enthusiastic fan might be a little too enthusiastic, and if this admiration for her athletic ability might cloak a disturbing obsession.

And what, really, was the point in a fan letter? To reward the recipient for the pleasure her performance had brought him? Hardly, if such a letter were more likely to provoke anxiety than to hearten. What kind of a reward was that?

No, it was the writer’s own ego that a fan letter supported. It was an attempt to create a relationship with a stranger, and the only fit relationship for two such people was distant and anonymous. She played tennis, and sparkled on the court. He watched, rapt with enjoyment, and she didn’t even know he existed. Which was as it should be.

In the letters he wrote in the privacy of his own mind, sometimes he was a wee bit suggestive, a trifle risqué. Sometimes he thought of things that would bring a blush to that pretty face.

But he never wrote them down, not a sentence, not a word. So where was the harm in that?

Her game was off.

Last month she’d played in the French Open, and the television coverage had been frustrating; he’d only been able to see one of her matches, and highlights of others. She didn’t make the quarterfinals this time, went out in the third round, beaten in a third-set tiebreaker by an unseeded player she should have swept in straight sets.

Something was missing. Some spark, some inner fire.

And now she was back in the States, playing in the women-only Virago tournament in Indianapolis, and he’d driven almost a thousand miles to watch her play, and she wasn’t playing well. At game point in the opening set, the girl double-faulted. You just didn’t do that. When the serve had to be in or you lost the set, you made sure you got that serve in. You just did it.

He watched, heartsick, as his Miranda lost point after point to a girl who wasn’t fit to carry her racquet. Watched her run after balls she should have gotten to, watched her make unforced errors, watched her beat herself. Well, she had to, didn’t she? Her opponent couldn’t beat her. She could only beat herself.

And she did.

Toward the end, he tried to inspire her through sheer force of will. He narrowed his gaze, stared hard at her, willed her to look at him, to meet his eyes. And she just wouldn’t do it. She looked everywhere but at him, and a fat lot of good it did her.

Then she did look over at him, and her eyes met his and drew away. She was ashamed, he realized, ashamed of her performance, ashamed of herself. She couldn’t meet his eyes.

Nor could she turn the tide. The other girl beat her, and she was out of the tournament. He’d driven a thousand miles, and for what? He wrote her a letter.

I don’t know what you think you’re doing , he wrote, but the net result — no pun intended — is to sabotage not merely a career but a life .

He went on to the end, read the thing over, and decided he didn’t like the parenthetical no pun intended bit. He copied the letter over, dropping it and changing net to overall . Then he signed it: A Man Who Cares .

He left it on his desk, and the next day he rewrote it, and added some personal advice. Stay away from the lesbians , he counseled her. They’re only after one thing. The same goes for boys. You could never be happy with someone your own age. He read it over, copied it with a word changed here and there, and signed it: The Man Who Loves You.

The following night he read the letter, went to bed, and got up, unable to sleep. He went to his desk and redrafted the letter one more time, adding some material that he supposed some might regard as overly frank, even pornographic. The Man For Whom You Were Destined. The phrase struck him as stilted, but he let it stand, and below it, with a flourish, he signed his name. He destroyed all the other drafts and went to bed.