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He laughs.

I can’t promise you that you won’t be tired, he says. But please know this. There’s a lot of good waiting for you on the other side of tired. Get yourself tired, Andre. That’s where you’re going to know yourself. On the other side of tired.

Under Gil’s care and close supervision I pack on ten pounds of muscle by August 1990.

We go to New York for the U.S. Open and I feel lean and rangy and dangerous. I take out Andrei Cherkasov, from the Soviet Union, in an easy three-setter. I punch and scratch my way to the semis, beat Becker in four furious sets, and still have plenty of rocket fuel in my tank. Gil and I drive back to the hotel and watch the other men’s semi to see who I’ll get tomorrow.

McEnroe or Sampras.

It doesn’t seem possible, but the kid I thought I’d never see again has reconstituted his game. And he’s giving McEnroe the fight of his life. Then I realize he’s not giving McEnroe a fight—McEnroe is giving him a fight, and losing. My opponent tomorrow, incredibly, will be Pete.

The camera moves close on Pete’s face, and I see that he has nothing left. Also, the commentators say his heavily taped feet are covered with blisters. Gil makes me drink Gil Water until I’m ready to throw up, and then I go to bed with a smile, thinking about all the fun I’m going to have, running Pete’s ass off. I’ll have him sprinting from side to side, left to right, from San Francisco to Bradenton, until those blisters bleed. I think of my father’s old maxim: Put a blister on his brain. Calm, fit, cocksure, I sleep like a pile of Gil’s dumbbells.

In the morning I feel ready to play a ten-setter. I have no hairpiece issues—because I’m not wearing my hairpiece. I’m using a new, low-maintenance camouflaging system that involves a thicker headband and brightly colored highlights. There’s simply no way I can lose to Pete, that hapless kid I watched with sympathy last year, that poor klutz who couldn’t keep the ball in the court.

Then a different Pete shows up. A Pete who doesn’t ever miss. We’re playing long points, demanding points, and he’s flawless. He’s reaching everything, hitting everything, bounding back and forth like a gazelle. He’s serving bombs, flying to the net, bringing his game right to me. He’s laying wood to my serve. I’m helpless. I’m angry. I’m telling myself: This is not happening.

Yes, this is happening.

No, this cannot be happening.

Then, instead of thinking how I can win, I begin to think of how I can avoid losing. It’s the same mistake I made against Gómez, with the same result. When it’s all over I tell reporters that Pete gave me a good old-fashioned New York street mugging. An imperfect metaphor.

Yes, I was robbed. Yes, something that belonged to me was taken away. But I can’t fill out a police report, and there is no hope of justice, and everyone will blame the victim.

HOURS LATER MY EYES FLY OPEN. I’m in bed at the hotel. It was all a dream. For a splendid half second I believe that I must have fallen asleep on that breezy hill while Philly and Nick were laughing about Pete’s ruined game. I dreamed that Pete, of all people, was beating me in the final of a slam.

But no. It’s real. It happened. I watch the room slowly grow lighter, and my mind and spirit grow palpably darker.

13

EVER SINCE WENDI CAME to watch me film the Image Is Everything commercial, she and I have been a couple. She travels with me, takes care of me. We’re a perfect match, because we grew up together, and we figure we can keep growing up together. We come from the same place, want the same things. We love each other madly, though we agree that ours should be an open relationship—her word. She says we’re too young to make a commitment, too confused. She doesn’t know who she is. She grew up Mormon, then decided she didn’t believe the tenets of that religion. She went to college, then discovered that it was the completely wrong college for her. Until she knows who she is, she says, she can’t give herself to me completely.

In 1991 we’re in Atlanta with Gil, celebrating my twenty-first birthday. We’re in a bar, a seedy old place in Buckhead, with cigarette-scorched pool tables and plastic beer mugs. The three of us are laughing, drinking, and even Gil, who never touches the stuff, is letting himself get tipsy. To record this night for posterity, Wendi has brought her camcorder. She hands it to me and tells me to film her shooting baskets at one of those tented arcade games. She’s going to school me, she says. I film her shooting for three seconds and then let the camera pan slowly down her body.

Andre, she says, please get the camera off my ass.

In comes a mob of loudmouths. Roughly my age, they look like a local football or rugby team. They make several rude remarks about me, then focus their attention on Wendi.

They’re drunk, crude, trying to embarrass me in front of her. I think of Nastase, doing the same thing fourteen years ago.

The rugby team slaps a stack of quarters on the edge of our pool table. One of them says, We got next. They walk off, smirking.

Gil puts down his plastic mug, picks up the quarters, and walks slowly to a vending machine. He buys a bag of peanuts and comes back to the table. Slowly he works his way through the peanuts, never taking his eyes off the rugby players, until they wisely decide to try another bar.

Wendi giggles and suggests that, in addition to his many functions and duties, Gil should be my bodyguard.

He already is, I tell her. And yet that word doesn’t cut it. That word isn’t adequate to what he is. Gil guards my body, my head, my game, my heart, my girlfriend. He’s the one immov-able object in my life. He’s my life guard.

I particularly enjoy when people—reporters, fans, kooks—ask Gil if he’s my bodyguard. A smile always plays across his lips as he says, Touch him and find out.

AT THE 1991 FRENCH OPEN I batter my way through six rounds and reach the final. My third slam final. I’m facing Courier, and I’m favored. Everyone says I’ll beat him. I say I’ll beat him. I need to beat him. I can’t imagine what it would feel like to make three slam finals in a row and not win.

The good news is, I know how to beat Courier. I beat him just last year at this same tournament. The bad news is, it’s personal, which makes me tight. We began in the same place, in the same barracks at the Bollettieri Academy, our bunk beds a few feet apart. I was so much better than Courier, so much more favored by Nick, that losing to him in the final of a slam will feel like the hare losing to the tortoise. Bad enough that Chang has won a slam before me. And Pete. But Courier too? I can’t let that happen.

I come out playing to win. I’ve learned from my mistakes at the last two slams. I cruise through the first set, winning 6–3, and in the second set, leading 3–1, I have break point. If I win this point I’ll have a choke hold on the set and match. Suddenly the rain starts to fall. Fans cover themselves and run for shelter. Courier and I retreat to the locker room, where we both pace like caged lions. Nick comes in and I look to him for advice, encouragement, but he says nothing. Nothing. I’ve known for some time that I continue with Nick out of habit and loyalty, and not for any real coaching. Still, in this moment, it’s not coaching I need but a show of humanity, which is one of the duties of any coach. I need some recognition of the adrenaline-charged moment in which I find myself. Is that too much to ask?

After the rain delay, Courier stations himself farther behind the baseline, hoping to take some of the steam off my shots. He’s had time to rest, and reflect, and recharge, and he storms back to keep me from breaking, then wins the second set. Now I’m angry. Furious. I win the third set, 6–2. I establish in Courier’s mind, and in my own, that the second set was a fluke. Up two sets to one, I can feel the finish line pulling me. My first slam. Six little games away.