Fell the Devil -- Part 3
The next tournament was in a week. He finally got back on the court with Mark--Daisy watched from the stands. She was beautiful. She hardly spoke English but she had big eyes, a pretty face, and great body. The only thing wrong with her looks were a series of scars from a motorbike accident.
Mark was surprised when Jeff showed up with a girl. She was on his arm, reluctant to let him go onto the court. Now Jeff was looking up at her as they warmed up. He was hitting extra hard, apparently trying to impress her. His first serve was great, but his second lacked the wrist finesse that allows the ball to really kick up. Mark was able to crush his second serves. And was Mark doing it to show these new eyes his own prowess? Was he jealous of the girl? Of Jeff’s new role as the star?
Jeff started to look a little frustrated and eventually Mark lightened up on him.
Starting Wednesday there would be his next tournament. He was still ready, more or less, from his win. They could ride that momentum.
They came off the court and Daisy had a cold towel to cool him down after he toweled off.
“Where do you come from?” Jeff said, “Romania?”
“Cambodia,” she said.
This was there routine. Jeff just couldn’t get over her. He felt she had a face he knew before, from somewhere, like one of his Polish relatives back in Greenport or a girl he knew from high school or who knows. “Cambodia? No way!” He said. “You’re a chocolate lady. Africa?”
“Chocolate Thai.”
They went through this regular routine, everyday, a few times a day, and it always made them laugh. It gave them an excuse to love each other. Of course they weren’t at love yet, it was like a mutual adoration based on interdependence and use. She needed him to take care of her with his newfound money and he needed her to give him something stable in this new crazy universe he found himself in, and he required sex.
She was poor, from rice-farmers, near the capital. She went to the capital to work at sixteen years old. Soon she met a rich boy. He introduced Daisy to his sister. He was the first guy she made love to. She enjoyed it. His sister invited her to the beach. It was improbable for rich and poor to stay together in this country. She brought Daisy to be a waitress. When they arrived there were no waitressing jobs, only jobs as a bargirl, only leaving with men. She saw girls with arms around foreign guys, kissing, and thought she could never. After one week she went back to an American’s hotel. They didn’t do it. Every time he started to get hot, rubbing on her great tits, she went to the bathroom for ten minutes until he calmed back down.
Jeff was back on the court now, fucking baking under the sun. She was still watching from the stands, tucked into a sliver of shadow wearing his bandana.
“I forgot how hot it is out here,” Jeff said. “Shit.” Mark hit him volleys, and he pounded them, hitting them cleanly, hard, square, no frame, sweat dripping down his nose, ball clean into the net. Every one. “I can’t take this shit.” He hit a few more, tape, netting, tape, netting. “Fuck!”
He hit the ball to Jeff and people started to fill in to watch him. Jeff had established a fan base of mostly young, pretty girls—those he’d slept with or had targeted for future rendezvous, or friends of one of the aforementioned groups. Often Mark would tighten up when many eyes were on him but recently he was so cool and loose.
In fact, Mark was hitting the ball better than ever—crisp, hard, accurately. Meanwhile Jeff slammed each one perfectly into the net. Jeff stopped and stood with his hands on his hips and his cheeks puffed out similar to Dizzy Gillespie. He fumed.
“Relax,” Mark said. “You’re out of shape.”
“It’s been one week! No fucking way!”
“Still, I see it.” Mark came into the net and he spoke hardly louder than a whisper. “You’re feet are slow. That’s how this game works. You’ve got to keep it all in balance, this whole game is timing, and feet get out of shape faster than arms, so your hitting clean but your whole body isn’t in it together. That’s the problem boy. Maybe you need a break from this girl.”
The racquet slipped from Jeff’s hand. He let it stay on the ground and walked off the court.
Mark looked for a Jedi hologram to consult. “He’s just not ready.” It’s the simple problem between young and old. Old knows better but young can do better. If only I could transfer my brain into his. Mark went behind the baseline with one ball in his hand. He lined up to serve. He hadn’t really hit a serve in about four years. Really cracked one. He tossed the ball, a high toss, he let his weight fall back, knees bent, back leaning, nearly horizontal with the ground. The ball reached it’s arch, and his body started to spring forward, his knees came unbent, and everything dove forward, knees, things, hips (uncoiling hard), stomach, chest, arms, wrist, hand, fingers wrapped around handle, and finally racquet until all his body was one straight piece, all of him was racquet, all of him was serve and the ball—oh, it felt good to hit like this—slammed into the net.
Mark, like Jeff, walked off the court. Fuck it. Fuck tennis.
Jeff and Daisy went to the beach. Her friends kept telling him she loved the beach. “She likes to be boomed on the beach. You’ll see.” Actually, he thought, she was shy. It was dark and still she looked around to see if anyone was around. There was the sound of the surf and some faraway crickets. The city was distant. It’s lights twinkling up the mountain.
Jeff slid her panties off and took her on the blanket. After he came he joked about putting it in the sand and turning it into a chicken cutlet and then shoving it back in. She said some Tagalog word that meant you’re too much and he loved the sound of it out her mouth.
Jeff lacked energy. He went out in the first round. His serve sucked. He left with the word pronate in his head. Pronate. Making sure the wrist pulled out. But something was wrong. He was bending so much but the radar gun hardly showed his first serves over 105 mph. That’s bullshit. He could hit hard.
He found a dictionary at the hotel and looked the word up.
One entry found for pronation.
Main Entry: pro·na·tion
Pronunciation: prO-'nA-sh&n
Function: noun
Etymology: pronate, from Late Latin pronatus, past participle of pronare to bend forward, from Latin pronus
Date: 1666
1 : rotation of the hand and forearm so that the palm faces backwards or downwards
2 : rotation of the medial bones in the midtarsal region of the foot inward and downward so that in walking the foot tends to come down on its inner margin
- pro·nate /'prO-"nAt/ verb
Why didn’t someone tell him that long ago? Mark always said the word, but Jeff figured even Mark didn’t know exactly what it meant. To bend forward. That changes everything. He always tried to snap it as hard as he could without bending it forward. This would make things so much more effortless. He wanted to get right back on the court and whack some serves. He phoned Mark but Mark wasn’t there. He knocked on his door, but no answer. He got his things on anyway and went down to the court. It began to pour.
Rainer was born in Samar but moved to Mindanao at thirteen years old. He met a Muslim girl named Daisy during high school. She was a cute girl who had a beauty mark to the lower left of her mouth. She lost her cherry to him. This is important. He wasn’t terrible well-hung. This is also important.
Unfortunately few people in Mindanao were making money. Daisy was told by a cousin about a waitressing opportunity near Manila. Shortly she was drafted to Diablos City. She was brought into a bar with many dancing girls. Many were talking with foreigners. Soon she noticed it wasn’t just dancing, it was also going home with them. She found out another thing that night. There were no waitressing positions. She was drafted to be a dancer.
There she lost her cherry to a Westerner. She was okay with him. They lived together in a hotel until he went back to his law firm in Virginia. He was a good guy why studied law, then taught English in Korea for five years before going back to law school. He had a boy-next-door face like he was everyone’s little league teammate who never hit a homerun but never struck out either. He went to law school on money saved during teaching overseas, mainly in Korea and Taiwan. When he graduated he rewarded himself with a trip to Diablos City. There he met Daisy. After some time he joined his brother-in-law’s law firm. He continued to support Daisy. He wanted the good life for her, didn’t want her to be a whore in a bar. But she got bored waiting. She was far from home, away from her family—except her cousin who also worked in the bar—and didn’t have anything to occupy her time. After four months she couldn’t resist. She went back to work in the bar. She didn’t barfine (that is, go home with a foreigner) just danced and had ladies’ drinks. She didn’t talk to the other girls much. She stayed in the hotel that Ben was paying for until moving in with another girl from the bar. After being back a few weeks she met Jeff. He was her first barfine.
The irony of the bargirl thing is that this Daisy was very concerned with her health. She was a very smart girl, a very poor but smart girl. That fucking bargirl, thought Mark, looked like Ana.
Jeff had his favorite song ‘rift’ blaring on the hotel CD player. The stereo system was one of the perks of being in a good hotel, not to mention a kitchen with fridge stocked with beer and whisky, a nightstand stocked with hash and a pipe, a pretty girl dressing in front of the big window looking out over the small city and the beach, the clean blue water caressing, massaging, beating, walking on, letting up on the dark rocks, the palm trees blowing in the soft salty wind. She clasps her bra around her back while he finds the zipper of his favorite training suit. It’s hot and he doesn’t really need it but he likes it. It’s dark blue and the chest, has the brand name over the left breast in blue, white, and red, the arms are pure white with two double red lines and the shoulder and a navy blue arm band a few inches wide. The pants are navy blue with the same two red lines going down the seam. They zipper at the bottom so Jeff can take his shoes off without taking the pants off. Today he will play in a shitty t-shirt for some beer from the Philippines and some shorts he picked up in Korea but on top, in public (so he thought to himself) he would be dressed up, hot, sexy, he was preparing himself for GQ. Why not?
(continue to part 4 of Fell the Devil)
