I tell Philly: It’s not bad enough that we live in a tennis laboratory—now we have to wear tennis balls on our feet?
I wonder why my father loves tennis. Yet another question I can’t ask him directly. Still, he drops clues. He talks sometimes about the beauty of the game, its perfect balance of power and strategy. Despite his imperfect life—or maybe because of it—my father craves perfection. Geometry and mathematics are as close to perfection as human beings can get, he says, and tennis is all about angles and numbers. My father lies in bed and sees a court on the ceiling. He says he can actually see it there, and on that ceiling court he plays countless imaginary matches. It’s a wonder he has any energy when he goes to work.
As a casino captain it’s my father’s job to seat people at the shows. Right this way, Mr. Johnson. Nice to see you again, Miss Jones. The MGM pays him a small salary, the rest he earns in tips. We live on tips, which makes life unpredictable. Some nights my father comes home with his pockets bulging with cash. Other nights his pockets are perfectly flat. Whatever he pulls from his pockets, no matter how little, gets carefully counted and stacked, then stashed in the family safe. It’s nerve-wracking, never knowing how much Pops is going to be able to tuck in the safe.
My father loves money, makes no apologies for loving it, and he says there’s good money to be made in tennis. Clearly this is one big part of his love for tennis. It’s the shortest route he can see to the American dream. He takes me to the Alan King Tennis Classic and we watch a beautiful woman dressed as Cleopatra being carried onto center court by four half-naked musclemen in togas, followed by a man dressed as Caesar, pushing a wheelbarrow full of silver dollars. First prize for the winner of the tournament. My father stares at that silvery haze sparkling in the Vegas sun and looks drunk. He wants that. He wants me to have that.
Soon after that fateful day, when I’m almost nine years old, he finagles me a job as a ball boy for the Alan King tournament. But I don’t give a damn about silver dollars—I want a mini Cleopatra. Her name is Wendi. She’s one of the ball girls, about my age, a vision in her blue uniform. I love her instantly, with all my heart and part of my spleen. I lie awake at night, picturing her on the ceiling.
During matches, as Wendi and I dart past each other along the net, I shoot her a smile, try to get her to give me a smile in return. Between matches I buy her Cokes and sit with her, trying to impress her with my knowledge of tennis.
The Alan King tournament attracts big-time players, and my father cajoles most of them into hitting a few balls with me. Some are more willing than others. Borg acts as if there is nowhere else he’d rather be. Connors clearly wants to say no, but can’t, because my father is his stringer. Ilie Nastase tries to say no, but my father pretends to be deaf. A champion of Wimbledon and the French Open, ranked number one in the world, Nastase has other places he’d rather be, but he quickly discovers that refusing my father is next to impossible. The man is relentless.
As Nastase and I hit, Wendi watches from the net post. I’m nervous, Nastase is visibly bored—until he spots Wendi.
Hey, he says. Is this your girlfriend, Snoopy? Is this pretty thing over here your sweetheart?
I stop. I glare at Nastase. I want to punch this big, stupid Romanian in the nose, even though he’s got two feet and 100 pounds on me. Bad enough that he calls me Snoopy, but then he dares to mention Wendi in such a disrespectful way. A crowd has gathered, two hundred people at least. Nastase begins playing to the crowd, calling me Snoopy again and again, teasing me about Wendi. And I thought my father was relentless.
At the very least, I wish I had the courage to say: Mr. Nastase, you’re embarrassing me, please stop. But all I can do is keep hitting harder. Hit harder. Then Nastase makes yet another wisecrack about Wendi, and that’s it, I can’t take any more. I drop my racket and walk off the court. Up yours, Nastase.
My father stares, openmouthed. He’s not angry, he’s not embarrassed—he’s incapable of embarrassment, and he recognizes his own genes when he sees them in action. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him prouder.
BESIDES THE OCCASIONAL EXHIBITION with a top-ranked player, my public matches are mostly hustle jobs. I have a slick routine to lure in the suckers. First, I pick a highly visible court, where I play by myself, knocking the ball all over the place. Second, when some cocky teenager or drunken guest strolls by I invite them to play. Third, I let them beat me, soundly. Finally, in my most pitiful voice I ask if they’d like to play for a dollar. Maybe five? Before they know what’s happening, I’m serving for match point and twenty bucks, enough to keep Wendi in Cokes for a month.
Philly taught me how to do it. He gives tennis lessons and often hustles his students, plays them for the price of the lesson, then double or nothing. But Andre, he says, with your size and youth, you should be raking in the dough. He helps me develop and rehearse the routine. Now and then it occurs to me that I only think I’m hustling, that people are happy to shell out for the show. Later they can brag to their friends that they saw a nine-year-old tennis freak who never misses.
I don’t tell my father about my side business. Not that he’d think it was wrong. He loves a good hustle. I just don’t feel like talking to my father about tennis any more than is absolutely necessary. Then my father stumbles into his own hustle. It happens at Cambridge. As we walk in one day, my father points to a man talking with Mr. Fong.
That’s Jim Brown, my father whispers to me. Greatest football player of all time.
He’s an enormous block of muscle wearing tennis whites and tube socks. I’ve seen him before at Cambridge. When he’s not playing tennis for money, he’s playing backgammon, or shooting craps—also for money. Like my father, Mr. Brown talks a lot about money. At this moment he’s complaining to Mr. Fong about a money match that fell through. He was supposed to play a guy, and the guy didn’t show. Mr. Brown is taking it out on Mr. Fong.
I came to play, Mr. Brown is saying, and I want to play.
My father steps forward.
You looking for a game?
Yeah.
My son Andre will play you.
Mr. Brown looks at me, then back at my father.
I ain’t playing no eight-year-old boy!
Nine.
Nine? Oooh, well, I didn’t realize.
Mr. Brown laughs. A few men within earshot laugh too.
I can tell that Mr. Brown doesn’t take my father seriously. Big mistake. Just ask that trucker lying in the road. I close my eyes and see him, the rain pelting his face.
Look, Mr. Brown says, I don’t play for fun, OK? I play for money.
My son will play you for money.
I feel a bead of sweat start down my armpit.
Yeah? How much?
My father laughs and says, I’ll bet you my fucking house.
I don’t need your house, Mr. Brown says. I got a house. Let’s say ten grand.
Done, my father says.
I walk toward the court.
Slow down, Mr. Brown says. I need to see some money up front.
I’ll go home and get it, my father says. I’ll be right back.
My father hurries out the door. I sit in a chair and picture him opening the safe and pulling out stacks of money. All those tips I’ve seen him count through the years, all those nights of hard work. Now he’s going to let it ride on me. I feel a heaviness in the center of my chest. I’m proud, of course, to think my father has such faith in me. But mainly I’m scared. What happens to me, to my father, to my mother and my siblings, not to mention Grandma and Uncle Isar, if I lose?
I’ve played under this kind of pressure before, when my father, without warning, has chosen an opponent and ordered me to beat him. But it’s always been another kid, and there’s never been