Page 122 of Carrie Soto Is Back

“Thank you, it is exciting. My first,” he says.

“It’s thrilling,” I say. “I remember my first one.”

“You have won before,” he says.

“Ten times,” I say. “Yes.”

“Hm,” he says. “But it is three sets.”

“Excuse me?”

“The match is best of three in the women’s. We play best of five. The men’s tournament.”

“Right.”

“So it’s not comparable, is it?”

I see Gwen coming to meet me. I look Jadran right in the eye. “I assure you,” I say, all smile—fake or not—gone from my face, “if I played you two out of three or three out of five, I would drag you across the court and murder your—”

“All right, that’s it,” Gwen says as she hooks her arm into mine and hauls me away.

—

Sometime around three in the morning, Gwen and I are in my hotel suite, opening a second bottle of champagne. Gwen’s thrown her heels off and is sitting in the club chair, pouring. I am lying, still in my fancy dress, across the sofa. She hands me my refilled glass.

“You should have let me tell that fucker off,” I say.

Gwen shakes her head. “If I let you say all the things you wanted to say in public, your career would be over in about two hours.”

“Why do I have to be nice when most of the men aren’t? Last year, Jeff Kerr called an umpire a ‘dogshit salad,’ and he’s hawking underwear for Fruit of the Loom.”

Gwen shakes her head. “You know damn well there’s another set of rules for you. Just like there’s evenanotherset of rules for me.”

I look at her, understanding that as much as I know what it’s like to be a woman in this world, I have no idea what it’s like to be a Black woman.

“Yeah,” I say. “And it’s not right.”

Gwen shrugs. “Most shit isn’t.”

I nod. “Good point.”

“And look, I know you might not care about all the money you stand to make, because you’ve already got your villa and your foundation, but I want that money! And what you’ve done this week will catapult you to the top of everyone’s list. The figures people are throwing around now—I could retire off this.”

“Oh please, you’re not gonna retire,” I say as I look up at the ceiling.

“I don’t know,” she says.

I sit up and stare at her.

“The twins are going to college next year. Michael is leaving. He met someone else, apparently. Her name is Naomi. Which is such a pretty name. And that irritates the shit out of me. And, anyway, I don’t know. I’d like to do…something. Something big. Something unexpected.”

“Like what?” I ask, putting my drink down.

“I don’t know yet. But where’s my midlife crisis? Aren’t I allowed one?”

I nod, considering. “Absolutely you are!”

“Yeah, I am.”

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