Page 4 of Bad Summer People
By the end of senior year, when their friends had either secured first-year banking jobs, been accepted to law or med school, or been recruited by Google or Apple, it occurred to Robert that he should’ve thought of his career beyond tennis. Julie had plans to move to New York and intern at an art gallery, the owner of which was a friend of her mom’s. She thought maybe her dad could help Robert get a job at a boutique finance firm, doing something or other, even though Robert was wholly unqualified for any such position.
“We can live together in my parents’ apartment for the first year,” Julie had said. They were eating sushi at a nice Japanese place off campus. As usual, Julie was footing the bill. Robert had just had a tense conversation with his dad, who’d warned him of relying too much on his “rich girlfriend.” He’d hung up with a bad feeling in his stomach. He knew, toa certain extent, that his dad was right. But he didn’t know how to act otherwise.
“I’m not sure,” Robert said, eyeing Julie as she stuck an entire piece of spicy tuna in her delicate mouth. “John Badner is moving to LA for the year to teach tennis at a club. He told me he could get me a job there if I wanted to. Apparently, there are lots of celebrities there. He said he was already booked to give Ashton Kutcher a lesson.”
Julie stared at him, a piece of salmon paused in midair.
“Ashton Kutcher? Ew. Why would you do that? Why don’t you come to New York with me and get a real job?”
“That is a real job,” Robert said defensively. “Maybe I don’t need your dad’s help.” He didn’t even know why he’d said it—he didn’t feel that way, did he? But once he’d spoken the words, it was too late to back down.
They’d left the dinner unhappily, not holding hands on the walk back to Julie’s off-campus home. Something had opened up between them that Robert was pretty sure would never go back.
He thought about that conversation as he sat atop the ferry to Salcombe, the sleepy beach town on Fire Island where he was working this summer. It was eleven years ago that he’d split from Julie, following John Badner to Los Angeles to work as a pro at the Brentwood Country Club. He’d stayed in LA for eight years, his clientele a regular rotation of actors, directors, and big-time agents. It was good money, pretty great money from where he came from, a couple of hundred thousand a year. His parents had never made that much combined. And he’d topped it off teaching private lessons to the celebrities’ spawn, bratty kids who couldn’t hit a forehand to save their lives, playing on gorgeous private courts. The women in LA were beautiful and available, and he’d spent his twenties sleeping with a lot of them. They were grown daughters of his clients, or aspiring actresses who were working as waitstaff, or well-kept women in their thirties who played doubles, whose older husbands ignored them.
He’d lived in a little bungalow with John in the hills, and they were either working or partying. Occasionally, Robert would be struck with the anxiety that he wasn’t “living up to his potential,” as his mom put it. He’d miss Julie and her fancy life in New York among the art snobs andfinance bros. He didn’t want to be a tennis pro for the rest of his life, did he?
Then when he was twenty-nine, his dad got sick. Stage 4 lung cancer from smoking Marlboro Reds for his whole goddamn life. Everything started to feel less fun. LA was too competitive, there was too much traffic. He’d been at Brentwood for nearly a decade, but there was nowhere to go from there—he’d basically topped out on the scene, unless he wanted to become the head pro and deal with all the administrative stuff, which he didn’t.
So, at his mom’s urging, and against his better judgment, he quit abruptly and moved back to Florida. His clients were devastated; they’d all begged him to stay, to put extra money in his pocket to keep teaching them how to serve and volley, master their one-handed backhands. But Robert had gone home. His dad died weeks later, quickly, so quickly, and so he’d stayed with his mom at their ranch, helping her clean and mourn.
After a few months, he’d gotten bored. This life was not for him. He was used to being surrounded by good-looking, wealthy people, and Tampa was filled with losers. His oldest brother, Mack, offered him a job at his contracting company, an office gig filing paperwork and dealing with complicated and often shady permit situations. His mom asked him to take it, to find a little place nearby and build a life there with them. He’d turned thirty; he needed to settle down, find a wife, have a baby. He’d gone to Stanford, for fuck’s sake. This was all wrong.
But Robert had tried it, he really had. Mostly because he hadn’t felt he had better options. He’d gotten up every day and gone into Mack’s office, he’d filed papers, he’d answered the phone, he’d sent emails. He’d rented an apartment in a condo complex ten minutes from his childhood home. He couldn’t stand it. He missed tennis, he missed chatting with important, powerful people, he missed the looks he got from all those women.
Robert had stuck it out for two long, depressing years. At thirty-two, he had a breakdown. He’d invested some money, basically all his savings from Brentwood, in a company his friend Todd Anderson from Stanford had recommended, some start-up that sold life insurance to millennials. “The Warby Parker of insurance,” Todd had assured him. Todd lived in San Francisco and worked at Facebook. Todd had lots of money to waste. The company, called Lyfe, tanked. It turned out the CEO was using the capital he’d raised to fund his very expensive OnlyFans addiction, in which he paid women wild sums to verbally abuse him. Robert had lost everything. He had nothing to show for those years of work, just his biweekly salary from Mack, hitting his bank account with a small thud, saving him from eviction. His mom offered to loan him some money, but the idea made him want to kill himself. Instead, he ran his credit cards to their limits paying his monthly bills, then told her and Mack that he was quitting his job at the contracting company and going back to being a tennis pro. He didn’t belong there.
He’d quickly found a job at the Boca Country Club in Boca Raton. It wasn’t as flashy as Brentwood—more old wealthy macher than young Hollywood player. He’d stayed for a year and a half, living in a room on the grounds—it was a Waldorf Astoria property, and the staff were put up in the fancy digs. Robert had finally felt like himself again. He’d started sleeping with one of the waitresses, Taylor, who was putting herself through law school. She was superhot andveryadventurous in bed. But a better life was always on the horizon. Every now and then, he thought of Julie, who was married to some hedge fund guy, splitting her time between her town house next to Sarah Jessica Parker’s in the West Village and an estate next to Tory Burch’s in Southampton.
He’d gotten hooked up with a new client named Morty Friedman, a retired investment banker who’d made a bunch of money in the ’80s. Morty was a terrible tennis player, he could barely hit the ball, but he loved the game and booked time with Robert nearly every day. They’d struck up a casual friendship, and Morty took a fatherly interest in Robert, giving him unasked-for life advice during water breaks.
“You’ve got to get to the East Coast, son, if you want to go anywhere in life. You’ll meet connected people there, find something exciting in the city. You went to Stanford! You’re talented, handsome, smart. Florida is a wasteland. I’ll help you find something up there you can use as a launching pad.”
Robert had nodded along politely. Everyone always promised him things, but few, he’d learned, truly delivered.
But true to his word, two weeks later, before the start of a particularly pointless backhand lesson, Morty came to him with an idea.
“Have you ever heard of Fire Island?” Morty asked. He had curly salt-and-pepper hair and wire-rim glasses over big brown eyes.
“I think so—it’s the gay island,” said Robert.
“No, no,” said Morty. “Well, it does have a couple of gay towns. But mostly it’s just families from the city. Hamptons-y people, but quirkier. There’s a village there, Salcombe, that one of my former partners has a house in. He told me they’re looking for someone to run the tennis program at their little yacht club. It’s nothing fancy, but the community there is intense, obsessed with tennis, and they’re willing to pay someone a lot to come in and revamp their system. I think around a hundred K for the summer, plus a percentage of any private lessons.” A hundred thousand dollars for three months of work? He’d be able to pay off his debts and then some. It sounded good to Robert. Too good.
“What’s the catch?” he asked Morty.
“Got me,” he said. “My former partner, Larry Higgins, is a nice guy. His whole family has been going out there for decades. I think they had some issue with the last tennis pro—he was a drunk or something. Anyway, I’ll put you in touch with Larry, yes?”
Robert nodded. “Come on, old man, let’s go hit some balls,” he’d said, heading out to the court, the Florida sun beating mercilessly on his exposed neck.
He’d gotten the job. He always got the job. Taylor had wanted to come with him, but he’d broken it off before he moved. He needed a fresh start in New York, and he wasn’t going to take a girlfriend—awaitress—with him to live in this beach town for the summer. The yacht club was putting him up in a small house near the town playground, a shabby two-bedroom bungalow with ants in the kitchen and a ceiling fan that rattled the whole place. The tennis pros lived there every year, and there were still remnants of the last occupant, Dave, the former pro whose drinking problem had lost him this cushy position. Robert had found a yellow-striped beach towel, a pair of Nike shorts, and an old bottle of gin under the sink.
Larry Higgins, Morty’s former partner who headed up the Salcombe Yacht Club Tennis Committee—apparently a vaunted position within the town’s hierarchy—told Robert that Dave had been caught drinking vodka out of his water bottle during a group clinic for seniors. Someone unnamed, possibly with a vendetta, had snitched on him to Susan Steinhagen, the woman who oversaw the tennis program for the members.
“You should have seen how livid Susan was,” said Larry, who’d found Robert on the top of the ferry. Robert had been in Salcombe for a week and had gone off island to buy some groceries in Bay Shore. The ones in “the store,” as the villagers called it, were so overpriced it took Robert’s breath away. Ten dollars for a pint of milk?
“Her head nearly exploded. She screamed at him in front of everyone at the mixed doubles tournament. Huge town drama,” Larry continued. Larry had a reedy build, with thick, white, expressive eyebrows that reminded Robert of poplar fluff. He’d been the one to hire Robert, and for that, Robert liked him very much. Dave had been asked to leave immediately, Larry said, with Susan publicly dragging him out like a hardened criminal.
Robert had met Susan this week; she’d stopped by the courts to introduce herself and to discuss the upcoming round robin tournament. She was in her seventies, he guessed, a former accounting professor who now put all her kinetic energy into making sure that Salcombe’s tennis programs ran smoothly (also making sure everyone knew who was in charge). She was tiny, maybe five foot two, with papery skin and a beak nose. Her voice boomed louder than anyone’s Robert had ever encountered. Robert was slightly scared of her. This story about Dave solidified his fear.
