Read Online Everything on the Line by Bob Mitchell - Free Book Online Page B

American life expectancy figures, which are ninety-six for women and eighty for men. Accommodating the mostly doddering Floridians are endless shopping malls, replete with hair salons, gargantuan Publix markets, delis, travel agencies, jewlery (the local pronunciation) stores, plastic surgery parlors, and mortuaries.
    This part of Florida hasn’t changed much in the past century, still featuring rows of pink stucco ranch-style houses, orange trees, mosquitoes, stooped and senescent drivers slunk down low in their seats in what appear to be driverless cars, kumquats, mosquitoes, early-bird specials, humidity, swamps, jogger-biting alligators, and mosquitoes.
    In the northern section of the city, nestled between three bustling golfing communities, is the $31 million private estate of Ira Spade, all 20,000 acres of it, complete with three swimming pools, five saunas, a par-three golf course, and, the jewel in this sparkling crown, a tennis complex with four opulent and pristine courts: grass, hard, carpet, and red clay.
    Ira has decided to keep Jack in Florida while Ugo Bellezza knocks his head against a brick wall, or rather a brick court, in Barcelona. He is carefully avoiding a first-ever, final-round meeting between the two phenoms until the Big Cassoulet, the French Open Juniors. He is milking this cash calf for all it’s worth.
    Ira and Jack are in the middle of a grueling workout on the brand-new red clay court Ira has had built, specifically to train for the upcoming French Open Juniors. Through a shady contact of manager Odi Mondheim, he has had the thick, moist clay shipped from Provence, a facsimile of the same clay used at Roland Garros in Paris.
    The two Spade males are engaged in a fiendish drill Ira has dreamed up, and that he has affectionately dubbed “To Hell and Back.” Ira is taking great pleasure in seeing his son work so hard and suffer so much, all for a good cause. The point is not to win rallies; the point is to run and run and run some more. Ira is positioned at the T , hitting pinpoint drop shots and bringing Jack to the net, then hitting delicate lobs that send Jack scrambling back to the baseline. After a full hour, the sliding, diving, somersaulting young man—shorts, shirt, socks, sneakers, wristlet, and headband all smeared with clay—now resembles one of those crimson lobsters his father so enjoys boiling alive.
    “Okay, let’s take a break. Oh, and nice job,” Ira says.
    Unaccustomed to hearing such hysterically ebullient praise, an exhausted Jack Spade smiles appreciatively.
    Father and son sit themselves down on expensive antique redwood Adirondack chairs. Ira, hardly having broken a sweat, is as fresh as a dandelion. Jack, after sixty minutes of forced labor in unbearable humidity, is as drenched as Gene Kelly’s shoes in that famous “umbrella” dance scene in Singin’ in the Rain . A swarm of ferocious mosquitoes buzzes above his head.
    “You think this is tough?” Ira says. “Wait’ll you get to Paris. You’ll be wishing you were back here with the mosquitoes and the humidity and me running you ragged. Wait’ll you get there and it’s hot as hell and you’re down in that bowl of a stadium with those clay-court bastards from Argentina and Brazil and Spain and Italy jerking you around with their topspin drives deep into the corners and those sonuvabitch Frenchie fans screaming obscenities at you!”
    Jack guzzles an entire bottle of Gatorade in one take and awaits the continuation of the diatribe he knows is coming.
    “So listen up, you sonuvabitch,” Ira says with his gravelly Vince Lombardi voice.
    “This Bellezza kid, he’s deaf . Do you know what that means?”
    “That he can’t hear?”
    “No, Einstein. That’s what any simpleton would think. But you’re Jack Spade, future numero uno in the world, and for you, it means that your principal rival for your entire tennis life… has a weakness .”
    The last three words are enunciated slowly, three little words