Chapter 11

“New Players, New Angles”

by A.J. Kohlhepp

The boys were well into their second glass of Rodney Strong, an amicable wine that stacked up well against pricier bottles from the Russian River Valley. Stacy had poured the pinot aggressively but sipped Pellegrino judiciously, begging off from their collective libation with the prospects of a long afternoon run. Things were coming back into form.

“Let me get this straight,” said Hank incredulously. “That Kiwi crook thinks he can build a squash center way the flock out there?”

“And he thinks he’s gonna get a bunch of Princeton alums to pay for it,” guffawed Reid, knowing full well that a Tiger and his, or her, money were never easily parted. Not even when there were “naming opportunities” involved.

“Exactly,” smiled Stacy. “We give him what he wants–the land–and he leaves us alone, once and for all. And I get back to the loves of my life.”

“Loves,” muttered Hank, emphasizing the plurality of the term by drawing out the s at the end in a downward sigh.

“Loves,” Stacy replied shortly and sweetly. “You and Finn, of course.”

This pleased Hank immensely, and she sealed it with a perfunctory kiss.

“And Reid,” she laughed, giving him a kiss as well as she got up from the table.

Reid shrugged merrily, meeting Hank’s eyes momentarily as they darted his way.

“Why don’t you boys head into the living room and we can work out the details.”

“Works for me,” said Reid, though there were other rooms in the house that he would rather visit with her, and none of them in the presence of her husband. Stacy was never more alluring to him than when she was crushing the competition, and he couldn’t wait to see how she would get out of this jam.

Hank, already headed toward the cozier confines of a large leather sectional, paused to look at the drone on the counter. “Wait a minute,” he puzzled. “What about –“

Stacy knew exactly what he was thinking and cut him off before he could even frame the question. Although she wasn’t conscious of it, the advice of countless coaches propelled her forward in this moment. Seize the T. Get in the lead pack and go as hard as you can, as long as you can.

“Really sorry you had to hear that, sweetheart,” she offered in her most consoling voice. “But you know we need that for the trial, right?”

The two men paused at the threshold of the living room and looked at her as one.

“The jilted lover angle,” she offered breezily, as if this were patently obvious. Act, don’t react. Stay calm and keep breathing.

“You mean–,” began Hank, starting to imagine the effect on jurors (not to mention on his own bruised ego) of that particularly prejudicial piece of audio evidence.

“Be right in,” she laughed, turning toward the near-empty bottle on the counter. “Shall I open another?”

- - -

From the driver seat of his rather decrepit Boxster convertible–the candy apple red had faded to a dusty macintosh hue–Cav had an unobstructed view of the land that incited so much maneuvering.

“Can you remind me why it has to be this one,” muttered his precocious companion, who was working absent-mindedly on a wad of chewing gum that she had popped in prior to her squash lesson and kept chewing on their drive into the San Gabriel foothills. “What’s wrong with that piece,” Rowan asked, looking up from her phone and momentarily extricating a digit long enough to point toward another equally desolate chunk of terrain.

“It’s a numbers thing, kiddo,” reminded Cav. “Seven times seven equals–“

“Oh, yeah,” she half-nodded, turning back to the incessant torrent of handheld pixelated activity that passed for “social” interaction in her peer group. “Forty-nine.”

“Exactly,” he enthused, reaching a hand over to muss her gingery top, noticing a tweak in his right forearm as he did so. “A lucky number squared is twice as lucky, right?”

“Right,” she assented, recognizing certain computational shortcomings in his theory. But Cav was a jock and thus, in her mind, exempt from the kinds of precision required by her SSAT prep math tutor.

“And all you need to do is–“

“Tell my mom it’s for the Princeton thing?”

“Correct,” enthused the cunning Kiwi. “The Greater Los Angeles Princeton Alumni Center for Squash.”

“GLA-PACS,” giggled Rowan, proud of her facilities in recognizing acronymic opportunities.

The girls couldn’t hit a backhand length for shit, observed Cav, but she was pretty good with her lines. Rowan Shields shared her mother’s adolescent coloration and ambition but not, at least not yet, the sculpted cheek bones that had seemed to catapult Brooke to early stardom.

At that moment, she was also demonstrating her dexterity with instantaneous communications. One quick snapshot, with her in the foreground, Cav in the middle distance, and the San Gabriel mountains in the far background, uploaded with a couple of surreptitious clicks and a questionable caption: #CoolestCoachEver. The only way to improve this selfie, she reflected, would be to shoot it from one of those weird drones that her little sister’s squash pal Finn was always fiddling with.

Cav was actually proud of himself for coming up with this new angle. Having heard before coming over that Americans were fetishistic about their university affiliations, he had observed the prevalence of college-themed gear among the movers and shakers in LA. Not that they wore their crests and logos out about town, mind you; it was more like a subtle series of tribal signals engaged in the locker rooms, in the clubs, on the courts and courses. Represent for the old alma mater, and all that shit.

Even Reid and Stacy, otherwise level-headed people, seemed to cherish a college-based bond that in some ways trumped family and faction, race and religion and region. Cavs found it all thoroughly boring but when boring worked–as in that straight volley drop that provides an endless series of winners against an opponent whose movement is compromised–you use it. Just win.

The squash angle, which made the whole plot feasible into the future, was a bit more obtuse. It seemed that young Rowan Shields’ mother had been nurturing a low-grade grudge against an ex-spouse who rose to fame and fortune through his facility with a whole different racket. Though she could never hope to eclipse him on the hard courts, the former Mrs. Agassi was hoping for vengeance one generation and one athletic pursuit removed: her own girls would defeat Andre’s at squash, and the host site–a gleaming new club redolent with the trappings of Ivy League elitism–would add insult to injury. At least that was the play.

For now, he simply needed title and deed. “Mangari,” he chanted to himself in Maori, as he often did in key moments of his life. “Be lucky.”

- - -

Two of the men in her life were snoozing comfortably on the sectional, thanks to the wine and a little afternoon enhancer she had dropped into the bottle before pouring out the last half glasses. The third was probably just finishing his lunch at school and would stay late for robotics club this afternoon; the fourth was likely coaching up some hot momma(s) at the club, waiting to hear from her about their clandestine stratagem.

Stacy slipped her phone into its case on her upper arm, grabbed her ergonomically designed Badwater Ultra- water bottle, and headed out the door for the San Gabriel mountains. As she closed the door behind her and took off toward the trail, a sleek and silent drone lifted effortlessly off the roof.

- - -

“See you at 3:00,” declared a text message appearing at that exact moment on Cavanaugh’s phone. ”Lot 49.”