Chapter 13: Gettin' Served
April was a month of sunny days and reckoning. Following an unusually wet March, the ash-hued shrubs and faded-red earth running up the hillside had been transformed into a huge swath of green. The sight of it filled me with hope and energy, although some of that I attribute to the two coffees I'd downed in order to make the courts by 9:00 on a Sunday morning.
Jane had one sport and that was tennis. Of the four of us her serves were by far the deadliest. She'd get you on the serve. Her racquet almost dropped to her ass as the ball peaked in the air, her Nike shirt tightening over her conical tits, and then the racquet swept along a high arc, her body reversing its twist and becoming momentarily weightless as the thwack sounded off like a perfect note and her right foot came to a graceful landing just in front of the server line. Camille and I had to scramble to place ourselves ahead of the incoming bullet and I was constantly forced to play from the baseline, where it was hard to return with any power. Despite Jane's mighty serve and Kaden having beaten me in the past, Camille and I kept the score close, or so I was told. I'd played maybe thirty hours of tennis in my life and couldn't wrap my head around the scoring.
We took a break between matches and Jane sat on a folding chair left by the instructor who taught kids the prior evening. As she eased her bottom down she smoothed out her short, white tennis skirt to keep it from riding up. Camille sat beside her, sipping tea from a thermos as she pulled a loose thread from her running shorts. There sat one brunette, one blonde and four gorgeous legs.
The tennis courts were surrounded by a tall chain link fence and the girls sat with their backs to it. A loud slobbering on the other side caused them both to turn around in their seats, and then their faces lit up upon finding a huge playful bulldog poking its long, drippy tongue through the openings in the chain link. A guy came running across the field of grass neighboring the court until he caught up to the dog and snapped on a leash.
"Sorry, he doesn't usually stray away from me."
"Oh it's okay," Jane said affectionately, as her and Camille tried to pet the dog's head through the diamond holes in the fence while also avoiding its wet tongue.
The guy kneeled to scratch the bulldog's back. "Spanky's essentially a drool factory on legs."
"No problem," Jane assured him, "I'm used to slobbery dogs. My family has one."
"A bulldog?"
"No, he's a dogue de bordeaux."
Camille and I locked eyes, silently asking one another, "What the fuck did she just say?
Dog de fucking-bordeaux?"
We both struggled not to laugh, pursing our lips to hide our growing smiles.
Even the bulldog's owner was confused and Jane quickly explained, "It's sort of like a French Mastiff."
I Googled it later and it is a French Mastiff—it's exactly that.
Kaden broke it all up when he spun his racquet in the air and asked, "Are we playing tennis or what?"
Within minutes we were back on the court. Camille and I still had the giggles. It wasn't just the strangeness of Jane's words back there at the fence, it was the pretentious way she used them that made it so perfect. And oddly enough, our telepathically communicated joke seemed to heighten our mental connection and sync up our playing for the second match.
Jane served first and she executed it perfectly, only this time I was able to get in position to fire back and drop the ball right between them. A polite hesitation over who was going to return caused Kaden to wait too long and scoop up the ball, barely lobbing it over the net. Camille moved up and fired it to the back, right corner, where Jane took one step in its direction and then realized it wasn't worth running, the ball was moving too fast and angled away.
The rest of the game played out much the same way. I'd come to learn Jane had four spots where her serve would drop, and once I'd determined where I needed to be for each of those I was able to consistently position for the return. Camille and I both figured out that Jane played a very precise game and wasn't interested in sloppy saves, which meant we only needed to get the ball outside her comfort zone for a point. I could tell it frustrated Kaden, but still under the gooey spell of his new girlfriend, he merely rolled eyes dramatically in the opposite direction.
We were in the last set, up a point and Camille's serve, when I called a quick time out and walked over to quietly discuss a new strategy. I leaned in and pointed across the court. "OK, here's what you need to do. I want you to put some dogue de bordeaux on this serve."
She pinched her eyes shut and snickered cutely, as I slapped her shoulder in coach-like fashion and returned to left center. Camille, about to toss the neon-green ball into the air, mouthed, "Dogue de bordeaux," gave me a thumbs up while still clutching the ball and then proceeded to replicate one of Jane's perfect serves. Or rather, Camille replicated her perfect form. The ball on the other hand, it sailed straight out of bounds. Apparently we needed to shore up the meaning behind our new favorite saying.
They caught up, 40-40, or deuce, or whatever the fuck. Kaden served a mean shot right down the line, but Camille leapt into place so fast she was at a forty-degree angle as her backhand returned the ball on a beeline to Kaden. He had to hop to the side and make a desperate swing that missed entirely, which granted us our serve again.
Kaden was on fire after that, his thigh muscles hatching as he darted back and forth across the court. And the next time Jane let the ball whiz by, he didn't just roll his eyes, he loudly pleaded, "Jane, you could've got that!"
After that we had several long vollies. And neither side could score a winning point. They'd get one and have the advantage, and then we'd deuce it up, and then we'd get the advantage, and they'd deuce it up. I lost track of points after a while and Jane had visible pit stains on her white Nike shirt. We were all sweating and breathing heavy, and all determined to win.
On my last serve of the game I had the scoring down cold. I loudly called out, "Advantage," and drove the ball far to the right of Kaden, who threw his whole body towards it, swinging in mid air and barely landing on his feet. He managed a clean return, though, and what followed was an epic volley between Kaden and Camille.
Camille was so on point she even stole a shot from me. Kaden put one so close to the net it actually wobbled, and Camille fired it back over the net causing it to wobble again. "Fuck you," Kaden shouted as he pivoted and raced back across the court again. The fast action was drawing them in closer to the net, with Kaden almost on it for a shot that struck within a yard of it and hugged the ground. Camille's racquet swept towards the fuzzy ball and popped it up but in a delicate lob that plodded a slow short path to Jane. Jane ran forwards but Kaden beat her two it with a resounding backhand. The ball went up, apexed over the net and fell from the sky on a course behind Camille.
"That's the one!" Kaden yelled with exhausted confidence.
But it was not the one. Camille reached back and caught the ball, the extreme angle of the racquet causing an unbelievable topspin on a shot that was sure to land outside the line but somehow curved its way back in. Kaden's big smile turned into gaping surprise the instant he realized the match was not over and the ball was still in play. He made a last desperate attempt, losing his footing and crashing down on his shoulder, but he couldn't make up the distance and his swing breezed past the ball.
Camille and I hi-fived as Jane helped Kaden to his feet. He rolled his shoulder, stretching it out and looked over at us with horrified eyes and a giddy smile. "Camille, where the hell did that come from?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"You aren't being straight with me. There's no way you haven't played since high school."
"Just those couple of weeks before I settled on track."
He rubbed his shoulder. "That was brutal." He took a swing at nothing, making sure his arm was good to go. A second stronger swing made the racquet whistle through the air. "Okay, that's one match each. We gotta settle this."
Kaden was met by heavy sighs, and Jane conceding that she was done for the day. She looked done. It was nearing noon, the sun high above us and sweat spots soaked through the back of her Nike shirt.
"Ah Jane, I can't go out like this!"
We were walking off the court to our water bottles by then, all hi-fiving each other over a good game played.
