Everything on the Line by Bob Mitchell Read Free Book Online

not because they had perfect strokes or were overpowering, but because they had a no-mercy, go-for-the-jugular, killer instinct that comes along only once in a blue moon.”
    Coach and pupil resume the hit for another twelve minutes with a diabolical drill that Ira cooked up, consisting of Jack’s having to backpedal from the net for a tough stretch overhead smash, then rush back up to net for a low volley, then repeat this eleven times without stopping. Ira calls it “the Dirty Dozen.”
    Jack calls it “the Satanic Torture.”
    Like Hercules cleaning up manure in the Augean stables, Jack performs the distasteful drill with aplomb, obedience, and—unlike the Greek hero—a series of unattractive grunts that, since he was a tot, his father has encouraged him to emit every time he hits a tennis ball. They are louder and more high-pitched, ear-shattering, obnoxious, and classless grunts than any other in the long and fabled history of tennis, easily surpassing the unattractive vocal emissions of such superb soprano gruntaholics as Monica Seles, Maria Sharapova, and Serena Williams.
    At the end of the final set of twelve round-trips between net and service line, Jack is a tad late for an easy volley and dumps it into the bottom of the net before crumpling to the ground.
    Similar to Muhammad Ali looking down with those fierce eyes at a beaten Charles Liston on that fateful night in 1965 in Lewiston, Maine, Ira glares defiantly at his exhausted offspring.
    “Now, I know you’re tired, but if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times why I work you so hard all the time. And it boils down to one single word: Darwin! The survival of the fittest ! This means that only the fittest will survive! This means that in order for you to reach our goal, to be the best there has ever been, you have to be fitter than every opponent you face. It’s dog-eat-dog, you or them, and if you are the fittest , it’s going to be you , goddammit!”
    Never mind that Darwin preferred the phrase natural selection . Never mind that it was the British economist Herbert Spencer who actually coined the phrase survival of the fittest . Never mind that, at that time in the mid-nineteenth century, fittest meant “most appropriate or suitable” and not “in the best physical shape.” Ira Spade is a loyal Darwinian disciple, whether he actually understands the great naturalist or not.
    On the way home, back in the Mercedes, Ira’s TelevideoPhone rings.
    “Jel-lo,” Ira says, opening his Nokia SuperMiniLaser2800SE.
    “Hey, Ira,” short, fat, bald, chinless Odi Mondheim says, looking obsequiously at Ira through the screen. Odi is Jack’s business manager, agent, factotum, and publicist. As a child, Odi couldn’t pronounce his Christian name—Cody—so the moniker stuck.
    “Whassup?” Ira asks.
    “Well, I just got off the horn with the Nike people—”
    “So, didja stick it to ’em?” Ira asks impatiently.
    “Well, I started to, but they said the kid’s only thirteen, and—”
    “Goddammit, Odi, you sonuvabitch, listen to me. Thirteen, shmirteen, this kid’s a frigging gold mine, fer chrissakes. A big fat check just waiting to be cashed!”
    “But—”
    “Now listen,” Ira spews, “you’re gonna haul your fat ass back to Nike tomorrow and you’re gonna not chat about, but demand that sneaker deal we’ve been talking about. They all know how dominant the kid is for his age, and exactly where he’s headed. They’re not stupid, and, know what? Neither are we, goddammit!”
    “Okay, whatever you say, Ira. You can count on me. Oh, and by the way, I had my inside guy do some research on that Italian kid you heard about, the one the same age as Jack? Yeah, his name is Ugo Bellezza. Well, don’t look now, buddy boy, but he just won the All-Italian Under-18s as a thirteen-year-old , in five grueling sets, against that world-ranked fifteen-year-old, Mauro Maione, which is a tiny bit troubling. I mean, if you ask me, this kid