Chapter 2 The Arrangement #2
Her lanyard said MEGHAN and the name of a brand consultancy that had not existed two seasons ago.
She delivered the script in the bright, frictionless cadence of a person reciting in a second language.
Then, gathering her tablet, watching Kas reset his grip, Meghan said, to no one in particular, “Continental. Everyone keeps telling him to change it. They’re wrong.
” Kas revised his estimate of her by a full grade.
It was the first true sentence anyone from the brand had spoken in the building, and she had not meant to let it out; the brand voice closed back over her a half-second later, as though it too came with a visor.
Kas ignored the theater. “What do you want to run,” he said to Callahan, a prompt with the punctuation of a question removed.
Callahan’s eyes flicked up. “We can start with serves, see how the angles line up. Or we can get the awkward stuff out of the way: figure out who calls the poaches, who covers the lobs, that kind of thing.”
“Fine.” Kas dropped his bag at the baseline, took out a racket, and bounced the nearest ball twice. He was ready before Callahan finished stretching.
They started with a rally. Neutral ground, no trick shots.
Neither one spoke; the court held only the ball and the squeak of shoes on the court.
Kas adjusted to the lefty spin and to the slight collapse of Callahan’s follow-through, the racket dropping as if its owner had already moved on to the next shot.
The American’s groundstrokes came with built-in sarcasm, each one a degree past necessary, a dare wrapped in a joke.
After a few exchanges, Callahan broke the silence. “I always thought you’d be louder.”
Kas hit a drive that forced a stumble. “Most people think that,” he said. “They are wrong.”
Another rally. The ball found Callahan’s backhand, the signature slice, and dropped dead two feet inside the line. Kas retrieved, reset, said nothing, and let the quiet do its work.
“I read somewhere,” Callahan said between points, “that you never sweat. Is that true, or just a weird flex?”
Kas caught the ball and pocketed it. “It is not interesting to sweat.”
This time Callahan laughed, short, involuntary. “Is that a thing in Hungary, or just for you?”
Kas waited for the next ball. “It is only a thing for me.”
They cycled through drills: cross-courts, net approaches, a dozen volleys in quick succession.
The American was quicker than the scouting suggested, and the quickness lived less in his feet than in his instincts; he mirrored Kas’s adjustments without being told.
Still, he wasted energy, chasing balls no one else would bother retrieving, converting lost points into content.
A few rallies in, Callahan called a break. He grabbed a towel, wiped his face, and leaned on the net. “I know you probably hate this. So let’s agree up front: you call the plays. I’ll try not to make you look bad.”
Kas sipped from his water bottle. “That is not necessary. You will play as you play. I will adjust.”
Callahan studied him, hunting for a tell. “You always this direct?”
“Yes.”
A head-tilt, one corner of the mouth moving without quite agreeing. “Can I ask you a real question?”
“You can try.”
“If you hate doubles so much, why say yes? You had to know what you were in for.”
Kas shrugged. “Because it is required. And because the alternative is to let someone else decide. This is better.”
Callahan nodded and, for once, did not follow it with anything. “Makes sense. I don’t want to screw this up for you. I know I’m not…” The thread slipped from him. “Whatever you think I am, I’m just here to not get in your way.”
Kas looked at him. Callahan’s reputation was a costume of chaos, but underneath it Kas registered a simpler fact: the man had stopped watching the ball. He was watching Kas’s face, checking whether the last shot had registered.
“You are not in my way,” Kas said. “But if you want to be useful, stop running for balls that are out.”
Callahan let a beat pass, then nodded. “Copy that. I’ll be boring.”
“Not boring. Efficient.”
The next drill ran smoother. A rough code began to assemble: a glance, a shift of feet, Callahan beginning to mirror Kas’s readiness instead of fighting it. They finished the set, sweat sheeting Callahan’s arms, Kas’s shirt still crisp.
Meghan clapped from the sideline. “Excellent start, gentlemen. The press will want a few stills after you cool down.”
Callahan grimaced, then turned to Kas. “You want to fake a smile for the cameras, or should I do the heavy lifting?”
Kas considered. “You can handle it.”
“Figured.” The American’s next smile arrived a notch more authentic. “See you tomorrow.”
Kas picked up his bag. “You will,” he said. “Try not to be late.”
He left the court first, as usual. In the corridor back to the lounge he could still register the American’s presence behind him, a faint ripple he did not yet have a name for. By ten o’clock he had been sure he could contain it. Now he was less sure.
For now, he let it trail a little longer than necessary.
* * *
At 1:40 in the morning, in the climate-controlled dark of his hotel room, Kas opened the American’s scouting folder for reasons that were not entirely professional.
The laptop’s folder system was impeccable, matches sorted by surface, by season, by hemisphere.
The American’s folder sat where it had sat for six years, larger than the others, which he had always attributed to the man’s stylistic variance: more shot types required more film.
He opened it now, for preparation, he told himself, partnership demanded familiarity, and began to watch, and the lie held.
Doha. The exhibition.
Two years old, the file’s cornerstone, watched more times than any match Kas had ever played in.
A forty-one-stroke rally, the longest of his season, both men dragged to the edge of their games and then past it.
The ball had finally sat up for Callahan’s forehand, the simple finish there, the rally’s logic begging for it.
Instead, Callahan had hit a drop shot between his own legs.
For the crowd. For the clip. A flourish so unnecessary it had felt like vandalism.
Kas had stood at his baseline for three full seconds and then walked off the court of an exhibition match in front of four thousand confused spectators and a row of sponsors, the single least professional act of his career.
He watched it again now. Frame by frame, the old habit.
And in the frozen frames, he saw what he had refused to see at full speed: Callahan’s face in the half-second before the trick shot.
The broadcast face was gone. What remained was desperate.
The face of a man who had just played the best rally of his year and could not allow it to end sincerely. Sincere was unwitnessed. Unwitnessed did not count. So he had defaced his own masterpiece to make sure somebody filmed it.
Two years ago, Kas had called the feeling disgust.
Now, sitting in the dark, thirty-one years old, world No. 12, four hours from a practice court he would share with the man, he corrected the oldest conclusion.
It had not been disgust.
It had been recognition.
He knew what it was to take the best thing in himself and lock it inside a system no one else could touch. Callahan had built his vault out of applause. Kas had built his out of silence.
The locks, he saw now, were nearly identical.
He closed the laptop. He did not log the session. He had been studying Callahan for two years already. The sponsor had only made it billable.