D
id you check. his phone?
I told you, I'm not gonna
do that!
But it's so easy.
They are not talking about Martin.
Toby pronounces it Mahr-fem. Be-
cause that's how Martin himself pro-
nounced it, being from Chile. It was
only last year that Martin stayul with
them, and Toby's father was crazy about
the young tennis player. Since then,
disillusionment has spoiled his father's
gaze, and every tennis player after Mar-
tin can only be a reminder of him, and
an object of suspicion.
I don't think I could live through
that again, Toby's father says, and
switches back to the subject of the new
guy: How difficult could it be? Just ask
to borrow his phone. Say you want to
play a game. Say I don't allow you to
on your own phone. Then take a look
at his messages for anything iffy. Head
things off at the pass.
He'll know I went through his
messages!
Tell him you touched it by accident!
Do I have to feed you everything?
Toby has only his father, and his fa-
ther has only Toby. Plus their palatial
estate in La Jolla. Many months out
of the year, Toby is left alone with a
groundskeeper and a companion-all
right, a nanny-while his father is in
Macao tending to his casinos and his
other businesses. But this is the part
of the year that they always spend to-
gether-roughly from the beginning
of March to late April.
For as far back as Toby can remem-
ber---sincc he was six or so-his father
has signed them up to host a visiting
player at the local event, the Diamond
Club Challenger, in which Toby's fa-
ther is an investor, of sorts. Toby is now
eighteen and taking a year off before
deciding on college, maybe longer. Of
cotme, he'll go-he's Chinese, and who-
ever heard of a Chinese without a col-
lege degree? And, besides, he does not
have the option of becoming a tennis
player. He simply is not good enough.
There's been,let's see, Pratesh,Llam,
Manolo, Manuel, that Indian guy (the
one after Pratesh, with the compli-
cated ruune that you couldn't shorten),
the Moroccan guy who wanted to be
left alone because he was in a mid-
divorce funk (though that didn't stop
him from trying to get into the pants
of one of the event sponsors),Apichat,
Albert from Canada {which was how
Toby's father, riffing on the way the
young man had introduced himself,
referred to him behind his back), the
three Chinese guys in a row-Wu-
yang, Zuhan, and Louie--or, rechnically,
four, since Albert was Chinese-Cana-
dian, and, of course, most eventfully
{though not at the time), Martin, just
last year.
It was Apichat who taught Toby to
drive when he was thirteen. Apichat,
with electric-blue hair that he claimed
nobody in the streets ofBangkok gave
a second glance to, was originally going
to drive Toby to the mall, as a distrac-
tion from his second-round loss, but
instead they circled the family com-
pound over and over again, Toby in
the driver's seat being instructed by
Apichat. They wound up sitting on
the beach, people-watching, commis-
erating over the unfairness of life,
Apichat sharing a joint. Two firsts on
that day: his first drive and the first of
many tokes.
Although the tournament admin-
istrators told him that they couldn't
accommodate the request, his father
had insisted on hosting any Asian
players in the tournament, on the no-
need-to-speak-it assumption that
Toby would benefit from exposure to
an older-brother figure, to make up
for his lack of a mother. Though, to
be honest, it was also to compensate
for his having a ghost as a father, since
Toby's father, even when in residence
at the family manse, is always out
making his deals, driving from meet-
ing to meeting, and, when he's home,
holing up in the game room in front
of his wide-screen TV, on which he
can monitor the .floor action at his
Macao casinos, as well as his cashiers'
booths, his office with the two safes,
and, most important, his general man-
agers' quarters.
Besides, Toby's father is an alco-
holic, and by noon on most days, if
he notices Toby at all, he does so
through a scrim of wooze, on wobbly
feet. When operatic-drunk, his father
likes to quote a line he says comes
from his favorite movie star, Steve
McQ.ueen: "If you're looking for trou-
ble, you've come to the right place."OnewaythatTobybondswith the
visiting players is by betraying his fa-
ther-as when, with Pratcsh,he spied
on his father, dressed in nothing but
boxers, making circuits around the pe-
rimeter of the pool, a full tumbler of
Scotch attached to his hand. His fa-
ther would take a sip, walk a few steps,
then stop and say, to no one, to the
air, to an antagonist in the air, If you're
looking for trouble, you've come to
the right place. He repeated this rou-
tine for nearly half an hour, until there
was nothing left in the tumbler and
he let his hand drop. He'd forgotten
that he'd had the enfue place, includ-
ing the pool area, .fitted with cam-
eras--or maybe he didn't care-and
Toby and Pratesh sat in Toby's bed-
room cackling over the sad-comic
spectacle on Toby's laptop.
It was worse when they had the
swans, who, for two years, owned the
pool. His father would taunt the birds,
pitching ice cubes into their habitat,
making them honk and flutter their
insane wings, goading them to come
after him, which they did less and less
as time passed. They were supposed to
mate, but, when a guy from the zoo
came to collect them, it was discov-
ered that Toby's father had been har-
boring two males-imagine his peeve.
Faggots, he told Toby. All this time!
Which is among the reasons that Toby
has not told-and probably will never
tell-his father about his own possi-
bly irreversible gay tendencies.
It was Apichatwho, intuiting those
tendencies, had jacked him off by the
pool very late at night, before flying
to Florida to compete at another Chal-
lenger event. Where was his father
then, that Toby could be so brazen?
Probably knocked out in his bedroom,
on the other side of the property. Or
induJging one of his club jaunts. Toby
remembers being so wrapped up in
420 and lust, it was as if he were swad-
dled in blankets even when he was
naked. The lights were off, and he was
being pleasured by a ghost made of
white eyeballs and electric-blue hair.
Thinking of that night now never
fails to give Toby an erection. Apichat
rested his wireless speakers on a
lounger, and the same song kept play-
ing over and over: "Abracadabra,"
by the Steve Miller Band, a tune that1l£ NEY )()MfR, MAl\01 30 , 1020 57