Everything on the Line Read Free

month?—a passage from Leonardo da Vinci’s Notebooks. All about the perfect balance that exists in nature and how everything happens for a reason. “Necessity is the mistress and guide of nature,” Giglio had recited from memory, as he looked straight into Ugo’s eyes.
    Perhaps then this thought had appeared abstract and not entirely clear to Ugo. But now, he totally gets it. Animals are not mean-spirited or malicious or despicable when they kill. They just need to eat.
    Virgilio Marotti, Ugo’s beloved “Giglio”—father figure, mentor, best pal, and tennis coach—enters the room and taps Ugo gently on the shoulder. The adolescent turns around and gives his coach a warm smile.
    “ Andiamo, ragazzo, it is time to play!” Giglio says, enunciating each syllable meaningfully. Ugo’s smile, widening, says yay yippee hurray evviva !
    Ugo throws his tennis bag over his shoulder, and the two jog into the kitchen like excited schoolmarms to say good-bye to Ugo’s mother, who, at the sound of their sneakersteps, whirls around.
    Gioconda Bellezza is standing by the sink, her hands dusted with flour and partially caked with clumps of bread dough. Hers are rough hands, toughened by decades of soaking, squashing, squishing, smushing, and sifting, to which she, as a Tuscan donna , has committed herself. They are also tender hands, softened by over a decade of love and nurturing, to which she, as a Tuscan mamma , has devoted herself.
    These hands, dough clumps and all, wrap themselves around her Ugo and squeeze him tight. Gioconda smiles at her son, with her Mona Lisa smile that is just as knowing as but a smidge less mysterious than the one in the painting. She releases Ugo and throws a second smile Giglio’s way.
    “ A presto, ragazzi , see you boys for dinner,” she says, returning to her bread.
    * * *
    Virgilio Marotti chugs up to the parking lot at the Tennis Club Racchetta Novantanove on Via di Brozzi and deposits his beat-up 2026 Fiat 898 Veloce. The jalopy, which Giglio has tenderly named Viola, put-puts to a labored stop. Giglio finds the clunky sound slightly annoying; Ugo does not.
    As they jog onto their sumptuous deep red clay outdoor court, reserved for two hours, it is the teacher who is the more noticeable of the two players. He is dashing in his canary-yellow Fila warm-up suit, his bushy brown mustache and virile beard stubble, his wiry physique. Preparing to hit the first practice ball of the session, his strong, long, lithe fingers dwarf the shaved thin grip of his Dunlop racquet just the way his tennis idol Ilie Nastase’s did his.
    But as soon as Giglio hits this first ball, something happens that diverts all the focus from him to his pupil. Uncannily, Ugo is running to return the ball at virtually the precise instant that it leaves his coach’s racquet. Not a half second later or even a quarter second, but nearly simultaneously. To Giglio’s delight, Ugo reaches the ball in plenty of time, sets his feet, and cracks a forehand down the line that is unreturnable.
    “ Bravissimo! ” Giglio says, initiating a second rally.
    Carbon copy.
    Looking at his pupil, sports fanatico Giglio recalls Armin Hary, the German sprinter who eighty-three years ago was the first non-American to win the Olympic 100-meter dash since 1928. What was so amazing about Hary (Giglio has seen actual video footage) was his ridiculously fast starts, based on his keen sense of hearing, as though he could react perfectly to the sound of the starter gun at the precise instant it went off. Of course, Giglio thinks, Ugo’s genius is due to something different, something God-given that has to do with some sort of heightened visual sense of anticipation that he was, well, just born with.
    Coach steps it up, hitting balls closer to the lines to make student increase his effort, but again, Ugo reaches them all in plenty of time.
    Giglio steps it up even more, moving young Ugo from side to side, but still the boy’s uncanny anticipation