Murder Is My Racquet Read Free Page B

a child. But now you know its source. It’s not the official, who of course cannot be expected to be right every time.”
    “They’re only human.”
    “Exactly. It’s your father you’re truly enraged at, and he’s dead, and out of reach of your anger, no longer available to approve or disapprove, to applaud or punish.”
    “That’s it, all right.”
    “And now, armed with the insight you’ve developed here, you’ll be able to master your rage, to dispel it, to rise above it.”
    “You know something?” Tommy said. “I feel better already.”
    • • •
    I n a first-round match two weeks later, an unreturnable passing shot by his unseeded opponent fell just outside the sideline marker. The umpire called it in.
    “You blind bastard!” Tommy screamed. “How much are they paying you to steal the match from me?”
    • • •
    “W ith every breath,” the little man in the loincloth intoned, “you draw the anger up from the third chakra. Up up up, past the heart chakra, past the throat chakra, to the third eye. Then, as you breathe out, you let the anger flow in a stream out through the third eye, transformed into peaceful energizing white light. Breathe in and the anger is drawn upward from the solar plexus where it is stored. Breathe out and you release it as white light. With every breath, your reserve of rage grows less and less.”
    “Om,” Tommy said.
    • • •
    I n his next tournament, the Virginia Slims Equal Opportunity Challenge (dubbed Men Deserve Cancer Too by one commentator), Tommy waltzed through the early rounds, breathing in and breathing out. Then, in the quarterfinals, he smashed his racquet after a service double fault.
    He had a replacement racquet, and it wasn’t until midway through the next game that he snapped it over his knee.
    • • •
    “W hy put you on the couch for ten or twelve years,” the doctor said, “when I can give you a little pill that’ll fix what’s wrong with you? If you had high blood pressure, you wouldn’t probe your psyche to uncover the underlying reasons for it, would you? You might stroke out while you were still trying to remember your childhood. No, you’d take your medication. If you had diabetes, you’d watch your diet and take your insulin. I’m going to write you a prescription for a new tranquilizer, and I want you to take one first thing every morning. And you won’t have to master your anger, or figure out where it comes from. Because it’ll be gone.”
    “Neat,” said Tommy.
    • • •
    “T here’s something curiously listless about Terhune’s play,” the television announcer reported. “He’s performing well enough to win his early matches, but we’re used to seeing him rush the net more often, and his reflexes seem the tiniest bit less sharp. We’ve heard rumors that he’s been taking medication to help him with his emotional difficulties, and it looks to me as though whatever he’s taking is slowing him down.”
    “But his temper’s in check, Jim. When that call went against him in the first set, he barely noticed it.”
    “Oh, he noticed it. He stared over at the official, and he looked puzzled. But he didn’t seem to care very much, and he lifted his racquet and played the next point without incident.”
    “If he’s on something, it does seem to be working…. Oh, what’s this?”
    “He thought Beckheim’s return was out.”
    “But it was clearly in, Jim.”
    “Not the way Terhune saw it. Oh, there he goes. Oh, my.”
    • • •
    “Y our eyelids are very heavy,” the hypnotist said. “You cannot keep them open. You are sleeping, you are in a deep sleep. From now on, you will be completely calm and unruffled on the tennis court. Nothing will disturb your composure. If anything upsetting occurs, you will stop what you are doing and count slowly to ten. When you reach the count of ten, all tension and anger will vanish, and you will once again be calm and unruffled. Now how will you be when you play