Goldengirl

Peter Lear Goldengirl

One

A girl in a white vest and gold satin shorts stood alone in a narrow corridor thirty meters in length. Across the floor in front of her was a thin metal strip with two small terminals at the left end. Behind it, a set of starting blocks. Ahead, a rubber mat, flush with the floor. The wall at the end of the corridor was padded.

‘Na Mesta.’

The instruction in Russian came from behind a glass observation panel to her rear. She advanced to the blocks and got into the hunched position for the crouch start, with her fingertips splayed on the metal strip.

‘Gotovo.’

She raised her buttocks and leaned forward, distributing her weight on a tripod formed by the front foot and two hands. The only movements were the pulsing of her temple and a strand of blond hair that slipped from her left shoulder.

The crack of a shot.

The girl screamed in pain, cannoned from the blocks and crashed heavily on the mat.

‘I got a reading of.17,’ the voice indifferently announced from behind the panel, speaking now in an American West Coast accent. ‘You’re not going anyplace this way. On your feet and try again. When your reaction is down to.15, you’ll beat the electric shock. But if you come away slower, by Jesus, I’ll step up the impulse.’

The girl was still prostrate on the mat. Her back gave a series of small tremors.

‘Action, Goldengirl!’ the voice ordered. ‘You’re going to make.15 before we finish this session, and.14 tomorrow. It’s a fact of life that good gun response is essential to a top-line sprinter.’

She got up slowly, biting her lip. She went back behind the starting line without looking up toward the observation panel. Her eyes were moist.

‘I tell you, chick,’ said the voice, ‘by the time you get to Moscow you’ll be out of those blocks like hot cowshit.’

At one-thirty on the afternoon of Thursday, June 12, 1980, a classic cream-and-maroon Mercedes SSK swept out of Alameda Street, Los Angeles, and slotted into one of the eight lanes of the Santa Monica Freeway. The upright lines of the SSK, conspicuous in the procession of streamlined sedans, were those of the 1933 model. But between the chrome flex exhaust tubes projecting from the hood throbbed a Chevrolet V-8 engine, for this was a modern ‘derivative,’ a Brooks Stevens Series III Excalibur. As it approached Santa Monica, its owner, Jack Dryden, of the Dryden Merchandising empire, registered that he was about to join the Pacific Coast Highway by pulling open his shirt. A whiff of sea on the gasoline fumes endorsed his feeling of release.

Traffic four lanes wide still snaked ahead, tires zipping over the antiskid grooves, radios tuned to local stations for news of diversions and delays beamed from the Sigalert helicopters patrolling overhead. But at intervals from this point on, there were stretches of sea and shore unscarred by gas signs and hamburger stands.

At six, if California 1 was clear, he would order a Rob Roy at Dick Armitage’s tennis ranch 200 miles up the coast at Cambria Pines.

The trip to Cambria wasn’t to improve his forehand. Armitage, the 1979 U.S. champion, stood high in the organization’s list of clients. He had phoned early on Wednesday morning. Between the French Championships and Wimbledon there was a nine-day interval, and he had flown in on Tuesday night. Unlike most players on the circuit, Armitage took the first plane back to California when there were intervals between tournaments. This time he would need to work on a faulty return of service which had put him out at the semi-final stage in Paris.

‘But this isn’t about that,’ he had told Dryden. ‘I called to tell you I might be able to send some business your way. Could you possibly get out here for the weekend, Jack? You keep busy, I know, but I figure this might be worth the trip. I’d rather not discuss it now, if you understand me. How about checking in for dinner Thursday night and making it a long weekend? It’s time you saw the ranch, anyway.’

‘I’ll clear my calendar,’ Dryden had promised.

He reckoned Armitage would introduce him to some young player with ambitions on the professional circuit who was looking for an agent. He would go through the repertoire of his strokes on court, and Dryden from the sidelines would nod politely and agree to act for him. With upward of twenty agencies scouting for clients, a tip from the U.S. champion couldn’t be ignored. Now that tennis ranches were firmly established up and down America as the places where anyone with Grand Slam ambitions learned to use a racket, the pros in residence were well placed to study form.