I called Fen a machine before she had touched the ball. On the replay, which I have watched more often than I intended, the phrase comes out warmly. “A machine built for the job.” It sounds like a compliment if you don’t know how to listen to me.
Beside my booth, the stadium’s audience dial climbed from amber into green.
There were two thousand actual spectators at the final. There was room for twelve thousand. To fill the difference, the stadium made its own noise: feet stamping, breath drawing in, a roar from the upper gallery. It could give you an entire block of disappointed away supporters, or that extraordinary hush just before a match point. The league called it atmosphere assistance. I called it a regular audience. At my age you take what you can get.
Wallball is a simple game until someone good plays it. Four walls, two bats, one ball. Alternate strikes; you lose a point if the ball touches the floor twice before your return. The ceiling is out. First to eleven, win by two. The court is large enough to hide a bad decision for a second, and no longer.
Rafe knew where every bad decision in that court lived. I had announced his matches for sixteen years. He sent me a postcard from each tournament, mostly pictures of the hotel plumbing. I had a drawer full of them. Today was supposed to be his last final.
Fen came through the other tunnel carrying her own bat. Her joints were matte white, her chest dark beneath the league vest. She was the first player whose entire body had been assembled by a workshop. The league had approved her reach, weight and striking force. Her nervous system, or whatever she preferred to call it, was hers to train.
“Here comes the future,” I said.
Rafe got a cheer. Fen got a thinner, experimental sound, the sort an audience makes when it has not decided whether someone counts.
The opening point went to Rafe. Fen misjudged a short bounce, swinging through the ball’s old position. He grinned up at my booth. I said he still knew a thing or two. The upper gallery stamped.
Fen looked up too.
By four–one, she was taking longer between points. She had no sweat to wipe away, but she held her bat in both hands and tilted her head toward the gallery. Rafe took the extra seconds to talk to her. We couldn’t hear him. We had court microphones, but the crowd track covered speech below a certain level.
“The old campaigner has some advice,” I said.
The stadium laughed. It was an ugly little sound. I glanced at the technician, Len, who was watching the audience dial.
“We have a laugh?” I asked off microphone.
“We have everything.”
I put my headset straight. On court, Fen struck a hard low ball into the left wall, then stepped across Rafe’s retreat. He appealed. The referee ruled that she had allowed room. My friend shook his head. I said it was an aggressive interpretation of space. Somewhere above us, a crowd that did not exist began to boo.
Fen lost the next two points.
At the break she walked to the edge of the court, directly below my window, and looked up. Her coach remained by the bench with a towel she did not need.
“Is that you?” Fen asked.
I couldn’t hear her through the glass. Len turned up the court feed, and she repeated it.
“Is that your voice in the noise?”
“I’m commenting,” I said into the microphone. “That’s my job.”
“It changes when you talk.”
“Crowds do.”
She stood there until the referee called her back. I introduced a sponsor and muted my channel. Len put his finger on a graph. Peaks in the crowd output followed peaks in my voice, with small labels: HOME AFFIRMATION, CHALLENGER ERROR, CONTACT DISPUTE.
“It’s reading the booth,” he said. “Along with the stands.”
“Since when?”
“Always. You give it a good cue.”
I looked at the court. Fen’s coach was pointing to the service corner. Rafe stretched his shoulder against the wall. I knew that stretch; I knew the shoulder. He had won a final with it taped in a way that made lifting his coffee impossible. I had told the story so often that the footage was hardly needed anymore.
“Can you leave me out?” I asked.
Len opened a panel. “Not during the match. It’s one live mix.”
“Turn the assistance off.”
He pointed through the window at the league director, seated behind Rafe’s bench. “Her call.”
I could have sent someone. I could have waited until the next break and made a request through the producer. Instead I unmuted my microphone and explained to two thousand people that the stadium was amplifying my opinions into ten thousand extra spectators.
I wish I could tell you I planned the sentence. I was angry at being treated as part of a sound system. The microphone was open and I had spent most of my working life filling an open microphone.
Len went very still.
In the court, Rafe turned toward the director. Fen bounced the ball once, caught it, and waited. A few real spectators shouted. Their voices sounded startlingly close. Then the synthetic gallery cut out, taking the echo with it.
I could hear someone’s keys fall between two seats.
“Seven–two,” said the referee. “Resume.”
Rafe served hard. Fen let the return travel farther than she had before and struck it with a short, almost bored movement. It died low in the corner. Rafe arrived late. Seven–three.
She did it again on the next point. He adjusted his position. She sent the ball long. He got it, but his return hit the floor twice before she had to move.
“She’s changed the pace,” I said.
Nobody stamped. There was a little applause from Fen’s bench. A child somewhere shouted her name, quite badly, turning it into two syllables.
At seven–six, Rafe walked beneath the booth. He looked up with the expression he used when a hotel shower had been especially offensive.
“You couldn’t wait?”
I took my finger off the microphone button. Then put it back.
“We’re on air, Rafe.”
“I know.”
The referee called him. He stayed another second, making sure I saw his face, and went back to the court.
He won the next point. Then Fen won three. At eight–nine, Rafe played the shot that had made him famous: high to the rear wall, a rebound that looked easy until it dropped almost vertically. Fen backed up too fast. Her heel struck the wall. The ball fell twice.
Nine–nine.
The actual audience made enough noise for all twelve thousand places. Fen tapped her heel against the floor, testing it. She asked the referee for ten seconds. I expected a mechanic to come out. Instead she retied the lace on her shoe. One of the white joints above it bore a narrow black scratch.
Rafe reached match point on the next rally. He stood with his head down while the referee changed the ball. I said nothing. I had already used every story I knew about him, and every one wanted him to win.
Fen took the next point. Then another. At ten–eleven, the rally went long enough that I lost count of the strikes. Rafe chased a low rebound across the court, recovered, returned. Fen sent it straight at him. He moved aside, reached, and caught the ball with the rim of his bat.
It went into the ceiling.
He watched it drop. So did Fen. The referee waited for its second bounce before announcing the score.
Rafe shook Fen’s hand and left by the near tunnel. He did not look at the booth. The crowd stayed, some of them on their feet, some gathering coats. Len handed me the winner’s microphone channel. I asked Fen how it felt to make history.
“My shoe doesn’t fit,” she said.
“Was that affecting the match?”
“Yes. And the noise.”
“You overcame both.”
“You stopped one. I tied the other.”
I let her answer sit there. Then I asked about the short ball to the left corner. She explained what she had seen in Rafe’s position, how she had tried it too late in the first game, why silence helped her hear the second bounce. It was a good answer. I should have started there.
Below us, the child called her name again. Fen asked whether she could go sign his bat. The director wanted a trophy photograph first. I heard them arguing about the order as Len closed the channel.
That evening, Rafe’s assistant sent me his new address for the retirement party. Two minutes later she sent another message asking me not to come. I had already put the first address in my calendar. I deleted it, left the drawer of postcards shut, and watched the final rally again with the sound on.
Loading comments…