The Best of Friends Read online

  “Ginger, hey, Ginger, want a cuppa tea?” John, our host, asked, bringing me back to the bush. We walked onto a large wooden deck fitted into the trees with the riverbed far below. “Oh yeah, great.” I accepted a cup of rooibos, or bush tea, and a chunk of what looked like stale bread. I bit into the bread; the power of the crunch turned heads and nearly broke a tooth. Kevin didn’t say a word. He dipped his rusk into his tea and it melted in his mouth. I stepped away from the small group of game rangers and looked below at the pools that dotted the sand and the birds that fluttered between the reeds. The air was crisp, and the sound of silence infused with laughter echoed across the riverbed.

  This was the bush. Peace, quiet, mystery, and an almost tangible magic. I’d seen pictures in National Geographic of elephants walking across vast open plains and watched a documentary film on lion behavior in South-West Africa, but those images, though moving, were one-or two-dimensional. Now I could feel the roughness of the earth, smell the richness of the rivers, almost taste life and death. It was fertile and raw, wild and ancient, and I couldn’t have been further away from Richmond.

  We finished our tea and began a tour around camp. It was clear that John was justly proud of his home. Londolozi was once a family farm, but John, along with his brother Dave and his wife, Shan, transformed it into a five-star experience in ecotourism long before anyone called it that. The Varty family were widely respected and emulated in the conservation world for their practice of reclaiming land, stopping illegal hunting, and providing jobs to members of the impoverished local communities. We stopped outside a chalet where thick duvets and natural fabrics mixed with African art and unabashed luxury. John grinned at me and said, “You can have this room or you can sleep outside the camp, away from everyone, if you want.”

  Kevin looked amused and I wondered, Is this a test?

  I laughed, unsure of the right answer, but the thought of no electricity, no toilet, and plenty of animals with big sharp teeth sent a chill down my spine. Power lurking behind the trees wasn’t restricted to the pages of a book now; it was palpable.

  “I think we’ll sleep inside.”

  It didn’t matter. I hardly slept at all. Lion roars, hippo snorts, and owls screeching provided the audio backdrop to a physical yearning to get outside. My eyes picked up the slightest movement; my ears heard every twig snap, every alarm call. I was entranced by the bush, and when I saw a leopard for the first time, I was gone. Diamonds, rubies, emeralds—there was nothing more stunning in the world than her deep green eyes. In them I found the beauty, the tension, and the power of the bush. She was at once enticing and threatening, gorgeous and dangerous. As she disappeared back into the thicket, I felt these natural extremes touch a deep, primal place in my soul. I felt as if I belonged here, and oddly, though it was Kevin who’d introduced me to the bush that he loved, this feeling of belonging wasn’t tied to him. It felt unique, mine alone, a feeling that remained with me long after we left Africa.

  Whenever possible, Kevin and I returned to the African bush, but our life together revolved around the very unnatural world of the tennis circuit. During the infrequent weeks when I wasn’t traveling on the tour with him, I went home to visit my family, but there was rarely an opportunity to see Sara or my other old friends. No sooner had I landed in Richmond than I was back on the phone, using Kevin’s calling card to make plans to pick up my prepaid ticket at the airport to join him again. Indoors, outdoors, hard courts or grass, the tournaments melted into one another. Off the courts, life was full of moments I could never have imagined when Sara and I had shared our childhood dreams.

  In Tokyo a charming representative from Cartier, complete with gold cuff links and a thick French accent, laid out three watches in front of me on the table. “Please, Ginger, would you select one?” In Montreal, between matches, I wandered the streets of the old quarter alone, returning to the courts in time to watch Kevin play. In Melbourne, alone on the sidelines, I cheered as Kevin reached the finals of another Grand Slam tournament, the Australian Open. Back in South Africa, I was asked to model—all five feet four inches of me, blue eye makeup and pink cheeks, hair teased and the spring wardrobe prepared and presented as a gift. And there was the prospect of another, even better present.

  “Gin, what if I gave you a fabulous ring—say, three carats—but then something happened between us. What would you do?” Kevin spoke quietly, not looking at me but gazing out into the distance, across one of the largest, deepest ravines in South Africa.

  Below, between the cliffs, a black eagle soared on thermals. His words hung in the air. I shifted closer, resting my head on his shoulder; the breeze blew my hair around his neck. “Don’t worry. I’d give you back one and a half carats.” A near-perfect ending to another African holiday.

  So many times I’d wanted to call home, to giggle with Sara about seeing myself on page one of newspapers, to laugh about nearly plowing down Faye Dunaway on the steps at Wimbledon, or to share the giddy feeling of riding through the streets of London in a Rolls-Royce while trying to act blasé. I also wanted to know what was happening in her life. Was she happy? Was the search for a good story as rewarding as the search for true love? Had she found her ticket out of Richmond? Were we still friends, or would the outside perceptions of our lives once again keep us apart? I wanted to reconnect, but the time was never right. Morning in England meant the middle of the night in the U.S. In most places I was too jet-lagged to even begin to figure out the time difference. Then too much time passed. Months rolled into years and I wondered if my old friends remembered me as part of their present, or just their past. I never called and then I wondered if anyone would answer if I did.

  Despite my mother’s warnings that I needed to have my own life, my own career, my own friends, I kept traveling, living Kevin’s life. Since childhood I’d never needed many people around me, preferring small groups of close friends, but now through choice and time that group had narrowed to one. Kevin. He was all I needed. From Cincinnati to Sydney, London to Los Angeles, I sewed sponsor patches onto his tennis shirts, rang for room service, even polished his trophies. This was his time. Everyone knows the career of a professional athlete is short. We would have the rest of our lives together and my time would come.

  But the holidays in Mauritius, the Mercedes sports car, nights out at London clubs, and mornings spent lying close to each other listening to the African bush awaken were all possible because of Kevin’s success. He shared them with me on his terms, and then his terms began to change.

  “So Wimbledon is coming up?”

  “Yeah, I know.” That was not the response I was hoping for.

  A few days later I asked, “So where will we be staying?”

  “What? Where?”

  “You know, in England.”

  “Don’t push it, Ginger.” I didn’t. I washed his clothes, drew the blinds when he was tired, and kept quiet. A few days later he told me sternly, “Listen, you can come to Wimbledon, but not early. Not for Queens, none of the preliminary tournaments. I’ll meet you there later.” He didn’t explain and I was too afraid to ask.

  JULY 7, 1985. It had been two weeks since I’d landed in England and the sun was shining. My Maud Frizon heels clicked rhythmically and a light breeze blew my white linen skirt as I walked down the hill toward the All England Lawn Tennis Club. It had been three years since I first passed through these gates, smelled the fresh-cut grass, felt the energy and the tension. My third Wimbledon, the day of the finals, and I was still there. I remembered nothing of the previous two weeks, couldn’t recall whom Kevin had beaten or where the other seeded players had fallen. I only knew that today Kevin was to play for the championship against Boris Becker, an unknown kid from Germany with a big serve and nothing, absolutely nothing, to lose.

  I flicked my hair over my shoulder and smiled. And yet, as I climbed the steps to the players’ box, I felt tense and it had nothing to do with the atmosphere on court. Only twenty-four years old, I knew that this time
I had everything to lose.

  2

  SARA (1985)

  THE POLICE AND fire department scanners clucked quietly, slow and lazy as that steamy summer day. But then, it was still early. It was July 7, 1985, and genteel, conservative Richmond had earned a dubious new distinction: ranking third in the nation for murder. As any reporter knows, on summer weekends tempers soar with the temperature, so I cranked up the scanners and tried not to think of my bikini-clad friends slathering themselves with Hawaiian Tropic at Virginia Beach. My two-piece was a jacket and skirt from Dress Barn and my tan came courtesy of L’eggs panty hose.

  I got a sudden shiver in the over-air-conditioned Channel 12 newsroom and rolled another Q-set into the manual Royal typewriter. A stack of white, pink, green, and blue sheets with carbon paper in between, the Q-set allowed me to type a script for myself, the producer, director, and TelePrompTer operator all at the same time. At twenty-four years old, I’d recently been promoted to weekend anchor as well as reporter, which meant I had a show to write. But the paper remained ominously blank.

  I’d majored in English at the University of Virginia, wallowing in lengthy, delicious novels by writers from Jane Austen to John Irving, and I still struggled to keep my prose succinct. “Heard of the KISS rule, Sara?” a veteran newsman had asked me one day. My eyes widened and I shook my head warily, braced for some lesson in lechery. Instead he’d frowned and pointed at my script. “Keep It Simple, Stupid. Write shorter. Lose those three-syllable words. Picture your viewer cracking open a beer, yelling ‘What’s for dinner??!!’ at the missus. No one really watches TV, Sara, they just have it on all the time. You gotta grab ’em.”

  Grab ’em. So far our only breaking news was a story about a cheerful hobbyist who built and flew radio-controlled airplanes. If I didn’t come up with a better lead than that, not even my doting parents would watch at six.

  “Whoa!” exclaimed sports anchor Ben Hamlin. I glanced up. The Wimbledon final was on, and I suddenly realized everybody but me was watching. Some kid from Germany was darting across the court, manhandling his handsome, dark-haired opponent. I did a double take. That had to be Kevin. Kevin Curren. Which could only mean…

  “Check out that babe,” ogled the studio camera operator.

  Yep, there she was all right. Chewing on her pearls, looking nervous, but absolutely drop-dead gorgeous.

  “You mean Ginger?”

  Ben shot me a quizzical look. “You know her, Sara?” Suddenly I realized how improbable it must seem that I would know someone at fairy-tale Wimbledon, especially the girlfriend of a South African player.

  “We went to school together,” I explained, wondering why I hadn’t said, We’re friends. After all, we had been. But were we still?

  It had been at least a year since I’d seen her, and on her last trip to Richmond she seemed so different from the childhood friend I remembered. I’d felt awkward and distant, suddenly clumsy and thirteen instead of twenty-three. It wasn’t just the South African vowels that muddied her southern accent. She looked thinner and blonder, and the gold bracelet that dangled like a chain was heavy and new. Kevin was becoming increasingly rich and famous, so who could blame her for enjoying the spoils, not to mention the spillover from his spotlight? Who could blame her for not keeping in touch with old friends who probably seemed provincial and dull? Some friendships you just outgrow. They’re moored in time and place and fit about as well as your high school jeans. You’re left with little more than a fond memory and a signature in your yearbook. My runaway thoughts suddenly careened into an unpleasant possibility: Had she changed, or was I just jealous?

  The sound of applause brought me back to the present. Point, Curren. The camera zoomed in on Ginger, who sighed with relief and tugged a sparkling earlobe. Now the studio cameraman looked from her to me, dubiously. “So where’d you meet? College?”

  “Middle school, actually.”

  “She’s from Richmond?” His pole-vaulting eyebrows indicated it was impossible that someone that sophisticated could be from our hometown. Or perhaps it was the fact that she glittered with diamonds and my most expensive accessory was a tarnished Timex.

  “Believe it or not.”

  I had a momentary impulse to inform him we’d been selected, back-to-back, as Miss Tucker High School, that I’d passed my rhinestone crown to her. But that was a story I would never confess, and I felt sure Ginger wouldn’t either.

  Feeling off-balance and suddenly annoyed at myself, I headed for the Associated Press and United Press International wires. The heaving machines churned out paper comet trails of spare, staccato copy filed by correspondents from Nashville to Nome, Manhattan to Moscow. On a quiet weekend like this one, I would “rip and read” to fill out the newscast—simply tear off a relevant story to rewrite or, in the case of an urgent news flash while we were on the air, read it exactly as written. But as I sorted through wire stories that day, I sorted through tangled feelings, too.

  After all, what was so surprising about the reaction of my colleagues? Back in high school it hadn’t seemed we had much in common, either. Ginger was a popular cheerleader, I was a freckle-faced writer wannabe whose prime source of entertainment was watching the Watergate hearings on TV. I remembered the night we’d met at a birthday sleepover, a night when we gorged on M&M’s and confessions. Who had? Who hadn’t? With whom? Of course back then what we had or hadn’t done was French-kiss, and no one had done less than I. And no one was more fun than Gin, all bright, blue-eyed mischief. I instantly liked her gaiety, spontaneity, and warmth. Later when everyone collapsed into sleeping bags, we’d wound up side by side. As all around us the giggles subsided, we continued our conversation in whispers.

  “So how are you going to do it?” she asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Get out of here. Let me guess. Are you going to write a book?”

  I hesitated, and then realized her tone was teasing but not unkind. “I’d like to one day,” I confessed. “I’m sure it sounds ridiculous. I don’t even know what I’d write about. They say write about your experiences, but nothing interesting has ever happened to me. Maybe if I leave, something might.”

  “I want to leave, too.”

  “Why?” The room was warm and smelled of Doritos, and near us another girl snored gently.

  Finally Ginger said, “Lots of reasons.”

  “And what will you do?” I pressed. “Do you have a plan?”

  “Not yet. But I will.”

  It didn’t take a crystal ball to predict her way out of town would involve a handsome, wealthy stranger. Then, just as I was about to succumb to sleep at last, Ginger surprised me. She made a confession, too, one that had absolutely nothing to do with youthful, clichéd ambition or even a middle school crush. My eyes opened and I stared into the darkness, listening. And when she was done, I could think of nothing to say except “I’m so sorry, Gin. I had no idea.”

  Heading back to my newsroom desk with a fistful of wire copy, I wondered why she’d confided in me all those years before. Perhaps it had been the weight of the secret. Maybe it was just sleep deprivation. Regardless, our friendship began that night, because you can’t be friends without exchanging confidences. Throughout high school and into college, while we’d often traveled in different circles, we’d never lost that connection. And as anyone knows, as secrets accumulate year after year, old friends become best friends because you trust them. Because they know who you were as well as who you are, but they don’t tell.

  Or old friends simply drift apart. I realized I had no idea what was happening in Ginger’s life beyond what I’d just glimpsed on screen, and that thought prompted me to glance up at the television once more. Kevin took the point and I smiled because I felt I could hear Ginger’s laugh as I watched her applaud. Who needed more information? Whether Kevin won or lost, it was obvious her life was perfect and she was blissfully happy. Not only was she traveling the world, but as Kevin’s girlfriend, she’d made her debut on network TV—e
xactly where I wanted to be. She was living her dream while I was just dreaming.

  I shook myself, trying to shed the feeling of Inadequate by Comparison. I had no interest in marrying fortune and fame. I wanted to know that whatever I achieved I’d earned on my own, and had felt proud to land a job in my hometown. After all, I hadn’t been the only aspiring journalist obsessed with Watergate and enamored of Woodward and Bernstein. Their investigative reporting had toppled a president and helped shape history. And they were cute. By the time I’d graduated from UVA, the market had been flooded with “Woodsteins,” and all three Richmond stations had initially turned me down flat. So I’d headed for the local library, checked out the Broadcasting Yearbook, and begun cold-calling news directors. Mom and Dad were amused and proud—until the phone bill became so enormous it arrived in two envelopes.

  Suddenly realizing that landing a job was a job in itself, I’d pulled out my credit card and headed for Hit or Miss, the best place I knew to buy fashionable clothes on a budget. I carefully selected two new suits—my favorite was a powder blue polyester suit with a white ruffled tuxedo shirt—threw a suitcase into the back of my turquoise 1972 Dodge Colt station wagon, and hit the road. The summer I was twenty-two, I’d logged more than four thousand miles traveling through thirteen states. Having no TV experience proved something of a handicap. From Baltimore to Birmingham, Charlottesville to Charleston, South Bend to West Palm Beach, news directors smiled and said no. In all I visited more than thirty stations, changed two flat tires, and fended off more than one proposition. “What you really need is to come to the Radio and Television News Directors Association convention, Sara,” offered one especially helpful executive. “I’ll introduce you around. And you can even share my hotel room.” So much for the ethics of Woodward and Bernstein. I kept my spirits up by thinking how shocked he’d be when I’d made it to the big leagues.