the Power. Twice the Timing.’
Not exactly original, but what did they care? They had not only been paid lavishly for the ads, but had been contracted to embark on a month-long press tour around Europe in mid-September, as soon as the required American media appearances had been completed. The Duplex press tour was an infinitely higher level of travel than anything underpaid athletes in a not-really-famous sport ever got to experience: five-star hotels, unlimited expenses, first-class flights, and all they had to do was play some small exhibition matches and hold a series of press conferences with luxury goods journalists whose idea of a probing question was to compliment the girls’ amazing bodies and ask if they’d met Prince Toby at the Olympics. Shameeka and Lori had been in sheer heaven.
Lori’s burgeoning relationship with Joachim had grown exponentially as the press tour progressed. Europe was tiny, Lori had discovered. Really tiny. You could fly from country to country in, like, an
hour
. You could drive across three borders in one
day.
It was nothing for Joachim to charter a plane and fly to Madrid, or Rome, or Berlin, or St Petersburg, wherever she and Shameeka were staying, so that he could take her out to dinner. And he did exactly that with increasing frequency. Joaquim treated her like a queen: the dinners would always be at the Italian or Japanese restaurants she liked; he made sure they served her favourite cocktail, a Sea Breeze, since her regime meant she could only allow herself one alcoholic drink a day; she only had to mention casually how much she liked flowers, and the next time he took her out there would be a guided visit to a botanical garden planned before their dinner reservation.
And he was very pleasant company. He listened, he asked questions. He heard about her childhood in a small, dying town in upstate New York, which had flourished during the days of the Erie Canal, when heavy industry had sent all its goods by water. Its population was shrinking every year; kids left for college and never came back. But Lori’s parents, loyal to a fault, wouldn’t have dreamt of leaving Dorchester.
‘I’m the only one who even went out of state to university,’ she said, over dinner in Barcelona, after Joaquim had organized a private tour of Gaudi’s Sagrada Família. They were sitting on the terrace of L’Orangerie, an exquisite restaurant in the Gran Hotel la Florida, their chairs turned so that they could see the city stretching out below them and watch the sun falling slowly in a hot red ball into the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. ‘My brother and sister are still back home. Both of them went to the community college, they’ll settle down ten minutes’ drive from my mom and dad. Hometown kids all the way.’
‘Family is very important to you, Lori, I can see,’ Joachim had said appreciatively.
‘Oh,
very
,’ she said wholeheartedly. ‘I don’t see enough of them. I try to get back for Thanksgiving, but, you know, an athlete gets a pretty short window at her physical peak, and they totally get that I want to go for it while I can.’
‘And what do you plan to do after you—’ Joachim smiled, which was rare for him; his expression was usually so composed. His rather plump face creased up into pleasant lines as he did so, a little dimple popping out on each side of his full lips. ‘I was about to say, after you retire, but you are so young and beautiful and full of life, it seems very wrong to say retire to a woman who looks like you do.’
‘Oh! Thank you!’
Lori found the formality of King Joachim’s compliments charming, and, frankly, refreshing, after the highly charged sexual atmosphere of the Olympic Village. Whenever an athletic event had finished, all the competitors were unleashed to party freely, and in the later stages it had been a Bacchanal, with drunken guys staggering between the Heineken and Budweiser Houses, pockets full of condoms – a hundred
Not exactly original, but what did they care? They had not only been paid lavishly for the ads, but had been contracted to embark on a month-long press tour around Europe in mid-September, as soon as the required American media appearances had been completed. The Duplex press tour was an infinitely higher level of travel than anything underpaid athletes in a not-really-famous sport ever got to experience: five-star hotels, unlimited expenses, first-class flights, and all they had to do was play some small exhibition matches and hold a series of press conferences with luxury goods journalists whose idea of a probing question was to compliment the girls’ amazing bodies and ask if they’d met Prince Toby at the Olympics. Shameeka and Lori had been in sheer heaven.
Lori’s burgeoning relationship with Joachim had grown exponentially as the press tour progressed. Europe was tiny, Lori had discovered. Really tiny. You could fly from country to country in, like, an
hour
. You could drive across three borders in one
day.
It was nothing for Joachim to charter a plane and fly to Madrid, or Rome, or Berlin, or St Petersburg, wherever she and Shameeka were staying, so that he could take her out to dinner. And he did exactly that with increasing frequency. Joaquim treated her like a queen: the dinners would always be at the Italian or Japanese restaurants she liked; he made sure they served her favourite cocktail, a Sea Breeze, since her regime meant she could only allow herself one alcoholic drink a day; she only had to mention casually how much she liked flowers, and the next time he took her out there would be a guided visit to a botanical garden planned before their dinner reservation.
And he was very pleasant company. He listened, he asked questions. He heard about her childhood in a small, dying town in upstate New York, which had flourished during the days of the Erie Canal, when heavy industry had sent all its goods by water. Its population was shrinking every year; kids left for college and never came back. But Lori’s parents, loyal to a fault, wouldn’t have dreamt of leaving Dorchester.
‘I’m the only one who even went out of state to university,’ she said, over dinner in Barcelona, after Joaquim had organized a private tour of Gaudi’s Sagrada Família. They were sitting on the terrace of L’Orangerie, an exquisite restaurant in the Gran Hotel la Florida, their chairs turned so that they could see the city stretching out below them and watch the sun falling slowly in a hot red ball into the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. ‘My brother and sister are still back home. Both of them went to the community college, they’ll settle down ten minutes’ drive from my mom and dad. Hometown kids all the way.’
‘Family is very important to you, Lori, I can see,’ Joachim had said appreciatively.
‘Oh,
very
,’ she said wholeheartedly. ‘I don’t see enough of them. I try to get back for Thanksgiving, but, you know, an athlete gets a pretty short window at her physical peak, and they totally get that I want to go for it while I can.’
‘And what do you plan to do after you—’ Joachim smiled, which was rare for him; his expression was usually so composed. His rather plump face creased up into pleasant lines as he did so, a little dimple popping out on each side of his full lips. ‘I was about to say, after you retire, but you are so young and beautiful and full of life, it seems very wrong to say retire to a woman who looks like you do.’
‘Oh! Thank you!’
Lori found the formality of King Joachim’s compliments charming, and, frankly, refreshing, after the highly charged sexual atmosphere of the Olympic Village. Whenever an athletic event had finished, all the competitors were unleashed to party freely, and in the later stages it had been a Bacchanal, with drunken guys staggering between the Heineken and Budweiser Houses, pockets full of condoms – a hundred
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