S.1 E.8 Wednesday 04/17/2019: A Slice of Humble Pie Covered With Hard Truths
Desperate to bring John Palmer back to therapy, Andrew reaches out to John's Super Agent Stephen Gotski. He and Andrew have a long history including shared clients. Gotski is blunt about assessment.
Season 1 Recap:
Fergus secretly plots Andrew’s demise from prison. The Beck family mourns the death of patriarch Ted Beck, but childhood wounds between Andrew and Brandon still fester. Andrew reluctantly agrees to give a speech at his father’s memorial ceremony on Saturday. However, Andrew has other matters on his mind, mainly how to tell Sandra he has a gambling problem when last week’s events have her ready to leave him. Andrew talks with his patients, and Gina tries to get his patient roster back on track. His gambling and out-of-office distractions have him dangerously close to losing everything he has worked for. Lorry tries to keep Fergus and his henchmen at bay while she takes over The Five Iron after successfully conducting Operation Phoenix.
Episode 8. Preview
Andrew is desperate to bring John Palmer back to therapy, for John’s benefit, for Andrew’s practice, but also for the guilt and shame he feels for lying to John that he flew down to Miami to watch him pitch. Super Agent Stephen Gotski, a long-time friend with whom they share several clients, including John, gives Andrew some hard truths but says he will try to get John back to therapy.
Andrew took a deep breath and began to think of another way to bring John back into the fold. Andrew needed the help of “Super Sports Agent” Stephen Gotski with John, and Gotski was the only person who could reach John right now. But that request would go a lot easier if he could assure Gotski that their volatile tennis star Robbie Owen was ready for her next match in the Miami Open.
Robbie Owen was Gotski and Andrew’s shared twenty-year-old, top-ranked British tennis player. She was infamously nicknamed the “Bad Girl of Tennis” for her on-court explosions, destruction of racquets, harassment of the umpires, and off-court antics.
Robbie’s motto was, “Whatever the boys can do, I can do.” This stance made her a favorite of rebellious young girls and feminists. To the top brass of the Professional Tennis Association or PTA, she was a terrorist to their brand.
Gotski was her agent and represented her business interests. He brought Andrew in to help her with her temper and rein in her other off-court behaviors, which were torpedoing her career, her mental health, and her sponsors’ financial backing. Andrew had been working with Robbie for almost a year. Still, she was elusive. She would routinely cancel appointments, and when in therapy sessions, when they got close to discussing childhood wounds, she would deflect with a sexual comment, trying to seduce Andrew. The transference comments did not phase Andrew, and she often used sexuality to divert attention from the real work, trying to get Andrew to react. He never took the bait.
[Click here to read about Robbie’s Backstory]
Andrew rang back Gina to find out if she had any luck reaching Gotski.
She picked up on the first ring.
“How’d it go with Vlad?” She asked.
“Good, I think he is in a good headspace for the game and with his temper.”
“Great! I tried calling Gotski, but my call went to voicemail.”
“Okay, I’ll try him in a bit.”
“Hey boss, I’m not sure if you knew, but Robbie beat Keiko Yamada from Japan, who was ranked seventy-second.”
“Straight sets?”
“No, Yamada took the first set six games to four, but then Robbie responded, winning six-one and six-two.”
“I wonder what happened in that first set?”
“I didn’t see it, but I’ll send you the link to her match highlights.”
“Thanks. Who does she have today?”
“She faces Stephanie Argento.”
“Oh, shit, they have history.”
“Yeah, she is seeded twenty-first, but Argento beat the number twelve seed, Robbie’s nemesis, Angela Clarke from the UK. I’m sure Argento will be super revved for the re-match.”
Andrew’s iPhone phone buzzed, and he saw that Gotski was calling him.
“There’s Steve. I’ll call you back.”
“Adios, jefe.”
Andrew took a deep breath and let it out before picking up John’s “super agent.” Andrew knew he screwed up with John. Sandra warned Andrew to tell John the truth right away about why he did not make John’s game as promised when John flew Andrew down in a private plane. Andrew was going to wait until Monday, but John called him on the golf course on Sunday and confronted him about lying to him that he was at the game. After that, John stopped showing up for therapy and would not return Andrew’s calls.
“Hey, Steve.”
“Hey, Andrew, how you doin’, brother? So sorry to hear about your dad.”
“Thanks, Steve. I saw your text, and I appreciate the thought.”
“What’s up?”
“John Palmer.”
“What about him?”
“He’s MIA from therapy.”
“We doing this now?” Gotksi asked.
“Yeah, let’s get into it.”
“Andrew, you and I go back a long way, man. I know you and Ted didn’t always get along so much. And Ted dying on you like that had to be rough. But if we’re going to get into it, then dad dying or not, I have to tell you, what you did to JP was pretty fucked up, dude.”
“Stephen, you’re right. I fucked up royally. I know that. I was put in an impossible position, and I don’t regret my choice, but I do regret not telling JP on Friday after I had to turn the plane around. That was unprofessional of me.”
“What the fuck was that about?”
Andrew hesitated. “Okay, but you got to keep this between you and me.”
“Of course, bro.”
“I’m treating Vladimir Poplov from the Sentinels.”
“Oh, that crazy fucker who beat Teddy Newsome to a pulp on Friday?”
“That’s him, and he’s not crazy.”
“They carried Newsome out on a stretcher.”
“Yeah, well, he hit Chris Kruder with a nasty cheap shot; he should’ve known the “Russian Bear” wouldn’t let that stand.”
“Yeah, but bro, don’t you think he went too far?”
“Yeah, but that’s another story, and it makes him violent, not crazy. Look, I had to come back because the Sentinels GM, Riley Asherton—”
“Oh, he’s a prick. We were working a trade for Gabe Powell and—”
Andrew interrupted, “Yeah, well, Asherton was threatening me, so I made the call to turn the plane around and come back to New York. I didn’t call JP right away and tell him I had an emergency. It was a big mistake, which I own.”
“What was Asherton threatening you with?”
Andrew hesitated for a moment and felt a burn on his face. He didn’t want to tell Gotski what he was up to, fearing he might try to leverage this situation into something Andrew would have to do for him. That was Gotski. He was brilliant and fun but could be very manipulative when leveraging a position to get something in his favor. However, Andrew needed to make things right with John, which was greater than his fear of Gotski using the information he needed to share with him to Andrew’s disadvantage. Andrew was unsure if he had the cards, but he had to raise the pot.
“Asherton is golfing buddies with Ron Davis, the GM of the Bulldogs. I’m trying to work with the team. We met last Thursday. Asherton said he would talk shit about me to the Bulldogs management and coaches if I didn’t come back to deal with Vlad.”
“Yeah, that sounds like him.”
“I’m really sorry. It was wrong of me on many levels. With JP’s whole family gone and him only twenty-three, I think you and I are the only other people in his life who are not with the Tides.”
“That’s true. Never thought of it like that.” Gotski paused, “Okay, let me reach out to him and see if I can’t get him to call you. I’ll remind him that you both had your fathers die in your arms. That might drum up some sympathy for you.”
“Well, not exactly. He found his dad dead in his La-Z-Boy recliner from a heart attack while watching JP’s game film. My dad died having a heart attack playing golf with me.”
He paused. “Well, now that I think of it, not all that dissimilar.”
Andrew added, “Steve, the thing to remember with John is he’s a kid. He’s only 23. Craig Palmer ran his whole life and enabled and monitored his drug use. His mom died of an overdose. The kid had been through a lot of trauma and never really had to grow up.”
“Yeah, and now he’s got time, millions of dollars, and an itch to use drugs. That cannot be good.” Gotski added.
“No, it's not. If he starts using again, he’ll get suspended without pay, traded, sent down to the minors, or, if I know Seth Rothstein, he will just cut him if the league suspends him. He was already on his last nerve with John.”
Andrew heard Gotski take a deep breath.
“Brother, you fucked this up.”
“Yeah, I already feel bad enough, but you go ahead and rub some salt in the wound, bro.”
“It will be a fucking miracle if I get him out of this.”
Andrew poured on the ego-boosting.
“But you’re Stephen Gotski, Super Agent extraordinaire!”
“Uh-huh.”
When Andrew sensed he wanted more, he rolled his eyes and dug deep into his bag of affirmation words.
“Weren’t you the man who got John more money and snatched him away from the Philadelphia Steam Engines to get him the top rookie contract of 2018?”
“Yeah, I was, bro!”
“And aren’t you the man who, after Robbie tried to shatter her Prince Phantom racquet and failed to do so, you called the Prince execs and turned that moment into a bigger sponsorship? You told them they created a racquet so tough that even ‘The Bad Girl of Tennis’ couldn’t destroy it.”
“Fucking genius, wasn’t it? I got Robbie an extra two million on her current deal, and I got five hundred K on that one.”
“Is there anything you can’t do, Steve?”
“Not a fucking thing, Doc!” Gotski paused, “I’ll get you fucking JP back. I fucking got this, you know why?”
“Why, Steve?”
“Because I’m the fucking man, that’s why.”
“You’re the fucking man, Steve.”
“Fucking-A.”
“Oh, Steve?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m calling Robbie now. She has her round-of-16 match in a few hours.”
“Yeah, please make sure she has her head on straight. We need this win to push her to number one by Wimbleton.”
Andrew said, “To be ranked in the top three, she will have to make the finals in the Miami Open, the Monaco Grand Prix, and the French Open.”
“Dude, when Robbie has her head on straight, she can beat anyone. Her body doesn’t lose matches. Her head does.”
“I’m on it.”
“Good, because if we get to number one or two by Wimbledon, that’s another million in my pocket. Plus, I can go after top-tier sponsors, which is another twenty percent on five or ten million.”
“Glad to hear you in it for helping the athletes.”
“You don’t work for free, bro.”
“Touche. You go get JP, and I’ll prep Robbie.”
“Later, bro, don’t fuck it up.”
Andrew shook his head and resisted the urge to comment as he hung up.
Andrew ate his humble pie covered with hard truths and hoped Gotski could convince John to return to therapy, for John’s sake but also for Andrew’s not just because John was an important client. Andrew drew a lot of attention to himself for bringing a confessed drug addict from the brink of destroying his very young career as a professional baseball pitcher to being the starting pitcher on opening day. And John’s 2019 season started very successfully with two wins in two starts. However, Andrew knew he let John down and felt awful about that. Failure was not something Andrew was used to feeling, and he needed that feeling to stop.
Steve, you bring John back from that cliff, and I’ll fix this. Just like I always do.
Up Next:
S.1 E.9 It Feels Better When I Hate Them
Andrew counsels Robbie Owen, “The Bad Girl of Tennis,” before her next match in the Miami Open. She faces an opponent with a history of aggravating and distracting her with yells and screams, which made Robbie lose her temper. Andrew gives her a “game within a game” technique to help her rein in her anger and frustration to get this crucial win that she needs if she wants to win the Miami Open and several other spring tournaments be in the top four when she plays at Wimbledon in July.
Author’s Note:
There is a link to Robbie’s backstory. I hope you get a chance to read this. I love Genesis stories. All my characters have them; sometimes, I share them, and sometimes, I don’t. But for every character I create, I also create their backstories.
Backstories were always my favorite cartoons as a boy when it was revealed how superheroes became who they were: gamma-ray explosions, being bombarded by cosmic rays in outer space, or being bit by a radioactive spider. So I wrote one for Robbie, but not only that, in 2023, I went to England and visited Stockport. My tour guides, dialect advisors, members of my Advanced Reader Team and dear friends Shelly and Gareth Woods, brought me all over Stockport and Cheshire. In Stockport, we drove up and down streets in a rough neighborhood, looking for where Robbie might have lived. As we drove down Lowfield Road, we spotted a white transit van parked in front of 77 Lowfield Road with the numbers painted on the door, and Robbie’s house was found. They took me to the Stockport public tennis courts, where I saw the metal nets. We stopped by Alderley Edge Tennis Club and had a great conversation with the manager, who talked to me about Tennis in the UK and the process young players go through. I have pictures and videos of all of this, which I will post with the backstory, so click on the link and read about how a tiny girl from the wrong side of the tracks grew up to be the “Bad Girl of Tennis.”
Enjoy!
Chris K. Jones
I agree on the love of backstory, Chris. I love the additional context that they give...keep linking to them, please!