Brad Johnson Serving Elisabeth Shue

After her tennis match where she finished off Tom Arnold and Chrissy Evert with Martina Navratilova at net, she signed glossy photographs handed her by a crowd kept behind a barricade. Then she took her tennis bag to the far court, away from the barricade that penned her in or her paparazzi out. She opened two new cans of balls, dumped them on her racquet face and balanced them to the end line. I’d left early and now watched Elisabeth Shue practice her serve.

I thought to ask if I could chase balls for her, stand silently, arms behind my back, stiff as a guard outside Buckingham, then scamper across the net like those squirrel children clad in Ralph Lauren at the US Open. When she called for a ball I’d deliver in a single bounce. But what if she called for two? Where would I look when she tucked the first in the outer thigh pocket inside her pink Nike tennis skirt and opened her hand for another?

She played girlfriends in her films: Heart and Souls, The Karate Kid, Back to the Future. Tom Cruise knocks her up in Cocktail then steals her away from rich parents. She played a scientist that discovers cold fusion but falls for Val Kilmer. Her strongest roles, her most independent female characters are babysitter and prostitute.

Would Elisabeth Shue accept my offer to chase down her precision serves that clang in the back corner of the court fencing or just smile as if I extended another glossy photo for her to sign? I watch her toss another ball above her head and reach her racquet behind her back, anticipating the snap forward, anticipating the lunge of her body.