‘I figure she was a moderating influence on Doc so far as my upbringing was concerned. I never heard them discuss it. I just see how things have gone through the past year and a half since Jean took off. Doc focused totally on me, and he’s a determined man. He found some backers and had the training camp built. Since we’ve been up there, everything is stepped up. That’s okay — I expect it, to be sure of winning the Olympics. Jack, I know I can win in Moscow. It would be a betrayal not to make sure I do, by training hard. A betrayal of myself, I mean. You see, winning is my way of making sense of my life so far. If I gave up, walked off right now to join a commune somewhere — I’ve thought about it — that’s as good as saying all these years were wasted. I don’t want that. I want to get my golds and give some meaning to my life so far. Then I can draw a line underneath’ — she stopped and made a mark in the wet sand with her toe, and stepped over it — ‘and begin to find out who I really am.’
‘That makes sense, up to a point,’ said Dryden.
‘I know what you’re going to say. I’ve thought about that, too. I can’t really draw that line, can I?’ She turned. ‘Look, it’s disappeared already. After Moscow, I shall really be Goldengirl. It’s too late then to search for an identity.’
‘Do you want to be Goldengirl?’
She walked on in silence, looking at the waves.
‘It’s important,’ he gently insisted.
She stopped and looked earnestly at him, pulling a strand of gold hair between her teeth. ‘Jack, I have to admit that I do.’
‘You don’t need to be ashamed. Almost any girl would answer yes to that.’
‘But almost any girl starts from a consciousness of her own identity. It’s a reference point. I don’t feel that I have that.’
‘Have you discussed this with Dr. Lee?’
‘Sammy? His answer is that Goldengirl is me. When I accept it, all my anxieties will go. He’s helping me to realize this through the simulation sessions. And it’s true. When I attend stadium simulations and I see the crowd around me in their thousands, and hear the cheering and the announcements in Russian with my own name, I’m happy, Jack. In the press-conference sessions I come alive. It makes up for all the pain.’
‘Physical pain, you mean?’
‘Sure. Pete Klugman is a great coach, and he’s improved my track technique beyond belief. He doesn’t do it with sugar cubes. I was raised to work hard at my sport, but nothing resembling the sessions with him. I don’t like to talk too much about it. He can be very sweet at times, and he’s doing all this for my benefit. For instance, my starting is immeasurably better with the practice I’ve had on the shock-start mechanism. It speeds your gun reaction. If you don’t move your hands within fifteen hundredths of a second, you get volts up your arm. It hurts, but I go faster. You saw me today?’
‘You went off so fast in the hundred that they called you back.’
‘That’s the problem with quick starting. Starters will assume that if you leave the blocks before the others, you must have jumped. It isn’t so. In Moscow, they plan to have automatic fault lights that can’t operate after the gun has fired, so I should be safe from human error there.’ She dangled a piece of seaweed in the water like a child. ‘I can take the electric shocks. They’re sharp, but they don’t damage me. What I can’t stand is being humiliated.’
‘How does that happen?’
‘It seems to have crept into the training sessions lately. Pete used to be patient with me if I fell down on something. Say I run an interval in twenty-six instead of twenty-five. Not so long ago he would say something to encourage me, tell me where I could pick up a little more speed. These last few weeks if something goes wrong, he just lays into me, calls me a lazy cow and worse things, real ugly things, all in front of his assistants. Some days he gets them to bawl at me as I run by. ‘Get your ass moving!’ they shout. ‘That was only twenty-six.’ It’s supposed to get my spirit up — I’ve discussed it with Sammy — provoke some anger that raises the adrenalin. Sometimes it does, that’s true. Other times it’s plain dispiriting. He sets me goals we both know I can’t reach, and then gives me a verbal larruping while the others look on.’
‘Have you complained to Dr. Serafin?’
‘I’ve tried. He’s sympathetic, but he won’t alter anything. It’s necessary to my preparation, he says. Light and shade. If I have it rough from Pete, that makes the sessions with Sammy nicer.’
‘And are they?’
The answer was in her eyes. ‘You bet. I’m Goldengirl already to him. He gives me stimulating things to do, like listening to tapes and watching films. Jack, I’ve seen so many films of Moscow, I know it like you must know L.A. And I’ve seen all the great sprinters in action from Jesse Owens on. Shall we sit down now? You’ve carried my bag a long way.’
They had reached a wooden breakwater. They sat in the sand, protected from the slight breeze that had driven other people from the beach. From below the horizon, the sun coloured the underside of a solitary cloud, but it would not be long before darkness set in.
‘You say you enjoy the sessions with Dr. Lee,’ said Dryden, ‘but it isn’t all films and conversations. You must have got through some hard work on the question sessions from the way you handled the press conference yesterday.’
‘Practice,’ said Goldine, smiling.
‘But just as hard as running intervals, I should think,’ said Dryden.
She shook her head emphatically. ‘Sammy’s methods are different. He never humiliates me. He’s taught me how to treat the questions as a pleasurable experience.’
‘Most people regard that kind of experience as an ordeal,’ said Dryden. ‘What’s your secret?’
She gave him a piercing look, and said, ‘Something anyone can buy for a few dollars. It wouldn’t be much help to you, though.’ She turned away and shied a stone at the water. ‘You know about vibrators? Lonely women sometimes have a use for them. Sammy started me off with one. I wasn’t embarrassed; I was raised to have no inhibitions about my body and its needs. We used it in the stimulus-response sessions — privately, not with all that jazz we had in the press-conference simulation yesterday. It was wired up so that each time I gave a good response I got good vibes — literally. I made a lot of progress that way. Now I don’t need the vibrator. I get the same turn-on just from hearing the question and knowing I have the answer ready.’
‘We’ve come a long way since Pavlov.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Goldine.
‘I was recollecting something your Sammy said about learning theory. He’s no fool. He knows about people, how to win their confidence, make them more efficient.’
‘You don’t like him?’
‘I’m impressed by him,’ said Dryden. ‘I don’t know whether it matters if I like him.’
She turned to face him, her hair flame-coloured in the freakish light. ‘How about me? Are you impressed by me?’
He wasn’t used to such directness. ‘By your running — dazzled.’
‘And do you like me?’
‘Too much,’ said Dryden.
She fingered her neck. ‘What does that mean, Jack?’
‘I find it difficult to be objective about you, as a businessman should.’
‘You don’t have to be objective.’
‘Sorry, but I do. If I’m to reach a decision about acting as your agent, I must make an informed estimate of your potential, both athletically and commercially. I’d be crazy to allow likes or dislikes to blur my judgment. I didn’t build my agency by signing up all the nice people I know.’
‘Do you have any girls among your clients?’
‘A few.’
‘And if one of them got to like you, I figure you’d just tell her to knock off the romance and sign the contracts.’