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None of the partners of Benning, Bynum, Caxton, Braithwaite had proved smart enough to follow the all-Olympics, all-the-time broadcast schedule the cable channel was providing. True, the schedule covered hundreds of events and thousands of athletes. There was no way the names of athletes could be included: they changed on a daily basis, depending on who won what. The problem abated, however, once Gary Lollar and Cheryl Ford finished competition. All that remained was to see how their fascinating long shot, Ana Darcy, was faring.
This turned out not to be a simple matter at all.
Darcy was in so many events, and the events had so many preliminary heats at odd times, that it seemed they were being televised around the clock. Missing important events, the partners grumbled bitterly all day long.
Mrs. Anderson finally rescued them with a brilliant idea to put an intern in charge of recording only the events Darcy was in. Then they could watch them in the evening before they headed home.
It became a tradition from the first night they tried it.
The intern couldn't believe he was actually getting paid to do this.
On the second evening, as they were getting settled and pouring drinks, Jack Benning, the lead partner, was talking about the odd atmosphere taking over the Olympics.
"Last night at the reception at the Mayor's house I caught a little of what we're going to see this evening. Nobody was talking politics for once. Everyone was talking about Ana Darcy. His honor wanted to know how our firm had found her. I told him to ask you, Hartley, but to wait until the Olympics were over. We really don't know squat about her, do we?"
"Well, we know she's Barbadian. We know she has a small collection of gold."
"Yeah, that's what I mean: we know doodly. But anyway, I was going to say, after Anita and I got home from the mayor's party we watched a little of the diving prelims. Anita's caught up in it too. She says there's just something about that kid that gets to her. She feels drawn to her.
“The stands over there were jammed with people, all wanting to see if this tiny, shy young woman could also dive. I mean, we felt the excitement through the screen. We'll all see it here in a minute."
He paused to swirl his scotch, and then looked at Braithwaite over his half-glasses.
"I won't spoil it for you, except to mention that my gut is telling me this Darcy thing might be really, really big. I don't know exactly in what way, but my sense is that it'll involve this firm and, probably money. Lots and lots of money."
He paused again. No one swirled anything.
"It might behoove us to get a jump on it. Henneke and Haskin said Ana Darcy was from nowhere, made no calls, owned nothing, had no money. That is almost certainly going to change, for her and us too, come to that.
‘Hartley, why don't you and Dick do some preliminary heats of your own and set up some contracts and accounts? Then we'll be ready to move if and when the time comes."
Caxton, the contract man, glanced at Braithwaite.
"Good idea. You bet. We can do that."
"Good," said Benning. "Now let's watch some sports."
It took only fifteen minutes for the partners to see Darcy qualify in a high jump preliminary heat. Then several hours later, they saw her win a gold medal on another part of the field with a long jump of 7.8 meters. It was another world record.
The announcer explained for the benefit of backward Americans, that that was "almost two feet" beyond the old record.
The announcers lost their minds.
The people in the stands were going crazy.
The security team around the track were clearly nervous that there would be a stampede onto the field, but that didn't happen.
Darcy was escorted off immediately. The field announcer said she was headed to the swimming and diving venue, where the women's 10-meter platform event was about to start.
The anchorman added that she would be returning to the track again immediately after the diving. The finals of the high jump were in the late afternoon. He recommended everyone stay tuned.
The intern looked at a note pad and began fast-forwarding.
"That's three," said Bill Braxton.
There was a pause. Two partners looked at him. Benning was pouring himself some more scotch.
"Three gold medals," he added, helpfully.
The intern pressed play and the screen revealed an impossibly lofty, cold looking concrete structure with several platforms on it projecting over a crystal blue pool. Another shot, evidently taken earlier, showed what the water below looked like from the top platform. Braithwaite heard one of the partners mutter "Jesus Christ!"
The next screen showed a roster of divers. That image dissolved to one of a lean, muscular Asian woman standing at the back of the top platform. The camera was at pool level, and her body was foreshortened, but her concentration was obvious.
The woman looked to the end of the platform.
Then she came to attention, and then began running forward swinging her arms stiffly at her sides, palms straight. She leaped into the air, did something utterly impossible in the blink of an eye, and splashed into the pool.
An underwater camera showed her pushing off the bottom.
The next shot showed her climbing out of the pool and drying herself off.
"I love diving,” Benning whispered.
The announcers were full of consolation for the woman and her apparently disappointing dive. She looked at the water too soon, she started her spin late, the splash was too big. It was all too complicated for mere lawyers, even with the slow-motion replay.
Finally, her scores came up and that was also complicated. The dive had been worth some number of points, which had been multiplied by numbers for her performance from a panel of judges. Some numbers had been thrown out and the rest averaged, and the result was...well, it was complicated. But it hadn't been the best of dives.
By that time, another woman was on the top platform, a strong, healthy-looking Latvian blonde. She was also concentrating at the back of the platform.
Bynum whispered to Benning, "I love diving too."
The intern cleared his throat diplomatically. "Do you want me to fast forward to our diver?" he said.
Benning liked that. "Our diver."
"No!" All the partners spoke as one, rather more curtly than necessary,
So, diver followed diver.
Finally, Darcy's turn came.
The camera showed her standing on the little elevator being lifted to the top platform, as the announcers summarized her earlier medal performances. Both had been divers at one time, as the man, a pudgy, balding, bespectacled fellow named Hal, pointed out.
"Ms. Darcy wasn't here for the practice diving session earlier, with the other divers. She apparently felt it was more important to win the gold medal in the long jump, and no one would disagree with that, I'm sure, eh, Donna?”
Donna laughed and agreed.
“As far as we know, no one in the natatorium right now has ever seen Ms. Darcy dive, with the exception of her coach, of course. So we're all looking forward to seeing if she can dive anything like she can run and jump and cycle."
Hal reminded everyone that the divers, Darcy included, began with the simpler dives ("Christ!" thought Caxton, again) and moved to the more complicated ones as they warmed up.
Like the others, Darcy stood at the back of the platform. The chrome railing around the back end of the platform came up almost to her shoulders. She was wearing a sleek, shiny one-piece blue suit with yellow lightning-like streaks that made her look like a fish of some kind.
Given her size, he thought, maybe a minnow.
Darcy looked, Braithwaite thought, like a lost child. But he changed his mind when another camera focused tightly on her face. Absorbed in concentration, her head was slightly down as she breathed deeply and slowly. Darcy’s eyes stared directly into the camera (which must have been at the opposite end of the pool), jaw clenched, her whole being motionless. She looked deadly serious.
Braithwaite felt a thrill run down his back.
It was so silent in the natatorium that the sound of the water jet spraying on the surface, to show the divers the water level, was audible.
Darcy’s head moved, signaling a shift in her weight as she started to run.
Another camera showed her sprint to the end of the platform and her jump into the air over the pool. Like the others, she performed several hard-to-identify maneuvers on the way down and disappeared into the water.
The woman announcer hollered along with the rest of the crowd, as though some unrealized universal tension had been released. It had been "a great dive," she shouted, "an excellent dive."
The announcer explained the details as the slow-motion replay started, but the only thing the partners really understood was the clean entry into the water. Darcy had somehow gone straight in, leaving a splash no bigger than a cup of water behind her, and that immediately over the entry point.
Braithwaite gathered that this was one of the goals of a diver. The announcer, Donna someone, mentioned her score as well, but this meant less to Braithwaite.
As the same cycle of divers came around again for a second dive (each would perform a half dozen dives in turn), the partners wordlessly agreed it was time for another drink.
They watched dive after dive after dive, finally beginning to make a little sense out of what the women were doing, although it remained incredible.
All but one of Darcy's dives were high scorers, and that one, which she "went a little over on," according to Donna, produced a splash the size of three cups of water, which nevertheless fell back within the radius of a dinner plate.
The keen-eyed and analytical Donna pointed out that Darcy was doing something with her hands at the instant they hit the water, which might account for the small splash ("punching a hole in the water" was how Donna explained it), yet even the slow-motion camera couldn't show it clearly.
By the time the preliminary heat was over, and the announcers had previewed the diving semifinals to take place the next day, Jack Benning had lost track of how much scotch he had drunk.
Darcy was leading by a large margin, as they watched her escorted out of the pool area to head back to the track.
By the time she had won the gold medal in the high jump, gliding nearly weightlessly over the bar and setting another world record, Dick Caxton had also lost track of the scotch he had drunk.
Bynum wasn't feeling too steady either.
Mrs. Anderson began calling taxis and guiding her bosses to them.
