Marcel’s fervor was all too genuine. “I was thinking the same thing,” he said, striding to the door to the garden. “Come on,” he invited, fairly yanking it open, “Let’s go!”
“What, now?”
“Yeah, now. You’ve been here for two weeks, we haven’t even been out to the range. I mean, it’s the whole reason you came! Come on, my finger’s itching.”
“Finally!” I said, following him out the door and across the grass, my stomach in my throat, my hard-on having fled the scene.
Through the eyes of someone who had no idea what he was looking at or what to look for, the long, low, indoor/outdoor shooting range across the meadow-posing-as-garden certainly seemed state-of-the-art. He led me into a low-slung shelter, the back wall of which was covered in racks of rifles and pistols. These faced the open side of the building and a series of distressingly small, round targets staggered, he pointed out, at distances of 10, 25, and 50 metres. On my long and winding road to Olympia, I had tried archery (for about a half an hour), and was rather looking forward to similarly large, straw targets. I could barely see the 50-metre targets across Marcel’s garden, and would have trouble hitting one with a cannon, much less faking any skill with a handgun. Remembering my role, however, I turned loose a low whistle of appreciation.
“This is quite a set-up,” I cooed.
“Thanks,” he said. “I haven’t really been that focused on shooting for a while. I’m not exactly at the top of my game. That’s why I’m excited to have you here; to get back into it. I figure if we’re gonna try and get one of us to London, we might as well both go together. I’ve never had a teammate before,” he gushed, “it was always just me.”
“That would be great,” I declared.
“Don’t be so nervous,” he counseled, reading the tone in my voice. “We’ll just have a little fun today. See where you’re at. See what I’ve gotten myself into.” He chuckled.
I groaned.
He perused the wall for a moment, alternately browsing the rack of rifles and assessing my physique, muttering to himself. “Let’s see…you’ve got quite long arms…this one might be a bit much, you just off crutches and all…”
Shortly he made his selection and unmounted a rifle. He turned to hand it off to me, and I fumbled it immediately. It was either too light or too heavy compared to what I was expecting—I wasn’t exactly sure which, consumed as I was with praying that my acute embarrassment wouldn’t actually kill me, while secretly hoping that it would. My sheepish grin elicited a stone-faced response.
He bent to retrieve the rifle and cradled it in the crook of his left arm. “You’ve never shot before in your life, have you?” Less an accusation than a point of clarification—he’d known I was lying.
“Does tequila count?”
This got the tiniest chuckle, which I took as a good sign. “No,” he said, “although that might be next. If you’re not a shooter, what are you doing here?”
If I could have thought of one, I probably would have served him some line of bullshit about wanting to follow in his family footsteps or some similarly faux-noble motivation, but I figured he might as well know where I was coming from. He was by far my best-ever chance at actually making it to the Olympics, but I wasn’t going to try to live some elaborate lie for the next three years. He could take it or leave it, and if he was going to dump me as a potential prodigy, it might as well be now, I figured, while I still had time to learn how to paddle a canoe or ride a BMX bike or something similarly implausible.
“First off,” I said, “I wasn’t lying in my e-mail.”
“You weren’t?” he asked. “So you do have a passion for shooting that won’t be denied, you’re just scared of guns?”
“Okay, that part was a lie.”
“It was pretty much the main part.”
“I know. What I mean is, I do have a mad, lifelong passion to go to the Olympics.” I gulped, then forged ahead. “Mostly because I want to be around guys who have bodies like Olympic swimmers and Olympic gymnasts. And I suck at all the other sports I’ve tried.”
“I see,” he said. “And shooting’s not a ‘real’ sport, right? ‘They don’t work out like swimmers do. They don’t fly around like gymnasts. There aren’t even any balls—how hard can it be?’”
“Well…”
“Well,” he mimicked, holding up his free hand, “I’ve been shooting since I was a little kid, I’ve heard it before. Here’s the thing: the pressure? The level of competition? If you think it’s less intense than other sports, you’ll never make it out of my backyard. You’ve got to have a level head, a steady hand, and you’ve got to be able to shoot a housefly out of the air from across the room in front of an audience. Some of them are cheering you on, sure, but the rest of them are praying you’ll miss so their guy can win. The pressure is so real it’s physical, and even in your first competition you’re gonna be up against people who’ve been shooting for twenty, thirty, maybe fifty years. I’m not a superstar Olympic hero, but I have a reputation, here in Europe and in the international community, and I’m not putting my name on your product unless you can at least shoot at the broad side of a barn without embarrassing me.”
“No, of course not,” I said. “I understand. You’re right. I’ve never shot before. But I want into the
