He sat in the chair on the other side of the desk. I tried to block his view, but he saw it anyway, the hole and the fissures in the plaster around it.
“Wasn’t exactly a crack shot, was he?”
“I think maybe he took a bit of skin off his cheek. He wore a Band-Aid for a few days.”
Ed smirked. He was wearing boxer shorts. It was a hot night and we were both stuck to the leather chairs.
“It’s not here anymore,” he said.
“What?”
“What happened.”
“Then where is it?”
“It’s gone. It’s over. You can’t find it, stroke it, coo over it. Time has stolen it away like it fucking steals everything. In rare instances, like yours, that can be a good thing.”
During the interview my mother had asked Ed and Grant if they played either tennis or golf and they had lied and said they did, thinking that that was the kind of person she was looking for. In fact she had wanted to know solely for practical reasons, because if they did she would put their names down in the guest book at the club and they could come and go as they liked. That first weekend I took them to play tennis. On weekends you had to wear all whites and so they put on my father’s clothes. It was only as we were walking there that I noticed Ed had forgotten to put on my father’s white socks. I didn’t say anything but Grant did, and Ed said he was going to move so fast on the court that no one would arrest him for his black socks.
I made sure we got court 8, the farthest one from the clubhouse. Ed picked up on it right away.
“You don’t want to be seen with a couple of slouches, do you?”
He was right. I could tell by the swings they’d taken in the yard that neither of them had any form. I probably told myself I was protecting them from ridicule, but I was protecting myself. I could already hear my tennis teacher telling me how bad it was for my game to play people like that. Fortunately the court next to us was empty and the wild lobs they hit at first did not bother anyone else’s game. I was disappointed by their lack of skill. After living with them for five days I had convinced myself they could do anything. They looked like buffoons, especially Ed in his black socks, who was clearly athletic and could reach everything, but once he got there he flung his body along with his racket at the ball with very little success. I didn’t understand why they couldn’t easily imitate my stroke, which I showed them again and again. After rallying for a while, Ed moved over to Grant’s side and they challenged me to a set. I suggested a little more practice was in order but they insisted. I spun my racket, they called up, it was down, and I served.
I decided to crush them. I lifted that first toss and decided to shred them to pieces. I had never had that feeling on the tennis court before, the raw desire to win. I was a competent player, but I had more runner-up trophies than anything else. I determined that I would not let them win one point off me. Because suddenly I found I resented my awe of them, my infatuation with them both, and the dread that had already lodged itself in my chest of their leaving in the middle of August. I wanted somehow to even the scales a bit, to show them that I was worth something, too, that I had something to teach them, something for them to be in awe of.
My first serve was low and fast. Ed returned it with a punch, as if it were a volley, and I expected it to die in the net but it went over and I couldn’t reach it in time. That was the only point, I coached myself, they were ever going to get off me.
I served to Grant. He spun around and whiffed it. Tossed a high one to Ed who backed up then rushed forward but reached it and knocked it over nicely, right to me. I smashed it back but Grant stuck his racket out, it came back at me, and I hit it crosscourt to Ed’s alley, but he was there and gave me a lob, which I smacked at his toes and watched it sail far up as he scrambled back, not backward as I had been taught, with little steps, but sprinting to the back of the court and reaching it and slicing it at just the right angle to my back corner. I hadn’t been ready to run and it flashed past me, ticking the tape. Ed let out a victorious bellow. I could feel the heads down the row of courts swivel toward us. We had all taken to grunts and groans and hollers. They got better and I got worse and I slowly relinquished all hopes of a shutout and just tried to scratch out a humble win.
In the end they beat me 6–4. I threw my racquet at the fence and stalked off. I knew what this looked like; it was the kind of behavior that was abhorrent to my parents. Any anger was dealt with swiftly and severely, quarantined immediately, allowed no audience. I expected Grant and Ed to react similarly, to urge me home that instant, remove me from this public place because people were watching. People on the clubhouse veranda, people walking to their cars, people on the courts, and even people on the putting green could hear me swearing and kicking tires in the parking lot. I was surprised by it myself, the anger that came pouring out all because a couple of hacks had beaten me at tennis. But they just sat on the little strip of grass beyond the court with the three racquets zipped back up in the cases and the balls back in the can. After a while I had nothing left in me and they came to where I was by a maple tree near the entrance to the club and we started walking home.