Double Fault

“They have something against your sister?”

Willy screwed up her eyes. He was just making conversation, but she had so few opportunities to talk about anything but open-versus closed-stance ground strokes that she indulged herself. “They have something against the whole world, in which we’re generously included. But my parents bear Gert no special ill-will. Their feelings for my sister are moderate. Moderation is what she invites. In high school, she made B’s on purpose. Now she’s studying to become a CPA. The sum of this calculated sensibleness is supposed to make my father happy. It doesn’t. In my book, they both deserve what they’ve got … I’m sorry, you have no reason to be faintly interested in any of this.”

“Oh, but I am.”

Afraid he was going to add something flirty and odious, she went on quickly, “I think they scrounged ‘Wilhemena’ and ‘Gertrude’ from the nursing home where my mother works. Even as kids, we sounded like spinsters.”

Eric knocked back his beer with gusto. “You’re awfully young to worry about becoming an old maid.”

In the terms of her profession Willy was already shuffling toward her dotage; this man instinctively honed in on soft spots. “I’m not,” she fended off lightly. “It’s the implausibility of ‘Wilhemena Novinsky’ on a Wimbledon scoreboard that’s unsettling.”

“Wee-Willy-Wimbledon. ’Sgot a ring. Besides: shitty name, one more obstacle to overcome. On which you thrive, I’m sure. They did you a favor.”

All this assumed familiarity was grating, and only the more intrusive for being accurate. “If I thrive on obstacles, my parents have done me dozens of favors.”

The waiter arrived with their baked half-chickens with mountains of fried rice. Eric had ordered two plates for himself, which he arranged bumper to bumper.

“You’re going to eat all that?”

“And the remains of yours, when you don’t finish it.”

“How do—?” She gave up. He was right. She wouldn’t.

The rice was marvelous, scattered with pork and egg. The chicken lolled off the bone. “Don’t look so greedy,” said Willy. “I may finish more than you think.”

“Just promise me you won’t go puke it up afterwards.”

“I’m not that trite.”

“No tennis dad, no bulimia, and you’re not overweight,” Eric ticked off on his fingers. “Too good to be true. You must be having an affair with your coach.”

Willy was a sucker for any contest, but this was the limit. “None of your business.”

His eyes flickered; he could as well have scribbled her response on a scorecard.

“While I’m being crass …” Eric dabbed his mouth with his napkin; she couldn’t understand how he could suck up all that rice in such a mannerly fashion. She’d have predicted he’d eat like an animal. “What’s your ranking?”

There was no getting away. In tennis circles, this question arose five times a day, though it secreted far more malice than What’s your sign?

Willy placed her fork precisely beside the vinegar, then edged the tines a quarter inch, as if to indicate the incremental nature of progress in her sport. “I’m ranked 437. But that’s in the world—”

He raised his hands. “I know! I’m surprised your ranking is so high.”

“Surprised! I pasted you today!”

He laughed. “Wilhelm!” He pronounced her new name with a Germanic V. “I just meant that I don’t expect to run into a top 500 in the course of the average day. Touchy, touchy.”

“There’s not a tennis player on earth,” Willy grumbled, picking her fork back up, “who isn’t sensitive about that number. You could as well have asked on our first date how much money I make, or whether I have AIDS.”

“Is that what this is?” he asked gamely. “A date?”

“You know what I mean,” she muttered, rattled. “A ranking is … like, how valuable a person you are.”

“Don’t you think you’re giving them a little too much power?” Eric rebuked her, for once sounding sincere.

She asked sarcastically, “And who’s they?”

“They are whoever you can’t allow to beat you,” Eric returned. “And the worst capitulation is thinking just like the people who want your hide.”

“So maybe you’re my they?”

“I’m on your side.”

“I’ve only had one person on my side in my life.”

“Yourself?”

“No,” she admitted, “I am not always on my own side.” This was getting abstruse. “I mean a real person.”

“But didn’t you like it?”

“Yes.” The question made her bashful. “Can we stop talking about me for a second? Like, what do you do?”

“I graduated from Princeton in May. Math. Now I’m taking some time out to play.”

“With me?”

“Yes, but play, not toy. Playing is serious business. You of all people should know that.”

“Do you … have any brothers and sisters?” The low grade of repartee in locker rooms had left Willy rusty and obvious over dinner.

“Three brothers. My father wants to take over the world.”

She let slide the implication that a patriarch would only do so with boys. “You,” she determined, “are the oldest.”

“Good.”

What he was applauding, or should have been applauding, was her having made the effort to imagine being in anyone else’s shoes but Willy Novinsky’s for an instant. Self-absorption was a side effect of her profession. Oh, you thought about other people’s games, all right—did they serve and volley, where was their oyster of vulnerability on the court. But that was all a roundabout way of thinking about yourself.

“Princeton,” she nodded. Extending herself to him was work. “Brainy, then. You wouldn’t have two words to say to the people I know.”

“I doubt you know them, or they you. Players on the women’s tour live in parallel universes. Though they’re all pig-thick.”

“Thanks.”

“The men aren’t nuclear physicists,” Eric added judiciously.

“Your folks have money, don’t they?” The tidy table manners were a giveaway.