Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (30 page)

 
          
 
He picked up the phone and dialed his home
number.

 
          
 
No answer.

 
          
 
He felt like a Whoopee cushion sat on by a fat
person.

 
          
 
He refused to change in his room and ride the
elevator down to the basement. He was not ready to acknowledge that 1 he was a
resident of the YMCA, did not want to have to 1 answer questions from anyone he
might encounter in the 1 elevator or in the hallways by the squash courts.
Besides, he I enjoyed the camaraderie of the locker room.

 
          
 
Four men were already there: a pair from
State, who played together often, and a pair whom Burnham didn't recognize but
who knew one another and were obviously matched up. Burnham changed slowly,
expecting a lone man to rush into the locker room at the last minute, tearing
at his tie and kicking off his shoes, complaining about the traffic or the lack
of parking spaces or thoughtless superiors who had burdened him with urgent
trivia.

 
          
 
But no one appeared, which meant that Hal had
been unable to find an opponent for him. Either he would have to play alone,
which would give him little exercise and no pleasure, or he would have to
endure forty minutes of being cut to ribbons by Hal himself. Hal was
self-taught, but he played squash every day and was quick as a cougar and mean
as a shrew. His racket was a scalpel with which, methodically, he dissected an
opponent.

 
          
 
At the first stroke of
noon
, Burnham left the locker room and walked to
the row of squash courts. Hal was standing by the door to court #1. He was a
symphony in white, from platinum skull to ivory skin to milky polo shirt to
Cloroxed ducks to vanilla shoes. Someone stood behind him, in the shadows. An
opponent.

 
          
 
Burnham smiled, relieved.

 
          
 
"Timothy Burnham," Hal said formally,
"meet Eva Pym."

 
          
 
A woman.

 
          
 
She stepped around Hal and extended her hand.
She looked nervous.

 
          
 
She looked nervous? Burnham was suddenly
frantic. He wanted to call for help. He had never played squash with a woman.
How do you play squash with a woman? The rules must be different. No bumping or
checking? He'd have to go easy on her. How do you go easy on somebody in a
squash game? Suppose she was good, better than he. Suppose he lost. This was
supposed to be an hour of relaxation and exercise, not a test of his manhood
and self-esteem. If he won, he won nothing, he was supposed to win. If he lost,
he was a ... a wimp. He'd rather play against Hal. At least he expected to lose
to Hal.

 
          
 
The kaleidoscope of anxieties jangled in his
mind for perhaps a second, just long enough for him to realize he was staring
at the woman's hand. He took the hand and grasped it and said, weakly,
"Hi."

 
          
 
"Timothy works for the White House,"
Hal said brightly,! providing (as he always did for new opponents) conversational
fodder. He was as considerate as a hostess at a diplomatic soiree. "He
lives in"—he hesitated for a split second —"
Georgetown
. Eva is a caterer and a nutritionist. She
insists that I start taking a high-potency B-complex vitamin."

 
          
 
The woman took a step forward, into the light,
and Burnham saw her for the first time. Her blond hair was tied back in a
ponytail. She wore no makeup. Her nose was straight, her cheekbones high, her
jaw strong, her lips thin and perfect, her skin like polished walnut. She wore
a baggy
Bennington
College
sweat suit, but the muscles in her arm
suggested that her entire body was fit and finely tuned.

 
          
 
She was beautiful.

 
          
 
Burnham felt faint. Suppose he hit her with
his racket. It was one thing to hit a man; men were supposed to be scarred. But
if he opened a nasty gash on this face . . . he'd probably go to jail.

 
          
 
Please. Let the President call. Anything.

 
          
 
"I left this number," he said to
Hal.

           
 
"Don't worry." Hal grinned.
"I'll tell the President you're in a meeting." He put one hand on Burnham's
arm, the other on Eva's. "Enjoy yourselves, children."

 
          
 
Burnham pushed open the door to the court. He
started to duck down to go through the small opening, then caught himself and
backed off and gestured for Eva to go first.

 
          
 
She refused, waving him ahead. "No sexism
in combat," she said.

 
          
 
When they were both inside the court, Burnham
shut the door, isolating the two of them in a brilliantly lighted white box.
"Have you played a lot?"

 
          
 
"In college. Not much since. I hope I can
give you a game."

 
          
 
"Me too." No! Asshole! "I mean
... I hope I can give you a game."

 
          
 
"Never mind." She smiled.
"We'll have fun."

 
          
 
Burnham dropped a squash ball from his hand
onto the wood floor. It didn't bounce, but rolled languidly against the wall.
The hard rubber ball was cold, and the rubber had no elasticity. He should have
held it under a hot-water faucet for thirty seconds.

 
          
 
"I'll warm it up," he said, and he
began to rub it between his palms.

 
          
 
"Here." Eva reached under her
sweatshirt, hunched her shoulders and brought out a squash ball. She flung it
to the floor, and it bounced to her waist. "Let's use mine."

 
          
 
Burnham gazed at her dumbly.

 
          
 
"A bra," she said with a little
laugh, "is a coat of many colors."

 
          
 
Burnham wanted to grab the ball from her, to
feel it, examine it, smell it. She had kept it warm in her bra, in the fold of
her breast.

 
          
 
I can't play squash, Burnham concluded. This
woman is going to drive me mad.

 
          
 
Stop it! Do what Milan Kundera says: Separate
your sexuality from your self. Compartmentalize the elements of your humanity.
It may be possible to regard a sexual partner as an athletic opponent, but it
is impossible to regard an athletic opponent as a sex object. See yourself in
segments.

 
          
 
What?!

 
          
 
He wasn't going to go mad. He had gone mad.

 
          
 
Eva hit the ball at the front wall.

 
          
 
Surprised, unready, Burnham flailed at the
ball and missed it. It dribbled into the back comer. He picked it up and
squeezed it, not knowing what to expect. It felt like a warm rubber ball.
Nothing breasty about it.

 
          
 
He hit the ball at the front wall. She
returned it. He returned it. She returned it. He returned it. She returned it.
He hit it harder. She walloped it. He retrieved it off the back wall and belted
it cross-court. She took a step, dropped her racket head and whipped off a
backhand that fired the ball on a sharp angle to the front wall, whence it
caromed to the side wall, dropped to the floor . . . and died.

 
          
 
Burnham was in trouble. She was strong, quick,
sure-handed and experienced. She had good ball sense.

 
          
 
By the end of the brief warm-up, Burnham knew
that his only chance for victory lay in surprise, in constantly changing the
game on her, breaking her rhythm, keeping her from setting up for the smooth
strokes that she hit better than he. He resolved to imagine that she was the
hirsute Treasury drone he had played the day before. He would let her get into
a point, and then he would dink her to death.

 
          
 
They played for the right to serve. Eva won.
Burnham stood in the receiver's box, his eyes focused on the front wall,
waiting to see the black missile streak toward him. But nothing happened. He
glanced to his left.

 
          
 
She was removing her sweat suit.

 
          
 
"No fair," he said before he could
stop himself.

 
          
 
"What do you mean?"

 
          
 
She wore a white Bennington T-shirt through
which her bra was plainly visible, and white runner's shorts with high swoops
over each hip that did not cover all the firm flesh at the bottom of her bottom
and that revealed the sharp outline of her miniature underpants. Her calves
were turned as perfectly as if on a lathe, her thighs taut and lined with
muscle fibers. Her tan continued well up under her shorts. Her chest was ample,
her arms highlighted by hillocks of tricep.

 
          
 
Everything about her seemed to have been made
to strict specifications.

 
          
 
"Be still, my beating heart." He
blushed.

 
          
 
"Don't worry, Mr. Burnham," she said
nicely. "I'll get your heart working."

 
          
 
Ah, but she's slick, Burnham thought. First
she exposes an expanse of shiny thigh. Then she feigns innocence of its seismic
effect on me and maintains a fagade of formality by calling me "Mr. Burnham."
Then she assumes the posture of an authority figure, a trainer.

 
          
 
"Your serve. Miss Pym."

 
          
 
She lofted the ball high, aiming to have it
caress the side wall and drop softly, without a bounce, at Burnham's feet. But
he jumped the ball on the fly and swatted it smartly to the front wall, low,
just above the tin. She lurched forward but could not reach it before it
bounced twice.

 
          
 
"Good shot," she said.

 
          
 
He served, and stepped into the center of the
court, onto the "T."

 
          
 
Her return was a good one. It dropped like a
dying duck an inch from the side wall. If Burnham swung at it, he would smash
his racket head against the wail. He took a step back, hoping to catch the ball
on its bounce off the floor, but the ball was spinning crazily, and it jumped
off the floor directly at his face, so he took another step back—and crashed
into Eva.

 
          
 
They hit back to back. Her weight was forward,
on the balls of her feet. His was backward, on his heels. So when they
collided, she tumbled forward and he fell on top of her. He spun as he fell,
instinctively (like a cat) trying to position himself to break his fall with
his hands. One of his hands hit the floor to the left of her left shoulder, one
to the right of her right hip. His right knee came to rest between her thighs.
His head, the heaviest of all his corporal equipment, plunged deep into her
left armpit.

 
          
 
His face was buried in the soft flesh of her
underarm, in the swell of her pressed breast. His nose felt snug warmth and
smelled soap and salt and a faint blend of spices.

 
          
 
He didn't want to move. He wanted to lie there
and pull the covers up and take a nap and . . .