Doubles (21 page)

I drew first. The piece of paper said CAROLINA FRIENDS SCHOOL.

“This isn’t even a category,” I said.

“Go on,” Manny said. “You got this one.”

I sighed. I held up a peace sign. I opened a book. I tried to indicate I was wearing a large straw hat and had a large beard, like the Quaker from the oats.

“Grizzly Adams!” Manny yelled.

“What are you doing?” Katie said. “What’s he doing?”

I took off my shoes. I sat cross-legged and raised my hand like I wanted to be called upon. Kaz said, “Time.”

“Friends School,” I said.

“
Friends
School Friends School?” Katie said.

“Yeah. Friends School.”

“That’s nothing,” Manny said.

“I know.”

“What do you mean it’s nothing?” Anne said.

“It’s not a real clue.”

“He just did it, didn’t he?”

Manny shook his head in disgust. “Barely.”

Anne fished around the cowboy hat.

Katie whispered, “That really shouldn’t count. It really shouldn’t.”

“I know,” Manny said. They clutched hands.

Anne lifted a clue, looked at it with disgust, then cranked an invisible camera.

“Movie!” Kaz yelled.

Anne stopped cranking. “I don’t even know what this is.”

“At least it’s a category,” I said.

“Get phonetic,” Manny said.

“Give her another one,” Katie said, annoyed.

“That’s not how it works.”

“
The Magnificent Seven
?” Anne said.

“Oh my God,” Manny said.

“What is it?”

“Just hold up seven fingers and do something magnificent.”

“This is bullshit,” she said and drew again.

“Wait!”

But she was already cranking another camera, rolling her eyes. The tattoo crept out from her arm again, and I saw that it was a small bird in flight.

“Movie,” Kaz said, glad to latch on to something. “Two words. First word . . . small word. OK. A? The? The!” He followed as she tapped on her forearm. “Second word. OK. Two syllables . . .”

She placed a hand on her forehead as if she were shielding the sun from her eyes and then looked across the room, squinting.

“Look, looking. The Look,” Kaz said. “The Squint. The Confusion.”

Anne began to get frantic. She bent and looked under the love seat, then around its back. It was amazing to see her so active.

“Lost. Looking. Search. Search? Search!”

Anne waved yes! Like she was trying to waft the smell of the answer into her nose.

“The Search! The Search! The Search! What? The Searcher! The Search! The Searching! The Search! Searching! What? The Searcher!”

She nodded towards Manny, as if Kaz had gotten it. Manny only laughed. The word was becoming meaningless the more Kaz repeated it.

“Searcher. Search. Search. Searching. Searcher . . .”

Manny could barely hold himself together, laughing so hard that he could no longer make noise, just silently gulp air.

“Time,” he finally gasped. “Time!”

“What was it?” Kaz said.

“Sear
chers
,” Manny said.

“I said that.”

“He said that.”

“Not the plural,” Katie said.

“Oh my God,” Kaz said, falling hard into the love seat beside Anne.

“I don’t even know what it is,” Anne said.

“
The Searchers
?” Manny said.

“Yes.”

“The best movie ever.”

“We still get it, though,” said Anne.

“He didn’t get it,” Katie said. “No way.”

Anne held her arms into the air.

“I can’t believe I came here for this,” she said, then picked up the hat full of clues. She pulled one out and read it. “
Hang ’Em High
?” She tossed it over her shoulder. “
Rancho Notorious
?” Over her shoulder. “
Hondo
. . .
Hondo
? That’s not even a word.
Hondo
? These are bullshit.” She dumped the hat on the ground. Small pieces of paper flew everywhere.

“Stop!” Manny said, grabbing clues by the fistful. Everyone was laughing now, even Anne. She settled back in the love seat beside Kaz, and I was overwhelmed with jealousy. I longed for her. I fantasized about my own wife. As everyone laughed, I forced myself to laugh along with them.

Manny stood. He wound the air beside his ear.

“Movie!” we shouted.

He ran in exaggerated slow motion while grinning at us, his huge lips stretched with joy across his angular face. He never broke the clues down into words or syllables. He just tried to convey the essence. His arms extended and retracted at a glacial pace while each knee slowly rose almost to his chest
.
At times he would stop to warm his hands by an imaginary fire.

Katie yelled, “
The Running Man! Rocky! She’s Got Legs! Catch Me if You Can! The Fugitive!
”

I just let her go on. Anne and Kaz laughed and whispered. Like me, they knew it was
Chariots of Fire
. I just tried to look confused.

“
Cool Runnings!
Um um um
The Gods Must Be Crazy! Ben-Hur!
”

Manny’s grin faded as he continued to run.

“Time!” Kaz said.

Manny’s limbs ground to a halt.

“
Ben-Hur
?” he said.

“What was it?” I said.

“
Ben-Hur
?”

“What?” Katie said. “What was it?”

“What part of me said
Ben-Hur
?”

“What was it?”

“Ben fucking Hur?
Chariots of Fire!
”

“Agh!” I said.

I put my hands on my face in disgust. Through my fingers I saw Anne watching. I wondered if she was detecting the fake. But then
Kaz stood and wound the air, and she shifted her attention. Another movie. They were all movies. He pulled invisible fistfuls of dollars from his pockets while my wife squealed in pleasure. Manny grew increasingly furious as we lost and lost again. I held my tongue with each movie I knew. Everyone laughed more and more. I knew we had to lose for this equation to work. They needed the win to celebrate.

I said, “I need to get back.”

“There’s more clues,” Manny said.

“Ah.” I waved my hand in the air. “You guys finish without me.”

Anne and Kaz waved simultaneously.

I walked downstairs and heard Kaz yell, “Movie! One word! One syllable!”

I looked up at the landing. Anne stood with her back to me. She put her hands around her stomach, indicating that it was huge.

“Fat!”

She held her hands high above her head.

“Tall!”

She shook her head, crouched down, then spun. As she spun she grew taller with each turn, as if she were in a magical whirlwind.

“Spin!”

When she reached her full height, she held her hands high above her head and finished her turn. When she stopped, she was facing me. I looked up at her, stretching long towards the ceiling, a sliver of a human who had once been mine. Her eyes lowered. It was the woman whom I had aspired to fit, the one I had almost killed. She had stood with her arms above her head just like that at the edge of the pontoon. From the balcony she looked into me, and it felt like she was diving into my face. It was the first private moment we’d had since the hospital. She looked alive and tall and thin and like a different person with her hair and tattoo, now completely visible on the side of her shoulder. She rose in one last push, lifting onto her tiptoes, and Kaz yelled, “Big!”

I PLACED THE
containers of Go-Gurt on the bench beside me and took the packet of Ex-Lax from my sweatshirt pocket. I stuck my finger into the Go-Gurt on the right. I licked it off. Blueberry. I stuck my finger into the one on the left. I licked it. Raspberry. I ate one spoonful of raspberry, one blueberry. Then I took an Ex-Lax. I jogged in place while humming “Born to Run,” then bounced away from the bench, slowly crossing the locker room as I felt my system begin to behave. I jogged directly to the toilet, dropped my pants, and sat. My body obeyed like a machine. I showered for a second time. I finished the blueberry Go-Gurt. I drank two orange Gatorades then finished the raspberry Go-Gurt. I didn’t need Kaz here to tell me any of this. I had done it enough to know.

The locker room was always empty on Sunday. Everyone else had already lost and flown to Paris. I always beat Kaz to the court for the final. I never knew why he was late in the past. This year I knew.

I dressed and left before he arrived. When I emerged from the locker room, the Simon brothers stood on the landing. Sam, the one who wore a tight beaded choker necklace, said, “Slow. You gonna count all day? I’m just giving you a hard time. When you going to France?”

We would only qualify for the French Open if we won today. “Tomorrow, I guess.”

“Gonna say we should ride together.”

Sandy, the lefty, waved while talking on his cell phone. He said, “I don’t know if they serve chicken or not. I don’t know. I don’t know how else to say it. They might. They might not.”

“I gotta,” I said, pointing towards the courts. I couldn’t stand to hear Sandy talk about chicken for another second.

“Oh yeah,” Sam said, like he had forgotten there was a match to be played. “I’ll see you out there in a bit.”

But I didn’t go to the courts. I left the gates and headed into the streets of Forest Hills, running as hard as I could. I passed under the low-hanging branches, heavy with ephemeral blossoms. A woman got out of a Lincoln Town Car with a young girl carrying a large stuffed panda. The father, in flip-flops and khaki shorts, took bags from the trunk. I ran by them. Another couple pushed a baby carriage towards me. I had passed from the elderly into the family district. I kept running. I passed through a small area beneath an overpass lined with Mexican bakeries and a storefront filled with pastel formal dresses. Back into affluence, past brownstone stairs leading older couples home from church. The first year I had run this route I made eye contact with everyone I passed in hopes someone would recognize me. But these people didn’t even know that the West Side Tennis Club existed. And if they did, they didn’t care. I crossed through the bustling plaza near the subway stop and entered the tunnel of vegetation leading back to the club. I turned left onto the block where the club was. A cab was stopped at the curb. I stopped in the shade of a gingko tree. Kaz stepped out of the cab, slowly setting his tennis bag on the sidewalk before searching his sweatshirt for his wallet. After he paid, he ambled slowly towards the clubhouse, stepping carefully over every crack.

 

Court 1 was packed with the usual geriatric set. I wondered what it was like to watch men perform feats no longer possible for you. But
as I saw the tanned faces on those old men, I suddenly had the feeling that these captains of industry all still thought they could do what I did. They didn’t look like they were dying. They all looked confident and tan and happy.

Manny and Katie were already seated courtside. They started to cheer when I stepped on court. “Slow it down,” Manny yelled. “Slow it down, ladies and gentleman.”

He wore a brown polyester suit that looked like it had come from the Mexican wedding store under the subway. His amber medallion glimmered atop a white cowboy shirt. Katie wore a lime green dress and a wide white hat. I worried about the people who had to sit behind them.

Kaz said nothing as he walked to the chair. He looked more drawn than normal, but I smelled him as he passed, and he smelled terrible, so that was a good sign. We did not speak. We hit practice serves side by side. We traded groundstrokes with the Simons. We stood at the net and hit volleys, then lifted our eyes to the sun, a blurry, shifting orb lingering in my vision as I snatched overheads out of the air.

Play began with Sam Simon serving. He didn’t serve as fast as I did, but he placed them well. They won the game. Which was fine. We didn’t have many looks. I hit two aces in the next game, and we chalked up our tenth game ever against them. By the time we switched sides, my jitters were gone.

On Kaz’s serve, he tossed the first ball too far in front and dumped it into the net. His second serve floated long. It often took Kaz a few minutes to ease into a match. At the net I switched sides and leaned low to give him clearance. The Simon brothers bounced from side to side simultaneously. A ball flew over my shoulder and landed three feet long. I heard Kaz bounce another three times behind me as I stood and reset. The Simon brothers began to bounce again. Sam was so close to the net that I could hear the beads on his necklace click
with each hop. My shadow stretched just over the net, a squat, dark mass that moved with me as I swayed from side to side. The angle of the shadow meant the sun was behind us. Kaz could see the ball as well as he was going to, but it didn’t matter. His next serve hit almost the same spot as its errant predecessor. A murmur rose. A double double fault.

Kaz took his time moving to the deuce court, then just stood there, leaning forward on his one stiff leg, perched above that scuffed shoe. He had always mocked me for my counting, but I now wondered if he wasn’t trying it for himself. He should have been. I watched him from the corner of my eye. When he bounced the ball it hit the toe of his shoe and rolled into the middle of the court. A hesitant and beautiful ball girl who couldn’t have been more than fourteen rushed after it.

I heard one of the old men courtside say, “This puppy’s got a problem.”

His first serve went long. My shadow was motionless. I heard Kaz start to bounce the other ball behind me, and the sudden thought that he had not slept with my wife filled me with a rush of panic. Without this win, I would have enough points to go back into the satellite circuit, but at age thirty-one that seemed like the prospect of learning to walk all over again. I didn’t know how to face a return to the office. I could only bear that job knowing it was temporary. I needed this match. I needed him to complete whatever sequence he had started. The ball then soared past my head, crossed the net, and dropped in the middle of the box, and Sandy drilled it at my face. I knifed it crosscourt, and it skidded off the line. One point and my panic was gone. Kaz had done what he needed to do.