gets serious.'
'And the woman loses the serve.'
He now stood where she had, and Winn was the curious one. He wore white tennis-style shorts and a disreputable looking T-shirt of navy blue that said Dick's Bar on the back and looked as if it had been relieved of its sleeves and bottom half by somebody's dull hedge trimmer. The crudely slashed fabric curled back on his shoulders, and the armholes sagged halfway down his ribs. Six inches of bare stomach showed between navy shirt and white shorts, and it was remarkably tan for May, as were his sinewy legs above the calf-high socks. She was staring at the socks, one with a gold stripe around its top, the other with a purple, when his serve careered past her head. She completely ignored it and burst out laughing.
'Now who's asleep?'
'No fair, your socks broke me up!' Her laughter resounded from the walls.
He rolled onto his heels, bringing his toes off the floor, and perused his hairy legs. 'What's the matter with them?'
'They don't match!' She was still laughing.
'Naw, they never do. Not in a house where three men do their own laundry.
'Hit it,' she returned.
They threw their total effort into racket ball then, and before the serve had changed twice, they'd quite forgotten to ogle each other. They were immersed in competition, concentrating on the reaching, running, reflexive joy of rivalry. They were well matched, and if physically Joseph had the edge, she was perhaps the more accurate shot.
When he gained a point by charging up on a dying pigeon and slamming it off the back wall, she came back with a placement shot so deadly he missed it even after a belly dive. His legs were four inches longer, but hers were quicker. He'd perfected the difficult ceiling shot, and she missed it every time after it caromed from ceiling to front wall to floor, then always beyond her reach. But she had a keen feel for successfully sprinting to meet the ball a mere five feet before the front wall and softly finessing it so it dropped softly, two feet from the wall and fell dead, leaving Joseph no chance to charge forward and save the point.
They reveled in the exhilaration of pushing their bodies to great physical limits. The acoustical room was filled with the high magnified squeaks of their rubber soles on the hardwood floors, the slap of the ball, their grunts-and sometimes groans-and occasionally the clatter of a racket against concrete. They stretched their tensile limbs to their limits. They strained their bodies for the simple reward of beating the ball. They smashed and drove and sometimes watched a shot arcing over their heads, not knowing till the final second whether it would reach the back wall or fall that agonizing three inches from it. Their shirts became soaked and their limbs sheeny. His hair became curlier, and hers stringier. They smiled, teased, cried 'I told you so' and sometimes, 'Damn you!'
And he took the game 21-20.
They fell to their backs in the middle of the backcourt, panting, heaving, closing their eyes against the white fluorescent glare of caged lights overhead. Star bursts danced before their lids. Their hearts pounded against the cool boards beneath their shoulders. Their legs stuck to the floor. Their weary arms flopped straight out to the side, lifeless. They were in heaven.
He rolled his head to look at her. She was five feet away, but her lax fingers almost touched his.
'Hey, Gardner.' She opened one eye and peeked at him. 'You're good.'
'So're you. But next time I'm gonna whip you, boy.'
His laughter bounced off the walls like a well-executed Z-serve.
'My pleasure,' he offered, then closed his eyes and rested again. A minute of pure silence passed. Their breathing was less labored. She pulled her shirt up, exposing her stomach, and rested a hand on it. He flexed a knee.
'Oh, God, I needed this.' Her quiet admission whispered three times as it came back to them.
He rolled his head to look at her again. 'Why?'
Meredith Emery came into her mind's eye. 'Oh, Joseph, I've done the worst thing it's possible for a physical therapist to do. I've become empathetically involved with one of my patients.'
'Who?' He studied her profile as she stared up at the overhead lights.
'Her name is Meredith Emery, and she's ten years old.' He saw her swallow. 'And she's the victim of an explosion.'
Joseph hadn't guessed physical therapists worked with burn patients, and though he wanted to question her about it, he wisely kept silent.
'She has these enormous brown eyes that… that have no eyelashes anymore and no eyebrows, either. And her face has been scarred, and she's bald now. But she showed me her school picture when she had beautiful black hair down past her shoulders.' She paused, took a deep gulp of air and went on. 'She studied ballet and was a gymnast, too, and now she can't even touch her ear to her shoulder because her skin has lost so much elasticity she has to wear a splint to hold her chin up.' A tear formed in Winn's eye and ran from its corner down her temple, disappearing within the droplets of perspiration already there.
Joseph inched nearer and took her outflung hand. She grasped his fingers so tightly his ring cut in almost painfully. Her ragged voice went on. 'And next summer her family is all going to Disneyland… and… and…' Suddenly Winn flung a forearm across her eyes and released one gulping sob that echoed from the high bright ceiling.
Joseph rolled to one hip and braced beside her on an elbow. 'And?'
'And sh-she won't be g-going along b-because she's going to die.' Winn began sobbing unrestrainedly then and attempted to roll away from Joseph, but he clasped her shoulder to keep her on her back.
'Winn… oh, Winn.' He lifted her to a sitting position-they were hip to hip, facing each other-and wrapped his arms around her, cradling her against his chest, cupping the back of her damp hair while she clung to him and cried.
'Oh, J-Joseph, sometimes I d-don't understand why.'
'I wish I could tell you, but I can't find any reason for the waste, either.' He pressed her hair hard, contouring the back of her head. 'God… only ten years old.' He, too, sounded choked up.
'And she's b-been through such hell already. Pain and scars, and… and sh-she still fights with me when I tell her to-sh-she doesn't know that all the physical therapy is f-for nothing because she'll never l-live to see her limbs m-move as they did on the p-parallel bars.' He kissed the side of her skull, then patted her back, feeling the pitiful heaving of her chest against his.
'Do her mother and father know?'
'I don't know. Her kidneys just failed today.'
'What are they like? Do they love her a lot?'
'Oh, yes. She adores her mother and… and beams all over wh-when she talks about her father. At least her eyes look like they're beaming, but it's an… an awful sight when they don't have any lashes.'
Joseph leaned back, grasped her temples in both hands and repeatedly pushed the hair back from her face, searching her eyes. 'Maybe that's what it's all about… love. She had love, and she gave it, so her life wasn't for nothing, was it?'
Winn's eyes swam with tears. The skin beneath them was wet and shiny as he rested his thumbs there. Oh, God, she thought, why couldn't Paul have been this way when I needed him?
'Do you think so, Joseph?' She sat as still as the walls around them. He gazed into her sad wet eyes with their lashes stuck together, then lifted his gaze to her tawny hair and gently brought her forehead to his lips.
Meeting her eyes again, he assured Winn, 'Yes, I think so. There's got to be a reason for all of this, and if it's not love, what else could there possibly be? You love her, too, and because you do, you needed to cry and so you came to me. And I think I could very easily fall in love with you. Maybe that's the reason… to bring us together.'
'Joseph, you mustn't say that.' Her voice was quiet, unchiding, as she probed his dark brown eyes with her troubled blue ones.
'But it's true.'
'But there's still Paul.'
'Yes… Paul.' The pressure on her jaws increased as Joseph held her prisoner with his hands and eyes. 'And
