Roger’s mind ran through its gears, each one more powerful than the last, spinning, whirring, so fast that he had to pace, the excess mental energy escaping into his body. The lover’s wife, if she existed: at one stage, a hypothetical and false contractor in a superseded plan for Francie, but now that she did exist, he felt… confusion, so strange for him. Fact: Francie was sleeping with the husband of her tennis partner. He found that harder to believe than the adultery itself. It reduced her to the basest commonality, like one of those illiterates on a TV tell-all show, a walking mockery of his taste. Was it possible for him to have misread her so grossly? Or-or was this something different, something more sophisticated: could it be possible, for example, that this tennis partner, this Anne, knew of the affair and accepted it? Roger’s mind was already at the next stop, waiting with a disgusting image of Francie in bed with the two of them, and before he could digest that, was preparing another, even worse, with four participants. He felt a responding pulse in his groin. No! Were they animals, beasts, mere rutting things? Not him. He stopped pacing, poured water; it trembled in the glass, like an earthquake warning. He drank, tried to calm himself. It’s all right, Roger, he thought, quashing all images. The lover’s wife is just another piece on the board, part of the problem, and all problems are fundamentally mathematical. Permutations and combinations.
The door opened and Francie walked in, snow in her hair, her appearance revealing nothing at all of what he now knew hid within. “Hello, Roger.” She glanced around. “Were you on the phone?”
“No.” But had he said permutations and combinations aloud? The air in the room felt disturbed, as though the last ripples of a sound wave hadn’t quite flattened away.
She took off her coat, her old coat- where’s the new coat, Francie? — and hung it over the back of a chair.
“When did you get back?” she said.
“Moments ago.”
“How was the trip?”
“Didn’t you get my message?” Enjoyable, asking that. Dance on my string, Francie.
“Yes, but it didn’t say much.”
Enough to do the job. “Cautious optimism, then-how does that sound?”
“Fine.” She was watching him, waiting for details, waiting for.. for some suggestion that he might be moving to Fort Lauderdale, of course! What better moment to spring a surprise:
“Your tennis partner called. She’s invited us to dinner tonight.”
Oh, Francie was very good, showing almost no reaction at all. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll cancel.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“I know how you hate those things.”
“Not at all. In fact, I’ve already accepted.”
“You want to go?”
“Why not? She sounds… charming, and she is your tennis partner. You must be a nice fit.”
“A nice fit?”
“On the court. You’re in the finals, after all.”
“Anne’s a good player.”
He poured another glass of water, started for the door that led to his basement room, stopped with his hand on the knob. “Her husband’s coming, too,” he said. “I didn’t quite catch his name.” He paused, his back to her. “Fred, is it?”
“Ned.”
That surprised him. He’d expected something craven: “I’m not sure” or “Ned, I believe.” Surprised him and infuriated him. He went downstairs without another word.
Roger sat by the glassed-in window in the spectators’ gallery off the bar, overlooking court one. On the court, the umpire was already in her chair, and the players were warming up their serves. He studied them one by one. First, the opposition: a stocky woman with an uncoordinated service motion, each component slightly mistimed, and a thinner one with better form but little power. Then he turned to Francie and her partner: Francie had improved her serve since he’d last seen her play, years before; she’d perfected her slide step, now got her legs nicely under the ball, hit it hard. And her partner, Anne: a delicate-looking woman, she reminded him of a Vassar girl he’d dated long ago, his only serious girlfriend before Francie. Anne had the best form of all, but she wasn’t putting a single serve in the court. He leaned forward, trying to figure out why, at the same time hearing the gallery-there was room for fifteen or twenty people, no more-fill around him, hearing Francie’s name mentioned more than once. He should have been prepared, but was not, for that smooth voice.
“This seat taken?”
He turned to face radio boy. “No.”
“Thanks.” Radio boy sat down beside him. He held up crossed fingers. “My wife’s playing for all the marbles.”
“So is mine,” said Roger.
Radio boy looked down at the court. “Which one is she?”
Roger pointed her out.
“Oh, Francie,” said radio boy. “I met her the other night-when Anne twisted her ankle.” He held out his hand. “Ned Demarco.”
Smooth, smoother even than Francie. Roger had no choice but to shake his hand, hand that had been all over his wife. “Roger Cullingwood.”
“Nice to meet you, Roger. Let’s hope we bring them a little luck.”
Roger smiled, a smile that spread and spread, almost culminating in that laughing bark. But he held it in and said, “There’s no luck in tennis.”
“Heads,” said Francie. The coin spun in the air, bounced on the court. The umpire bent over it.
“Tails,” she said.
Francie and Anne touched racquets, moved back to return serve, Anne in the deuce court, Francie in the ad. “How’s the ankle?” Francie said.
“I feel fine.”
But she didn’t look fine: her face was colorless, except for the mauve depressions under her eyes, and the eyes themselves couldn’t meet Francie’s gaze.
“Hungry?” said Francie.
“No.”
“Me either,” said Francie. She glanced up into the gallery, saw Roger and Ned side by side, talking. Even though she hadn’t been able to derail Anne’s dinner plans, had prepared herself for the possibility that they might sit together, she wasn’t prepared. She swung her racquet a few times, tried to make her arm feel long. “Let’s work up a fucking appetite,” she said.
Anne smiled, a smile barely there, quickly gone. Was she about to burst into tears? What the hell was going on? Tennis, Francie. Just watch the ball.
The server tucked one ball under her skirt, held up the other-“Play well,” Francie said-and served. Not a hard serve, not deep in the box, on Anne’s forehand. By now Francie had seen Anne do many good things with a serve like that-the crosscourt chip, the lob into the corner, the down-the-line putaway. She had never seen her jerk it ten feet wide, never seen her hit with such a tight, awkward motion. A little spot of color appeared on Anne’s cheek.
“Sorry,” she said, not for the last time.
“Not a problem,” Francie said, also not for the last time.
When the match ended an hour and fifteen minutes later, the red spot had spread all over Anne’s face, down her neck, vanishing beneath her collar. But Francie had stopped seeing that bright redness, stopped hearing the “sorry’s,” stopped saying encouraging little things, stopped noticing Anne’s double faults, unforced errors, mishits, blocked all that right out. Blocked out everything in her life as well-Ned, Roger, the cottage. She just played, forgot her life and played as she had never played before: winning her serve at love in almost every game, hitting winners from all over the court, making shots she seldom even attempted, topspin lobs from both sides, inside-out forehands, backhand overheads. Everything went in. At the same time she learned that Vince Lombardi had been wrong, that winning wasn’t the only thing, or everything-it was nothing. All that mattered was hitting that ball on
