Double Fault Read Free Page B

get." Willy was offended in return. She doled out flattery in such parsimonious dribs, to anyone, that she had expected him to run home with the tribute and stick it under his pillow. He wouldn't bully her into a standing ovation. He was better than she expected. Period.
      Eric offered to walk Willy to her apartment, but up Broadway the air between them was stiff with grudge. "That was good food," she said laboriously at 110th.
      "You thought it would be ghastly."
      "I did not!"
      " Cuban-Chinese? Beans and stuff? You whined, like, Sher, I mean, if you wanna . Vintage Capriati."
      She laughed. "OK, I thought the food would be revolting." The air went supple. Willy strolled a few inches closer to her companion, though he'd still have to reach for her hand.
      His arms swung free. "What are you doing tomorrow?"
      "Heading up to Westbrook, Connecticut, for the weekend. I train up there."
      "Let me come see you."
      She felt protective of Sweetspot, but a visitor would serve a purpose. "Maybe."
      Eric crimped her phone numbers into the margins of his New York City tennis permit.
      She lingered at her stoop for a kiss. It was not forthcoming. In the glare of the entrance light, Eric's woodsy eyebrows shimmered with mutated stray hairs, some up to an inch and a half long. Intrigued, not really thinking, Willy reached for the longest eyebrow hair to pluck it.
      He slapped her hand.
      "Sorry," he said as Willy rubbed her knuckles. He'd hit her hard. "I like those."
      Cheeks stinging, Willy studied her tennis shoes. "I guess I liked those weird hairs, too," she mumbled. "Maybe that's why I wanted one."
      When she glanced up again, he was pinching the same overgrown straggler; he plucked it and laid it in her palm. "Then it's yours."
      Her fingers closed over the specimen. She didn't know what to say. Willy didn't go on dates.
      "Eric?" It was the first time she'd ever said his name. The syllables felt ungainly on her tongue, their use a monumental concession to the young man's existence. "I did go to college. My father made me. I quit, after my junior year, to go pro. I'm not nineteen, I'm twentythree. I'm way behind. I have very, very little time left."
      In reward for the successful exchange, one eyebrow hair for one confession, he kissed her. Willy could only hold one broad shoulder. The other hand fisted Eric's peculiar gift. Unaccountably, once in her apartment she would store it in a safe place.

    TWO

    M AX UPCHURCH CALLED SWEETSPOT a "School of Tennis," dismissing Nick Bollettieri's more famous Florida academy as a camp . The education Sweetspot students received was better than perfunctory; Max couldn't bear colossal forehands at the expense of confusing Tiananmen Square with Chinese checkers. Max eschewed Bollettieri's reform-school trappings, dispensing with Bradenton's sniffer-dog drug checks, five-dollar fines for chewing gum, and restrictions to one TV program per week. As far as Max was concerned, if parents wanted to pay two thousand dollars a month for their kids to pop bubbles in front of The Munsters it was no skin off his nose. Should his students turn pro they might as well get practice at the tube. Isolated in an indistinguishable string of hotels waiting for the rain to clear or their draw to come up, most journeymen on the tour spent more time watching American reruns than they did on court.
      Despite Sweetspot's unfashionable liberality, Willy was not alone in regarding Max's operation as more elite than his competition's in Florida. Bollettieri accepted 225 would-be champions a go; Max admitted seventy-five. Max Upchurch himself had had a distinguished career, ranked number six in the world in 1971, and making a solid contribution toward pulling the U.S. ahead of Australia playing Davis Cup. As a young aspirant in the late sixties, he'd made a name for himself behind the scenes, finagling with a handful of other infidels to drive this snooty, exclusive,