Lawrence Block - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, No. 6. Whole No. 790, June 2007

© 2007 by Lawrence Block

A Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and one of the nation’s most popular crime novelists, Lawrence Block hasn’t always devoted as much time to short fiction as fans of his taut short stories might wish. This year we’re lucky; EQMM has three of his stories in its line-up, and there’s a new book of Keller stories, Hit Parade (William Morrow), not long off the presses and also out in audio.

The game changed over time. Technology made change inevitable: Racquets were larger and lighter and stronger, and even shoes got a little better every few years. And human technology had much the same effect; each generation of tennis players was taller and rangier than the one before it, and players improved on genetics by getting stronger through weight training and more durable through nutrition. So of course the game changed. It had to change.

But the players still — with rare exception — wore the traditional white clothing, and that was one thing he hoped would never change. Oh, some of them sported logos, and maybe that was inevitable, too, with all the money the corporations were throwing around. And you saw colored stripes on some of the white shirts and shorts, and periodically the self-appointed Brat of the Year would turn up in plaid shorts and a scarlet top, but by and large white prevailed.

And he liked it that way. For the women, especially. He didn’t really care what the men wore, and, truth to tell, found it difficult to work up much enthusiasm for the men’s game. Service played too great a role, and the top players scored too many aces. It was the long drawn-out points that most engaged him, with both players drawing on unsuspected reserves of strength and tenacity to reach impossible balls and make impossible returns. That was tennis, not a handful of 120-mile-an-hour serves and a round of applause.

And there was something about a girl dressed entirely in white, shifting her weight nervously as she waited for her opponent to serve, bouncing the ball before her own serve. Something pure and innocent and remarkably courageous, something that touched your heart as you watched, and wasn’t that what spectator sports were about? Yes, you admired the technique, you applauded the skill, but it was an emotional response of the viewer to some quality in the participant that made the game genuinely engaging, and even important.

Interesting how some of them engaged you and others did not.

The one who grunted, for example. Grunted like a little pig every time she hit the ball. Maybe she couldn’t help it, maybe it was some Eastern breathing technique that added energy to her stroke. He didn’t care. All he knew was that it put him right off Miss Piglet. Whenever he watched her play, he rooted for her opponent.

With others it was something subtler. The stance, the walk, the attitude. One responded or one didn’t.

And, of course, the game the woman played was paramount. Not just the raw ability but the heart, the soul, the inner strength that enabled one player to reach and return shots that drew no more than a futile wave from another.

He sat in his chair, drew on his cigarette, watched the television set.

This one, this Miranda DiStefano. Sixteen years old, her blond hair hanging in a ponytail, her face a perfect oval, her nose the slightest bit retroussé. She had a slight overbite, and one closeup revealed braces on her teeth.

How charming...

He’d seen her before, and now he watched her play a match she was not likely to win, a quarterfinal that pitted her against one of the sisters who seemed to win everything these days. He liked both sisters well enough, respected them as the dominant players of their generation, but they didn’t engage him the way Miranda did. She didn’t have to win, he just wanted to watch her play, and do the best she could.

A vision in white. Perfectly delightful and charming. He wished only the best for her.

There were sports you could see better on television. Boxing, certainly. Even if you sat at ringside, you didn’t get nearly as good a view of the action as the TV camera provided. Football was a tossup; at home you had the benefit of good closeup camera work and instant replay, while from a good stadium seat you could watch a play develop and see the whole of a pass pattern. Basketball was better in person, and hockey (if you could endure it at all) was only worth watching in person; on TV, you could never find the bloody puck.

TV covered tennis reasonably well, but it was much better in person. The court was small enough so that, from a halfway decent seat, you were assured a good view of the whole of it. And, of course, watching in person had other benefits that it shared with other sports. There were no commercials, no team of announcers droning on and on, and, most important, it was exciting in a way that televised sport could never be. You were there, you were watching, it was happening right before your eyes, and your excitement was magnified by the presence of hundreds or thousands of other similarly excited fans.

He’d been here for the entire tournament, and was glad he’d come. He’d managed to see some superb tennis (as well as some that was a good deal less than superb) and he’d made a point of watching all of Miranda DiStefano’s matches. The blond girl won her first two matches in straight sets, and he’d sat there beaming as she dispatched both opponents quite handily. In the third round, his heart sank when she double-faulted to lose the first set tiebreaker, then had her serve broken midway through the second set. But she rallied, she summoned up strength from within, and broke back, and went on to win that set. The final set was no contest; Miranda, buoyed by her second-set comeback, played brilliantly, and you could see the will to win drain out of her opponent, a black-haired Croatian girl who was five inches taller than Miranda, with muscles in her arms and shoulders that hinted at either steroids or a natural abundance of testosterone.

And Miranda crushed her. How his spirit soared to see it!

Now she was playing in the quarterfinals, and it looked as though she was going to beat the bigger, taller girl on the opposite side of the net. A strong player, he thought, but lacking finesse. All power and speed, but no subtlety.

A lesbian, from the look of her. He hadn’t heard or read anything to that effect, but you could tell. Not that he had anything against them. They were as ubiquitous in women’s sports as were their male counterparts in ballet and the design trades. If they played good tennis, he could certainly admire their game.

But he wouldn’t leave his house to watch a lesbian, let alone travel a few hundred miles.

He watched, his heart singing in his chest, as Miranda worked the ball back and forth, chasing her opponent from one side of the court to the other, running the legs off the bigger girl. Running her ragged, crushing her, beating her.

He was there two days later, cheering her on in the semifinals. Her opponent was one of the sisters, and Miranda gave her a good fight, but the outcome was never in doubt. He applauded enthusiastically every time she won a point, cheered a couple of difficult returns she managed, and took her eventual loss in good grace — as did Miranda, skipping up to the net to congratulate the girl who beat her.