Chang-Rae Lee - Aloft

"You kicked The Stank's butt, Mr. Battle?" the other associate asks. I think his name is Kenton.

"No way," I try to reply, through a mouthful of smoked-trout frittata.

"My old friend Jerry here talked some sense to him. I don't remember now. What did you say, Jerry?"

"I think I told him he should probably reconsider, because he really might kill you, and then where would he be? He'd spend the rest of his life at Sing Sing, where they'd let him shower just once a week."

"In fact the same insult," Richie points out.

"I guess he let you go soon after that."

"I guess he did," Richie says, gazing off into his pastures.

"After that, Jerry was my hero. I think I bought you sodas for a week."

"I would say about that."

There's a bit of a lull then, just the soft pocks of the women's ground strokes, and it's clear that the story didn't quite entertain in the way Richie perhaps thought it might, though I can't see how it would, at least from the perspective of impressing his colleagues. But then among a certain class of people, tales of woe and near-ruin have a sneaky kind of honor, these badges of pathos that lend some necessary muck to otherwise wholly splendid, smashing lives. Although Richie and I both left out a few details of the conclusion of that incident — namely, that The Stank (who was not as dumb as people thought) insisted on exacting his own price for Richie's wising-off, such that Richie had to do all his homework for the rest of the year, and also submit to one small physical punishment, both of which, I guess, I brokered. And if you look real close at Richie now you can spot it, how he has the scantest hitch to his gait, this infinitesimal hop to the left foot, where all 175 pounds of The Stank jumped up and landed with his steel shank shitkicker boot, breaking the bones of Richie's foot into an extra dozen little pieces.

"Rat and I'll stomp your fucking head," The Stank said, and Richie, to his credit, just nodded through clenched teeth. I helped him to the nurse's office, where he told her a big rock had fallen on him. She was incredulous, but didn't care enough to pursue it.

The women come back from the tennis court, saying it's getting too hot and humid to play, which it is. We meet and greet.

They're all elite professional types, two lawyers and a portfolio manager, as well as very attractive, though not in the way I prefer, meaning they're a bit too thin and sharply featured, like you might jab yourself if you hugged and kissed them with any real verve. Daisy was slim, but she had a round moon face and was unusually supple of body, and Rita, of course, is a lovely plen-teous armful, legful, everything else, which I'm sure makes a man like me not really yearn to conquer or destroy or run my part of the world, but rather just dwell and loll and hope to float a little, relinquish the burdens.

And I'm wondering how long she'll remain inside, when Richie suggests the men play doubles; but the younger guys balk, saying they're too full with brunch, obviously just wanting to drink more beer, the older fellow still leaning on the table, trying to stretch out his leg, and Richie takes a racquet and hands it to me, practically supplanting my luncheon fork, and tells me I'm up.

"No way. I haven't played in more than twenty years," I tell him, not an untruth, the last time being at a divorced/widowed singles holiday mixer at an indoor tennis bubble, and only because I was bored to death.

"We'll just hit."

"I'm not dressed. Look at my shoes." I show him (and everybody else) my knockoff Top-Siders from Target. I'm wearing long shorts and an old polo shirt with a Battle Brothers logo on the breast, the head of a rake.

"What's your sneaker size?"

"Twelves. There's no way I'd fit into one of yours, what, you're an eight, nine?"

"We've got lots of extra pairs around here. Alva, if you can take a look, please."

"Yes, sir."

"Forget it. Anyway, I just ate."

"So did I."

"I haven't finished."

"Listen, Jerry," Richie says, irked, in his sharp conference table alto, "when are you going to figure out that there's no free lunch around here?"

Suddenly everyone's calling on me to play, except of course for Alva, who has just disappeared inside the house on her errand.

"Okay," I say, looking back to the house for Rita, my only ally, though thinking that perhaps she's been instructed to stay inside by Richie, so that she won't be a good health professional and dissuade this fifty-nine-year-old idiot from killing himself on the court.

We start hitting, or at least Richie does, as I blast his first three balls to me over the fence; after the third, Richie tells me to cut the bullshit. But I'm not playing games; it's my first time with these new titanium racquets, my last weapon being a lac-quered wood model (Jack Kramer Flight) strung with natural gut that you could nicely spin the ball with but had to whip to get any decent pace. This feather-light shiny thing feels like a Ping-Pong paddle in my hand, its head seeming twice as big as it should be — yet another game-improvement technology that makes anyone instantly competent in a sport he should probably never pursue but will anyway, leading to a lifetime of further time/financial investment. But after a couple more moonshots and a few overspins that dive and hit the court on my side of the net, I start to get the old stroke back, my arm feeling like the twenty-year scaffolding around it has been dis-mantled, and soon enough I'm solidly striking my ground strokes, at least those I don't have to range too far for, as my foot-work is shot and probably gone forever. And Ah yes, comes the revelation, I have legs, I have knees. Richie, on the other hand, appears to be playing a narrower court than mine. He's always hitting from the correct body position, knees flexed, shoulder to the target, weight moving forward, and though he doesn't hit for power he consistently places his balls deep, right inside the baseline, and periodically shaves a nasty cut backhand that skids low on the Har-Tru, making me bend that much more than I really can. He's good, for sure, obviously not self-taught, nothing natural about it, but thanks to hundreds of hours with his pro and a home ball machine and traveling tourneys with his club, he's got game.

"Not too shabby, Jerry," Richie calls out. "Not too shabby at all."

I can't really answer because it's taking all my energy to keep the rally going, and although I'm enjoying the action and its rhythms, the breezeless air suddenly seems unbearably humid, like I'm playing inside a dryer vent, and I just stop, letting his approach skip past me unharmed.

"What's the matter?" Richie says, poised at the net.

"I think I'm done."

"Not possible, Jerry," he says, chopping at the top of the white tape with his racquet. He's excited, though hardly breathing. "You gotta keep going. You're just getting into a groove. I think we're nicely matched. I usually play against guys who hit it pretty flat, but you have a lot of topspin on your shots, even your backhand."

"I'm done, Richie. Plus my feet are killing me."

I slip my sockless foot out of the deck shoe, half afraid to look. But it's not horrible, gone the color of watermelon, just that shade (white) skin turns just before the blisters puff out.

"Come on, it's nothing," he tells me, like his play date is being cut short. "Anyway, look, here comes Alva. Rita, too."

I turn around, and indeed the two of them are approaching the court, Alva holding an orange shoebox, Rita sporting an expression of extreme confusion and alarm, as if the sight of me holding a racquet near Richie were tantamount to wielding a machete, as in what is that lunatic Jerry doing now?

Alva flips the box top and hands me a pair of brand-new Nikes. "Twelve on the dot, Mr. Jerry," she says, it seems to me a bit gleefully. "I already laced them up for you. With fresh socks inside."