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I remember vaguely that it takes three weeks for this injury to heal. But I’ve got nine hours before I face Pete. It’s seven in the morning, the match is at four. I call for Brooke. She must be out. I’m lying on my side, saying aloud, This can’t be happening. Please don’t let this be happening.

I close my eyes and pray that I’ll be able to walk onto the court. Even asking for this much seems ridiculous, because I can’t stand. Hard as I try, I can’t get to my feet.

God, please. I can’t not show up for the final of the U.S. Open.

I crawl to the phone and dial Gil.

Gilly, I can’t stand up. I literally can’t stand up.

I’ll be right over.

By the time he arrives, I’m standing, but still having trouble breathing. I tell him what I think it must be, and he concurs. He watches me drink a cup of coffee, then says: It’s time. We need to go.

We look at the clock and both do the only thing we can do in such a moment—we laugh.

Gil drives me to the stadium. On the practice court I hit one ball and the ribs grab me. I hit another. I yell in pain. I hit a third. It still hurts, but I can put some mustard on it. I can breathe.

How do you feel?

Better. I’m about thirty-eight percent.

We stare at each other. Maybe that will be enough.

But Pete is pushing 100 percent. He comes out prepared, braced for a dose of what he saw me give Becker. I lose the first set, 6–4. I lose the second set, 6–3.

I win the third set, however. I’m learning what I can get away with. I’m finding shortcuts, compromises, back doors. I see a few chances to turn this thing into a miracle. I just can’t exploit them. I lose the fourth set, 7–5.

Reporters ask how it feels to win twenty-six matches in a row, to win all summer long, only to run into the giant net that is Pete. I think: How do you think it feels? I say: Next summer I’m going to lose a little bit. I’m 26–1, and I’d give up all those wins for this one.

On the drive back to the brownstone, I’m holding my ribs, staring out the window, reliving every shot of the Summer of Revenge. All that work and anger and winning and training and hoping and sweating, and it leads to the same empty disappointed feeling. No matter how much you win, if you’re not the last one to win, you’re a loser. And in the end I always lose, because there is always Pete. As always, Pete.

Brooke steers clear. She gives me kind looks and sympathetic frowns, but it doesn’t feel real, because she doesn’t understand. She’s waiting for me to feel better, for this to pass, for things to get back to normal. Losing is abnormal.

Brooke has told me that she has a ritual when I lose, a way of killing time until normalcy is restored. While I’m mutely grieving, she goes through her closets and pulls out everything she hasn’t worn in months. She folds sweaters and T-shirts, reorganizes socks and stockings and shoes into drawers and boxes. The night I lose to Pete, I peer into Brooke’s closet.

Neat as a pin.

In our brief relationship, she’s had lots of time to kill.

18

WHILE FACING WILANDER IN DAVIS CUP, I alter my movements to protect my torn rib cartilage, but when you protect one thing you often damage another. I hit an odd forehand and feel a chest muscle pull. It stays warm during the match, but when I wake the next morning I can’t move.

The doctors shut me down for weeks. Brad is suicidal.

A layoff will cost you the number one rank, he says.

I couldn’t care less. Pete is number one, no matter what some computer says. Pete won two slams this year, and he won our showdown in New York. Besides, I still don’t give a rat’s ass about being number one. Would have been nice; wasn’t my goal. Then again, beating Pete wasn’t my goal either, but losing to him has caused me to plummet into a bottomless gloom.

I’ve always had trouble shaking off hard losses, but this loss to Pete is different. This is the ultimate loss, the über-loss, the alpha-omega loss that eclipses all others. Previous losses to Pete, the loss to Courier, the loss to Gómez—they were flesh wounds compared to this, which feels like a spear through the heart. Every day this loss feels new. Every day I tell myself to stop thinking about it, and every day I can’t. The only respite is fantasizing about retirement.

Brooke, meanwhile, is working nonstop. Her acting career is taking off. As per Perry’s advice, she’s bought a house in Los Angeles and she’s been pursuing roles on TV. Now she’s landed a plum, a small guest spot in an episode of the sitcom Friends.

It’s the number one show in the world, she says. Number one!

I wince. That phrase again. She doesn’t notice.

The producers of Friends have asked Brooke to play a stalker. I cringe, thinking of the nightmare she’s endured with stalkers and overly enthusiastic fans. But Brooke thinks her experience with so many stalkers will be good preparation for this part. She says she understands the stalker mind-set.

Plus, Andre, it’s Friends. The number one show on TV. It might lead to a recurring role on the show. And besides the fact that Friends is number one, my episode is going to air right after the Super Bowl—fifty million people will see it. This is like my U.S. Open.

A tennis analogy. The surest way to make me disconnect from her desire. But I pretend to be pleased, and say the right things. If you’re happy, I say, I’m happy. She believes me. Or acts as if she does. Which often feels like the same thing.

We agree that Perry and I will go with her to Hollywood and watch her shoot the episode.

We’ll be in her box, as she’s always been in mine.

Won’t that be fun? she says.

No, I think.

Yes, I say. Fun.

I don’t want to go. But I also don’t want to lie around the house anymore, talking to myself.

Sore chest, wounded ego—even I don’t want to be alone with me.

In the days leading up to the taping of Friends we barricade ourselves in Brooke’s house in Los Angeles. She has a fellow actor come over every day to help run lines. I watch them.

Brooke is keyed up, feeling pressure, training hard, a process that’s familiar to me. I’m proud of her. I tell her she’s going to be a star. Good things are about to happen.

WE ARRIVE AT THE STUDIO late in the afternoon. A half-dozen actors greet us warmly.

They’re the cast, I assume, the eponymous Friends, but for all I know they could be six unem-ployed actors from West Covina. I’ve never seen the show. Brooke hugs them, flushes, stammers, even though she’s already spent days rehearsing with them. I’ve never seen her this starstruck. I introduced her to Barbra Streisand and she didn’t react this way.

I stay a few steps behind Brooke, in the shadows. I don’t want to take any of her limelight, and besides, I’m not feeling sociable. But the actors are tennis fans and they keep drawing me into the conversation. They ask about my injury, congratulate me on a successful year.

The year feels anything but successful, but I thank them as politely as I can and step back again.

They persist. They ask about the U.S. Open. The rivalry with Pete. What’s that like? You guys are great for tennis.

Yes, well.

Are you guys friends?

Friends? Did they really just ask me that? Are they asking because they’re the Friends?

I’d never thought of it before, but yes, I guess Pete and I are friends.

I turn to Perry for support. But he’s like Brooke, weirdly starstruck. In fact he’s going a little native. He’s talking showbiz with the actors, dropping names, playing the insider.

Mercifully, Brooke is summoned to her trailer. Perry and I follow and sit with her while a team of people blows out and combs her hair, and another team tends to her makeup and wardrobe. I watch Brooke as she watches herself in the mirror. She’s so happy, so hyper, like a girl primping for her sweet sixteen party, and I’m so out of place. I feel myself shutting down.