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Days later I talk to Perry and ask him to put aside a nest egg of Nike stock in Frankie’s name. When Brooke and I next drop into Campagnola, I tell Frankie about it. The shares can’t be touched for ten years, I say, but by then they should be worth enough to significantly light-en that tuition burden.

Frankie’s bottom lip trembles. Andre, he says, I can’t believe you’d do that for me.

The look on his face is a complete shock. I didn’t understand the meaning and value of education, the hardship and stress it causes most parents and children. I’ve never thought of education like that. School was always a place I managed to escape, not a thing to be treas-ured. Setting aside the stock was merely something I did because Frankie specifically mentioned college and I wanted to help. When I saw what it meant to him, however, I was the one who got educated.

Helping Frankie provides more satisfaction and makes me feel more connected and alive and myself than anything else that happens in 1996. I tell myself: Remember this. Hold on to this. This is the only perfection there is, the perfection of helping others. This is the only thing we can do that has any lasting value or meaning. This is why we’re here. To make each other feel safe.

And as 1996 wears on, safety seems like an especially precious commodity. Brooke is regularly receiving letters from stalkers, threatening her—and sometimes me—with death and unspeakable horrors. The letters are detailed, grisly, sick. We forward them to the FBI. We also ask Gil to work with the agents, monitor their progress. Several times, when a letter is traceable, Gil goes rogue. He boards a plane and pays the stalker a visit. He usually appears early in the morning, just after dawn, at the stalker’s house or workplace. He holds up the letter and says very softly, I know who you are and where you live. Now take a good look at me, because if you ever bother Brooke and Andre again, you will see me again, and you don’t want that, because then it will be on.

The scariest letters can’t be traced. When they rise above a certain gruesome threshold, when they threaten that something is going to happen on a specific date, Gil will stand outside Brooke’s brownstone while we sleep. By stand I mean stand. On the stoop. Arms folded. He stations himself there, looking left, then right, and he stays that way all night.

Night after night.

The strain, the sordidness, exact a heavy toll on Gil. He worries constantly that he’s not doing enough, that he may have missed something, that he’ll blink or look away one time and some creep will slither past. He becomes obsessed. He falls into a nearly debilitating depression, and I fall with him, because I’m the cause. I brought this on Gil. I feel deep guilt, and I’m beset by premonitions of doom.

I try to talk myself out of it. I tell myself that you can’t be unhappy when you have money in the bank and own your own plane. But I can’t help it, I feel listless, hopeless, trapped in a life I didn’t choose, hounded by people I can’t see. And I can’t discuss any of it with Brooke, because I can’t admit to such weakness. Feeling depressed after a loss is one thing, but feeling depressed about nothing, about life in general, is another thing altogether. I can’t feel this way. I refuse to admit that I feel this way.

Even if I wanted to discuss it with Brooke, we’re not communicating well these days.

We’re not on the same frequency. We don’t have the same bandwidth. For instance, when I try to talk with her about Frankie, about the satisfaction of helping him, she doesn’t seem to hear. After the initial fun of introducing me to Frankie, she’s cool about him, indifferent, as if he’s played his part and now it’s time for him to move offstage. This follows a precedent, a pattern that repeats itself with many people and places Brooke brings into my life. Museums, galleries, celebrities, writers, shows, friends—I often get more from them than she does. Just as I start to enjoy something, to learn from it, she casts it aside.

It makes me wonder if we’re a good fit. I don’t think so. And yet I can’t step back, can’t suggest we take a break, because I’m already distancing myself from tennis. With no Brooke and no tennis, I’ll have nothing. I fear the void, the darkness. So I cling to Brooke, and she clings back, and though the clinging seems loving, it’s more like the clinging in that painting in the Louvre. Holding on for dear life.

As Brooke and I approach our two-year anniversary, I decide that we should formalize our clinging. Two years is a meaningful benchmark in my love life. In every previous relationship two years has been the make-or-break moment—and I’ve always chosen break. Every two years I grow tired of the girl I’m dating, or she grows tired of me, as if a timer goes off in my heart. I was with Wendi two years, and then she declared our relationship open, which pre-figured the end. Before Wendi I was with a girl in Memphis for exactly two years, and then I bolted. Why my love life runs in two-year cycles, I don’t know. I wasn’t even aware of the pattern until Perry pointed it out.

Whatever the reason, I’m determined to change. At twenty-six I believe this pattern needs to be broken, now, or I’ll be thirty-six, looking back on a series of two-year relationships that went nowhere. If I’m going to have a family, if I’m going to be happy, I’ve got to break this cycle, which means pushing myself past the two-year mark, forcing myself to commit.

Of course, technically, it hasn’t been two years with Brooke. With our hectic schedules, with my playing and her filming, we’ve actually spent only a few months together. We’re still getting to know each other, still learning. Part of me knows I shouldn’t force a decision. Part of me simply doesn’t want to be married right now. But who cares what I want? When is what I want ever a good index of what I should do? How often do I enter a tournament, wanting to play, only to lose in the early rounds? How often do I enter reluctantly, feeling like hell, only to win? Maybe marriage—the ultimate match play, the ultimate single elimination tournament—is the same way.

Besides, everyone around me is getting married. Perry, Philly, J.P. In fact, Philly and J.P.

met their wives together, on the same night. After the Summer of Revenge, it’s the Winter of Marriage.

I ask Perry for advice. We talk for hours in Vegas and on the phone. He leans toward marriage. Brooke is the one, he says. How are you going to do better than a Princeton-educated supermodel? After all, didn’t we fantasize about her years ago? Didn’t he predict that she’d come along? And now here she is—destiny. What’s the problem? He reminds me of Shadowlands. C. S. Lewis doesn’t become fully alive, doesn’t grow up, until he opens himself to love.

Love is how we grow up, the movie says. And as Lewis reminds his students: God wants us to grow up.

Perry says he knows of an excellent jeweler in Los Angeles. The same jeweler Perry used when he got engaged. Set aside the question of whether or not to propose, he says, and just focus for a moment on the ring.

I know the kind of ring Brooke wants—round, Tiffany cut—because she’s told me. Straight out. She’s never shy about sharing her opinions on jewels, clothes, cars, shoes. In fact, the most animated talks we have are about things. We used to talk about our dreams, our childhoods, our feelings. Now we avidly discuss the best sofas, the best stereos, the best cheeseburgers, and while I find such talk interesting, an important aspect of the art of living, I fear Brooke and I put undue emphasis on it.

I gird myself, phone the jeweler and tell her I’m in the market for an engagement ring. The words come out croaky. I feel my heart pound. I ask myself, Shouldn’t this be a joyous moment—one of the great moments of life? Before I can answer, the jeweler is peppering me with her own questions. Size? Carat? Color? Clarity? She keeps talking about clarity, asking me about clarity.