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Slowly, an actress notices how much food is disappearing at my end of the table. She looks at me, alarmed.

Do you always, she asks, eat like this?

I’M PLAYING IN D.C. and my opponent is Flach. Brad tells me to go out and avenge last year’s Wimbledon loss, but I can’t imagine anything mattering less. Revenge? Again? Haven’t we been down that road before? It makes me sad, and weary, that Brad can be so blinded by his Bradness, that he can be so oblivious to what I’m feeling. Who does he think he is—Brooke?

I lose to Flach, of course, then tell Brad I’m shutting down for the summer.

Brad says, The whole summer?

See you in the fall.

Brooke is in Los Angeles, but I spend most of my time in Vegas. Slim is there, and we get high a lot. It’s a welcome change to have energy, to feel happy, to clear away the vapor lock. I like feeling inspired again, even if the inspiration is chemically induced. I stay awake all night, several nights in a row, relishing the silence. No one phoning, no one faxing, no one bothering me. Nothing to do but dance around the house and fold laundry and think.

I want to get clear of the void, I tell Slim.

Yeah, he says. Yeah. The void.

Apart from the buzz of getting high, I get an undeniable satisfaction from harming myself and shortening my career. After decades of merely dabbling in masochism, I’m making it my mission.

But the physical aftermath is hideous. After two days of being high, of not sleeping, I’m an alien. I have the audacity to wonder why I feel so rotten. I’m an athlete, my body should be able to handle this. Slim gets high all the time, and he seems fine.

Then all at once Slim is not fine. He becomes unrecognizable, and drugs aren’t fully to blame. He was already frantic about the prospect of becoming a father; now he phones me one night from the hospital and says, It happened.

What.

She had the baby. Months ahead of time. A boy. Andre, it only weighs one pound, six ounces. The doctors don’t know if he’s going to make it.

I speed down to Sunrise Hospital, the hospital where Slim and I were born twenty-four hours apart. I stare through the glass at what they tell me is a baby, though it’s only the size of my open palm. The doctors tell Slim and me that the baby is very sick. They have to give him an IV of antibiotics.

The next morning the doctors tell us that the IV popped out. It dripped on the baby’s leg, and now the leg is burned. Also, the baby’s not breathing on his own. They need to put him on a ventilator. It’s risky. The doctors worry that the baby’s lungs aren’t developed enough for the ventilator, but without the ventilator he’ll die.

Slim says nothing. Do whatever you think best, I tell the doctors.

As feared, hours later one of the baby’s lungs collapses. Then the other. Now the doctors say the lungs really can’t handle the ventilator, but without the ventilator the baby will die.

They simply don’t know what to do.

There’s one final hope. A machine that might do the work of a ventilator without harming the lungs. A machine that takes the blood from the baby, oxygenates it, then flows it back into the baby. But the nearest such machine is in Phoenix.

I arrange a medical airplane. A team of doctors and nurses unhooks the baby from the ventilator and carries him like an egg to the tarmac. Then Slim, his girlfriend, and I board a separate plane. A nurse gives us a number to call when we land, to find out if the baby has survived the flight.

As the wheels touch down in Phoenix, I take a breath and dial.

Is he—?

He made it. But now we need to get him onto the machine.

At the hospital we sit and sit. The clock doesn’t move. Slim chainsmokes. His girlfriend weeps quietly over a magazine. I step away for a moment to phone Gil. Kacey isn’t doing well, he says. She’s in constant pain. He doesn’t sound like Gil. He sounds like Slim.

I return to the waiting room. A doctor appears, pulling down his mask. I don’t know if I can handle more bad news.

We managed to get him hooked to the machine, the doctor says. So far, so good. The next six months will tell.

I rent a house near the hospital for Slim and his girlfriend. Then I fly back to Los Angeles. I should sleep on the flight, but instead I stare at the back of the seat in front of me and think how fragile it all is. The next six months will tell. To which of us does that dire statement not apply?

At home, sitting in our kitchen, I tell Brooke the entire sad, awful, miraculous story. She’s fascinated—but mystified.

She asks, How could you get so involved?

How could I not?

WEEKS LATER, Brad talks me into coming back, briefly, to play at the ATP Championships in Cincinnati. I face Gustavo Kuerten, a Brazilian. It takes him forty-six minutes to beat me. My third first-round loss in a row. Gullickson announces that he’s dropping me from the Davis Cup team. I’m one of the best American players ever, but I don’t blame him. Who could blame him?

At the 1997 U.S. Open I’m unseeded for the first time in three years. I’m wearing a peach shirt, and they can’t keep them in stock at the concession stand. Astonishing. People still want to dress like me. People want to look like me. Have they taken a good look at me lately?

I reach the round of sixteen and play Rafter, who’s having his breakout year. He reached the semis of the French Open, and he’s my personal favorite to win this tournament. He’s a great serve-and-volleyer, reminiscent of Pete, but I always thought Rafter and I made a better rivalry, aesthetically, because Rafter is more consistent. Pete can play a lousy thirty-eight minutes, then one lights-out minute and win the set, whereas Rafter plays well all the time.

He’s six foot two, with a low center of gravity, and he can change direction like a sports car.

He’s one of the hardest guys on the tour to pass, and even harder to dislike. He’s all class, win or lose, and today he wins. He gives me a gentlemanly handshake and a smile in which there is an unmistakable trace of pity.

I’M PLAYING STUTTGART IN TEN DAYS. I should lie low, rest, practice, but instead I need to go to North Carolina, a little town called Mount Pleasant, because of Brooke. She’s tight with David Strickland, an actor on her new TV show, Suddenly Susan, and David’s traveling to North Carolina to spend his birthday with family. Brooke wants us to tag along. She thinks it would do us good, hanging out in the country, breathing fresh air, and I can’t think of a good reason to say no.

Mount Pleasant is a quaint Southern town, but I don’t see any mount and it’s not all that pleasant. The Strickland house is comfortable, with old wood floors and soft beds and a warm, enveloping smell of cinnamon and pie crust. But somewhat incongruously it sits on a golf course, its back porch only twenty yards from one of the greens, so there’s always someone in my peripheral vision, lining up a putt. The lady of the house, Granny Strickland, is ample-bosomed, apple-cheeked, straight out of Mayberry, and she’s forever standing at her stove, baking something or whipping up another batch of paella. Not exactly training food, but to be polite I clean my plate and ask for seconds.

Brooke seems to be in heaven, and part of me understands. The house is surrounded by rolling hills and ancient trees, the leaves have turned nine different kinds of orange, and she loves David. They have a special bond, a secret language of inside jokes and comic banter.

Now and then they slip into their characters from the show, doing a scene, then laughing themselves hoarse. Then they quickly explain what they’ve just done and said, trying to bring me up to speed, so I don’t feel left out. But it’s always too little, too late. I’m the third wheel, and I know it.