Double Fault. Lionel Shriver

view of this no-holds-barred woo. Was romance just another contest to him? If Eric was given to infatuations, was Willy one such passing amusement in a string? For her boyfriend’s capacity to shift energies willy-nilly from one engrossment to another was perplexing. It was inconceivable to Willy that anyone should aim to become a bankable tennis player without having nurtured the ambition from the age of five.

      Willy appreciated that Eric seemed to be going about the project with some seriousness. He played for hours everyday. He trained every other morning in Gold’s Gym, with light weights and eight thousand skips of rope. He had scheduled out the whole next year, as she had, with a series of successively more challenging satellite tournaments. Though his ranking sounded abysmal to a layman, Eric had managed to accumulate a handful of computer points after graduating only in May, and through his disappearances in July and August scraped up several more. The bookshelf over his bed was crammed with how-to and tennis history; his knowledge of tennis stars and statistics was encyclopedic. But despite his laudable whole-hog, she was dubious whether such a capricious embrace of what for Willy had been a lifelong passion ought to be too readily rewarded.

      Accordingly, in Flor De Mayo—or Flower of Mayonnaise, as they had now dubbed their regular dive—Willy inquired how he might feel if his aspirations failed to flourish into a career. She observed what Eric, with his thorough research, would have ascertained already: that although Top Tens raked in $10 million a year, the earning curve in tennis fell off sharply. With rankings from 11 to 25, a man might pull in $1 million a year; a woman, Willy noted wrathfully, half that. From 26 to 75, a player’s total income came to no more than $200,000 to $300,000, though that depended on staying in the top 75, and in tennis, standing still could wear you out. However, by 125 you could expect no more than $100,000, half of which would be consumed by economy-class airfare and overpriced hotel breakfasts. If they both didn’t scramble into the top 200 neither would do much better than break even.

      Unperturbed, Eric reached for the remains of her rice. “You pay your rent, don’t you?”

      “Barely. I made thirty thousand dollars last year, which included winning two satellites. Five thousand went to Max. Another five to expenses. If you factor in what I don’t pay for—his coaching time, my dorm at Sweetspot—I’m in the red. How do you plan to make ends meet?”

      Eric hunted out chunks of pork. “My father.”

      “What?”

      “Why look so shocked? My dad’s backing me my first two years on the circuit. If I succeed, I won’t need him. If I don’t, I do something else. But I doubt that will prove necessary.” Eric licked his fingers.

      “Don’t you want to make it on your own?”

      “I never said word-one about wanting to ‘make it on my own.’ I said I wanted to make it. How that is achieved is of little consequence. If you’re short and need to fly to Indianapolis, who hands you a ticket? Upchuck. Me, it’s my father. What’s the diff?”

      Willy went quiet.

      Eric lifted her chin. “The profession’s rigged anyway. How do you earn computer points? By winning tournaments that award computer points. How do you get into tournaments that award computer points? By having computer points. That’s not the only catch-22. How do you make a living playing tennis? By getting into the top 200. How do you get into the top 200? By devoting one hundred percent of your time to tennis, and thereby not making a living. You can’t get there from here with a day job, Wilhelm. This is still an upper-class sport. I’m sorry your own father hasn’t been supportive, and I’m glad, financially anyway, that you’ve got Max. But you won’t make me feel lousy about my dad. Patronage is how it’s done.”

      She dropped it, eaten by a new curiosity. “Underwood? Why do you want to play tennis professionally? After an Ivy League degree in math?”

      “You wouldn’t go out with a computer hacker, would you? Reason enough.”

      “I’m serious.”

      Eric drummed his fingers. “It’s challenging. Keeps me in shape. I could stand to make a packet of money. And I’ll have to retire by forty at the latest, so it allows for a second career.”

      “You like that? Being forced to quit?”

      “Sure. I need variety. I get bored easily. Who’d want to play tennis all day until they’re ninety-two?”

      “I would!”

      “Well, you’re a nut,” he said affectionately.

      “God, I dread retirement. When I think about how few years I have left, I feel like I’m on death row.”

      “Why do you want to play pro, Wilhelm?”

      “What kind of a stupid question is that?” she snapped.

      Eric laughed. “The same stupid question you asked me.”

      “In my case that’s like asking why do I insist on breathing.”

      Eric examined her with real incredulity. “You’ve really never asked yourself that, have you?”

      “Not once,” Willy acceded. “I don’t have reasons, though I was pretty sure that you would. I’m a tennis player. I can’t envision being anything else and still being me. If I thought up explanations, they’d come afterwards. They’d just be something to say.”

      “OK, but unreasoning isn’t generally a compliment.”

      Willy had the queer impression that he was jealous. “You grew up with a whole series of ambitions,” she said softly, taking his hand. “Politics, basketball, mathematics. Me, maybe you’d call me limited, or obsessive. I’ve always had one true love.”

      His eyes narrowed another millimeter, and he slipped his fingers out from beneath her palm. “Are you accusing me of being a dilettante?”

      “I’m not accusing you of anything!” Willy cried in exasperation. “I’m sure you’re more adaptable than I am. You’re brilliant at all kinds of stuff, and that’s hardly a criticism. But I’m not the only one who’s irrational or less than candid with themselves. Because you’ve never answered my question. What if it turns out you don’t have the goods in tennis? What if your two years go by and you’re stranded in the 800’s? Or unranked altogether? That happens, and to decent players. How would you take it?”

      “Told you,” he said. “Do something else.” Eric didn’t usually speak with his mouth full; the garbling of his answer seemed deliberate, as if he didn’t want to hear it himself.

      “Like what?”

      “Dunno,” he said tersely. “What about you?”

      “What about me what?”

      “If you don’t make it.”

      Willy was tempted to defend that $30,000 didn’t sound like much but it was plenty for her rank and she was starting to make a living and so she had already, to some degree, “made it,” unlike some people who still got a monthly check from their daddies.

      “I can’t imagine, I—try not to think about it.”

      “Exactly.” Eric dabbed his mouth with a teachery expression, as if he’d been putting her to a test again and she’d barely passed. “I don’t believe in contingency plans. A little imagination is a dangerous thing. Picture the future where you’re foundering and before you know it this bleak landscape is framed on your living room wall. Put up travel posters. You’ll do great. I’ll do great. We’ll do great.”

      He spanked rice grains off his hands. Though only a year his senior, for once Willy felt appreciably older than her boyfriend.

      The National Tennis Center had a wretched reputation among players—the crowds were rambunctious and disrespectful; the stadium was plunked smack-dab under LaGuardia Airport’s flight path. Willy had long turned a deaf ear to such carping. She herself had been forced to focus through a foofooraw