There was something anticlimactic about this latest development, but I was willing to welcome any anticlimax at this point. It wasn’t as if all of the uneasiness I’d been feeling had completely dissipated-in fact, plenty remained. But now I could focus on my own personal life, and my professional life, too. If I concentrated hard enough over the next twenty-four hours, I just might be able to retrieve my normal status from the Dumpster into which it had been so callously tossed by recent events.
It would have been considerate of Hilary to have sent her message a few hours earlier, because then I would have had sufficient time to invent a reason why tennis was out of the question on this particular day. But it was officially too late to weasel out of the game now, and while the debilitating stiffness I’d felt when I’d first awakened hadn’t worn off completely, it had worn off too well to serve as an excuse. I began mentally steeling myself for what would certainly be both a mortifying and physically unpleasant episode.
Since we no longer needed to trail Alex Cutler it no longer made sense to rent an additional car. Instead, Peter and I dropped Luisa and Abigail at the mall, promising to pick them up after the game, and headed to the tennis club. The drive from the mall took less than five minutes, but it was still enough time for Peter to start humming again. Even worse, I found myself humming along. At least with the Rice-a-Roni theme, I knew the words, but now I was held captive by this nameless, unknown piece of jazz, and if it didn’t stop soon, an exorcism of some sort might be in order.
The clubhouse was an understated California mission-style building tucked at the end of a narrow road not far from the Stanford campus. Peter and I pulled up to the front of the building and entrusted the Prius to the care of a valet. I was still curious as to just what Alex Cutler would be driving, and the valet assured us that neither he nor Caro had yet arrived, so we decided to wait for them outside. From the courts behind the clubhouse we could hear the ominous thwacks of balls meeting racket strings accompanied by the occasional grunt or shout of a particularly zealous player. Peter seemed to be inspired by this, taking practice swings with his own racket as we waited. Meanwhile, I scanned the cloudless sky, hoping for signs of a sudden torrential downpour or locust infestation.
I wasn’t sure what, exactly, I expected of Alex’s and Caro’s respective means of transportation. I probably thought there was still a good chance Alex would drive up in a Lamborghini, although I was also glad Peter hadn’t agreed to bet me on that point. And I was reasonably certain Caro would drive up in a hybrid of her own, in a nice, sporty but feminine color like pale blue or maybe seafoam green.
Of course, I should have known better. When they did arrive, each within a minute of the other, there were no Lamborghinis, nor were there any hybrids. There weren’t even any cars.
They were both riding bicycles.
And not just any bicycles. These were fancy, multi-geared racing bikes, with complicated levers on the handlebars and little slots for water bottles and tire pumps. After Caro embraced me as if I were her long-lost Siamese twin and Alex said hello all around, I endured a lengthy discussion of the bikes’ special features, the best hundred-mile rides in the area, and the relative merits of road biking versus mountain biking. I was almost grateful when Alex pointed out we should hurry if we didn’t want to miss our court time.
The two of them were already wearing their tennis whites, and Caro looked every bit as blond, tanned and glorious as I’d feared. I thanked her for the clothes she’d brought to lend me, charmingly packed in an L.L. Bean tote she’d strapped to the back of her bike, and Peter and I went to change. In the ladies’ locker room, I unpacked the bag’s contents and spread them out on a bench. They included a sports bra in a size thirty-four C, which, short of emergency breast implants, I would never either fill or need, a white tennis dress trimmed with pink piping, and little white socks with matching pink pom-poms. There was also a note, written in a neat cursive script:
This is my favorite tennis outfit-it always brings me luck! I hope it isn’t too big on your adorable little figure! Can’t wait for our game-it’s going to be so much fun! C
It seemed as if everyone in the Bay area, and not just the Forrest family, was confused about the meaning of the word fun. I took off my own clothes, storing them in the locker I’d been assigned, and donned the dress Caro had left me, at which point it became abundantly clear that little was the operative word for any description of my figure. The skirt should probably have hit at midthigh, but without Caro’s various curves to fill it out it came down nearly to my knees, although it was hard to tell since the fabric was almost the exact same color as my skin. I pulled my hair into a ponytail as fast as I could in order to minimize any time in front of the mirror, grabbed the racket Caro had described as “one of” her spares, took a deep breath and went to join the others.
I knew that the odds of my having developed any athletic skill or eye-hand coordination since I’d last been forced to play this game were minimal, so I felt it was important to set everyone’s expectations suitably low. “In case Peter didn’t tell you,” I announced to Caro and Alex as we walked onto the court, “I really suck at this.”
Caro laughed. “I’m sure you’re much better than you think. And we’re just going to play a friendly game. Nothing to worry about.”
“And it’s doubles,” said Peter. “I’ve got you completely covered.”
We spent a few minutes hitting back and forth, with Peter and me on one side and Caro and Alex on the other. I managed to avoid most of the balls that came my way, but the one I did hit made it over the net, although it wobbled a bit on top before falling over. “See,” said Peter encouragingly. “You’re a natural.”
And then the match began for real.
If this had been a movie, the next hour would have been condensed into a montage set to something peppy and upbeat, with snippets of Peter and Caro and Alex expertly sending the ball across the net interspersed with snippets of me for comic relief. There would have been shots of the ball flying off the tip of my racket and onto the next court, the ball zooming past me as my racket hit nothing but air, the ball zooming at me as I jumped out of its path, and at the shining climax, the moment when I swung at the ball so hard I lost my grip and my racket flew from my hand, soared twenty feet up into the air and nearly decapitated Peter on its descent.
It didn’t help that everyone was so nice about my stunning ineptitude. Then things got even worse when, with one set over, we switched partners for a second set. Peter and Caro played together as a seamless team, a tennis pas de deux, fielding the balls with the sort of ease that comes only with years of shared practice. And while Peter had, against all odds, seemed to find my gaffes endearing, Alex Cutler found them less so, though he did do his best to hide his annoyance. My screwing up also appeared to be contagious; Alex’s own skills deteriorated as the game wore on, and I noticed he was limping slightly.
“Is your leg all right?” I asked. It was his serve, and I was handing him the balls I’d collected from the net. It seemed only fair to do the collecting since I was the one who’d sent them into the net in the first place.
“Oh, it’s fine,” he said. “I bumped into something the other day, and my knee’s a bit sore. That’s all.”
“Are you sure you want to keep playing?” I asked, trying not to sound as hopeful as the prospect of an early finish made me feel.