Double Fault by Lionel Shriver Page B

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 of wailing car alarms, plinking ice cream trucks, or thumping outdoor rock concerts in nearly every scrappy tournament she'd entered. As far as Willy was concerned, the National Tennis Center was as reverent and hushed as St. Peter's. If Steffi Graf groused that she couldn't concentrate there, Willy Novinsky would happily take her place.
      Willy loved Flushing Meadow. She'd been a ballgirl there in the McEnroe era, and had a crush on the