PAOLO

He’d woken up when he heard the creak of the spiral staircase as Candace made her way out for her audition. But then he dozed for another hour. By then it was too bright to sleep. Blearily, he checked his watch. Eight o’clock and his room was already hazy with morning.

People had hooked up at the party last night—Paolo was sure of it. But not him. A couple of girls had approached, one very sweet and unassuming, the other aggressive and raunchy. Months ago he’d have hooked up with one if not both. Yet he’d made excuses with both these girls. What was wrong with him?

Paolo’s thoughts strayed to Lucy. For a few blissful moments, he imagined her lying in bed alone. Almost certainly, that wasn’t the reality of what lay behind the door to Lucy’s room. It had filled with weirdoes of all types as the night went on. They’d probably all passed out in their clothes.

Paolo slid out of bed. Okay, so he seemed to be developing something of an obsession with Lucy. But it would wear off. Eventually. How long could he be expected to feel this bad?

The house was entirely still. Dressed only in shorts Paolo padded down to the kitchen, where he opened the fridge to get milk. When he closed the door, John-Michael was standing next to the sink wearing a white terry-cloth robe, grinning. It looked like he was still a little drunk, or high.

Paolo muttered a quick “good morning” and then returned to his room. He was fully awake now, and slightly wary of falling asleep again for fear of what he might dream. Instead, he pulled on a T-shirt, some tennis shorts, socks, and his sneakers. From his closet he picked out his second-best racket. He filled an empty water bottle from the cold water tap, grabbed two bananas from the fruit bowl on the kitchen table and left the house, heading for the tennis courts farther down the beach. Once summer vacation started he was booked to hit the tennis tournaments. It was time to begin some extra training, more than the hour or two he was able to snatch at the country club.

The beach was almost deserted, aside from joggers and people walking their dogs. It was surprisingly chilly out on the sand. Last night’s cool air had persisted, whipped into a steady onshore breeze. Paolo finished eating the second banana, tossed the peels into a nearby garbage can, and broke into a gentle jog.

The courts were about a mile down the beach. When he arrived, he was slightly surprised to find someone already there. A jet-black-haired guy in his early twenties, tanned, and with a slim, wiry frame; a body you more often saw on a cyclist than a tennis player. Paolo watched the guy hit a few serves. He was obviously working on some kind of killer ace, throwing all his weight and energy into noisy serves, at least 30 percent of which weren’t landing inside the box. Paolo did a few stretches and then returned to watching the guy serve. After a few minutes, the tennis player stopped, turned to him, and said, “You waiting for someone? Or looking for a game?”

Paolo doubted very much that this guy was going to provide much competition. Last time he’d been ranked, Paolo was twenty-fourth in the United States and tenth in the state. He was a little surprised that the guy didn’t recognize him. But Paolo reminded himself that outside the precious enclaves of the country club and tennis circuit most people just played. They didn’t watch.

Yet, once in a while, this guy landed a serve that impressed Paolo. There were a few that Paolo wasn’t even sure he’d be able to return. The serve, however, was no more the whole game than putting was in golf. A game would be more fun than just working on his serve, as he’d also intended.

“Sure,” Paolo answered. “I’ll play.” They played a set. For a while, Paolo hardly dropped a point. The fifth and sixth games, however, proved to be more of a challenge. Out of the blue, the guy broke his serve. In the end though, Paolo still won the set 6—1.

They shook hands and each sipped from their water bottles.

“My name’s Darius,” the guy said. “Play again? I bet you fifty dollars that next set I can take a game off you.”

“Make it two games,” Paolo said, “and you got a deal.”

“Make it a hundred,” the other guy said with a confident grin.

Paolo took the set again, but this time the guy took one game to deuce six times. It was slightly surprising to be held within a point of winning for quite such a long run, but then again, he wasn’t as warmed up as the other guy, who’d been out awhile.

“You’re very good,” Darius said. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and neck, pushing back shoulder-length hair. Paolo noticed the back of his neck was covered with tattoos—the kind of Eastern mystic stuff people were so into.

“I’m a pro.”

Darius rolled his eyes. “Aha. That explains it. I like to think I’m pretty good. But no one has ever taken a set from me by five games. Ever.”

“Huh. You’re taking it well. Very sportsmanlike.”

“I knew you had to be good. Who else comes out here to practice on a Saturday morning?”

“You?”

Darius laughed. “Busted! Listen, let me win my money back.”

“Do you have it on you?”

Darius shook his head, smiling.

“Then I guess you better win. I tell you what, you win the next game and we’re even.”

To Paolo’s faint surprise, Darius did just that. On the third deuce, Paolo felt his will fade. What did it matter to lose one game? He didn’t know the guy, but he seemed cool. It had been a long time since Paolo had been forced to work so hard in any game that didn’t count.

Darius was panting as Paolo went up to the net to shake his hand.

“Nice going, man,” Paolo said. “You just beat the twenty-fourth best player in the USA.”

“No kidding. Turned out all I needed was a real incentive. Care to see how I play for five hundred?”

Paolo stared for a second. “You’re serious?”

“You’ve seen my game.”

“Dude, it feels wrong.”

Darius fixed him with a steely gaze. “I’m the one making the offer.”

They played another game. Paolo won. Darius insisted on a rematch, double or nothing. In a few more minutes, Paolo had won a thousand dollars. Pretty soon it was two thousand. Each game was hard fought, until both players were straining at every point. When he was four thousand dollars up, Paolo realized that he hadn’t been in a fight this intense since his last pro semifinal.

And then he lost. It was the kind of mistake that any player can make: a double fault on a deuce point. Darius punished him with a volley as fast as Paolo had ever seen. Once again, they were even.

“You gotta let me go up. You’ve had me on the wire this whole time. You need to feel what that’s like,” Darius said, breathing hard.

Paolo stared at Darius. The guy had to be crazy. He’d gotten lucky enough to bring the score back to zero.

“Tell you what: If you’re chicken, I’ll let you go straight back to four thousand. One game. You’ll be right back where you were.”

Paolo shook his head. “I’m not chicken, man. But you got lucky.”

“Yeah. I knew it. You can’t face that I may be better than you. One game. I’ll prove it. I’m wrong—you get four thousand. And then we stop. Word of honor.”

“You want to play one game for four thousand dollars? US dollars?”

Darius plucked the strings of his racket like it was a guitar. “Yeah, US dollars. C’mon, man, out of the two of us, you’re the pro.”

Sweat was streaming down Paolo’s back and into his shorts. He wasn’t tired yet, but at this point he’d usually stop and take a short break. Darius, however, seemed to become calmer the more he played.

For the first time Paolo was beginning to sense some real doubts about his ability. He didn’t like the way this whole scenario was making him feel. Walking away now would leave the doubts lodged deep within his psyche. What if they reared up again in some crucial competition? There were already games in his schedule that Paolo simply couldn’t lose. He’d be haunted forever by Darius and this court.

Paolo felt his resolve solidify into something implacable. He had to beat Darius. Kill the curse before it took hold. The money would just be a bonus. What was at stake was worth a lot more than four thousand dollars to Paolo.

“One game?”

“One. Four large, winner takes all. We finish things here and go straight to the bank for the scratch.”

Paolo looked around. At the mention of the bank, he’d suddenly wondered if Darius was part of some scam to express kidnap him. He’d heard of such things—people being marched to an ATM at gunpoint—but usually in tougher neighborhoods. And it was barely ten o’clock. There was still hardly anyone on the beach apart from the joggers and dog people.

Darius reached back, grabbed a foot, and stretched his hamstrings. “I can beat you, Country Club. You just don’t want to believe it.”

Paolo picked up two yellow balls and headed for the service line.

But it turned out that Darius was right. He beat Paolo, and this time with relative ease.

Three of his four serves blistered past Paolo at speeds that would have pleased any of the world’s top ten players. As they shook hands at the end, Paolo began to wonder how to tell Darius that he didn’t have four thousand dollars to spare.