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wouldn't be overturned if Edberg's shot had landed so far wide that it bounced on our picnic basket…. Christ, what a trashy outburst."
      "Punt is 5–1 down! He's frazzled."
      "So if he can't play tennis, he could at least behave himself. Losing all the more behooves him to be gracious."
      "Gracious defeat is always insincere, and if I were being humiliated at what I cared about most in the world in front of thousands of people, I'd blow off a little steam at the umpire myself."
      Meanwhile, Larry Punt was giving his all. He was drenched in sweat, and lunged for every return, if reliably to no avail. For Edberg was in a zone, and deep lobs drove him to his backcourt for only the one winning overhead. Willy tried to get Eric to appreciate that at least Punt didn't roll over.
      Eric shrugged. "Makes for better spectating, but doesn't affect the result."
      "God, you sound so contemptuous…when he's playing his guts out—"
      "Quiet!" shushed a woman behind them.
      "Keep it down," Eric muttered.
      "Oh, who cares what the buttinsky thinks?"
      "I care," he scolded.
      "Of course you do; anything to do with what other people think and how somebody appears. All this stiff-upper-lipping tut-tut when you're not even British—" Willy burst into tears.
      "Willy! What's with you?" Apologizing to their neighbors, Eric ushered her from the stands.
      "Honey." He wrapped his arms around her under what might have been the Open's single spindly tree. "What's wrong? I thought we were having a nice time."
      Now that Willy had the most to say she couldn't talk. "All you care about is—" Her throat caught. "All you care about is—" she would have to choose single words carefully " —winning ."
      She expected the usual There-there-I-care-about -you sweetheart! but instead he laughed and smoothed her hair and said, "Oh, Willy. Not nearly as much as you do."

      Her sniffles subsided and they resumed their seats, where Willy discovered that she didn't revile Edberg quite so virulently any longer. Yet on the subway back to Manhattan, Willy was reserved, choosing to stand and read the MTA's Poem of the Week even when two adjacent seats became available.
      "Little Miss Macho," Eric muttered in her ear, swinging from the next strap to dig a forefinger discreetly into her ribs. "Can't be caught sitting down."
      He meant lighten up; she couldn't. Some bitter pill from their outing was still undissolved. "Happy?" Over the clatter of wheels, she had to shout. "The impertinent nothing was crushed. More laurels for the automaton."
      "I'm delirious with joy," he said, flouncing into one of the seats. Eric wouldn't be lured into another public confrontation, and grabbed a discarded New York Times.
      Willy grew alarmed that in reviving the antagonism she'd gone too far, and now Eric wouldn't come home with her. At that prospect, her face drained and broke out in a sticky sweat. The train jostled her clenched jaw, and her teeth clacked. When Eric didn't tromp out of the car at Grand Central for his connection with the number six, she went so weak-kneed with relief that she dropped into the seat next to him, with only one stop to go. Something awful was happening. It shouldn't have mattered so much, whether he stayed over. Willy had slept complacently alone most of her life.
      "OK, I give up!" he declared, slamming the door of her apartment. "Truth is, you don't give a rat's ass about Larry Punt. So what's this really about?"
      Eric switched on the overhead, and in its blaze Willy felt pasty and exposed.
      "I'm a little distressed that we admire such different players," she said haltingly.
      "You like Boris Becker?" he fired at her, bombing into the couch.
      "Yes, I—"
      "Bingo. We have something in common . Feel better?"
      "There's one other player who we may not see eye to eye on." Willy stood staring down at her hands.
      "I can't see what better to unite any couple than