Read Online Double Fault by Lionel Shriver - Free Book Online Page B

mutual revulsion for Andre Agassi, so who do you have in mind?"
      "Me," said Willy quietly.
      "Hey, come here." Eric reached and pulled her to his side, and then thought better of the overhead light. He lit a candle and killed the third-degree glare.
      "You like these stony, stoic types," she went on in the crook of his shoulder. "But I stamp my feet, leap up and down—"
      "And talk to yourself all the time," he finished for her with a smile. " Take your racket back! Kill the son of a bitch! Follow through on that volley!"
      "You're making fun of me."
      "Of course." He kissed her forehead. "You charm the pants off me on the tennis court, you know that."
      "But you're so contained. I've never seen you display a single emotion in a match."
      "That's illegal?"
      "It's inhuman! If your face never tingles with humiliation when someone slams an ace down your throat, if you don't experience a trace of exasperation when you muff a simple drive that you'd hit right since you first picked up a racket—well, then, I can't see how you could have feelings about anything!"
      "Like what?"
      She squirmed. "I don't know, whatever…"
      " Like what? " he needled into her neck, teasing up under her chin, where he knew she was ticklish.
      " Me! " Willy tried not to laugh. "Me, me me!" He moved to her ribs, which precluded addressing this very serious issue in their relationship with proper gravity. "All your fascist blather about control …and that snotty, antiquated bullshit about dignity… " She wriggled out of his clutches long enough to deliver, "And on top of that, you need 'variety' and get 'bored easily'!"
      Eric backed off, shaking his head. "So if I could possibly get bored with tennis, of course I'll get bored with you."
      "Well, how do I know? You play like a martinet. You have no commitment to tennis, since you look forward to quitting. Where's the devotion, the fire? Taken to its extreme, self-possession is mentally ill!"
      In a single motion, Eric slipped one arm under her knees, the other behind her back, and lifted her off the couch. He marched with Willy bundled against his chest to the bedroom and dropped her, bouncing, on the mattress. He dropped on top, stretching her arms overhead with both her wrists manacled in his hands.
      " Mentally ill ," Eric lectured, "is not knowing the difference between some stupid little sport and real life. One of the main reasons I like Edberg and Becker is they keep their careers in perspective. They recognize that the rest of the world would roll merrily along without them or tennis, if it came to that.
      "Now, do I feel anything on the court?" he asked rhetorically, his forehead pressed against her own. "Sometimes. I don't show it, and that's a gambit. I play better when I don't give my reactions away. But tennis is not about 'everything,' you moron, not by a mile. Sure I like control, and dignity, in its place. This," his hands slid down her arms, "ain't the place."
      Grappling under her shirt, Eric popped a button. Willy decided this was not a very good time to go look for it. When he unzipped his fly his cock sprang forward, and for once Eric didn't seem selfpossessed but simply possessed. He wouldn't wait for them both to get all their clothes off, and plunged into her with his jeans still binding his thighs. Willy had always considered fucking partially clad tacky, but now she changed her mind. Urgency took precedence over aesthetics. Apparently Eric did not always bother about appearances, about what people might think; he groaned loudly enough to titillate adjoining tenants. Yet his consideration was not so readily shed as his sense of decorum; even in the heat of the moment, he'd managed to slip a condom on.
      Eric flipped her gracefully on top, and grasped Willy by the waist. He raised her whole body until the tendons in his arms stood out. Bringing her pelvis back tight to his, he bellowed. In the echo of his