“So, you know how to play?” Antoni spoke with a thick accent, his voice low and his tongue heavy.

“I watch everything,” she said, lying. “Even the small tournaments.” Franny tried to think of one to name, but couldn’t. “I have an excellent grasp of the rules.”

“And the last time you played?” Antoni reached into his pocket and pulled out a tennis ball. Franny wished that Charles had come along and was close enough to make a joke. It was strange, having this experience alone, when it would clearly (so clearly) become something that she would write about, a story she would codify into a moment on the page. There would be a witty and slightly naughty joke from her best friend, right there. Only he wasn’t. Franny could tell him all about it after, he would make the joke then, and after that, it was a matter of editing.

“Oh,” Franny said. “Ages ago. A decade?” One of the women in her detestable book club played tennis every week in Central Park, as spry and mean as a goose, and she and Franny had had a game one morning. The woman pelted her with ball after ball, always giggling afterward in faux apology. The bruises had lasted for weeks. “I’m not an athlete. I’m a writer. You know, there haven’t been very many good books about tennis. Do you ever think about writing a memoir? I have a lot of friends who have ghostwritten sports books. We should talk, if you’re interested.”

“Okay, we start easy,” Antoni said, ignoring her. He walked over to the far side of the net. “Ready?”

Before Franny knew it, Antoni had served a ball. She watched it land three feet ahead of her and laughed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Did you want me to return that? It just seems so funny, actually playing with you.”

“This is not playing. This is practice. Warm-up.” He hit another ball, and Franny was surprised to find her feet moving and her racquet outstretched. She connected—the racquet smacked the ball back over the net, and Franny was so thrilled by her own sporty prowess that she jumped up and down, ignoring the fact that Antoni was, of course, going to hit the ball right back. He did, and the ball skidded by her, its bouncing path to the fence undisturbed. “Sorry, sorry,” Franny said. “I’m ready now. Sorry! I just didn’t know that that was going to happen. Ready.” She dropped into a half-squat like the players on television did, waving her hips back and forth.

Antoni nodded, his eyes hidden behind the reflective panes of his sunglasses. He arched backward, throwing a ball high into the air. Franny had watched him play for so many years, she knew the motion of his body. It wasn’t an OCD tic, like some of the younger players had (Nando Filani was notorious for turning his head to the side and coughing, which McEnroe always likened to a prostate exam). Antoni’s body moved purposefully, his shoulders as wide as a swimmer’s. He threw another ball up and hit it slowly, as gently as a mother to a child. Franny bounced from side to side, waiting to see where the ball would land, and then hurried toward it, getting the edge of her racquet underneath it just in time to send it back over the net. They volleyed lightly for a few more strokes before Franny missed a shot, and she panted happily, exhilarated.

“Not bad,” Antoni said. Franny wiped her forehead with her fingertips. “Let me see a serve.” He walked over to her side of the net, coming deliberately behind Franny. He slid his sunglasses down his nose and then crossed his arms. “Toss, then serve.”

Franny bounced the ball a couple of times and was relieved to find that it felt good in her hand, familiar. There had been a time when this was a normal function for her, and she willed all the atoms in her body to remember those days, standing outside in Brooklyn, the girls from her high school team all cackling and yelling. She threw the ball into the air and swung her racquet overhead. Franny heard a loud crack, and then she wobbled forward a few feet, and the next thing she knew, she was staring into Antoni Vert’s shadowy face, lying on her back in the middle of the tennis court. At last, he looked as delighted to see her as she was to see him.

Bobby and Carmen were out by the pool doing their exercises, and normally that would have made Lawrence do an about-face and sit in the bedroom reading for a couple of hours, but the day was too beautiful to stay indoors. He put on his hat and sunglasses and headed outside, a novel tucked under his arm.

“Hey,” Bobby said from the deep end of the pool. He was treading water in the most athletic way possible, bouncing up and down like a spring, the damp ends of his curls weighty and dark.

“Hey!” Carmen said, mid push-up. She dipped down halfway, stopped, and then went even closer to the ground before straightening her arms and rocketing back up to a plank position. Lawrence was impressed.

“You are really good at that,” he said, and then kicked off his flip-flops and settled into one of the lounge chairs.

“Thanks!” Carmen said without stopping. “I can show you, if you want.”

Lawrence squeezed out a dollop of sunscreen into his palm and began to cover himself—arms, legs, cheeks, nose—with a thin coating. It was the expensive stuff, chalky white and impermeable.

Bobby stared. “What is that? Zinc?”

“What, this?” Lawrence said, turning the tube over. “I don’t know. It’s made of things I can’t pronounce.”

“Don’t you ever want a tan?” Bobby swam over to the side of the pool. “Sometimes I go to the beach with just tanning oil and fall asleep. It’s the best. You wake up and you’re totally bronzed. Like, a statue.”

“That sounds like an excellent way to get skin cancer.”

“Well, yeah, I guess.” Bobby did some flutter kicks, his feet sending little plumes of water into the air. Lawrence tried to imagine having a baby and then watching the baby grow into someone who used tanning oil. It wasn’t as bad as smoking crack, but it did seem to signify major differences in ideology. Bobby dunked his head underwater and then hoisted himself out of the pool. “I’m gonna hit the showers, guys. See you in a bit.”

Carmen grunted, and Lawrence nodded. For a few minutes, they stayed in silence, Carmen doing her push-ups and Lawrence doing nothing at all, just staring off into space and watching craggy faces emerge from the mountains, which happened as often as they appeared in clouds. There was a man with an enormous beard, a cat curled up into the shape of a doughnut, a Samoan mask, a sleeping baby.

“How long have you guys been together now?” Lawrence heard himself ask. He didn’t want to read the novel he’d brought outside. It was the next movie he was working on, a period- piece adaptation. Nineteenth-century Brits, lots of party scenes with scores of extras, lots of horses. Those were always the worst. Every page turned into nothing but dollar signs—Lawrence read the cost of crinolines, of vintage lace, of imported parasols. Werewolves weren’t great, either, but packages of fake hair were less expensive than real dogs for a hunting scene. His favorite movies of all were the tiny ones where the actors all wore their own clothes, brushed their own hair or didn’t, and everyone rented a country house for a week and slept all piled on top of one another like a litter of newborn kittens. He could do the accounting for those in his sleep.

“Me and Bobby?” Carmen sat with her legs wide open in straddle position and leaned forward. “Seven years, almost.”

“Wow, really?” Lawrence said. “Was he still in college?”

Carmen laughed. “I know, he was a baby. He only had one set of silverware. One fork, one knife, one spoon. And then a drawer full of plastic ones that he got from take-out places. It was like going out with a kid in high school, I swear.” She swung her torso over one leg and then crab-walked her fingers to the toe of her sneaker. “Fucking hamstrings.”