Steady Hands #3
“I watched a twenty-minute video called ‘Tennis Explained for Beginners’ and I understood approximately none of it. The scoring system was invented by a lunatic.” Liam turned to Blake and Andre, his green eyes wide and earnest. “Teach us. Properly. From the beginning.”
Blake looked at Andre. Andre looked at Blake. A silent communication passed between them — the kind that came from more than three years of shared life — and they both smiled.
“Fine,” Blake said, standing up. “But we’re going to need more wine.”
“And a visual aid,” Andre added, disappearing into the bedroom. He returned a moment later with one of Blake’s old rackets and a tennis ball.
“Right,” Blake said, settling into the armchair with the authority of a man who had given a thousand press conferences.
“The basics. A tennis match is divided into sets. You need to win a certain number of sets to win the match. At Grand Slams — which is what Wimbledon is — men play best of five sets.”
“Five?” Liam said, horrified. “That could take hours.”
“It can take five hours,” Andre said. “Sometimes more.”
“Good God. And people just… sit there? For five hours?”
“They sit there,” Blake confirmed. “In the sun. Without alcohol.”
“Barbaric,” Liam muttered, refilling his glass.
“Each set,” Blake continued, “is made up of games. You need to win six games to win a set, but you have to win by two. So if it gets to six-all, you play a tiebreaker.”
“What’s a tiebreaker?”
“A special game where the first person to seven points wins. But again, you have to win by two.”
“Why is everything ‘by two’?” Talia asked, frowning. “What’s wrong with winning by one?”
“Nothing is wrong with winning by one,” Andre said. “Tennis simply does not allow it. Tennis demands that you prove yourself beyond doubt.”
“That’s very French of it,” Liam observed.
“It is English, actually. The rules were invented here.”
“Were they? Huh.” Liam took a large sip of wine. “Alright. Sets, games, tiebreakers. Got it. Now explain the scoring, because that’s where I completely lost the plot.”
Blake held up the tennis ball. “Within each game, the points go: love, fifteen, thirty, forty, game.”
There was a silence.
“Love?” Talia repeated.
“Zero. Love means zero.”
“Why?”
“No one knows,” Andre said. “There are theories. The most popular is that it comes from the French word l’oeuf — the egg. Because an egg looks like a zero.”
“That’s absurd,” Liam said. “I love it. Continue.”
“Fifteen, thirty, forty,” Blake said. “If both players reach forty, it’s called deuce.”
“Like the card game?”
“No. Like the French word deux — two. Because you need two more points to win.”
“Everything in this sport is French,” Talia said, looking at Andre. “Did your people invent this?”
“We invented the vocabulary,” Andre said, with a small, proud smile. “The English invented the boredom.”
Blake threw the tennis ball at him. Andre caught it without looking.
“After deuce,” Blake continued, ignoring Andre’s smirk, “the next point is called advantage. If the person with advantage wins the next point, they win the game. If they lose it, it goes back to deuce.”
“So it could go on forever,” Liam said slowly.
“Theoretically, yes.”
“Has it ever?”
“The longest game in professional tennis had thirty-seven deuces,” Blake said.
Liam stared at him. “You’re joking.”
“I am not joking.”
“Thirty-seven deuces. That’s…” Liam did the math on his fingers, gave up, and drank more wine. “That’s too many deuces.”
“Drink every time he says deuce,” Talia suggested, and Liam immediately raised his glass.
“Deuce,” Andre said.
They all drank.
“Deuce,” Blake said, grinning.
They drank again.
“This is going to end badly,” Talia observed, but she was already laughing.
Over the next hour, as the wine bottles emptied and were replaced, Blake and Andre walked them through the rest: the difference between a forehand and a backhand (“One is elegant, one is functional,” Andre said.
“Like the difference between Shakespeare and David Mamet,” Liam offered), the purpose of a serve (“It’s the only shot where you have complete control,” Blake explained.
“Everything after that is a conversation”), the etiquette of the crowd (“No talking during points. No phone sounds. No standing up to go to the toilet during a game”), and the particular agony of a five-set match that goes to a fifth-set tiebreaker.
“So you’re telling me,” Liam said, now on his fourth glass of wine and sitting on the floor for reasons that were unclear, “that two men can play for five hours, be completely equal, and then the entire thing comes down to one point?”
“Yes,” Blake said.
“That’s the cruelest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s Greek tragedy. That’s Euripides.”
“It’s sport,” Blake said.
“It’s the same thing,” Liam insisted, pointing at Blake with his wine glass, sloshing a small amount onto the rug. “The Greeks understood this. Competition as suffering. Victory as divine intervention. Defeat as fate.”
“You’re drunk,” Talia said fondly.
“I’m inspired. I’m going to write a play about tennis.”
“Please don’t,” Andre said.
“Too late. It’s happening. Two men. One court. Five acts. I’ll call it Deuce.”
“Drink!” Talia shouted, and they all raised their glasses.
By eleven o’clock, Liam was lying flat on his back on the living room floor, holding Blake’s racket above his head like a sword, while Talia demonstrated what she had learned by providing commentary on an imaginary match.
“And Moreau serves — oh, that’s a beautiful toss — and it’s an ace! That’s when they can’t touch it, right?”
“Correct,” Andre said, deeply amused, his legs stretched out on the sofa, his head resting in Blake’s lap.
“Fifteen-love. Because love means egg. Because the French are insane.”
“We prefer ‘creative,’” Andre murmured.
“And now Harlan is at the baseline — that’s the back line — and he hits a forehand — that’s the pretty one — cross-court, which means diagonally, and it lands on the line, which means it’s in, and the crowd goes wild because the English love nothing more than a man hitting a ball into a rectangle.”
Blake was laughing so hard he could barely breathe, his hand resting on Andre’s chest, his body shaking with it.
“You’re going to be fine at Wimbledon,” Blake managed. “Both of you. You’re going to be absolutely fine.”
“I’m going to cry,” Liam announced from the floor. “I can already tell. If it goes to five sets, I’m going to weep openly. I have no shame about this.”
“You have no shame about anything,” Talia said.
“True. It’s my greatest quality.”
Andre tilted his head back, looking up at Blake from his lap. Blake looked down at him, his blue eyes half-closed, the corner of his mouth turned up in that private, lazy smile that was only ever for Andre.
“Thank you,” Andre said softly, in French. “Merci pour cette soirée.”
Blake leaned down and kissed his forehead. “Anytime.”
They put Liam and Talia in a taxi at midnight — Liam still clutching the racket, which Blake told him to keep, Talia reciting tennis scores under her breath like she was running lines.
“Fifteen-love, thirty-love, forty-love, game,” she chanted as she climbed into the cab. “I’ve got it. I’m ready. Wimbledon won’t know what hit it.”
“That’s not how you use that phrase,” Andre called after her.
“Deuce!” Liam shouted from inside the taxi, and the cab pulled away into the London night, leaving Blake and Andre standing on the pavement, laughing.