He liked to drill afterward. I’d never been big on drills,
but with Will I actually preferred them to matches, because the way his warmth
and thoughtfulness contracted in competition reminded me uncomfortably of
myself. So we traded baby drops and cross-court volleys: the training montage,
at last. As I examined my game, there’d be an occasional glint of brilliance—a
moment when I lunged just right, held my shot to freeze him, then feathered in
a drop to the nick, the delicious spot where the floor and the sidewall join
and the ball rolls out dead.
And:
We played a game, just for fun. I got off to a lead, and
then Peter began to reel me in, extending the points with a knowing grin. He
shaved his rails tight, working me until my hammies quivered. But I was hitting
good rails, too, thanks to him, and I converted a reaching-back-in-midair
volley to go up, 6–5. Trying to catch me with low kills, he tinned a few, and
then I dead-handed a drop shot to the nick. At 10–6, after a long rally, I held
a forehand, then crunched a rail into empty space. He gave a little hop of
chagrin and cried, “You . . . bugger!”
That “He shaved his rails tight, working me until my hammies
quivered” made me smile. Perhaps the piece’s best passage is this non-squash
remembrance of youthful joy:
I wear contact lenses then, and one is killing me, so I take
it out and cradle it in my palm as we kiss, and with my nearsighted eye I see
her soft mouth and glacier-blue eye made enormous, while my corrected eye sees
the Chrysler Building and the blazing city beyond, closeup zooming to master
shot, the way New York can suddenly open itself to you for a moment, when
you’re young.
“Holding the T” proves once again the old adage that almost anything that happens to a person, even a squash player, can be interesting, moving and entertaining if you write about it well enough.
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