realized how I knew her. She had aged, and her hair was shorter with more prominent streaks of gray, but Jane was Bette’s ex-girlfriend—her first girlfriend, the one with whom she had gone diving all those years before. Jane had been married then, but now she wore no wedding ring. She wore almost no jewelry at all, only small gold posts in her ears. There was something distinguished about her features, something noble. I could see, vaguely, what had attracted Bette.
“You’ll never guess who plays tennis with me,” I said to Dennis one evening when we were getting ready for bed. But when I told him, he didn’t remember Jane. At that time, Suzanne was living in Bette’s house in Coconut Grove. They’d found an abandoned black lab puppy and were devoted to him; every night they took him for a three-mile walk. Bette had sold her dive shop to a franchise and spent her days sailing or tending her backyard. When Dennis and I visited, they served curry and good wine. They listened to folk music I knew I’d like if only I knew more about it. They had season tickets to the opera. Suzanne was a real estate agent and drove a Porsche and wore fine, draping tunics and wide-legged pants. They spoke German together—Suzanne’s father had been in the service and her family had lived briefly in Hamburg—and Bette had taught Suzanne to scuba-dive.
Jane tended to outplay the rest of the team, along with Rodrigo. His wife, Twyla, was one of three women on the team who knew each other socially, all of whom were a little on the bawdy side and very pretty in the blond, well-coiffed way of many Coral Gables women. They wore tennis skirts with grosgrain ribbon waistbands and matching tops. One morning they passed me on the stairs as I went up to the lounge for an iced tea—I knew they liked to congregate there after practice, usually with mimosas—and Twyla said, “Oops, it’s the teacher’s pet,” and sidestepped to let me pass.
“Ha,” I said. “Hardly.”
Jack was sitting in a leather club chair by the windows; I sat next to him with my iced tea. “You’re hustling out there,” he said. He clicked his glass against mine. It wasn’t the first time he’d let me know I was doing well. That morning, in fact, I’d gotten several points off Jane, though she’d mentioned afterward that she’d been up late with her sick cat. Jack gestured toward my racket. “You need an upgrade,” he said. “It’s time, Frances.”
I’d mentioned to Dennis that I needed a new racket, and he’d told me to go ahead and buy one, for goodness’ sake—he didn’t like it when I pinched pennies—but I’d been holding off. Jack took my racket and pressed his palm against the strings. Physically, there was much about him that reminded me of Dennis: the scattered gray in his hair, the freckles on his arms, the light-colored eyes. But Jack was larger in size, broader and taller, and his hair was black. His eyes were a little close-set. He crossed his legs when he sat down, which was a move with just enough femininity to enhance his masculinity. When he did this—as when he put his hand flat against my back while I was serving, or when he stood at the sidelines with his sunglasses on and his clipboard against his chest, watching me and interjecting a coaching point every so often—I felt a distinct longing.
“I know,” I said to Jack, and took my racket back.
“Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t you try out a few? See what you like, and I’ll buy it here with my discount.”
My face got hot. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Don’t be so sensitive, Frances.”
I was caught off guard. It was an intimate thing to say, and his tone was disarming. I thought of my clothes—there was nothing wrong with them, nothing shoddy. In fact, my clean white tennis skirts were both new, and I’d been wearing the diamond earrings Dennis had given me on our fifteenth anniversary, because they stayed out of the way and looked sporty when I had my hair pulled back. I thought also of my car, which was in good shape, the better of our two. “Of course you’re right,” I said, gathering my things to leave. Jack stood, too, and we walked out together.
“Well,” I said as we walked. “What do you recommend?”
“You should try out a few, see what suits