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game.”
    Doug came to the net and wanted to spin his racket to decide who served first, but I said, “It’s all right. You guys can serve.”
    “Then you choose the side.”
    “This side is fine,” I said.
    “Okay, if you don’t want the wind. Whose balls should we use?”
    “We can use mine.”
    “When did you open them?”
    “Today.”
    He examined one of the balls suspiciously. “They’re Spalding and we prefer Wilson. Do you mind if we use our balls?”
    “Be my guest,” I said.
    Doug served the first game. After double faulting, he shouted “Fuck!” and when Kirsten missed a volley at the net during the next point he yelled, “Come on!” I thought of the old saying, how a person’s true personality comes out on the tennis court. If this was true, Doug was the world’s biggest jerk.
    After we won the first three games, Doug became increasingly nasty. He kept cursing at himself and at Kirsten and when I called one of his balls out he gave me a long, John McEnroe–like stare. I was afraid he was going to start throwing his racket.
    Meanwhile, Paula and I were getting winded, breathing hard after every point, and Doug and Kirsten won the next few games. Now that they were playing better, Doug stopped yelling, but he was just as fiercely competitive. After I hit a weak return of serve, he hit an overhead that just missed Paula’s head. He said he was sorry, but I knew he was aiming for her.
    We wound up losing the set. I was willing to call it a match right there, but they wanted to play best two out of three and, for some reason, so did Paula.
    At this point, I couldn’t care less who won, but now Paula was taking the match as seriously as our opponents, as if Doug’s cutthroat personality had rubbed off on her. When I missed a backhand on a ball hit to the center of the court, she said seriously, “From now on let those balls go.”
    “But it was on my side of the court,” I said.
    “It doesn’t matter—let me take them. My forehand is a lot better than your backhand.”
    If we were alone, I wouldn’t have let a comment like that go, but I didn’t want to get into a big shouting match around strangers.
    We wound up losing the second set and the match. Victorious, Doug’s personality changed. He greeted us, smiling, at the net.
    “Great game, guys,” he said.
    I was ready to shake hands and leave, but Paula wanted to stick around and have a conversation. It turned out that Doug and Kirsten were boyfriend and girlfriend, and that they lived in separate apartments in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side, not far from Paula and me. It also turned out that they were staying at the Red Lion Inn this weekend. It annoyed me that we suddenly had so much in common.
    “It’s a nice place,” Doug said in regard to the inn, “but looks like the geriatric crowd’s up here this weekend, huh?”
    Paula laughed, although I knew if I made a crack like that she wouldn’t have thought it was funny.
    Kirsten was smiling with her perfect white teeth.
    Doug talked for a while about the Berkshires versus the Hamptons and how much better the Hamptons were. Then he said, “I have an idea—if you guys don’t have any plans tonight, how about you join us for dinner?”
    Before I could make up an excuse, Paula said, “That sounds great.”
    Doug suggested that we meet on the front porch of the inn at seven o’clock, then he and Kirsten continued to play tennis, grunting and squealing.
    Walking away next to Paula, I decided not to say anything. I was so angry I knew that it would be impossible to have a normal conversation and that I was better off waiting until I cooled down. But Paula never let anything go and after about a minute or two of silence she said, “So why are you so mad at me?”
    “Forget it,” I said.
    “I don’t get it,” she said. “You didn’t want to have dinner with them tonight?”
    “No, I’d love to have dinner with them. Tennis was so much fun, dinner should be a