like most of the time other people are worse. Sometimes I play someone and I’m worse, and I feel in awe of what they can do. But you rarely feel in awe of what you can do yourself.” I asked whether this came as a disappointment. She thought about it and shrugged. “If I was someone who was going to feel awe all the time, I’d probably be going to div school, not playing tennis.” When I told people our meeting story I would tell them it was this down-to-earth quality that drew me to Vicky, this mature wisdom about the limits of genius and her levelheaded rejection of the romanticism people tried to attach to her talent. But although this is what I told people and what I was telling Léo now, it wasn’t true. I had already known Vicky when I interviewed her, not well but casually, and I had conceived the piece at least in part to get closer to her. I was attracted to her, and although I am ashamed to say it, I was attracted to her excellence. I was rambling a bit by the time Léo turned up the drive. He stopped before we came in sight of the house and turned to me. “What if I told you I slept with Victoria, years ago?” I tensed and fingered the pebbled leather on the Rover’s door. “Are you telling me that?” Léo looked bored, or tired. “Maybe,” he said. “If yes, what do you say?” I tried to follow the eddy of my feelings, to still and look at them, but all I could see was Léo, handsome and lean, looking out through the windshield, awaiting my reply. We wore the same collared tennis shirt, mine white, his red, and it felt ridiculous, the two of us sitting there, discussing this like a hypothetical. And yet that was how it seemed—hypothetical—because I could sense a gulf between what I should feel and what I did. Because how could I begrudge Vicky this handsome man, his athlete’s body, his perfect way of moving, all those years ago? Maybe she should have told me, but I couldn’t be angry with her. What I honestly felt, when Léo smiled at me, was that this brought us closer, Léo and me.
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