Deuce

As in:

When last we left Pierce and Meg, Meg had taken the train to Cristobal with Beth Ann to watch Beth Ann play mixed doubles. It was impossible for Pierce to know whether Meg made the trip just to support Beth Ann, or whether she was at least slightly motivated to watch Pierce play as well. To be sure, Meg, alone, needed support. She’d been elevated to play in the #1 match with Pierce on account of Sissy Vuelos having been fingered for slipping some Panama Red into a batch of Home Ec oat bars.

Pierce was nevertheless intrigued. The way he saw it, if Meg had known that he was Beth Ann’s partner for the match, it at least had not discouraged her from coming along. That seemed vaguely promising.

But what did it really mean? This barely approachable, dark-eyed girl with the glasses and the beautiful ringlets in her hair taking the train to watch him play tennis?

These and similar questions were not helpful to him. When you’re falling in love, or something like falling in love, you tend to want to rush toward the end of the movie, to see how it ends. Pierce was vulnerable in this regard and it only enhanced his impatience with the whole scene in Cristobal–the godawfully slow courts that made it seem like you were playing tennis in molasses, the weirdness of the sun trying to set in the wrong ocean, and the lingering earth farts of swamp gas. Not to mention the ridiculousness of having the CHS Tiger mascot on hand to lead cheers for a tennis match. A tennis match for gods sake.

As noted in our last episode, Pierce and Beth Ann we’re playing better than their opponents. But, perversely, it didn’t matter. They were losing when they should have been winning, and, for Pierce especially, an unfamiliar desperation took hold. The last straw came when Lucas Waters, the male half of the CHS team, clipped the net with a cross-court volley and Beth Ann, struggling to keep her team in the match, dove into the doubles alley for the ball. Ohmygod, Pierce thought, no, no, no. Diving onto the Cristobal courts was as crazy as suddenly announcing you were going to take a piss into a trash can in Mrs. Graham’s Geometry class.

She could only get the tip of her Yonex racquet on the ball and came up bleeding from both knees. She would be bandaged and try to play on but Pierce had seen enough.

What happened next was either an act of chivalry, bad sportsmanship, or mayhem. It would depend on your perspective. Years later, when he accepted that he could never really erase  the incident from his biography, Pierce would gamely point out that his main purpose was to get his team back to deuce.