Pages 655–662

E.T.A., Ennet House, and the A.F.R., cross-cut · first-time reader guide · all scenes

When you've finished these pages: three things worth a second look, at the bottom.

Back to Show Court 6 without leaving the afternoon: the Hal-Stice first set tightens toward 6–5 under a sun "the color of hollandaise," and the scene splits its attention between the tennis and the bleachers, where Aubrey deLint delivers a running clinic into the ear of "Helen Steeply" — half scouting commentary, half a full-dress statement of what E.T.A. thinks it's for. It's mostly dialogue and match anatomy; one single sentence mid-scene cuts to little boys in a utility tunnel twenty-six meters underground and then returns without comment. That sentence belongs to a scene you haven't had yet; just note it and move on.

Terms, in order of appearance

a./d.f. (p. 656) — ace-to-double-fault ratio; endnote 267 unpacks the stat.
"Play a let, babe" (p. 657) — take-two etiquette: replay the point when the call's unknowable.
Gregg ideogram (p. 659) — Gregg shorthand, the real stenographic system; what deLint's peripheral vision catches her writing.
endnote 268 (p. 659) — Steeply's private census of the day's left-handers, colleagues and adversaries included; a short flip.
the Show (p. 661) — the professional tour; E.T.A.'s standing name for it, in use since the early academy pages.

After you read: three things

1. Two player-anatomies, one axis. Stice serves like a man who learned from still photos and cranks it anyway; Hal builds points three shots deep — "Chess on the run," Steeply offers, and deLint takes the term. The keeper is deLint's taxonomy: "Hal's in essence a torturer... instead of a straight-out killer like Stice or the Canadian Wayne" (p. 659) — Hal's game keeps the ball "seeming just in reach, to keep you trying." Consider where else the book has shown you that exact mechanism.

2. The sermon is sincere; the mouth isn't. Between "babe"s, deLint lays out the whole pedagogy: E.T.A. is "about seeing instead of being seen," a place to "forget themselves as objects of attention... and see what they can do when the eyes are off them" (pp. 660–61) — because the Show turns players into entertainers, and audiences "chew them up, it's what you do." Note who he's explaining this to: a professional watcher hunting an entertainment that chews terminally. Neither of them flags the irony; that's your job.

3. This is also a counterintelligence engagement. Her pen "slips" into the bleacher struts on Stice's toss; her probes arrive as non sequiturs; his orders are to keep her in sight and off Wayne ("Wayne's your ideal food-group. Which is why we'll keep you off him"). And watch the sportsmanship beat stump her: Hal flat-hands an ace against himself — "You hit it too hard to see, you deserve the point" (p. 657) — and the operative genuinely cannot file it. Her exit line, "Carved out of what, though, this place?", is left hanging.

Written only from this scene and earlier pages. Safe to read before you start.