JOI's father's tennis monologue (pp. 160–161)

The flask enters the lesson as one more body to be handled "with due care" — silver, calfskin-sheathed, warm with "the oil from my fingers. My oil, Jim, from my body" — and it's pressed on a ten-year-old between instructions on opening a garage door. The dipsomania the book elsewhere traces as an inheritance (JOI's "very gradual spiral into the crippling dipsomania of his late father," scene 020; Hal's vow "concerning fathers and differences," scene 023) is right here being physically offered, father to son, mid-lesson, as if readiness for the drink and readiness for the Game were the same threshold. The father drinks "to help me accept the same painful things it's now time for me to tell you" — so the bottle and the confession arrive together, and the son gets handed both.