every stroke. He looked like a dope but felt like a champion. Overman shook his hand and took his racquet out of his bag.
“Aren’t you going to stretch?” Rosenfarb asked, by now a parody of himself.
“I stretched at home,” Overman lied, fooling no one.
They began their usual warm-up, half-volleying at the service line. Rosenfarb recounted his day, not bothering to ask whether Overman wanted to hear about it.
“Hunter-Douglas didn’t have the Duettes ready, but I look like the schmuck.”
You only look like the schmuck if you are the schmuck, Irma Overman used to say. It certainly seemed true in the case of Rosenfarb. Wait till I tell him about my day, Overman thought, deciding it would probably be best to save his Maricela bombshell for later.
They move back to the baseline, warming up groundstrokes and taking serves. Rosenfarb hops around again, preening like a moron. He spins his racquet, Overman calls “up” and like clockwork, the “W” on the grip faces down. Rosenfarb elects to serve, swaggering back to the baseline like the cock of the walk.
Rosenfarb’s serve is much like everything else in his distorted worldview. He thinks of it as a gorgeous, searing weapon when it is, in fact, a pedestrian stroke that meanders over the net. When Overman effortlessly returns the serve, Rosenfarb counters with an unspectacular shot back, Overman tries to put it away, Rosenfarb hits another mediocre shot, then Overman hits it out or into the net. More often than not, such is the pattern. Consumed by boredom, Overman succumbs to Rosenfarb’s tedious style of play and makes an unforced error. Meanwhile, Rosenfarb feels like Roger Federer. It is beyond annoying, but literally the only game in town, because Overman doesn’t have anyone else who wants to play with him.
“These go,” Rosenfarb announces, holding up the ball. “Have fun.”
Like he ever wanted Overman to enjoy himself. Like Overman ever knew how.
Rosenfarb tosses the ball in the air and hits a decent serve to Overman’s famously weak backhand. Overman focuses on the ball and drives it back to Rosenfarb. Rosenfarb steps around his backhand and hits a pussy forehand. Overman steps around that and blasts an inside out forehand down the line.
“Love-15,” Rosenfarb calls out, proceeding to serve to the ad side.
Again to the backhand, Overman drills it back to Rosenfarb’s feet, leaving him helpless.
“Love-30,” says Rosenfarb, starting to get annoyed.
He double faults and it’s Love-40. The window man serves and volleys, Overman easily lobs it over his head and wins the game.
And on it goes. Overman scores every point and wins 6-0, 6-0. Rosenfarb insists on a third set, and once again loses every point. Three golden sets, as they are known, but rarely experienced in the world of tennis. Rosenfarb looks like he’s about to kill himself. An exhausted Overman manages to spit out a few words. “Imagine what the score would’ve been if I’d stretched.” Adding insult to injury wasn’t necessary: it just felt so good.
“I’ve never lost every point in a match,” Rosenfarb sputters in disbelief.
Even though the outcome was just desserts for this preening diva, the man had become so unraveled that Overman couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. There’s a reason this happened. It has nothing to do with you.”
Rosenfarb doesn’t know what to make of this. Is Overman saying he actually anticipated this lopsided victory? That overnight, he was somehow transformed from plodding, unathletic schlub to grand slam level player?
“This isn’t about tennis,” Overman says, trying to console him.
“Stop patronizing me, Ira,” Rosenfarb snorts.
“I’m not. Something has happened to me.”
“You’re making it worse. Just shut up.”
“Fine. I’ll meet you at Jerry’s, the one across from Cedar’s.
Jerry’s was the deli, Cedar’s Sinai the hospital, both overpriced as far as Overman was concerned. Thank God he didn’t have any more children being born and only had to deal with fifteen-dollar pastrami sandwiches. Rosenfarb ate light anyway, always pretending to be on some ludicrous diet Rita heard about in her Pilates class.
Rosenfarb is already seated when Overman arrives. His face is ashen, a shocking contrast to the forced conviviality that had always been Rosenfarb’s stock-in-trade.
“You all right?” Overman asks.
The waitress, a young, lip-plumped Kim Basinger lookalike, comes over to take their order.
“No, I’m not all right, you prick,” Rosenfarb snaps. “What the fuck happened out there?”
The waitress offers to come back in a few minutes but Rosenfarb says he needs food and brusquely asks for the triple-decker corned beef and Swiss.
$18.75, Overman silently notes to himself. “I’ll have the blintzes.” He smiles at the waitress, patting his paunch. “Just what I need, huh?”
She scurries away, convinced that Rosenfarb is some kind of loose cannon.
“What the fuck, Ira? You’re too cheap to buy performance-enhancing drugs. I don’t get it.”
“I’m not on drugs,” Overman replies. “It’s hard to explain. I don’t fully understand it myself.”
“Do you know what my record is against you? 232-1.” Only Rosenfarb could hold on to a stat like this. “That’s matches. Maybe you’ve taken 10 sets off me since we’ve known each other.”
Overman explains that this unlikely result is part of something bigger. “I’m telling you, Jake. There’s been a change. I suddenly have this new focus, this new power, if you will.”
“You? Power?” Rosenfarb scoffs. “Ira, you’ve been fired from practically every job you’ve ever had, your wife left you, your kids barely speak to you and you live in a place where plants grow out of the carpet. What kind of power could you have?”
“I won every point tonight, Jake.”
“I had a hard day at work. Don’t make it into more than it was.”
“Ever since my Lasik surgery—”
“Which I believe you had done at the 99 Cents Store,” Rosenfarb interrupts.
“— I’m able to make things happen. I think about something, I feel this rush through my whole body that saps me of all my energy, but then the thing I want to happen, happens.” Overman recounts his bonding with Maricela, followed by the parting of the 101 south on his drive home.
Rosenfarb finds all of it absurd, as implausible as Rita having sex just because she feels like it. “So what are you telling me? You had bargain basement eye surgery and now you have special powers?”
“I just feel like a different person.”
“From car salesman to magician,”
