When the Fowlers flee Greenville in their Hemi-parlor light burning, tire swing twirling-half the tennis pros know the courts will soon be theirs. Greenvillians travel south at the drop of a leaf, a hint of frost. Some, like the Gullivers, flock as far as Florida; others, such as the Clarks, make it only to Virginia. Nature never gives much notice.
Half the tennis pros are relative newcomers Greenville has nicknamed Penn Gwynne and Dina Sawyer. Penn's too well suited for the snow to leave New York (he's originally from Ontario), while Dina (from Georgia) is too dumb. Only Penn's and Dina's respective spouses, natives Mrs. Swanson and Mr. Ducksworth, are silent on the matter in town-hall meetings.
"Why don't you come practice your groundstrokes in Atlanta?" Mr. Ducksworth asks his wife, luggage in hand. "Venus and Serena live in the South."
"You go on," Dina says, per her own custom. "Now that I'm in Greenville, I'd like to stay."
Her husband grows more embarrassed each year, migrating alone. "You're from Georgia."
"Not anymore. Anyway, poor Penn needs someone to practice with."
Nobody, not even Mrs. Swanson, asks Penn to migrate like the other townspeople: It's proclaimed by the aldermen to be medically impossible. He'll be roasted duck south of the Mason-Dixon. Penn knows this to be untrue-remembers childhood vacations in Baja-but he lets Greenville have its excuses. No one wants to believe half the pros are having an affair.
Mr. Ducksworth and Mrs. Swanson are the other half of the tennis pros in Greenville. When they were teenage stars, Greenville expected them to marry each other. As it turned out, she required a doubles partner who'd switch sides as lobs demanded, whereas he believed switching leads only to chaos. Even worse, they both became career backhanders. On the 2005 US Open Tour each met a formidable forehander-he the woman who'd become Dina, she the man who'd become Penn. Double dates led to mixed doubles, mixed doubles to mixed marriage, mixed marriage to the arrival of outsiders in Greenville.
When the winter of '05-'06 found the newcomers refusing to migrate with their spouses, Greenville wanted to say, I told you so. It wanted to say, Birds of a feather flock together. Greenville, however, is a town and cannot speak. The citizens only got gooseflesh and headed to I-95 as their instincts demanded. Once or twice over that first winter, a Remus in Boca Raton, a Clooney in Charlotte, maybe a Keane in Biloxi would wonder about the two birds snow-huddled in Greenville. Such thoughts made them seek out their brood and nestle.
But Dina and Penn are never so lonely in the winter as Greenvillians hope. Nor are they lovers.
This winter-their third-while the Fowlers hoot in Mobile, the Sternes swoop on Disney's Space Mountain, and the Chens wade in the Gulf of Mexico, half the tennis pros sit in a deserted diner on Teal Street.
"Here's to the perks of our profession," Penn says with fake glum between bites of a bagel he's toasted. "Free restaurant-quality food. Motels of fresh beds."
Dina thinks him a funny-looking bird. His nose curves lipward like a hawk's beak. His breast beetles over chicken legs.
"I hope to reach all your shots this winter," she says.
"I'll take it easy down the line if you won't slice too many to my left."
"Jack Sprat could eat no fat..." Dina balances eggs on her fork. It's their joke.
Contrary to local opinion, they love their lawful mates and depend on them during the tournament season. This year Penn and Swanson won the Australian and several ATP Masters events. Dina and Ducksworth defended their title at Roland Garros. An analyst would be hard-pressed to find to happier couples in the USTA. Even so, Dina and Penn need a separate season.
"Does your nickname bother you?" he asks, turning serious, chest caving some. "Do you wish they called you Mrs. Ducksworth?"
"Not in winter it doesn't."
The courts, when they arrive, are as clean as they'll be until snowfall. Half of half the tennis pros know their first few sets will be booby-footed. They are accustomed to doubles. The other half looks forward to the change, no one to please.
Penn: I'm no single man, but I hope like any for a decent match of tennis. My woman's too much there. When the ball sinks left, she digs and sends it across at an angle. Alone, I'm terrified into delight by the empty squares. If I skin a knee I have only to the glimpse Peach State pterodactyl tottering at the net to know it hasn't been recorded. She, too, is space-eyed.
Dina: His pale calves bulge with mid-court indecision. He sweats a deer face onto his cotton chest. I've chosen well in love for this one folds in unsavory ways. Duckworth's as natty as a mallard comes. Yet the fuzzy limes this one lobs for me to swat, his green ticks scuttling underfoot-these are what I want to detest, so I may keep from wanting. An opponent.
It's not desire exactly, nothing so plain. Maybe they'd call it desire in Atlanta or Ontario. Maybe even on the Gulf of Tonkin. But it's the nature of Greenville to create a disguise for all desires, desires for disguise. Penn and Dina have learned this much despite themselves. When the townspeople seek warmer climes, their fears freeze in a place for no one.
Penn tosses the felt ball skywards, momentarily blocking the sun.