Henry ignored them. Nothing new there.

"Liberace only appeared in that one episode," Win repeated, his nose in the air.

Myron made a soft buzzing sound. "Sorry, that answer is incorrect. What do we have for our player, Don? Well, Myron, Windsor gets the home version of our game plus a year's supply of Turtle Wax. And thank you for playing our game!"

Win was unmoved. "Liberace only appeared in that one episode."

"That your new mantra?"

"Until you prove otherwise."

Win – full name: Windsor Horne Lockwood III – steepled his manicured fingers. He did that a lot, steepling. Steepling fit him. Win looked liked his name. The poster boy for the quintessential WASP. Everything about his appearance reeked arrogance, elitism, Town and Country Parties Page, debutantes dressed in monogrammed sweaters and pearls with names like Babs, dry martinis at the clubhouse, stuffy old money – his fine blond hair, his pretty-boy patrician face, his lily-white complexion, his snotty Exeter accent. Except in Win's case some sort of chromosomal abnormality had slipped through the generations of careful breeding. In some ways Win was exactly what he appeared to be. But in many more ways – sometimes very frightening ways – Win was not.

"I'm waiting," Win said.

"You remember Liberace playing Chandell the Great?" Myron asked.

"Of course."

"But you forgot that Liberace also played Chandell's evil twin brother, Harry. In the same episode."

Win made a face. "You cannot be serious."

"What?"

"That doesn't count. Evil twin brothers."

"Where in the rule book does it say that?"

Win set his jutting jaw in that certain way.

The humidity was thick enough to wear as undergarments, especially in Flushing Meadows's windless stadium court. The stadium, named strangely enough for Louis Armstrong, was basically a giant billboard that also happened to have a tennis court in the middle. IBM had a sign above the speedometer that clocked the velocity of each player's serve. Citizen kept both the real time and how long the match had been going on. Visa had its name printed behind the service line. Reebok Infiniti, Fuji Film, Clairol had their names plastered wherever there was a free spot. So did Heineken.