Opposites Attract

“Agreed, on one condition.” Sensing her withdrawal, he continued. “One question, Asher. Answer one question.”
    She tried to wrest her hand away and failed. “What question?” she demanded impatiently.
    “Were you happy?”
    She became very still as quick flashes of the past raced through her head. “You have no right—”
    “I have every right,” he interrupted. “I’m going to know that, Asher. The truth.”
    She stared at him, wanting to pit her will against his. Abruptly she found she had no energy for it. “No,” she said wearily. “No.”
    He should have felt triumph, and instead felt misery. Releasing her hand, he stared out at the street. “I’ll get you a cab.”
    “No. No, I’ll walk. I want to walk.”
    Ty watched her move into the flood of a streetlight and back into the dark. Then she was a shadow, disappearing.
    The streets were far from empty. Traffic whizzed by at the pace that seemed the pride of European cities. Small, fast cars and daredevil taxis. People scattered on the sidewalks, rushing toward some oasis of nightlife. Still, Ty thought he could hear the echo of his own footsteps.
    Perhaps it was because so many feet had walked the Roman streets for so many centuries. Ty didn’t care much for history or tradition. Tennis history perhaps—Gonzales, Gibson, Perry, these names meant more to him than Caesar, Cicero or Caligula. He rarely thought of his own past, much less of antiquity. Ty was a man who focused on the present. Until Asher had come back into his life, he had thought little about tomorrow.
    In his youth he had concentrated fiercely on the future, and what he would do if . . . Now that he had done it, Ty had come to savor each day at a time. Still, the future was closing in on him, and the past was never far behind.
    At ten he had been a hustler. Skinny and streetwise, he had talked his way out of trouble when it was possible, and slugged his way out when it wasn’t. Growing up in the tough South Side of Chicago, Ty had been introduced to the seamier side of life early. He’d tasted his first beer when he should have been studying rudimentary math. What had saved him from succumbing to the streets was his dislike and distrust of organized groups. Gangs had held no appeal for Ty. He had no desire to lead or to follow. Still, he might have chosen a less honorable road had it not been for his unquestioning love for his family.
    His mother, a quiet, determined woman who worked nights cleaning office buildings, was precious to him. His sister, four years his junior, was his pride and self-assumed responsibility. There was no father, and even the memory of him had faded before Ty reached midchildhood. Always, he had considered himself the head of the family, with all the duties and rights that it entailed. No one corrected him. It was for his family that he studied and kept on the right side of the law—though he brushed the line occasionally. It was for them that he promised himself, when he was still too young to realize the full extent of his vow, to succeed. One day he would move them out, buy them a house, bring his mother up off her knees. The picture of how hadn’t been clear, only the final result. The answer had been a ball and racket.
    Ada Starbuck had given her son a cheap, nylon-stringed racket for his tenth birthday. The gift had been an impulse. She had been determined to give the boy something other than the necessary socks and underwear. The racket, such as it was, had been a gesture of hope. She could see too many of her neighbors’ children falling into packs. Ty, she knew, was different. A loner. With the racket he could entertain himself. A baseball or football required someone to catch or pass. Now Ty could use a concrete wall as his partner. And so he did—at first for lack of something better to do. In the alley between apartment buildings he would smash the ball against a wall scrawled with spray paint. DIDI LOVES FRANK and other less romantic statements littered his playing field.
    He enjoyed setting his own rhythm, enjoyed the steady thud, thump, smash he could make. When he became bored with the wall, he began haunting the neighborhood playground courts. There, he could watch teenagers or middle-aged weekenders scramble around the courts. He hustled pennies retrieving balls. Deciding he could do better than the people he watched, Ty badgered an older boy into a game.
    His first experience on a court was a revelation. A human forced