??
“Staying with your dad for a while?” the lawyer asked.
“Only two nights,” Ruth said. “Then I’m going to Europe.”
“Oh,” Scott said. “Business?”
“Translations—yes.”
She already knew they were going to sit together on the bus. Maybe he had a car parked in Bridgehampton; then he could drive her ( and all her luggage) to Sagaponack. Maybe his wife was meeting him and they wouldn’t mind dropping her off. In the pool, his wedding ring had reflected the late-afternoon sunlight as he’d treaded water. But when they were seated beside each other on the jitney, his wedding ring was gone. Among Ruth’s rules for relationships, one of the inviolable ones was this: no married men.
There was the shattering sound of an airplane overhead—the bus was passing LaGuardia—when Ruth said, “Let me guess. My father has converted you from tennis to squash. And with your complexion . . . you’re very fair, you must burn easily . . . squash is better for your skin, anyway. It keeps you out of the sun.”
He had a wicked, secretive sort of smile; it suggested his suspicion that nearly everything could lead to litigation. Scott Saunders was not a nice guy. Ruth felt pretty sure of that.
“Actually,” he began, “I gave up tennis for squash when I got divorced. As part of the settlement, my ex-wife got to keep the countryclub membership. It meant a lot to her,” he added generously. “And besides, there were the children’s swimming lessons.”
“How old are your children?” Ruth asked him dutifully.
Hannah had told her long ago that it was the first question you should ask a guy who’s divorced. “It makes divorced men feel like good fathers to talk about their kids,” Hannah had said. “And, if you’re gonna get involved with the guy, you want to know if it’s a three-year-old or a teenager you might have to deal with—it makes a difference.”
As the jitney moved eastward, Ruth had already forgotten the ages of Scott Saunders’s children; she was more interested in how his squash game compared to her father’s.
“Oh, he usually wins,” the lawyer admitted. “After he wins the first three or four games, he sometimes lets me win one or two.”
“You play that many games?” Ruth asked. “Five or six?”
“We play for at least an hour, often an hour and a half,” Scott said. “We don’t really count the number of games.”
You wouldn’t last an hour and a half with me, Ruth decided. The old man must be slipping. But all she said was: “You must like to run.”
“I’m in pretty good shape,” Scott Saunders said. He looked in very good shape, but Ruth let his remark pass; she gazed out the window, knowing that he was taking this moment to evaluate her breasts. (She could see his reflection in the bus window.) “Your father says you’re a very good player, better than most men,” the lawyer added. “But he says he’s still better than you—for a few more years.”
“He’s wrong,” Ruth said. “He’s not better than I am. He’s just smart enough to never play me on a court of regulation size. And he knows his barn—he never plays me anywhere else.”
“There’s probably something psychological about his advantage,” the lawyer said.
“I’ll beat him,” Ruth said. “Then maybe I’ll stop playing.”
“Maybe we could play sometime,” Scott Saunders said. “My kids are only around on the weekends. Today is Tuesday . . .”
“You don’t work Tuesdays?” Ruth asked.
She watched the bright flicker in his smile again—like a secret he wanted you to know existed, but which he would never tell. “I’m enjoying divorce leave,” he told her. “I take as much time out of the office as I need.”
“Do they really call it ‘divorce leave’?” Ruth asked.
“That’s what I call it,” the lawyer said. “When it comes to the office, I’m pretty independent.” He said it in the way he’d said he was in pretty good shape. It could mean that he’d just been fired, or that he was some killer lawyer with uncounted successes.
Here I go again, Ruth knew. She considered that the wrong guys always attracted her because they were so transparently short-term.
“Maybe we could play a little round-robin,” Scott suggested. “You know, the three of us. You play your father, your father plays me, then I play you . . .”
“I don’t play round-robin,” Ruth said. “I just play one-on-one, for a long time. About two hours,” she added, purposely staring out the window so he was left looking at her breasts.
“Two hours . . .” he repeated.
“Just kidding,” she told him. Turning to face him, she smiled.