And in the rectangle beside the 9: CHEEVER + 3 again, with a ditto mark.
"That's two hours," Ruel said, before he could stop himself. It was a stupid thing to say. It was the least important thing about it. But it was the thing his mouth found first.
"Yes," Perpetua said. "It is."
Ruel's grandmother had a saying about moments like this one, which she had never once said out loud but which Ruel had absorbed anyway, the way you absorb the smell of the house you grow up in. The saying went something like: the first thing you do decides the next ten things they think about you. So you be careful with the first thing.
He was careful with the first thing. He did not touch the board. He did not pick up the chalk. He walked through the gate onto Court 4 with his racket held down by his leg, head pointed at the ground, the way you would carry something you wanted to show was not a weapon, and he stopped at the service line, a good fifteen feet from the bench, and said, "Excuse me, Mr. Cheever."
Cheever looked up from his bag. He smiled. It was a nice smile, a practiced one. "Morning."
"I had Court 4 at eight. I wrote my name at seven. I think it got erased by accident."
"Did it?" Cheever said. He glanced at the board as though he were seeing it for the first time. "I didn't see a name there. I saw a smudge. Somebody writes a name before seven, Perpetua wipes it, that's the rule. Right, Perpetua?"
Perpetua had come to stand at the gate. "I didn't wipe anything, Rolf."
"Well, somebody did."
"Yes," Perpetua said. "Somebody did."
One of the other men, a heavy man with a bad knee brace whose name Ruel had never caught, looked at his shoes. Another one, younger, with a Bluetooth earpiece still in one ear, looked at Cheever and then at Ruel and then at the trees. The third one did not look at anything. He kept stretching his calf.