"Look," Cheever said, still smiling, "there's three other courts. Court 1's got leaves on it but it's fine. Court 2 is wide open. Why don't you take Court 2?"
"Court 2's got a crack through the deuce box," Ruel said. "And the eight o'clock on 4 is a youth hold. It's on the board."
"That thing?" Cheever laughed, and two of the other men laughed a little too, not because it was funny but because he had laughed. "That's from the Clinton administration. That sign doesn't mean anything. There's no desk. There's no sponsor. Nobody's held anything for anybody since that building closed."
"It's still on the board."
"Lots of things are still on the board. There's a phone number for a bowling alley on the back of it." Cheever's smile was getting thinner at the edges, the way a sheet of ice gets thinner at the edges when the sun comes up. "Son, I've got a group here. We drove over. We booked."
"You wrote over my name."
"I didn't see your name."
"Then how did you know to write yours in the same spot?"
It was the wrong thing to say, and Ruel knew it was the wrong thing to say as soon as it was out of his mouth, because it was true. True things said in the wrong tone of voice to the wrong people were, his grandmother had made very clear, the most dangerous sentences in the English language. He had not said it loudly. He had not said it rudely. But the man in the quarter-zip heard something in it anyway, and his face changed. It did not get angry. It got careful. It got the look of a man deciding which drawer to open.
"Okay," Cheever said. "Okay." He took out his phone. "I'm not going to stand here and get cross-examined by a kid on a public court. I'll let somebody else sort it out."
"Rolf," Perpetua said. "Don't."
"I'm just making a call, Perpetua. That's what the city tells us to do. If there's a dispute, you don't escalate. You call somebody." He walked away from them toward the far fence, toward the creek, with his phone to his ear, and Ruel heard him say, in a low voice he was not quite meant to hear: "Yes, good morning, I'm at the Wick Park tennis courts on Sumac, and I've got a situation, there's a young man here who's refusing to leave a court we've reserved, he's been hanging around the old rec building, and he's getting a little aggressive. No, no weapon that I can see. He's got a racket. I'd just like somebody to come out."