Dee looked at her father. His face was the face he wore when a member complained the courts were too slow, or too fast, or the wrong shade of green: patient, closed, a man standing very still in the weather. She knew he wanted her to say no. She knew that if she said no, he'd walk her back down the hill and never mention it again, and the backboard would be gone by August, and she'd go back to the Washington Street courts and the chain nets for the rest of her life.
"Yes, sir," she said. "I asked for it."
"Good girl." Mr. Langford slapped the table, and the ice jumped in the glasses. "Now, a match ought to have stakes. Makes it interesting. Let's see." He leaned back, enjoying himself. Two women at the next table had turned their chairs all the way around. "If Whit wins—which, no offense, honey—you keep off club courts from here on out. All of them. And that old backboard behind the shed comes down. Dabney's been after me about that eyesore for a year."
Mr. Dabney, standing by the door, nodded.
"And if I win?" Dee said.
Mr. Langford laughed. He laughed like it was the funniest thing anybody had said all summer, and some of the people at the other tables laughed with him because he was laughing.
"If you win," he said, "I'll tell you what. If you win, I'll pay your way to the state junior championships in Columbia. Entry fee, motel, gas, new racket, new shoes, the works. And you can play on these courts any day you want, as my personal guest, for as long as you like. How's that?"
"I want it written down," Dee said.
The laughing stopped.
Her father said, "Delia."
"I want it written down," she said again, and her voice only cracked a little. "And signed. Both sides. So nobody forgets."
Mr. Langford looked at her for a long moment. The lit-window smile didn't move, but something behind it shifted, the way a big fish turns in dark water.
"Leon," he said, without taking his eyes off her. "Bring me some of that club stationery and a pen."
Leon, who had worked the veranda bar for nineteen years and whose son Dee had gone to grade school with, brought a sheet of heavy cream paper with the club crest at the top, a heron and a palmetto and the words COOSAW POINT CLUB, EST. 1924. Mr. Langford wrote in big looping letters, reading it out as he went so the tables could hear. Best of three sets, Court One, Saturday, September the first, two o'clock. If Whitfield G. Langford wins. If Delia Pruitt wins. He signed it with a flourish and turned the paper around and held out the pen.
Dee reached for it. Whit put his hand flat on the paper first.