At Harry’s club he and Chip and Paul played the American game, but Chip had first learned to play squash on International courts with a softball while working for Siemens in Munich, and so when he came back to the US, playing the American game felt like hitting a Super Ball in a closet. In a long, patient fit of pique he built an International court out of cinder block and plaster in his backyard, and he called it the “µm Club,” or the “Micron Club” after his favorite unit of measurement. He gave Ben and a few other local kids the keys and said they could use it whenever they wanted.

From Ben’s house to the country club was a sixteen-minute drive, but it was only a seven-minute bike ride to the Um Club, and so almost entirely out of inertia Ben at age eleven began spending ninety percent of his playing time on the International-size court playing with the International ball. He and the other kids who ended up at the Um Club were generally in better shape than their tournament opponents because a softball is harder to put away. Their points lasted longer, but their timing was off for the American game, their movement not as precise, and so they would almost inevitably lose in the second or third round of any tournament they entered.

On certain weekend days Ben played with the other kids at the Um Club for four or five hours at a stretch, going through three or four changes of T-shirts and socks. And sometimes after school or after dinner or when he couldn’t sleep, Ben would bike over and just hit balls, straight long shots (“rails”) and drop shots. He would stay there for hours, and would be surprised when he saw the time as he walked off court. Chip would look out his bathroom window while brushing his teeth and see the court lights on, then hear the faint sound of the ball against the racquet and the slightly louder sound of the ball against the wall.

Ben couldn’t have told you why he was doing it, exactly; there was just something soothing about the limits of the court, the consistency of that world, just a few walls, and the ball, and the racquet, and he could submit to those boundaries and make only the very few decisions that they dictated.