Price smiled. “I told the rest of the team that if I saw Teddy within twenty feet of the courts, all of them would have to row a two-thousand-meter erg piece. Then the slowest three would have to row another two thousand meters, and then the slowest one of that three would have to row yet another two thousand meters. And I never saw him there again.”

As they came into the high common room Price stopped, so Ben stopped. Price looked full at him. His eyes were pale and he had outdoors skin.

“You think that’s cruel. But it’s the best thing I could have done for him. Teddy thought that someone was going to be happy because he was playing squash—your father probably—but that wasn’t true, and he was spending hours of his life doing something he didn’t like. No one should ever do that. I just made him make a decision that he wasn’t strong enough to make on his own. And everyone on the team was happier, and he was happier.”

“What did he end up doing?”

Price pulled his head away and frowned. “I don’t know.”

After a moment Price stepped closer and put a closed hand on Ben’s shoulder. Again Ben smelled his vegetal breath.

“Don’t worry, Ben. I know you’re scared. I’m going to put a lot of pressure on you. But you have the love. I’ve seen how much pleasure you get from playing, and that pleasure gets even better when you go through a few curtains of pain. When you can go through the last curtain and your opponent can’t, that is a kind of living that you’ll never be able to find any other way.

“So. Go to the boat docks, go play soccer or some other nonsense this fall, but then after that, it will be time.”

Price walked away as if in that instant he had entirely cleared his mind, and it took a moment for Ben to shift himself and take a tray and get in the food line.

*  *  *

After the Jesus Rock Ben was nervous to see Ahmed again, so he went to the library that night instead of working in the dorm. At a low table in the two-story reading room, with windows looking out over the pond, two boys were taking a break from reading by playing backgammon.

Ben remembered that last day in Florida with his extended family. They had all been trying to relax at the covered bar looking out over the green-clay courts at the Bath and Tennis, especially Saturday afternoon before everyone had to fly out.