Ben hit it crosscourt and began hitting backhands, and the sense of no-effort was even stronger on this side, with his hips turned almost entirely away from the front wall and his shoulders half a turn farther around and then the lean toward the ball and the arm and racquet unfurling, and the ball’s weight on the racquet face confirming the mechanical rightness of every part of the movement, like testing the shape of a bell with a slim hammer.

Ben shifted farther up the court and hit a crosscourt volley that caromed front-wall then side-wall and arrived at his forehand, and he hit crosscourt again front-wall-side-wall and the ball arrived at his ready backhand.

It seemed to him now that his only task was to see the ball, and the rest of the valentine-shaped movement was taking care of itself. Sweetness passed all through his body. Again and again he hit it, losing any possibility of counting how many volleys it had been, and he almost wanted to close his eyes and see for how long the system could cohere.

Why couldn’t all of squash be like what it feels like to hit alone? Why the moment during the match of trying to decide what to do with the ball? If only it didn’t take so much money to create this place, this equipment, all the component parts of this experience. Without all that paraphernalia, it seemed that the ball, the racquet, the court, even the matter making up his arms and legs and torso, all of it had come together so that Perfectness could have a place to escape its usual hiding place.

Ben started to feel a little bored with volleys, and so he began hitting drop shots, trying to place the ball in the nick every time. He knew that this would get boring too, and that for the really good stuff he would have to wait, he would have to move through the boredom into the second and third and fourth periods of absorption. Not since the Um Club had Ben entered this kind of trance past past past past past past boredom. Ben felt a few moments of worry that he wasn’t getting his work done, that he might miss dinner or even check-in if he kept going, but he couldn’t bring himself to step off the court to look at the time, and so he kept hitting and kept hitting.

*  *  *

Price was there in the dim vestibule as Ben left the courts. The coach was clearly trying to create an effect by appearing this way, and Ben tried not to betray surprise.

“I heard.”

Ben wished this could mean that Price had heard about hazing or Ahmed having his head shaved.

Price sighed, and to Ben it seemed that he was playacting his idea of a concerned person. “People get overextended.”

Ben stayed quiet.