George always made sure he was able to sneak out at lunch from his job at Kidder Peabody on 120 Broadway. He lived in Great Neck and commuted to the city Monday through Friday. He’ get in as early as he could; if he wasn’t playing an early morning match, he’d half run for a lunch time game at the old Park Place Squash, the "dungeon of squash" as it was called.  It was founded by Leon Collins, a South African transplant who happened to also lived in Great Neck and was a trader at Merrill Lynch. Leon still ran the club, which often had no hot water, no clean towels, smelled of old sweat and mildew, but it had the first international court ever built in the States, a softball court, British style. Leon claimed he brought the softball game to the States.

He built that court at a time when the narrow court, the American hardball game, was at its peak. Six old American courts flanked the one squash wide court, that softball court, built with cinder blocks and covered over in an inch or two of plaster. No matter how hard you hit the ball, if you didn't use the height of the front wall that ball wasn't going anywhere for good length. George could hear in his sleep that special sound only that old style British court made, it was like music to him.  He used that sound to help him sleep at nights.

His wife Theodora, or “Teddy”, as she was called by her closest and oldest friends from Radcliffe days, would often stay out late, while George rushed home from his technology job to let the nanny, who cared for their two children, Jeremy and Samantha, go home. He would bathe them, read them stories and put them to bed. Teddy had an annoying habit of always calling last minute to tell George she was working late and he would have to relieve the nanny.

It took sometime before George found out that his wife was involved with another man, it later turned out he was an El Salvadorian line cook at the Crowne Plaza hotel and restaurant in Times Square. She used to go there a lot with her coworkers and clients. He found out about the affair purely by accident, he really shouldn’t have ever found out, because Teddy had always been careful with this kind of thing. George loved his children, and loved squash, he loved writing, but most of all he loved just being a father to his children. He couldn’t wait for them to grow older so he could teach them squash.

It was one of those sunny October days, beautiful days between the changing seasons, when he found out what Teddy was doing. Teddy said she had to work at her architecture firm where she was the office manager. She told George they were replacing the phone system and she had to be there all day Saturday and Sunday. George figured he would drive her to work and then take the kids to his Kidder office -- a quick drive downtown, especially on a Saturday morning. He'd do some work, let the kids hang out in his office and then take them home. He didn't think much of any of it until he was in his office barely an hour then had she called to say he couldn’t reach her by phone.

They arrived home late Saturday afternoon, having stopped at the Queens Farm museum as a reward to the kids for coming to the office with him; they loved the petting zoo and Jeremy squealed when he saw the goats, but Samantha just sulked and was totally grossed out by the smell.

She said "everything smelled like poop there."

George was quick to remind her that animals pee and “poop” and it smells, but they are animals, all god's creatures and they are to be loved and respected. Samantha at 7 was just perfecting her eyeball roll. George would try and tickle her but that didn't work anymore, she wasn't 4 she was going on 8. She reminded George so much of her mother, her demeanor, her temperament.  Jeremy just found everything incredible and funny, mostly his dad, at 3 years old he just would crack up at watching George going about his business. George found Jeremy's amusement the best part of his day.

After Teddy’s call telling him he couldn’t reach her, he thought it was odd that she would call like that and the whole thing sounded off, like rehearsed. Before they left the office for home he called her. Michelle, one of the junior architects picked up.

“Hello, Eastman Associates, Michelle speaking.”

“Hi Michelle, George here.”

“Hey George, how are you? She’s not here, well she was here left hours ago.”

“I’m surprised I even reached you, it seemed earlier there was a problem with the phone system.”

“That’s the first I heard, you sure you were dialing correctly? We have a lot of architects in this weekend, big push to land the Governor’s Island redevelopment, we actually have a shot –“

“Shoot Michelle, Jeremy, got to go.”

“No problem b-y-y-e”

George hung up he just couldn’t listen to insipid Michelle any longer. He had no idea what this was about, he’d sort it out, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out Teddy was caught in a lie. This seemed to him on the drive home a big lie, enough to distract him and let Jeremy and Samantha fight it out in the back seat.

When they got home, as if being led by someone or something else and without thinking, George went directly into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. There was Teddy's diaphragm case, he paused, knew what he wanted to do and picked it up and shook it a bit. It was empty.  "Unbelievable" he said to himself. They hadn't had sex in weeks, yet she put her diaphragm in this morning when she had to go to the office to have the phone system replaced. A phone system that seemed to work just fine.

They hadn’t been home that long, when Teddy came home. She seemed very agitated, pissed almost, he knew that expression, especially when something didn’t go her way. She was rude to George and almost seemed to dismiss Samantha when she came running out of her bedroom greeting her with "Mommy!” George looked at Samantha's face as Teddy brushed passed her on her way to the kitchen.

George was used to Teddy's moods. He couldn't very well come out and ask her why she took her diaphragm. So he just watched Teddy as she went around their apartment listened to her short manner with the children.

“What happened, Teddy, you have that look you didn’t get your way, did someone cancel last minute on you?” he thought to himself.

 It reminded him of the days before the children when he unexpectedly had to work late and he and Teddy had plans, she’d get really annoyed with him, and seemed agitated about everything, just like she was now, things probably didn’t go her way.

When Teddy came out of the bathroom George went in. He stood in the bathroom looking in the mirror.

"Do you really want to do this?" No, not really, I don't want to do this, I am a writer this kind of shit is beneath me. She can do what the fuck she wants to do," he always talked aloud to himself when he was stressed.  

He opened the medicine cabinet and there was the diaphragm case, egg shaped, beige, sleek.  Something about it looked like it should contain earrings, or a necklace, not something so much as what a woman would use to keep herself from getting pregnant by her lover or even her husband.

“Not quite a Faberge egg”, he thought, but definitely a modernist motif about it, he added. He was trying to postpone this not face it. He reached for it and held it in his hand for a moment, he didn't need to open it, and he knew as he shook it the diaphragm was back in. He put it back and stepped back as if he had just met a badger in the medicine cabinet. He stared at this oval container and just said to himself,

 "Unbelievable".

George met Bob Kind for his lunch time game at Park Place. Bob was a stuck up British transplant to New York who at the low advanced level thought he was a squash aficionado. He was patronizing and always trying to tell George the mistakes he made. George put up with Bob because Bob beat him with a methodical length game that so frustrated George, who wanted to play softball like he used to play hardball. George had to simply grin and bear it. And as long as Bob kept beating George, what could he say.

As George rushed out of 120 Broadway and headed towards Park Place he kept thinking about Teddy. She was seeing someone, that was obvious, but what happened, everything was so different on this Monday than when he left for home on Friday. He had to hurry to get to the court in time and stretch a bit and warm up. The court was booked solid and he and Bob had only 45 minutes.

Grace greeted George at the front desk and George paid for his court time,

"Bob is already here." Grace said.

She was a pretty girl in her early 20’s everyone at the club suspected she was sleeping with Lionel. He had a daughter Grace’s age. George didn’t like it but a lot of the other guys at the club admired Lionel for that.

"Well good for fucking Bob, he didn't have to work, take care of children, he’s independently wealthy and besides it’s a good probability that he has no children to look after.” George thought as he rushed to his metal locker which was rusty and dented and the combination was a hit or miss thing – today it was a hit. He grabbed his stuff and headed for the locker room.

Grace just said, “Okay George, easy on the locker Lionel will make you pay for damages.”

“Not nice George, not nice, Grace is a fool, Teddy is a whoring bitch, how the hell...” his thoughts were rapidly going through his head as he took of his office clothes and put on his squash clothes.

He ran into Richard Quinn, the club pro, on his way to the court who said,

 “You have your hands full today, George, Mr. Bob is telling everyone you're easy to beat."

That set George almost into a rage, the thought of the uppity priggish pompous Brit talking shit like that.

 “Damn,” he said aloud.

He made an abrupt about face because he had to hit the crapper. He played better if he hit the crapper before he played, he had a nervous stomach, but this was a good thing. He felt lighter and more at ease on court.

Bob was warming up and seemed a bit perturbed that George wasn't ready to go. Bob never stretched, nor really appreciating the necessity to warm up before playing. He was conditioned to warm up 2-3 minutes each hitting the ball on each side of the court, run a little in place and then play the game. George was pretty athletic and had to stretch about ten minutes. People liked to watch the two of them play, George would short circuit and often lose his temper, Bob kept his cool and George knew they were laughing at him. He wanted so much to keep his cool.

"C’mon, we have about 35 minutes of court time...you're late. Can’t you get here on time?"

"Sorry" George said.  "Let me hit a few". George immediately felt the Teddy go out of his system like air out of a tire.  The sound of the ball on that court, he thought, just keep that music in your head.

George played the first game terribly, he tinned the ball and he could tell Bob was not happy, it just wasn't good squash. In the second game George picked it up a bit and played very aggressively, cutting the ball off and moving the slower Bob out of the way. George took the second game because Bob let George play George’s game.

Some of the lunch time players, hard ball holdovers hung around to watch the match. George was going through his usual vocal gyrations,

"What the fuck, man are you just plain stupid with a shot like that." Sometimes George hit his head with his racket. Today he was hitting his thighs.

In the third game, Teddy was back on court with George, he just thought how she could do this to her family. Who was the guy, what was she doing. Should he confront her? At one point George whiffed a return of serve from Bob, he didn't even see the ball until the last second and just stuck his racket out.  Bob strutted a bit around the court, he might as well have been a peacock.

They took a quick water break and George just wanted to do something bad, he wanted to hit Bob, wipe that smirk off his face. That smirk that said so many things and not just about squash.

Richard Quinn came over and said in his Welsh accent,

"You can beat this guy, man, you can. Just make him move, keep the point going. Let him hit his looping grandpa shots, but you, just keep it in play with a bit more pace than his."

The fourth game the rallies were more significant. George kept the ball in play, he had to expend a lot of energy to take the ball early, but the result was good. Bob had expended a lot of energy too, George played his game and just turned the tables on Bob, and Bob was retrieving and didn't have the physical endurance that George had. George won the fourth game in good course.

In between games, George said to himself,

“Stop thinking about her, stop it. Do you love her? No, you haven't loved her in a while. Do you love your kids? Yes they are everything to me. Do you love this game? Yes, I do want to play well, every time out just like this last game. I want to be a good father, I am a good father, and I must be a bad husband?”

They didn't have much time left, no one would kick them off in the midst of a 5th game. George simply played beautifully running Bob all over the court. Just when George was taking total command of the game, Bob took a ball off the back wall and wound up and nailed George just behind his right knee cap. The pain was excruciating. Bob didn’t say anything. They played a “Let”, but George was really hurting. Bob seemed impatient and wanted to resume play. He wanted to take advantage of the opportunity which, of course he did, and he finished out the fifth game for an easy win.

George sat in the locker room thinking about his loss. He looked in the mirror at the nasty bruise from the hit he took. He didn’t know which was worse losing or getting hit, probably both, and it was insult to injury.

“Not funny, not funny at all,” he thought.

He showered quickly and as he came out of the club he noted the weather had changed, it was raining, but he was back at his desk before anyone was the wiser.

WILL GENS writes the blog SquashDashersbashers.blogspot.com.

He is passionate about poetry and squash. He is pursuing a graduate degree in Poetry at Adelphi University, writes about squash, coaches squash and when not on the court is working on Wall Street in software testing.  

He lives with his wife, Shyamala, and his son, Kyle, a semi-professional squash pro and classics student at Hunter college. He also has a daughter, Alexandra, living in Florida and planning to attend medical school.

He would someday in this lifetime love to see both a U.S. born player reach the top 10 on the world squash tour and witness the total elimination of petroleum driven cars.