Couples by John Updike

crowded on thelittle piece of asphalt whose edges fell off into mud softened and stamped by sneaker footprints. Ken and Gallagher were the tallest and she saw Ken, whose movements had a certain nice economy she had not seen displayed for years, lift the ball to the level of his forehead and push it off. It swirled around the rim and flew away, missing. This pleased her: why? He had looked so confident, his whole nicely poised body had expressed the confidence, that it would go in. Constantine seized the rebound and dribbled down low, protecting the ball with an outward elbow. Foxy felt he had been raised in a city. His eyes in their ghostly transparence suggested photographic paper now silver, now black, now clear, depending upon in what they were dipped. His sharp features flushed, little-Smith kept slapping his feet as if to create confusion. He had none of the instinctive moves and Foxy wondered why he played. Saltz, whom she was prepared to adore, moved on the fringes cautiously, stooped and smiling as if to admit he was in a boys’ game. His backside was broad and instead of sneakers he wore black laced shoes, such as peek from beneath a priest’s robe. As she watched, Hanema, abruptly fierce, stole the ball from Constantine, braving his elbow, pushed past Ken in a way that must be illegal, hipped and hopped and shot. When the ball went in he jumped for a joke on Gallagher’s back. The Irishman, his jaws so wide his face was pentagonal, sheepishly carried his partner on a jog once around the asphalt.
    “Discontinuous,” Saltz was protesting.
    “And you fouled the new guy,” Constantine said. “You are an unscrupulous bastard.”
    Their voices were adolescently shrill. “All right crybabies, I won’t play,” Hanema said, and waved the waiting boy into his place. “Shall I call Thorne to come and make four on a side?”
    Nobody answered; play had already resumed. Hanema draped a sweater around his neck and came and stood above the watching pair of women. Foxy could not study his face, a circular purple shadow against the sun. A male scent, sweat, flowed from him. His grainy courtly voice asked his wife, “Shall I call Thorne or do you want to? He’s your friend.”
    Angela answered, “It’s rude to call him this late, he’ll wonder why you didn’t call him sooner.” Her voice, lifted toward the man, sounded diminished to Foxy, frightened.
    He said, “You can’t be rude to Thorne. If rudeness bothered him he’d have left town long ago. Anyway everybody knows on Sundays he has a five-martini lunch and couldn’t have come earlier.”
    “Call him then,” Angela said. “And say hello to Foxy.”
    “Pardon me. How are you , Mrs. Whitman?”
    “Well, thank you, Mr. Hanema.” She was determined not to be frightened also, and felt that she was not.
    Sun rimmed his skull with rainbow filaments. He remained an upright shadow in front of her, emanating heat, but his voice altered, checked by something in hers. “It’s very endearing,” he said, and repeated, “endearing of you to come and be an audience. We need an audience.” And his sudden explosion of energy, his bumping of Ken, his leap to Gallagher’s back, were lit in retrospect by the fact of her watching. He had done it for her to see.
    “You all seem very energetic,” Foxy said. “I’m impressed.”
    He asked her, “Would you like to play?”
    “I think not,” she answered, wondering if he knew that she was pregnant, remembering him looking up her skirt, and guessing that he did. He would make it his business to know.
    “In that case I better call Thorne,” he said, and went into his house.
    Angela, her casual manner restored, told Foxy, “Women sometimes do play. Janet and Georgene are actually not too bad. At least they look to me as if they know what they’re doing.”
    Foxy said, “Field hockey is my only game.”
    “What position did you play? I was center halfback.”
    “You played? I was right inner, usually. Sometimes