"Thanks," Danny said. "But do you think I can get something better to eat than this gunk?" He pointed down to his lunch tray, which had the sandwich called a Sloppy Joe on it and some very gloppy macaroni and cheese. 

"Tomorrow I'll take you to a better place," Mandel said. "Don't be offended, but maybe you aren't wearing exactly the right clothes. We dress a lot more casual here." 

"Yeah," Danny said, smiling. "I noticed. I feel as if I'm dressed for maybe the wrong play." 

"Where did you get your backhand?" Mandel asked, changing the subject. "I'd kill a guy for your backhand."

"Everything I know about tennis, I know from my father," Danny said. "He worked as a locker-room valet at a ritzy tennis club in Manila — that's in the Philippines — and picked up the game on his own. He spent a lot of time teaching me, beginning when I was three or four. I've got a brother Bobby, he's only five now, you should see him. He figures to be a lot better than me." 

The next afternoon, Maj Singleton called a practice at Indian Boundary to introduce the team to Danny. Everyone paired up afterward to hit some balls, and Danny and Mandel hit together. Rallying balls back and forth, Mandel felt himself getting into Danny's rhythm, and how satisfying that rhythm felt! "Whap" went the balls Mandel hit, "pock" came Danny's returns, all right at Mandel, so he scarcely had to move to return the ball to him. Whap, pock, whap, pock, Mandel could have stood out there on that court through the night, so fine did he feel rallying with Danny. 

When Mandel came up to the net, Danny provided him precisely placed lobs, so that he could hit practice overheads. He fed him volleys to his forehand and backhand sides. Mandel felt the level of his own game rising, just by being on the court with Danny. They played a set, which Danny won 6-2. Mandel wasn't quite sure how he got the two games, but was very pleased he did. At the end, meeting at the net, Mandel was breathing like someone who had just completed a marathon, Danny was cool and smiling. 

On another afternoon, Mandel and Danny played doubles together against two other boys on the team, Tim Ritholz and Dicky Simpson. Danny was a perfect partner, unselfish, backing up Mandel whenever necessary, cheerfully congratulatory whenever he made a winner at the net. He made difficult half-volleys look easy. His sense of the angles of the doubles court — and doubles, he taught Mandel without having to say a word about it, was essentially a game of angles, geometry in motion — was perfect. Like all really good athletes, Danny had mastered form, and yet was ready to abandon good form when winning the point required it. In the few autumn practices the team had, Mandel, warming up with Danny, playing doubles with him as his partner, felt he was playing well over his head; and it occurred to him that exactly there, over his head, was the best of all places to play.