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  And what, really, was the point in a fan letter? To reward the recipient for the pleasure her performance had brought him? Hardly, if such a letter were more likely to provoke anxiety than to hearten. What kind of a reward was that?

  No, it was the writer’s own ego that a fan letter supported. It was an attempt to create a relationship with a stranger, and the only fit relationship for two such people was distant and anonymous. She played tennis, and sparkled on the court. He watched, rapt with enjoyment, and she didn’t even know he existed. Which was as it should be.

  In the letters he wrote in the privacy of his own mind, sometimes he was a wee bit suggestive, a trifle risqué. Sometimes he thought of things that would bring a blush to that pretty face.

  But he never wrote them down, not a sentence, not a word. So where was the harm in that?

  * * *

  Her game was off.

  Last month she’d played in the French Open, and the television coverage had been frustrating; he’d only been able to see one of her matches, and highlights of others. She didn’t make the quarterfinals this time, went out in the third round, beaten in a third-set tiebreaker by an unseeded player she should have swept in straight sets.

  Something was missing. Some spark, some inner fire.

  And now she was back in the States, playing in the women-only Virago tournament in Indianapolis, and he’d driven almost a thousand miles to watch her play, and she wasn’t playing well. At game point in the opening set, the girl double-faulted. You just didn’t do that. When the serve had to be in or you lost the set, you made sure you got that serve in. You just did it.

  He watched, heartsick, as his Miranda lost point after point to a girl who wasn’t fit to carry her racquet. Watched her run after balls she should have gotten to, watched her make unforced errors, watched her beat herself. Well, she had to, didn’t she? Her opponent couldn’t beat her. She could only beat herself.

  And she did.

  Toward the end, he tried to inspire her through sheer force of will. He narrowed his gaze, stared hard at her, willed her to look at him, to meet his eyes. And she just wouldn’t do it. She looked everywhere but at him, and a fat lot of good it did her.

  Then she did look over at him, and her eyes met his and drew away. She was ashamed, he realized, ashamed of her performance, ashamed of herself. She couldn’t meet his eyes.

  Nor could she turn the tide. The other girl beat her, and she was out of the tournament. He’d driven a thousand miles, and for what? He wrote her a letter.

  I don’t know what you think you’re doing, he wrote, but the net result—no pun intended—is to sabotage not merely a career but a life.

  He went on to the end, read the thing over, and decided he didn’t like the parenthetical no pun intended bit. He copied the letter over, dropping it and changing net to overall. Then he signed it: A Man Who Cares.

  He left it on his desk, and the next day he rewrote it, and added some personal advice. Stay away from the lesbians, he counseled her. They’re only after one thing. The same goes for boys. You could never be happy with someone your own age. He read it over, copied it with a word changed here and there, and signed it: The Man Who Loves You.

  The following night he read the letter, went to bed, and got up, unable to sleep. He went to his desk and redrafted the letter one more time, adding some material that he supposed some might regard as overly frank, even pornographic. The Man For Whom You Were Destined. The phrase struck him as stilted, but he let it stand, and below it, with a flourish, he signed his name. He destroyed all the other drafts and went to bed.

  In the morning he read the letter, sighed, shook his head, and burned it in the fireplace. The words, he thought, would go up the chimney and up into the sky, and, in the form of pure energy, would find their way to the intended recipient.

  * * *

  Her next tournament was in a city less than a hundred miles from his residence.

  He thought about going, decided against it because he didn’t want the disappointment. He’d developed a feeling for her, he’d invested emotionally in the girl, and she wasn’t worth it. Better to stay home and cut his losses.

  Better to avoid her on television as well. He wouldn’t tune in to the coverage until she was eliminated. Which, given the massive deterioration of her game, would probably come in the first or second round. Then, once she was out of it, he could sit back and watch the sport he loved.

  But, perversely, she sailed through the opening rounds. He read the sports pages every morning, and noted the results of her matches. One reporter commented on the renewed determination she was showing, and the inner reserves upon which she seemed able to draw.

  There’s a sparkle in her eye, too, he added, that hints at an off-court relationship.

  He was not surprised.

  She won in the quarterfinals, won again in the semis. He didn’t watch, although the pull toward the television set was almost irresistible.

  If she reached the finals, he promised himself, then he would watch.

  She got there, and didn’t have to contend with either of the formidable sisters; one had skipped the tournament with a sore heel tendon, while the other lost in the semis to Ana Dravic, the Croatian lesbian he’d watched Miranda lose to in a quarterfinal match when she was still his Miranda, pure and innocent, glowing with promise. Now Miranda would play Dravic again, for the tournament, and could she win? Would she win?

  She lost the first set 4-6, won the second in a fierce tiebreaker. She was on serve in the first game of the third and final set, won that, and then broke Dravic’s serve to lead two games to none.

  And then her game fell apart.

  She double-faulted, made unforced errors. She never won another game, and, when she trotted up to the net to congratulate the hulking Croatian, the TV commentators were at a loss to explain what had happened to her game.

  But he knew. He looked at her hand as she clasped Dravic’s larger hand, caught the expression on her face. And then, when she turned and looked into the camera, looked straight at him, he knew that she knew, too.

  * * *

  Her next tournament was in California. It took him four days to drive there.

  He went to one early-round match, watched her win handily. Her tennis was purposeful, efficient, but now it left him cold. There was no heart and soul in it. It had changed, even as she had changed.

  At one point, she turned and looked him right in the eye. Her thoughts were as clear as if she’d spoken them aloud, as if she’d shouted them into his ear. There! What are you going to do about it?

  He didn’t go to any more of the matches, hers or anyone else’s. He stayed in his cheap motel, smoked cigarettes, watched the television set.

  When he smoked, he removed the white cotton glove from the hand that held the cigarette. Otherwise, he kept the gloves on while he was alone in his room.

  And periodically he emptied his ashtray into the toilet and flushed the cigarette butts.

  He was ready. He knew where she was staying, had driven there twice and scouted the place. He had a gun, if he needed it. It was untraceable, he’d bought it for cash at a gun show from a man with a beard and a beer belly and a lot to say on the subject of government regulation. He had a knife, equally impossible to trace. He had his hands, and flexed them now, imagining them encircling her throat.

  And there was nothing to connect him to her. He’d never sent a letter, never met her face to face, never given another human being the slightest hint of the way he and she were bonded. He’d always driven to the tournaments he’d attended, always paid cash at the motels where he stayed, always registered under a different false name. Never made a phone call from his room, never left a fingerprint, not even so much as a DNA-bearing cigarette butt.

  He would stalk her, and he would get to her when she was alone, and he would do what he’d come to do, what he had to do. And the world would never know why she’d died, or who had killed her.

  He was confiden
t of that. And why shouldn’t he be? After all, they’d never found out about any of the others.

  CATCH AND RELEASE

  When you spent enough time fishing, you got so you knew the waters. You had certain spots that had worked for you over the years, and you went to them at certain times of the day in certain seasons of the year. You chose the tackle appropriate to the circumstances, picked the right bait or lure, and tried your luck.

  If they weren’t biting, you moved on. Picked another spot.

  * * *

  He was cruising the Interstate, staying in the right-hand lane, keeping the big SUV a steady five miles an hour below the speed limit. As he passed each exit, he let up on the gas pedal while he kept an eye out for hitchhikers. There was a string of four exits where they were apt to queue up, college students looking to thumb their way home, or to another campus, or wherever they felt a need to go. There were so many of them, and they were always going someplace, and it hardly mattered where or why.

  He drove north, passed four exits, took the fifth, crossed over and got on the southbound entrance ramp. Four more exits, then off again and on again and he was once more heading north.

  Taking his time.

  There were hitchhikers at each exit, but his foot never touched the brake pedal. It would hover there, but he always saw something that made him drive on. There were plenty of girls out there today, some of them especially alluring in tight jeans and braless T-shirts, but they all seemed to have boys or other girls as companions. The only solitary hitchhikers he saw were male. And he was not interested in boys. He wanted a girl, a girl all by herself.

  * * *

  Luke, 5:5. Lord, we fished all night and caught nothing.

  Sometimes you could drive all day, and the only reason you’d have to stop was to fill the gas tank. But the true fisherman could fish all night and catch nothing and not regard the time as ill-spent. A true fisherman was patient, and while he waited he gave his mind over to the recollection of other days at the water’s edge. He’d let himself remember in detail how a particular quarry had risen to the bait and taken the hook. And put up a game fight.

  And sizzled in the pan.

  * * *

  When he stopped for her, she picked up her backpack and trotted up to the car. He rolled down the window and asked her where she was headed, and she hesitated long enough to have a look at him and decide he was okay. She named a town fifty or sixty miles up the road.

  “No problem,” he said. “I can just about take you to your front door.”

  She tossed her pack in the back, then got in front beside him. Closed the door, fastened her seat belt.

  She said something about how grateful she was, and he said something appropriate, and he joined the stream of cars heading north. What, he wondered, had she seen in that quick appraising glance? What was it that had assured her he was all right?

  His face was an unmemorable one. The features were regular and average and, well, ordinary. Nothing stuck out.

  Once, years ago, he’d grown a mustache. He had thought it might give his face some character, but all it did was look out of place. What was it doing there on his lip? He kept it there, waiting to get used to it, and one day he realized that wasn’t going to happen, and shaved it off.

  And went back to his forgettable face. Unremarkable, unthreatening. Safe.

  * * *

  “A fisherman,” she said. “My dad likes to go fishing. Once, twice a year he’ll go away for the weekend with a couple of his buddies and come back with an ice chest full of fish. And my mom gets stuck with cleaning them, and for a week the house totally smells of fish.”

  “Well, that’s a problem I’m spared,” he told her. “I’m what they call a catch-and-release fisherman.”

  “You don’t come home with a full ice chest?”

  “I don’t even have an ice chest. Oh, I used to. But what I found over time was that it was the sport I enjoyed, and it was a lot simpler and easier if the game ended with the fish removed from the hook and slipped gently back into the water.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she asked if he thought they enjoyed it.

  “The fish? Now that’s an interesting question. It’s hard to know what a fish does or doesn’t enjoy, or even if the word enjoy can be applied to a fish. You could make the case that a fish fighting for its life gets to be intensely alive in a way it otherwise doesn’t, but is that good or bad from the fish’s point of view?” He smiled. “When they swim away,” he said, “I get the sense that they’re glad to be alive. But I may just be trying to put myself in their position. I can’t really know what it’s like for them.”

  “I guess not.”

  “One thing I can’t help but wonder,” he said, “is if they learn anything from the experience. Are they warier the next time around? Or will they take the hook just as readily for the next fisherman who comes along?”

  She thought about it. “I guess they’re just fish,” she said.

  “Well now,” he said. “I guess they are.”

  * * *

  She was a pretty thing. A business major, she told him, taking most of her elective courses in English, because she’d always like to read. Her hair was brown with auburn highlights, and she had a good figure, with large breasts and wide hips. Built for childbearing, he thought, and she’d bear three or four of them, and she’d gain weight with each pregnancy and never quite manage to lose all of it. And her face, already a little chubby, would broaden and turn bovine, and the sparkle would fade out of her eyes.

  There was a time when he’d have been inclined to spare her all that.

  * * *

  “Really,” she said, “you could have just dropped me at the exit. I mean, this is taking you way out of your way.”

  “Less so than you’d think. Is that your street coming up?”

  “Uh-huh. If you want to drop me at the corner—”

  But he drove her to the door of her suburban house. He waited while she retrieved her backpack, then let her get halfway up the path to her door before he called her back.

  “You know,” he said, “I was going to ask you something earlier, but I didn’t want to upset you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Aren’t you nervous hitching rides with strangers? Don’t you think it’s dangerous?”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well, you know, everybody does it.”

  “I see.”

  “And I’ve always been okay so far.”

  “A young woman alone—”

  “Well, I usually team up with somebody. A boy, or at least another girl. But this time, well...”

  “You figured you’d take a chance.”

  She flashed a smile. “It worked out okay, didn’t it?”

  He was silent for a moment, but held her with his eyes. Then he said, “Remember the fish we were talking about?”

  “The fish?”

  “How it feels when it slips back into the water. And whether it learns anything from the experience.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Not everyone is a catch-and-release fisherman,” he said. “That’s probably something you ought to keep in mind.”

  She was still standing there, looking puzzled, while he put the SUV in gear and pulled away.

  * * *

  He drove home, feeling fulfilled. He had never moved from the house he was born in, and it had been his alone ever since his mother’s death ten years ago.

  He checked the mail, which yielded half a dozen envelopes with checks in them. He had a mail-order business, selling fishing lures, and he spent the better part of an hour preparing the checks for deposit and packing the orders for shipment. He’d make more money if he put his business online and let people pay with credit cards, but he didn’t need much money, and he found it easier to let things remain as they were. He ran the same ads every month in the same magazines, and his old customers reordered, and enough new customers turned up to keep him going.

  He cooked some pa
sta, heated some meat sauce, chopped some lettuce for a salad, drizzled a little olive oil over it. He ate at the kitchen table, washed the dishes, watched the TV news. When it ended he left the picture on but muted the sound, and thought about the girl.

  Now, though, he gave himself over to the fantasy she inspired. A lonely road. A piece of tape across her mouth. A struggle ending with her arms broken.

  Stripping her. Piercing each of her openings in turn. Giving her physical pain to keep her terror company.

  And finishing her with a knife. No, with his hands, strangling her. No, better yet, with his forearm across her throat, and his weight pressing down, throttling her.

  Ah, the joy of it, the thrill of it, the sweet release of it. And now it was almost as real to him as if it had happened.

  But it hadn’t happened. He’d left her at her door, untouched, with only a hint of what might have been. And, because it hadn’t happened, there was no ice chest full of fish to clean—no body to dispose of, no evidence to get rid of, not even that feeling of regret that had undercut his pleasure on so many otherwise perfect occasions.

  Catch and release. That was the ticket, catch and release.

  * * *

  The roadhouse had a name, Toddle Inn, but nobody ever called it anything but Roy’s, after the man who’d owned it for close to fifty years until his liver quit on him.

  That was something he would probably never have to worry about, as he’d never been much of a drinker. Tonight, three days after he’d dropped the young hitchhiker at her door, he’d had the impulse to go bar-hopping, and Roy’s was his fourth stop. He’d ordered a beer at the first place and drank two sips of it, left the second bar without ordering anything, and drank most of the Coke he ordered at bar number three.

  Roy’s had beer on draft, and he stood at the bar and ordered a glass of it. There was an English song he’d heard once, of which he recalled only one verse:

  The man who buys a pint of beer

  Gets half a pint of water;