Free Doubles by Nic Brown

points and was 112th in the world.
    I almost never had the urge to play. Intricacies of brands of grip, changes in ball velocity on different surfaces, altitudes, strategies honed over years were now useless. There was a feeling of deadweight and waste.
    For a few days after Kaz left I played cornhole by myself. One afternoon I threw cornhole on all four bags. Four cornholes was impossible. The toss is thirty feet long, and the hole is only six inches wide. When the fourth bag passed into that small, magical void, I fell to my knees in my backyard and screamed up at the trees like I had just won Wimbledon.

8
    I OPENED MY eyes to the back of Manny’s couch. My head felt like it had been filled with cotton. I knocked over a cup of water on the floor as I swung my legs around and sat.
    “That my little Slow?” Manny called, water puddling around my clammy heels.
    The smell of eggs filtered through the cotton in my head, and I walked slowly towards the kitchen, where Manny stood in limp white underwear pulled high above his navel, like a skeleton in a loincloth frying eggs.
    “Jesus,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I feel like I got drugged.”
    “That’s because I drugged you.”
    Manny flipped the eggs onto a plate.
    “Seriously.”
    Manny turned and said, “No, I’m serious too. I drugged you.”
    I remembered nothing past cornhole.
    “I gobstopped you,” Manny said.
    “I’m sorry?”
    “GHB. Yellow Dog came to play.”
    “GHB?”
    He set a plate of eggs and toast in front of me, like a nurse tending the sick. “These are for you.”
    “You serious?”
    “You guys needed to relax.”

    “You can’t drug us.”
    “Those eggs is getting cold, Slow.”
    The idea that I had been drugged by my own coach was both unbelievable and completely believable. I looked at the clock. It was ten after nine. Kaz’s match started at eleven.
    “How’d Kaz get home?”
    Manny winked.
    “He here?” I said.
    “He needed to relax, is what he needed to do,” Manny said.
    I opened the door to the guest room. Kaz lay on his stomach, on top of the sheets, wearing a shirt and no pants. The solid tan line at the middle of his thighs made it seem as if he actually were wearing a pair of shorts, but it was only his olive skin covered in a fine down. It was nothing new. I had seen him naked more than any human other than Anne.
    “Kaz,” I said.
    He didn’t move.
    “Hey.”
    One eye opened.
    “What?” He looked around.
    “Manny’s.”
    Kaz held his hand to his forehead for a moment. “Where’s my pants?”
    He stood unsteadily and bent to look under the bed, pointing his rear end directly towards me. Manny stepped into the doorway and said, “Hello, sailor!”
    Kaz turned, his shirt falling just above his crotch, penis dangling below the hem.
    “That shit was hilarious last night,” Manny said.
    “Where’s my pants?”
    “That’s what I’m saying,” Manny said.

    “What was hilarious?” I said.
    “I don’t think those pants even exist anymore.”
    “What?” Kaz said.
    “What was hilarious?”
    Manny pointed at both of us and said, “I love you guys.”
    “Fuck,” Kaz said. “I have to go, like right now.”
    “Here,” I said, pulling a pair of my own jeans from my bag. “Take these.”
    Kaz slid them on without underwear. They stretched far beyond his feet. He held them up with one hand as he rushed into the hallway. I heard him bang open the door and sit with a thud. I knew he was putting on his shoes. Manny made us keep them in the hall because of their stench. After all those years, he didn’t care about whether or not we were drugged or even made it to a match on time, but still our shoes couldn’t enter the room.
    “Manny,” I said. I didn’t even know where to start.
    “You needed a night off. Both of you.”
    “Manny.”
    “You loved it.”
    “We do anything . . . ?”
    “You went to India.”
    “With those women?”
    “With those women? I love you, Slow.”
    “Did I . . .