A few days after Lance Morrow told me he learned that he had but six months to live, I had a dream about the two of us.
We were tennis doubles partners, and we proceeded from match to match creaming every pair of challengers who came our way. Dressed in old-fashioned whites, we beat professionals as well as preppies who goaded us into games. We rallied with street kids too, hitting balls over invisible nets in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant. I played net, and Lance played back, positions that fit with our different writing styles when we took turns writing the Time-magazine Essay page in the 1980s and 1990s. I was quick and flashy, but it was Lance’s game that won the matches for us, as he hit hard, deep shots into our opponents’ court.
