Alice suspected a lot of things about Dana. One, that she was a mediocre tennis player at best, not because of lack of skill but because of lack of desire. Two, Dana was happy to be ranked 176th in the world. Three, if Dana were to retire now and live the rest of her life without tennis, she wouldn’t miss it. For a second, Alice resented that Dana seemed to be content with her life. Dana seemed happy with everything in her life, and that genuinely puzzled Alice. How could anyone be that complacent? She was suddenly determined to get some answers.

When she strode into the bedroom, she found Dana bent forward, tying her shoelaces. For a second, she forgot what she was supposed to be there for, and contemplated a well-placed palm and some nice kisses to the back of Dana’s neck. Dana straightened up and Alice quickly re-assembled her thoughts.

"Hi baby. How are you feeling?" Dana smiled and bent down to grab a towel off the bed. She quickly tucked it into the waistband of her sweats. She already had the heart monitor strapped to her bicep. Her hair was held up in a neat ponytail. To Alice, she glowed in the most beautiful way. Alice swallowed a lump in her throat.

"Good morning love. I just had a sudden thought. Well, several sudden thoughts, not so much sudden as… urgent. Well, not really urgent but I would like to know the answers to some questions…" Alice babbled and wondered how to phrase her questions so that they wouldn’t sound like accusations of an envious crazy person. "So Dana, how come you can be happy and I can’t?" would sound so distasteful. Alice winced.

"Alice, we’ve talked about this. If you really want to ask Kit if you could sell your ‘magical brownies’ or whatever at the Planet, go for it! The worst that could happen is that she’ll say no and you’ll be left holding the whole batch. And really, for you, that’s not such a bad thing, is it?" Dana smiled winningly. Alice smiled sarcastically while she decided. What the hell. This was Dana. She could say anything to Dana.

"Dana," Alice began, "I was just curious. You know how you always said that someday you’d break into the top 50. But you’re nearing retirement age but you’re still at 176. What’s up with that?"