Four Pairs of Muddy Pants  I'm at a tennis match. I walk very close to the courts as the matches begin. My friend Nat Miller, high school teammate Larry Rollie, and classmate Carol Derth are each playing. I sit on bleachers on one end of the courts and watch Nat and Carol play their matches. Carol is in the closest court. She is wearing dark bluish glasses and has braces. She looks at me. I try not to look at her encouragingly, but not show my disinterest in her openly. I think she thinks we're a couple. I watch the matches from a room in a house. The window I look out is on the second or third floor, and it is frosted up so it's hard to see out. There is a girl younger than I that I know there, and a woman who seems to be a teacher from Carter School, or Carol's mother. I walk out, down stairs, followed by the woman. We pass Sally Topp, a teacher I know from Carter School. The teacher that follows me says hi to Sally. I get outside and go up to Nat and hug him. His match is over and I can tell he won, even though I didn't see the end of the match, because he's happy. I start walking with Nat and my housemate Stephen Ramos. They get the back of my jeans all muddy somehow. I'm really mad at them, and I tell them angrily that because of the two of them I've ruined four pairs of pants in the past year. I go up to a house and wipe off my boots, which are very muddy. I'm at the front door, but I go to another secondary door. I blow the dirt off the key and open the door slightly. There are two cats inside that try to get out so I'm careful when entering. I enter, and know Nat is in the shower. There's one message on the answering machine that I play. The message is from Party Control in Wilmerton. A man says that they have heard about a party and he says the steps that Party Control is going to take to counteract the party. Nat's tennis evaluation form is on the table. He has given himself good marks with respect to the match he just played. There is a gate that extends the table to the countertop, with a release button on top. The cats climb this gate.