Wall Street Journal reporter Tom Perrotta, who covered tennis, died Wednesday at the age of 44 from brain cancer.
Jason Gay of The Journal writes, “This is how I want to remember him: This was a few years ago, in Paris, amid the French Open—he’d been through a wave of treatments, and he was feeling better, more himself, and leaving Roland Garros in the early evening, he was excited, because Rachel had flown into town. Tom picked out this place for all of us to go to dinner, not far from the Champs-Élysées, and we waited outside for a table for what seemed like hours, but we didn’t care, because it was one of those June twilights when the sun wasn’t in any kind of hurry, and more important: Rachel was here! Tom was so happy. Who could complain? A retired tennis pro walked by on the sidewalk, and Tom walked over and said a quick hello. It felt like Tom’s town, even if it wasn’t.
“We sat down to dinner, late, and the meal went on and on, with dessert, and maybe a little more dessert, because why not? No one says this sort of thing in the moment, but in the back of your mind, you’re thinking: How many nights like this are we going to get?
“When we finally paid the check and stepped outside, it was dark, and it was now raining, in the dreamy way you hope it rains in Paris. I asked Tom if he thought they were going to be able to play tennis tomorrow, and he said, who knows, he’d be there. He was always there. He smiled, and then he and Rachel walked off into the rain.”
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