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EVEN THOUGH THERE WEREN’T many fans around the place, the tournament organizers had the concession stands open. I went outside and let a cute young thing in an amazing pair of tight white shorts pull me a draft beer in a blue plastic cup. Tables and chairs had been set up under a large green and white awning.
I took my beer to one of the outer tables where I had a view of the putting green, and sat down. I thought about going to hit some balls myself. Playing a game of golf is for me a joyful experience that fully involves the senses and takes a total commitment of my attention. But when I’m at sixes and sevens, in need of some mild physical exertion and mental relaxation, I like to hit balls on the practice tee. Because I’m a former tour player, none of the pros objects to letting me use the practice range when it’s not otherwise busy.
Okay, hitting golf balls is not aerobics. As exercise, it sucks, maybe. And it may sound dreadfully boring, the thought of standing out in the hot sun for an hour or two, mechanically and methodically launching balls into the air, over and over again, for no apparent reason. But for me, it’s good therapy. Whatever else I can or cannot do in life, I know I can stand on a bit of grass and hot a seven-iron high into the air, make it curve either left or right, and land it within a reasonable distance of my target. It is such a liberating feeling to be able to do that. For me, anyway. Which is why I can stand there and do it over and over for hours at a time.
I was thinking about all this and sipping on my beer when a beautiful woman suddenly sat down at my table. She wore a pretty mint green outfit, shorts and top. Her long straight brown hair was pulled back off her face and tied in a pony tail, leaving her features open for inspection. The long and elegant lashes. That movie-star nose. The full and inviting lips. Nice profile.
Those features stared back at me arrogantly across the table. She held her mirrored sunglasses in her long and elegant fingers, which I noticed were twitching a bit.
“Are you a friend of John Turnbull?” she demanded.
“Nice to meet you, too,” I retorted. I held out my hand. “Name’s Hacker. Yours?”
She hesitated for a heartbeat or two. “Never mind that,” she said snootily. She ignored my outstretched hand, too. “Are you gonna answer my question, or not, Hacker?” she demanded again.
I took a sip of beer and let her simmer on the other side of the table while I studied her. Her arrogance began to shift over a shade toward desperation. I didn’t like this at all. I go to great lengths in my life to avoid situations where other people can get me by the short and curlies, but I’m never comfortable when I find myself on the gripping end of someone else’s.
“Well,” I said finally, as she fumed silently. “The short answer is no. I’m not what you would call a friend of John Turnbull, in the sense of having grown up with him, been his college roommate or spent many a happy evening carousing with him.” I took another sip of beer and watched the fire dancing in the girl’s eyes. “I do know the man, having talked to him some, and was almost run over by him last night in Atlanta, as I believe you know.”
She flushed as she recalled the parking lot incident.
“The longer answer to your question depends on what you really want to know, Miss whatever your name is,” I continued calmly. “And that answer depends on a few other questions. Like, who wants to know. And why. And what are you really driving at here, Miss —?”
She sighed and dropped her head into her hands with an exhalation forced from her lungs by the weight of the world. “Aw, hell, never mind,” she sighed. She lifted her head up and looked at me sadly this time. “Would you buy me a beer?”
I turned and signaled to a passing waitress to bring us two beers. By the time I turned back to my mystery guest, I saw yet another look on her face. This one was suddenly mysterious and sly and unmistakably seductive. Her long lashes beat once, twice, like a butterfly alighting. Her full lips, suddenly pouty, twitched upwards at the corners.
“Say,” she said softly, eyes wide and large. “Haven’t I seen you around somewhere?”
I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing. Her line was straight out of a bad B movie. So was the gamine look this strange little chameleon had manufactured, apparently for my benefit. It struck me as wildly funny.
Seductresses are not usually prepared for laughter as the reaction to their siren songs. Bold macho retorts, yes. Nervous laughter and a “golly gee,” maybe. Quick eyeball laser scan up and down the chest, almost always. Outright rejection, sometimes. But my loud guffaws were an affront to her womanly skill, if not her dignity. She turned a deep and angry red and her eyes flashed at me furiously while I laughed.
I wiped my tearing eyes and subsided into controlled gasping just as the waitress brought over two more foamy cups of beer.
“I’m sorry,” I said as I slowly calmed down. She was glaring at me. “That was very well done. Were I a director, I would have yelled ‘Cut! Print!’”
She continued to glare. Then she thought about it and, slowly, a smile began to form on her lips. Almost against her will, she too began to laugh, although hers was more on the sheepish side.
“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said finally.
“What’s your name, kid?” I asked her gently.
“Jean MacGarrity,” she said. She looked back at me and this time her face was without pretense. I liked what I was finally seeing for the first time. A young woman, pretty and intelligent, but confused. Her eyes were wise beyond her years, and had a hard edge born of adversity. They were the eyes of a doe who had been evading the hunters with the big guns, and had landed somehow in a thicket she believed was safe.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, indicating with my hand the general scene: the golf course, the players, the Tour.
She followed my hand with her eyes and look out across the green and quiet landscape that enveloped us. She didn’t answer for a long moment, lost in her own thoughts. When she turned back to me, that hard edge in her eyes had expanded and taken over. She backed deeper into her thicket and was not coming out.
“I like golf,” she said. She dared me with a look to question her further. I declined. Nothing worse than trying to lure a wild beast from her lair.
I shrugged. “None of my business,” I said. She down the last of her beer, muttered a quick “see ya around” and was gone.
I watched her leave. Those long brown legs that ended nicely in her round green shorts caught the eye of most of the males about, and not a few envious looks from the females. I suspected that jean MacGarrity was a golf groupie. All professional sports have them and I had gotten to know a few over the years, seen them come and go. In a way, they were sad people. I had never been able to work out a rational psychological profile for the type. They all seemed to have different reasons for doing what they did, which was seek out professional golfers for sexual and, hopefully other, pleasures.
Some were just cute young thangs looking for a fling on the wild side for a few weeks or months. Some were star-fuckers, who had their own personal and probably deeply perverted reasons for wanting to hang another celebrity pelt on their bedpost. Others I had known had been on a strange quest to seek Daddy’s approval that broke down roughly as: Daddy loves golf, so if I love a golfer, Daddy will love me. Sad. Pythagorean logic gone sadly astray.
They came and they went. They were passed around like well-thumbed skin mags. The lucky ones, if you can call them that, found real live golfers to slum around with and fulfill their strange destinies. For a night, or a weekend, or sometimes longer. The unluckier ones, the next echelon, the close-but-no-cigar girls– the ugly and the fat and the unhappy and the really sick-o types– were ignored by the players and passed along to the hangers- on. They ended up in the beds of caddies and bartenders and manufacturers reps and tournament officials and network guys and, yes, members of the press. Until they were used up or totally degraded and finally went back to whatever unhappy existence had made them flee, an existence made much worse by the memories they would also carry with them.
I downed the last of my beer. It was warm and as bitter as hemlock. Time for some therapy. I changed in golf shoes and went out to the practice range, almost empty in the late afternoon heat, and hit golf balls over and over until the sweat was trickling down inside my shirt and my hands began to ache. It felt wonderful.