I was on the putting green before I teed off in the first round when Terri beckoned to me. A little wave and smile.
I walked over to the ropes to say hello. She was with Cliff Doggett, the great American and wonderful human being she lived with. He didn’t look any
different than the first time I’d seen him, when he’d reminded me of Brad Pitt in True Romance. Sleepy-eyed guy, three-day stubble on his face, soft voice, messed-up brown hair.
“Hey man,” Cliff said. We shook hands. “I sure like knowin’ a celebrity . . . even though Terri says you’re just people.”
“That’s me,” I said. “One of the people flock.”
“Good-looking shirt,” Cliff said.
I glanced down at myself. It was just a yellow Sahara with a stand-up collar. Went with my khaki slacks and solid white shoes.
Terri was quick to tell me Cliff was working now. He was cooking three nights a week at The Old Neighborhood Grill. I knew the restaurant. A home-cooking joint over on Park Place.
“Cooking’s a new gig for me,” Cliff said, “but I’m all over it.”
Walking toward us came a couple—a gizzard-lip, stuck-for-an-answer-looking guy in a checkered sport coat, and a pale, lumpy bimbo in a short black skirt, pink satin blouse, and black high heels.
I recognized the couple from a photo in the Light & Shopper. It was Ray Ron Moreland and his girlfriend, Paula Dean Adcock. The same Ray Ron Moreland who’d murdered his wife and chopped off her head, but had beaten the rap thanks to Red Taggert.
The verdict was outrageous. I agreed with the local columnist who wrote that Red Taggert had outfoxed the DA again. Red had been shrewd enough to arrange for a jury of twelve men who were obviously unhappy at home with their own wives.
Terri greeted Ray Ron and Paula Dean with “Hi, there. I see you picked up the badges Red left for you at will call. Good.”
I would liked to have said, “Hey, it’s Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson,” but I was reasonably sure Ray Ron and Paula Dean wouldn’t recognize those names from Double Indemnity, even if they’d ever seen it. Also, I wasn’t crazy. Fuck with a head-chopper? What I did do, I dropped a couple of Titleists on the putting green and pretended to work on my stroke.
“We was in the clubhouse for a while,” Paula Dean said. “We just come from there. Everybody was real nice. Ray Ron signed a bunch of autographs.”
“I did,” Ray Ron nodded. “I sure did.”
Terri pointed Ray Ron and Paula Dean toward the margarita tent, saying she and Cliff would join them in there later—after they watched a few holes of golf.
Ray Ron said, “Who’s Cliff?”
Terri gestured at Cliff, who seemed to be studying something in the distant treetops.
Ray Ron said to Cliff, “Yo, man.”
“Huh?” said Cliff. “Oh . . . yeah . . . for sure.”
When the wife murderer and his fiancée had strolled away, I said to Terri, “High heels at a golf tournament? He killed the wrong woman.”
Terri let that sail on by and said, “I thought we’d follow you awhile, till it’s time for Cheetah and Couples and Knut to go.”
I said I was honored.
Terri mentioned that if she and Alleene both won their matches at Mira Vista this weekend they’d meet in the finals of the Ladies Club Championship next week. “You may have to skip Hartford,” she said. “How could you resist watching two of your exes clash on the links?”
“Tempting,” I said.
AFTER MY second round Friday, Alleene caught me on my way to the clubhouse. She was dressed for golf, like she might be going out to hit balls later. White shorts to mid-thigh, blue knit shirt, white visor, white shoes. Hard not to notice the perfect tan on her perfect legs. She said she’d watched me play sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen and was impressed with how casually I three-jacked two of the greens from twenty feet.
“I was impressed, too,” Mitch said.
I introduced Roy Mitchell to Alleene Simmons. I couldn’t believe the two of them had never met.
“This the first one?” Mitch asked me, nodding at Alleene.
“First or second, I never can remember,” I said.
“Is he always that funny, Mitch?” Alleene said.
Mitch said, “He tried to imitate a golfer today. Didn’t work out.”
Alleene asked if I wanted to come see the catering joint on Berry that I’d financed. She was now moved in. I said why not—I didn’t need to practice to keep playing this good. I showered and met her there.
Alleene’s Delights got my full approval. Good sign, plenty of space, lots of stoves and pots and pans. A big walk-in freezer. Nice office. Desk, chair, cabinets, file drawers, window to look out on Berry Street traffic and a Walgreens.
Two young people were working for her in the kitchen, a black kid and a Mexican girl. Their names were William and Mary.
“William and Mary?” I said, grinning at Alleene.
“I know.” She returned the grin.
“Wonder what the odds were on that?”
“Good,” she said.
“Probably not as good as they’d be on Oral and Roberts.”
“William and Mary are good workers,” she said.
This guy Terri lived with, I told her, was cooking at The Old Neighborhood Grill these days. She might want to keep him in mind for a job someday. I described Cliff to her. She said she made it a practice never to hire burnouts—or do anything else with them.
She said, “If Terri and I are in the finals of the Ladies Club next week, will you come out and watch? I’d love to have you there. I really would. You’re still my favorite guy, you know?”
I told her I’d have to miss the Hartford Open—they’d changed the dates again, to satisfy the new title sponsor. Imodium.
“This is more important,” she said.
“You should know that Terri has a new set of clubs. Hawk Eyes.”
“What she has is eighteen strokes. I’ll be giving her twelve. I’ll have to play my butt off to beat her.”
“You seriously want me there, Alleene?”
“I do, yes,” she said. “Unless it’ll upset Cheryl. How’s it going in the love department?”
“Rough sledding,” I said. “But . . . although I’m no good at being noble . . . it doesn’t take much to know that the problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”
“Thanks for reminding me of that, Rick.”
I promised her I’d think about skipping Hartford if her match with Terri took place. I said it might add a new dimension to the excitement of women’s golf.
CHERYL CAME out for a while on Saturday with her pals Jolene Frederick and Bonnie Lasater. They followed my group through the first six holes. I was in a pairing with Nick Price and Fuzzy Zoeller, two of the last remaining smokers on the tour. It took me back to a happy time.
Nick and Fuzzy weren’t scoring any better than I was, which was why we were paired together. Their names attracted a small gallery, although I doubt if they attracted more attention than Jolene’s snug white T-shirt with the purple lettering on the front. The message said:
Applaud These
I had a moment with the ladies while our group was forced to wait on the fifth tee—somebody had sliced into the Trinity River up ahead. As we stood there I said to Jolene, “I can’t help but admire your T-shirt.”
She said, “Most of the comments have been favorable.”
“I imagine,” I said.
Cheryl said the new bumper sticker on Jolene’s Audi A-4 was better than any message on her T-shirts. I learned that the bumper sticker proudly read “I Date Your Husband.”
I asked the ladies if I could take them to dinner tonight.
Jolene said, “Thanks, but I have a home to wreck.”
“I have a bridge game,” Bonnie Lasater said.
“I play bridge,” I commented.
Bonnie said, “Oh? Are you a Jacoby Transfer person, or do you bid the Stone
Diamond?”
“I just play bridge,” I shrugged.
I may have noted the sneer of a bridge Nazi as Bonnie walked away with Jolene, letting Cheryl and I have a moment together.
Cheryl permitted me to take her out for some barbecue that evening. The Railhead was too crowded, so we went to Angelo’s and ate ribs and drank beer and continued our discussion of my tragic character flaws.
26
MY TWO EX-WIVES WON THEIR semifinal matches at Mira Vista to set up their championship confrontation, but the other news around Bellaire Drive South was what the mail brought me—a manila envelope containing Irv Klar’s latest stab at literature.
A personal note was included. He apologized for taking so long with this version, but the scum-level newspaper he worked for had been keeping him busy covering “high school crap.” He’d also spent some time preparing his resume to send off to Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, Washington Post, and LA Times—everything in between sucked—
and he’d lost two weeks when his mom and dad made him come up to San Jose and help take inventory at their discount jewelry store.
He hoped I liked what he’d done. Smokey Barwood liked it. But he was sure I’d have some suggestions—hey, it was going to be my book, wasn’t it?
I tried to read what he’d sent, purely out of curiosity, but stopped halfway through the first page to kick a chair. Small wonder.
Tees and Sympathy
By Bobby Joe Grooves with Irving Klar
Hidy, podnoos. I’m just a yodelin’ country boy from down on the farm in Texas, but I never milked no cows, seein’ as how I was busy learnin’ how to whap that ol’ golf ball around, which I do pretty good these days on the PGA Tour.
Although I’ve won some tournaments and I have a bank account a lot of women would like to go down on, I don’t need a Greyhound bus to tell me I’m not any Ben Hogan.
I’m just your average money winner out here who scores his share of pussy along the way, and it don’t matter none to me if they’re spitters or a swallowers.
I picked up my first golf utensil when . . .
My immediate thought this time was, I wish I was my old lunatic high school basketball coach, Baldy Toler, and Irv Klar played for me. Irv would get fifty licks from my paddle on his gym-shorts ass, do a hundred push-ups on his fingertips, and run laps till his chest exploded.
27
THE TRUTH IS, I’D NEVER SEEN Alleene or Terri play golf.
But I was given ample opportunity the following week on a bright warm Sunday when I was skipping the Hartford Open in order to attend the Ex-Wives Classic at Mira Vista.
I suppose it was Alleene who talked me into staying around for the match. To be honest about it, I guess I was rooting for Alleene to win. Alleene wasn’t living with a guy who’d even failed hippie, or working for a loophole criminal lawyer.
And Alleene was taller.
My ex-wives both over-rehearsed for about an hour and a half, hitting balls at opposite ends of the practice range.
For the occasion Alleene wore a dark red shirt, a short white skirt—six inches above the knee, my eye measured—and white visor. Terri wore navy blue shorts, light blue shirt, black visor. They both wore white shoes and those little anklet socks that men look precious wearing when they play golf in shorts.
I stood off in the background behind the ladies, studying each of their swings for about ten minutes before I retired to the locker room and drank coffee and waited for the bell to ring.
On the range Alleene looked like the better player by far, which was why she was a six and Terri was an eighteen.
I was pleasantly surprised at how good a swing Alleene had. I liked the slope of her right shoulder and the way she was centered behind the ball when she set up. Her left-hand grip was a bit weak in my opinion, but when she came through the ball she compensated for it in the way her body uncoiled. I wouldn’t want Cora Beth Kenny or Perkie Haskins to hear me say it, but I thought Alleene had perfected a man’s golf swing for herself.
Terri had a long, slow three-piece swing, the kind that often gets cussed by somebody playing behind her. A lot of good things had to happen between the takeaway, the pause, and the follow-through for Terri to bring off a good drive, or a decent shot with any club in the bag. I assumed she must be a pretty good chipper and putter or she’d need 28 instead of 18.
I was up-front with Cheryl Haney, telling her where I was going to be that day. This was to prevent Cheryl from finding out about it later and accusing me of going out there in the hope of enjoying an Olde Lang Syne fuck with the winner, spineless asshole that I was.
Cheryl had intended to go with me for the bizarre fun of it all, but business kept her away. Her boss, Donald Hooper, had assigned her to play hostess at an all-day “open house,” which, I’d learned from Cheryl, was something a real estate firm did when it hoped to unload a joke of a mansion that would only make sense to buy if a Ferris wheel and roller coaster could be connected to it.
The piece of property that day was a big “modern Victorian” deal in a flush neighborhood that could be called either “out there around Shady Oaks Country Club” or “down there in New Westover Hills.”
It had two wraparound porches, one up and one down, where you could stand and look at nothing, Cheryl said. It sat in a hole and didn’t even provide a view of the Shady Oaks golf course. You entered into the game room, of all things, and then you had to go through the dining room before you found the living room, and then you had to go through the kitchen to reach the master bedroom, and it wasn’t even near Canterbury Drive where Ben and Valerie Hogan had lived.
Cheryl said, “I’m going to have to stand around the house the whole afternoon and watch people laugh at the fucking place and eat all the Krispy Kreme donuts.”
Alleene and Terri were scheduled to play at one o’clock. The pro shop let me have a golf cart to follow their match. I rolled down to the first tee on No. 1, a downhill par four. Got there before they did and sat there in my cart, chewing gum and wishing I still smoked.
The ladies came along shortly in their own carts, their golf bags strapped on the back. They stepped out and walked over to me, drivers in their hands. If they’d expected a gallery, it was just me.
Well, it was me most of the time. There was a phantom club member in a straw hat with a big black dog riding around in the golf cart with him. The man turned up every three or four holes during the match and looked like he was explaining what was going on to the dog. I swear the dog would nod and look as if he understood everything.
Now on the first tee, Terri said, “I’m glad you came out, Bobby Joe.”
I said, “What’s riding on this? Like . . . what does the winner get?”
Alleene said, “Oh, there’s a trophy, and I think there’s a $200 certificate for merchandise in the pro shop.”
“And you get your picture hung on the clubhouse wall,” Terri said.
I said, “I know you’re both nervous. You’ve been hitting balls all morning. Don’t worry about your drive on this hole. Just take a normal, easy swing. Your tee shot here is only one shot out of all the strokes you’re gonna take today. Just one. I’ve played some of my best rounds after I’ve bogeyed the first hole.”
Alleene said, “Great, Bobby. You’re telling us we’re going to bogey the first hole. Thanks. We needed that.”
“No,” I said, “I’m telling you not to get discouraged if you do.”
“Why in the world did we ask him to come here?” Alleene said to Terri with a laugh.
“Big mistake,” Terri said.
“Good luck,” I said. “Y’all play good.”
And I drove off, heading down to the first green.
28
THE RULINGS I WAS FORCED TO make had a dire effect on the Mira Vista Ladies Club Championship. Fortunately, they weren’t judgment calls, the kind a zebra comes up with in a football game that breaks your heart and makes your wallet look like Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped on it. They
were decisions that came right out of the Rules of Golf.
The first one occurred immediately, on the green at No. 1. Alleene hit a good tee shot to the edge of the bluff and played a respectable mid-iron down to the green. She was on in two. Terri drove well enough but thinned her second and was way short. She barely reached the front
edge of the green with her pitch. She was on in three, but she was getting a stroke a hole, so if they both two-putted, they would halve the hole, Alleene with a four, Terri with a five.
When Alleene couldn’t find a coin or a ball marker in her pocket she casually marked her ball with her car keys. She dropped the keys behind the ball. I’d left my cart and walked over to attend the flag.
Terri instantly said, “You can’t do that, Alleene!”
“I can’t do what?” Alleene said.
“You can’t mark your ball with your car keys.”
“I don’t have a coin,” Alleene said, “and I forgot to grab some ball markers in the shop.”
“That’s a penalty stroke,” Terri said. “You lay three.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Alleene said impatiently. “Did you hear that, Bobby Joe?”
“Terri may be right,” I said.
Alleene said, “Are you kidding me? A penalty for what?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I know our Tour rules say you can’t mark your ball with anything but a coin or a ‘similar object,’ I think it’s called. If you do, it’s a one-stroke penalty.”
“See there?” Terri said to Alleene.
Alleene said to both of us, “Since when are we playing PGA Tour rules? It’s just a goddamn country club tournament!”