Slim and None

  “Ein wannen sluppen sockin fockin

  Bitchy fretten fordik dickin

  Eatim goodink vit der sockin

  Fock me, fock me! Vant more fockin.”

  We think you can hear the Irving Berlin influence mixed in with a touch of Cole Porter.

  Irv Klar said, “Would it be indelicate of me to ask what happened with you and Cheryl, Bobby Joe? I ask as a friend. I liked Cheryl.”

  “I’ll tell you about Cheryl,” I said. “For a tricky-looking babe who was good fun at times, she could be a mean, angry, vindictive, greedy, lying, cheating bitch—and I’d say that even if I hadn’t been married to her.”

  He laughed. “Sorry, Bobby Joe, but that’s funny.”

  “Yeah, it was about two million funny on my end. I didn’t fight with her in the divorce. I gave her everything she wanted. You could say our divorce was the genteel equivalent of the woman in the mobile home throwing all of her husband’s clothes out on the gravel.”

  “I can use that,” Irv said. “Can’t I?”

  I shrugged. He scribbled.

  15

  It’s been the theory of coaches, teachers, and other authority figures dating back to—I don’t know, Knute Rockne or somebody—that if you jack with a lady the night before a game, you’ll be pussy-whipped when it comes crunch time on the scoreboard, and this is not a good thing. On the other hand, there’s the more recent theory that if you have a new babe to show off for, you may be inspired to play out of your skin.

  I was evidently in favor of the second theory.

  After I ordered dinner for us in my hotel room Saturday night during a well-deserved timeout, I mentioned as much to Gwen, and she said, “You’re showing off for me in more ways than one.”

  “I’m motivated,” I said.

  “So am I. Have you noticed?”

  “I have.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Where are we headed, do you think?”

  “I don’t Know that either.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not yet.”

  She was smoking. I was enjoying it.

  I said, “By the way, girl, has your obscenely wealthy son asked you how you’re spending your nights this week?”

  I thought it was about time I made such an inquiry.

  “Nope.” She sounded unconcerned.

  “He’s not curious?”

  “He hasn’t said anything.”

  “He doesn’t ask how it’s going with the escaped convict you’ve been seen with? He just stays focused on golf?”

  “He asks me what I’m doing every night. I tell him I’m having dinner with friends. He says great. He goes out to eat with other players, comes home early, watches TV, talks to one of his girlfriends on long distance for a while, gets a good night’s rest.”

  “Since he’s a nineteen-year-old millionaire, I assume the babes are on him like gravy on grandpa.”

  “They are. But if they don’t Know who Phil Mickelson is, they don’t last long. Which is a good thing for them, as I see it. A babe can only sit and stare at the ceiling for so long if the guy she’s with doesn’t talk about anything but golf, or think about anything but golf. It’s not a babe’s idea of romance.”

  “No, as I understand it, your babes have never been too interested in putting on the carpet.”

  When room service knocked on the door Gwen dashed into the bathroom. I made the waiter rich for bringing the Caesar salad for her, and the grilled-cheese sandwich with bacon and tomato for me.

  I sounded the all-clear and Gwendolyn reappeared in one of my navy blue golf shirts and her white panty briefs, with a fresh cigarette.

  Some men might have found that sight distracting enough to cause them to ignore their dinner, but I was more strong-willed than that.

  As we ate dinner we discussed the leaderboard. The top 10 looked like this after fifty-four holes:

  There were four other players between the first ten and the two tied at three-under 213—who, as it happened, were Grady Don and Scott.

  Gwen said, “Scotty’s six strokes back. He’d have to shoot sixty-two or something tomorrow to have any chance.”

  “It’s not the six strokes,” I said. “It’s the fourteen guys in front of him. It’s impossible for all fourteen to fall in a ditch on the same day. Only one guy ever made a comeback like that. When Arnold Palmer won the Open at Cherry Hills, his sixty-five in the last round made up seven shots and passed fourteen guys. I hadn’t been born yet in 1960, but I remember it well.”

  She said, “Tell me about Grady Don, your intellectual friend. Scotty’s paired with him tomorrow.”

  I said, “First I want to Know who you’re following tomorrow, golfers or Anne Marie Sprinkle?”

  “I’m going to the rally to hear the speeches. After that, I’ll follow two guys I Know who’ll be playing golf. What about Grady Don?”

  I said, “Aw, he’s just a good old boy from Odessa, out there in West Texas—where an oil pump passes for a shade tree, and the plate lunches are bigger than footballs.”

  “My father was born in Ranger, Texas.”

  “No way?” I was shocked and delighted to hear it.

  “Honest. My granddaddy was working in the Texas oil fields at the time. My grandmother used to talk about baking apricot fried pies and selling them to the roughnecks.”

  “Ranger was a famous boom town,” I said. “There were lots of boom towns in Texas. The rowdiest must have been Burkburnett. There’s an old movie, Boom Town, with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy. They made it about Burkburnett. I Knew there was something special about you. You’re a semi-Texan.”

  “Even though I was born in California?”

  “Minor deduction.”

  “My father moved to the Coast when he was a young man . . . for the same reason a hundred million other people did. Climate and opportunity. He was a traveling salesman. He sold furniture and carpet. He met my mother in LA, when she was nineteen and working at Paramount. They met in a Mexican restaurant on Melrose, near the studio.”

  “Your mother was a movie star?”

  “She went to Hollywood to be a movie star, but she wound up in wardrobe. This was in the fifties, long before I came along.”

  “Your mom must have Known all those Virginia Katherine McMaths.”

  “The Mack whats?”

  “All those Hedy Lamarrs, Dorothy Lamours, Ginger Rogers. Their real names are always Virginia Katherine McMath. Actually, Ginger Rogers’s real name was Virginia Katherine McMath. I Know this because she grew up in Fort Worth. It’s one of those small things we take pride in. She went to the same high school I did . . . but about fifty years earlier.”

  “My mother did Know Ginger Rogers, and Hedy Lamarr, and Jimmy Stewart . . . Gary Cooper. Lots of stars. She thought they were nice. You were saying about Grady Don—?”

  “Grady Don’s younger than me,” I said, “but we’ve been friends since he came on the Tour four years ago. We have TCU in common. TCU’s our alma mater. He was a two-sport athlete. A tight end in football and captain of the golf team. Grady Don was a tight end when tight ends didn’t have to weigh 275. He was a good football player. He was on the same bowl teams at TCU with Paregoric Sims, one of our All-America running backs.”

  “Paregoric Sims?” she said. “Nice nickname.”

  “It’s his real name. His mama was taking her best shot at Patrick on the birth certificate.”

  “Bobby Joe, you’re so politically correct, I can hardly stand it.”

  “It’s Grady Don’s influence. He’s married to Monette, his college honey. They live in Southlake. That’s a rich suburb with good access to the Dallas–Fort Worth airport. You can find some ungodly mansions in Southlake and it has a handmade little shopping village. Grady Don calls it Stepford Town.”

  “Grady Don has some wit about him.”

  I said, “Monette doesn’t come out here much. They have a fourteen-year-old, Donny. He’
s into every sport Known to mankind. She drives him to practice every day. Grady Don says Monette’s major claim to fame at TCU was getting Kicked out of Tri Delt for gaining too much weight. Like she went over 110 or something.”

  “That’s awful.”

  “I agree, but he says she didn’t take it too hard because her sorority sisters had stopped speaking to her anyhow. They found out her daddy in Houston was a veterinarian instead of a cardiologist.”

  Gwen said, “I think I like Monette. Grady Don still strikes me as being a trifle crude, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  “That’s why he makes me laugh.”

  “You like crude, do you?”

  “His Kind of crude is funny. Grady Don is good-naturedly . . . totally . . . honestly crude—and not embarrassed by it.”

  “He’s definitely not embarrassed by it.”

  “It’s not all-out hilarious but lately he’s been collecting colorful names for the female organ that was Known in my carefree college days as the blissful chasm.”

  “I hate the c-word, if that’s what you’re talking about.”

  “Grady Don Maples doesn’t bother with the c-word. He goes straight to fur taco.”

  “Crude.”

  “Lap moss.”

  “He’s still a frat rat!”

  “Wool.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Texas pelt?”

  “God.”

  “He used one I hadn’t heard the other day. Hatchet wound.”

  “ ‘Hatchet wound’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Yeah.”

  16

  ater in the evening, after I’d doctored the hatchet wound again, the good-luck phone call came from Buddy Stark and Cynthia. They weren’t calling from the resort in Ocala, Florida. They were calling from the oceanfront mansion in Sea Island, which I like a lot, where they were spending a week before driving up to spend a week in the mountaintop mansion in Highlands, North Carolina, which I like even more, before flying over to spend a week in Spain, which they could have.

  Spain had tried to Kill me twice—like Mexico.

  Buddy said all the things golfers say to each other before a crucial round in a big-deal championship. Fairways and greens, pard. Take dead aim. Tempo, B.J., tempo.

  “You want to be Viagra off the tee, Xanax on the greens,” he said.

  “I’ll take it back slowly,” I said.

  Another reason they called was to share good news with somebody who’d appreciate it. The good news involved Cynthia’s two sons by Knut Thorssun, Sven and Matt, who were once Known coast to coast as “the unruly little shits.” That was before a military academy in Virginia devoted five years to molding them into reasonably tolerable young adults. Now it seemed they’d been accepted by a small but very elite university—Mt. Gidley, in Vermont.

  Thanks to their daddy’s thoughtful donation of five million, Sven and Matt would be entering Mt. Gidley in the fall. It was one of those excellent universities in New England where for a tuition fee of only $50,000 a year the student is permitted to create his or her own four-year curriculum. Forget English, math, and history. That was old-fashioned.

  Sven was going to spend four years studying the entertainment values of pharmaceutical opium, and Matt was going to spend four years studying various ways to overthrow governments and start revolutions in freedom-loving countries.

  I said I couldn’t be more impressed with Sven and Matt’s progress— or with that of the academic world.

  Cynthia came on the line to ask if the lady in the room with me was somebody she’d like to meet someday. I asked her why she thought there was a lady in my room. She said because she Knew me well enough to Know that if I didn’t have company in the room, I’d be out on the town.

  I said, “Is this the same party-going stew I used to Know who was based in Dallas and flew for Delta when she wasn’t a golf groupie?”

  “It is I,” she said, giggling.

  She loved to say that. It was her favorite golfer’s quote. Bernhard Langer had said it after he won his first Masters and a sportswriter asked him who was the most famous German golfer of all time.

  I said, “Cynthia, honestly. A lady in my room? You only think things like that about men because you were married to the Swedish dolt. If Knut hadn’t learned to play golf for a living, he’d have had to grow a mustache and work as the fuck god in porn flicks.”

  She said, “Damn, I wish I’d said that.”

  “I miss you guys.”

  “I miss you too. So . . . is this a Keeper?”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t gimme that who. The person listening to you right now. I hope she’s a dynamite lady. You deserve it.”

  “Could be.”

  “Could be what? A Keeper or a dynamite lady?”

  “Both.”

  “Good. I hope I get to meet her someday. And B.J.—”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Cheryl was a dirty leg. I’m sorry it took you so long to find it out.”

  “Me too,” I said. “I could have had the title shot outdoors in the ball-park.”

  17

  he whole ridiculous mess started while I was playing the 9th hole. Trying to, I should say. I’ll remember it vividly. Remember it the way people remember where they were and who they were with when momentous things occurred in the world or in their lives.

  Things like, oh . . . 9/11, Pearl Harbor, JFK bites the dust . . . first wedding . . . first divorce . . . moon landing . . . the day the beloved high school won State in football . . . first car . . . first barbecue rib . . . first cheese enchilada . . . the day you finally broke 80 without cheating . . . the day the rich aunt took all the jewelry with her in the casket. Big stuff.

  Looking back on it, you’d think the Masters officials and the law enforcement agencies would have been better prepared. But I suppose the last thing anybody considered was that Anne Marie Sprinkle would have secret agents on the inside.

  This flat amazed me. The Masters is one of the toughest tickets in sports. It’s dream the impossible dream, folks. And yet there must have been a hundred protestors on the course with legitimate Masters credentials. Who Knows where the credentials came from—club members, ticket brokers, Don Corleone? All I Know is, the protestors made themselves some mischief and created your basic turmoil.

  I was overjoyed that Gwen Pritchard wasn’t a part of the disruption. She’d gone to the rally and listened to the speeches and left, figuring that was the high-water mark for the protestors.

  Which, as it turned out, was exactly what Anne Marie Sprinkle wanted everyone to think.

  My day started off badly enough as it was. I was obliged to have breakfast in the clubhouse with Smokey Barwood, my agent. He’d flown in from the Coast, where he’d been involved with another important client during the week. The client was Trapeze Cobb, the Laker.

  For several months Trapeze had been going through legal proceedings on two charges of rape. He was represented by a well-respected and good-looking criminal attorney, Rachel Stafford, who often appeared on Court TV, but it was a tough case. To recap: Trapeze had been invited by North Hollywood High to demonstrate to a class how rape could easily occur in today’s society. Trapeze had misunderstood and demonstrated it too literally. With the students observing, he raped the red-headed teacher, an attractive thirty-five-year-old woman, by bending her over a chair. When he’d finished, he raped a sixteen-year-old blonde cheerleader on top of a desk. After many delays the case had finally gone to trial, and the jury had deliberated only thirty minutes before it found the NBA star not guilty.

  Smokey confided that Trapeze Cobb was still angry about being put through the legal ordeal, a celebrity like himself. He’d said to the agent, “This judicious system better stop shittin’ on me or I’m gonna change my name to Abboo Boogerhammett . . . be a terrorist motherfucker.”

  The quarterly tax returns Smokey Barwood brought for me to sign were no cau
se to be cheerful. I asked him how I could owe so much money. He said it was because I chose to live in a country that desired to have an army, navy, and air force.

  I said OK, fine. I didn’t mind paying my fair share of taxes for a strong national defense. Not as long as all the people on welfare could Keep their country club memberships.

  I was paired with Claude Steekley, which meant that if I found myself in urgent need of a dumb-ass, there was one handy.

  Claude Steekley was a devout University of Texas grad—heir to the Crenshaw-Kite throne, he acted like—but that didn’t excuse him for wearing a burnt-orange tuxedo in his wedding. His socialite bride, Pookie, wore a burnt-orange gown, and her bridesmaids wore burnt-orange dresses, and the groomsmen wore burnt-orange UT football jerseys bearing the numerals of past Longhorn gridiron heroes. Number 22 for Bobby Layne, number 60 for Tommy Nobis, number 20 for Earl Campbell—stop me before I Kill more. When Pookie’s big-shot oilman daddy was asked who gives this woman in the ceremony, he said, “Her daddy, her mama, and the University of Texas Longhorns, national champions in baseball and women’s basketball last year, and would have been in football if it hadn’t been for two cheap holding calls. May God strike the Georgia Bulldogs dead and may the Eyes of Texas shine on this couple all they livelong days.”

  Talk of Claude and Pookie’s burnt-orange wedding often entertained locker rooms on the tour. Locker-room rumor also had it that Pookie Steekley, socialite though she was, liked to fool around on occasion.

  Claude and I heard the noise at the same time as we approached our drives on No. 9. Since the 9th hole comes back to the clubhouse, it was easy enough to hear the commotion from out on the street.

  I envisioned Anne Marie Sprinkle and her faithful followers gathered at the gates of Magnolia Drive on Washington Road and yelling at the reception committee of Chairman Kisser McConnell, a gathering of other green jackets, and the state troopers who’d be there to protect them.

  As the TV replays later confirmed, that was exactly the scene, with the activists chanting the predictable slogans: “Discrimination is not a game” . . . “Pigs play golf, women cook and clean” . . . “Georgia is a police state!”