Slim and None

by Dan Jenkins

  She said, “Don’t stay out late, honey. There’s this thing called a major starting tomorrow.”

  “I’m all over it,” he said, and was gone.

  I said with some alarm, “You’re not sharing a room, are you?”

  “That’s a rather sick question, don’t you think?” the chick-babe-mom said. “Of course he has his own room. He also has his own home. In Florida . . . to avoid tax problems.”

  “I Know Florida,” I said. “I’d rather have a tax problem. Florida is home of the door-to-door reptile.”

  She smiled. “He has a two-bedroom townhouse in Windermere, near Orlando. He’s a member at Isleworth.”

  “With Tiger, Shaq, and Cheetah. Shouldn’t he have a nickname?”

  I didn’t tell Gwendolyn my first impression of her Kid. That it wouldn’t be much trouble for him to pass for an arrogant prick. But he was only nineteen and he played golf, which was the saver. Most teenagers today by and large are morons. Not capable of saying anything intelligent because they’ve grown up having to yell above their music, which sounds like two leaf blowers in combat. What’s sad is that most teenagers today can hear the leaf blowers, but they can’t hear Harry Connick Jr. doing “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Now that I think about it, the only teenager I’ve ever heard say something interesting was Judy Garland—and she sang it in a movie.

  Now Gwendolyn said, “Scotty’s shy socially, but he’s confident about his golf game. He doesn’t think anything is impossible on the golf course.”

  “He has a world of talent,” I said. “Who looks after his vast wealth?”

  “His father. IMG made a strong proposal, but Rick is smart about finances. He said handling Scotty himself would be a no-brainer. Rick has started his own agency. He’s looking around for other clients. He negotiated Scotty’s deals with Nike, Titleist, American Express, Callaway, Dell, Porsche . . . all the foreign things.”

  I said, “Rick’s smart to handle the Kid himself. Let Dad be the thief. What does he take for himself, twenty percent? Thirty?”

  “Thirty. IMG would have taken thirty.”

  “Man’s office needs paper clips and pencils, and there’s always the bottled water to think of.”

  She flicked an ash. “Scotty’s financial setup is awesome. It’s true what you may have read in the golf magazines.”

  “What might I have read?”

  “Scotty was guaranteed fifteen million a year if he never made a cut.”

  “I wish Rick was my agent. But I’m not lugging around a National Amateur, two Westerns, and . . . didn’t he win the NCAA too?”

  “Yes. Last year. His only year at SC.”

  “Boy, he’ll miss that degree someday—when he’s trying to decide what country to buy.”

  “You Know, I’m sorry he’s missing the fun of college. I am.”

  “Yeah. The drugs, whiskey, parties, throwing up, car wrecks, getting chicks pregnant. Those were the days.”

  “You didn’t like college?”

  “I loved every minute of it.”

  “Scotty’s never cared about anything but golf. It’s too bad in a way. I suppose he’s a monster I helped create. He does like girls and having a slick car to drive, but more than anything he likes hitting golf balls and winning tournaments.”

  “How often does Dad the Agent come around?”

  “Not as often as I do. He drops in for a day or two here and there. I’m sure he’ll be at the Open. We won’t be sharing a room, in case you’re interested.”

  The drinks arrived. Gwen lit a cigarette before she tasted her potato vodka and soda. I bit off half of a large green olive and washed it down with a sip of the martini. It seemed time for somebody to speak.

  I volunteered. “Where did we leave off on the touchy subject?”

  “I’m wondering if we can discuss it seriously.”

  “I remember you reciting Anne Marie Sprinkle’s battle cry. ‘Discrimination is not a game.’ ”

  “It isn’t.”

  “I appreciated you not yelling it out loud.”

  “I was taking pity.”

  “The Augusta National doesn’t discriminate. Women have been playing the golf course as long as it’s been a golf course.”

  “But women can’t be members.”

  “They should be happy about it. They can play golf all they want and not have to put up with the cigars and the belching.”

  “I didn’t realize how lucky they are.”

  “Man, it’s a good thing Bobby Jones thought up the Masters or nobody would have heard of Anne Marie Sprinkle. This is the biggest thing that ever happened to her.”

  “She’s fought for many good causes in her life.”

  “Well, she’s on the wrong side of this one. The Augusta National is a private club. It can do what it pleases.”

  “It’s not a private club.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “No it isn’t. Not this weeK.”

  I was trying hard to hold my temper, not have to discount some of her exquisites.

  I said, “It’s a private club fifty-one weeks a year. What’s so bad if one week a year it holds a Kentucky Derby . . . a Rose Bowl . . . a Masters? Jesus, what a terrible thing. One week a year the club holds one of the great sports events in the world, but all of a sudden it’s a plague on mankind because some academic witch says it is—and a bunch of sportswriter and TV saps talk about it and build it into a big social issue. You Know what we need? More wars and depressions. Give the activists and the media something serious to worry about.”

  My little speech didn’t cause her to toy with the silverware or nervously light another cigarette to go with the one she was smoking. She sat there looking unmoved.

  Then she said, “I love the Masters, Bobby Joe. I’m delighted to be here. I’m thrilled my son is playing in it. But this is a legitimate feminist issue. There are CEOs in the club whose companies sell products to women, and yet a woman can’t join their club. There’s something wrong with that.”

  “There are dozens of other all-male golf clubs in this country, but Anne Marie Sprinkle only wants to protest against the Augusta National. Why do you suppose that is?”

  “Because it puts on a tournament that’s available to the public— which means it’s not a private club this week—and it has no female member.”

  “Wrong. Anne Marie Sprinkle wants to protest this week because the Masters is on national television. Has any activist ever protested anything anywhere if there wasn’t a TV news crew around? No livin’ way.”

  She was still looking at me calmly.

  “I’ll tell you something else,” I said. “This wouldn’t even be an issue if the club was in Massachusetts. But it’s in the Deep South. That makes it an easy target for the libs. Anne Marie Sprinkle is so uninformed she’s even said they can move the Masters to another town. Hey, I Know. What about Hartford? I’m sorry, but Anne Marie Sprinkle is a horror movie—Attack of the Fat Libs. The worst thing is, she’s trashing the Augusta National members in the media. She’s accused them of being a bunch of decrepit old mush-mouth, tobacco-spitting Confederate generals who don’t have anything to do but sit around the club and reminisce about all the great pussy back in Charleston.”

  “You’re making another speech.”

  “Yeah, I am. Anne Marie Sprinkle is trying to be Joan of Dogwood, but she’s so uninformed, she doesn’t even Know that some of the club’s southern members are successful businessmen with a track record of working to integrate the South’s banks, businesses, politics . . . and they’ve helped promote the careers of lots of women and minorities. That’s just a damn fact. Christ, bad-mouthing southern white men is so old and tiresome, it’s old and tiresome.”

  “Now you sound like a press release.” Still smiling. “None of this would be a problem, you see, if the club would simply enter the twentyfirst century
and admit a lady member.”

  “Oh, I’m sure that would solve all the world’s problems. You bet. Find a lady CEO of some investment company . . . woman in a ten-thousand -dollar designer suit . . . five-thousand-dollar haircut . . . fiftythousand-dollar face job . . . invite her to join. That’ll fix everything. Man, with that lady in the club there’ll be no more wars, hunger, homeless, crime, discrimination. What else? No more disease, floods, fires. It’ll be just one big happy globe—and the Masters did it, folks. There’s a Lucille for you.”

  “A what?”

  “Lucille. There used to be an old saying. Good deal, Lucille. Some of us have shortened it.”

  “Can we order dinner now?”

  “I have a better idea for the Augusta National. Instead of the lady CEO, the club should cover more bases. Take in a howling, screeching, pro-choice, antiwar, anti-Christian, tree-hugging, veggie burger, crippled black lesbian. Perfect.”

  “Bobby Joe?” she said.

  “What?”

  “If you Keep this up, I’m not going to sleep with you tonight.”

  9

  his paperback novel got me. The Kind you buy in an airport and intend to read on a flight but turn into a three-point shot by page 43 or a slam dunk by page 57.

  Her creamy lips. Her warm tongue. He stroked her soft inner thigh. They explored each other’s depths. The moist darkness of their depths. The darkness getting moister. Moister? She took him in her mouth. He took her in his mouth. How was that possible? Like this, that’s how. Who ordered the combo? The raw lust seeped from their bodies. No dripping allowed. Seeping only. She guided him into her. He sighed as he entered her dark moist depth. She thrust her head back and squealed. He thrust his head back and groaned. Lot of thrusting going on.

  That’s about where I laughed out loud.

  “Are you crazy?” she said, jerking away.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to laugh.”

  “What happened? Are you all right? Are you injured?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Something did.”

  “It has nothing to do with you.”

  “The hell it doesn’t.”

  “No, no. Really. It was . . . I swear on my mother’s Bible . . . autographed by Jesus himself . . . it wasn’t you. It was something silly.”

  “Something silly? I was something silly on your mind?”

  “Not you. I started thinking about a novel.”

  “You’re making love to me and thinking about a woman in a novel?”

  “Not another woman, no. Something made me think about the way they write about sex in some books I’ve read. Sometimes it’s so serious with the slurping and throbbing. It’s like, you Know . . . humorous.”

  “I’m humorous. I made you laugh. Terrific.”

  “That’s not what happened.”

  “You didn’t laugh?”

  “I laughed, but—”

  “Who do you think I am? One of those sad, desperate divorcées who need a vengeance fuck every now and then from an experienced, willing hand like yourself?”

  “Come on, Gwen. You’re making too big a deal out of it. You’re incredible . . . fantastic . . . first-team all-world. That’s what I was thinking. But out of nowhere this dumb thought jumped into my head and it made me laugh. I started thinking, ‘He entered her . . . She guided him into her moist darkness . . .’ That Kind of thing.”

  She looked at me sadly. “ ‘He entered her’?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “ ‘Her moist darkness’?”

  “LiKe that, yeah—you know—book shit.”

  “This is all so goddamn romantic, I need a cigarette.”

  She rolled over, gathering the sheet around her, grabbed a cigarette from her pack on the end table, and lit up.

  I enjoyed her second-hand smoke. Most ex-smokers hate second-hand smoke. I like it. Second-hand smoke reminds me of the best friend I ever had.

  I’d stopped smoking two years before while recovering from the mother of chest colds. I’d caught it on a flight. Probably from this guy next to me who was unquestionably using someone else’s frequent-flyer points to sit in first class. This germ-flinging slug in sandals, jogging shorts, and a T-shirt. No wonder airlines are going broke. I seem to be the only guy who pays to fly anymore. Anyhow, it took me a month to shake the rot, and I never went back to smoking.

  I’d been tempted to start again. Why not? Ben Hogan smoked every day of his life, won ten majors, and lived to be eighty-five. If Ben Hogan hadn’t smoked, he’d never have cured his hook. That’s what the Marl-boros Kept whispering to me.

  I said to Gwendolyn in a weak voice, “I wish I Knew what to say to you. I didn’t mean to insult you . . . hurt your feelings.”

  “I Know what to say to you,” she said. “No wonder you’ve been married three fucking times.”

  10

  Man with only two hours’ sleep. Man who’d spent the night trying to get back on good terms with a woman he’d become extremely interested in. Man with one golf shoe on, one golf shoe in his hand, a sausage-and-egg biscuit from Mac’s in his other hand, one bite gone. Man limping, hopping, struggling to make his 9:04 tee time in the first round of the Masters. Man looking more like he’d been by-god drunk last night than a man who’d overslept and was in a panic.

  Fortunately there was this understanding with Mitch. If he hadn’t heard from me and I didn’t show up in the practice area within thirty minutes of my tee time, go to the putting green. If I didn’t show up at the putting green within ten minutes of my tee time, go to the first tee. And if I never showed up on the first tee, go to the police.

  I made it with two minutes to spare. Time enough to put my other golf shoe on. Time enough to inhale the rest of my sausage-and-egg biscuit. Time enough to shake hands with the Belgian—Karp Blisters? Kessters?—and with Ace Haskell, the wide-eyed rookie in the faded orange golf shirt.

  This was after speeding to the club, doing a Dale Jr. thing into gate 3, the contestants’ gate, which is next to Magnolia Drive, slamming the car into a parking place by the clubhouse that was reserved for Arnold Palmer, rushing into the locker room, snatching the golf shoes out of my locker, and hobbling across the veranda down to the first tee.

  Mitch greeted me with, “I was fixin’ to go to your hotel room . . . see if you was sleepin’ so hard they drawed a line of chalk around the body.”

  Buoyed by Mitch’s humor, I managed to scramble off the first tee without hitting a line-drive sKank and Killing somebody. I even parred No. 1 without any big adventures. The Kind the Belgian dwarf and Ace Haskell experienced. Ace rattled around in the trees, the Belgian buried himself in a bunker. Both made a triple.

  It was after I turned the front with a light-running 34, two-under, that I let Mitch in on my secret.

  “I’m so exhausted, I’ve got tempo,” I said. “It’s a Bobby Jones deal. Jones said you can’t swing the club too slowly. OK, he was talking about hickory, but it still helps me. People forget Jones won all his majors with hicKory. He retired before steel took over. The steel shaft was around, but nobody believed in it until Billy Burke won the ’31 Open with steel.”

  Mitch said, “I’m glad you straighten that out for me. It’s been preyin’ on my mind.”

  “Hungover or exhausted,” I said. “Those are the two things that Keep me from swinging too fast.”

  “What we got goin’ today?”

  “Exhaustion.”

  “You make friends with whiskey last night?”

  “I made friends with something stronger than whisKey.”

  “Sounds like a woman lady?”

  “A too-much woman lady.”

  “You wear a raincoat?”

  “No. We were in too big a hurry to think about taking precautions.”

  “Sure ’nough?”

  I Kept clubfacing it on the back nine. I steer-jobbed my way around Amen Corner, two-putted for birdies at the 13th and 15th after reaching both on my second, and found
myself four-under as I stood on the 18th tee, needing par for 68.

  My name was up on the scoreboards around the course, but I wasn’t counting on being the first-day leader. There was already a crowd of celebs up there working on five-, six-, seven-under.

  Tiger, Ernie, and Phil were among them. Celebs Grady Don Maples liked to refer to as Elvis, Madonna, and Britney, as in Elvis Woods, Madonna Els, and Britney Mickelson.

  This was no insinuation that Ernie and Phil had become interior decorators. It was flattery. Grady Don felt they’d achieved a celebrity status that required only one name.

  I looked at my wristwatch, saw it was only 2 P.M. I’d been on the course for five hours. Not bad for a major. I Keep my watch in the golf bag for the simple reason that I like to Know what time it is. However, there are those celebrity types, you may have noticed, who wear a leather-band wristwatch when they compete. The reason is, they’re being paid. Soon as they leave the course they ditch those pieces of crap and put on their regular watches. Their headlight-size gold Rolexes and their solid gold hubcap-size Phillipe Toulouse-Lautrecs.

  There was a long wait on the 18th tee. Couples and Duval up ahead were exploring the pines on the right and rulings were being discussed.

  I had nothing better to do than stand there with Ace Haskell and the Belgian. After seventeen holes it was the first time we’d indulged in any conversation other than who was away or was that a seven or an eight?

  They were both way over par, working on something in the 80s. Ace didn’t act like he minded—he was enjoying the Masters experience for the first time. His wife, Jewel, was enjoying it too. He pointed Jewel out to me. She was standing among a half-dozen spectators behind the ropes, about thirty yards down from the tee markers. She was the short and wide person. The big fan of brownies and vanilla ice cream. She waved at us. I waved back.

  In an effort to mak conversation, I asked Ace how he got in the tournament, being a rookie and all.

  “I drove,” he said.

  I almost choked on the bottle of water I was sipping. I said I meant how did he qualify for the invitation? Had he won something I didn’t Know about, liKe in Europe maybe? Asian Tour? World rankings? What?