The Franchise Babe: A Novel

by Dan Jenkins

  Clubs were known to name golf holes long before Bobby Jones did it with blossoms at the Augusta National, which is where you find the famed Amen Corner—the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth holes—known as “White Dogwood,” “Golden Bell,” and “Azalea.”

  The other Augusta National holes have names too, but some don’t stir the heart as much as others. “Tea Olive,” for instance, which is number one, doesn’t have the lyrical charm of “Yellow Jasmine,” which is number eight. Most of us who cover the Masters every year agree on this.

  Names for holes on courses in Scotland, where the game was born, go back at least as far as Old Tom Morris and Willie Park.

  To pin it down, you’d have to dig up Old Tom or Willie or any of those guys who played golf in heavy tweed coats, knickers, and neckties, and who smoked pipes on their backswings.

  You could probably find out who named the eighth at Royal Troon the “Postage Stamp,” who named the fifth at Prestwick “Himalayas,” or who named the sixteenth on the Old Course at St. Andrews “Corner of the Dyke.”

  However, what knowledge I had of golf history couldn’t have prepared me for the names of the holes at Hollywood Dunes, which was going to play at 6,528 yards and a par of 70 for the championship.

  Digging into the tournament program, I learned that W. C. Fields had named the holes himself and had furnished the comments on each:

  No. 1. Ann Sheridan—356 yards/Par-4—“It takes some oomph to clear the bunkers.”

  No. 3. Howard Hughes—353 yards/Par-4—“Howard lost a stunt flyer near here when he was shooting Hell’s Angels.”

  No. 8. Cecil B. DeMille—520 yards/Par-5—“Very long, like most of his films.”

  No. 16. Mae West—174 yards/Par-3—“Aim between the mounds.”

  No. 17. Sam Goldwyn—400 yards/Par-4—“But Mr. Goldwyn, every director has to start somewhere.”

  “Don’t you believe it!”

  I was familiar with Palm Springs. They could call the neighboring areas Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells, La Quinta, or Bob Hope City, but it was all Palm Springs to me.

  When I’d been there four times to cover the Hope, what it meant was a six-pack of golf courses scattered everywhere, a pressroom, a hotel, and a few bars and restaurants.

  But I’d never been in Palm Springs for this particular week. A festive week that was now known as “the Dinah Shore Weekend” or “Lesbian Spring Break,” take your pick.

  The tournament had become an excuse for ladies on the Other Team to bust out and entertain one another while inadvertently or maybe intentionally tormenting straight folks.

  I’d read enough about it to know what to expect and what to avoid.

  For instance, I knew not to go looking for a cocktail in a joint called Big Girl’s Saloon, or wander into a “dance club” called Don’t Even Try.

  In recent years, the week had turned into more of an occasion for successful professional women—brokers, hedge fund managers, credit card execs, doctors, and so forth—to rent a condo or a house and impress people by throwing a party that said, “Yo, hey, I make big bucks and wear Meryl Streep Prada, and I can afford to have this catered even though I’m gay.”

  I assumed that out on the golf course I’d find some of those groups that gave the tournament a considerable amount of notoriety in the first place—the ladies who’d have inspirational tattoos on their upper arms. I’d heard Golf Bitch was popular and Sex Tramp was a big seller.

  I did hope none of those people would feast their eyes on the swimming pool at our hotel on Sunday afternoon. This was after we’d settled in. They’d see Thurlene and Ginger in their small bikinis, stretched out on reclining chairs in the sunshine.

  That sight wasn’t for the fainthearted of any sexual persuasion.

  31

  My game plan was to stay in the room for two days and fondle the laptop. Start to work on the piece about the kid. First, as was my custom, I went prowling around the net Monday morning to see how the death of Western civilization was coming along, and that’s how I stumbled onto the news about Toppy Pemberton.

  The headline was a grabber.

  “DINOSAUR MAN” SHOT ON LA JOLLA STREET

  Even before I read the story I knew it couldn’t be anyone else.

  Toppy had been taking his annual stroll in his dinosaur suit, costume, whatever it is. He was out on the downtown streets of La Jolla, celebrating his Sinclair wealth, when a “crazed gunman” shot him twice in the chest, or rather the dinosaur’s chest, with a .22 handgun.

  Toppy was rushed to Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, where he was said to be in stable condition. The bullets had struck nothing vital, but bullets inside a person were not good things, I’d wager.

  The gunman was identified as Carlos Menchaca, a twenty-six-year-old unemployed illegal immigrant. Some people would say that was a redundancy, not to linger on the subject.

  Menchaca surrendered soon after the incident. Actually, it was as soon as he discovered that the dinosaur wasn’t a real dinosaur but a man wearing a dinosaur costume.

  Menchaca argued that the unfortunate accident wasn’t altogether his fault. He blamed it on the high quality of the weed he’d been smoking and the fact that only the night before he’d watched Jurassic Park on TV in his oceanfront condo.

  When the police wanted to know how he happened to be living in an oceanfront condo, Menchaca said, “Ask the gringo in the United States government. He give it to me for free.”

  A lady answered the phone when I called Toppy in his room at the hospital.

  I said, “Hi, it’s Jack Brannon calling. I just found out about Toppy Pemberton, and I’m calling to see how he—”

  But the lady cut me off. Singing.

  “Who’s stupid now?” I heard. “Whose head is breaking for sinking that bow?”

  I said, “Connie?”

  “Right to the bend…FedEx will send, I tried to corn him somehow…”

  “Connie?” I said again.

  “But he went away…now I can play, I’m glad that he’s home no doubt.”

  I said, “Connie, it’s Jack Brannon. I’m calling to see how Toppy’s doing. I’m sorry to hear about what happened. I read about it on—”

  “He’s right here,” she said.

  Toppy came on. “Hello, scribe. Good of you to call.”

  “You sound okay for a wounded trouper,” I said.

  “Well, it was only a shitty little twenty-two,” he said. “Can you imagine somebody thinking I was a real dinosaur? It says something about our educational system, if you ask me. How long would you say they’ve been extinct, scribe?”

  “The dinosaurs or our educational system?”

  Toppy wheezed.

  I said, “I can’t resist asking, Toppy. What is your dinosaur suit made out of?”

  “Remember oilcloth?”

  “No. I was raised on linen and candelabra.”

  “You too?”

  “Of course I know what oilcloth is. It was on our kitchen table.”

  “My suit is made out of oilcloth and quilting and I don’t know what else. One of our housekeepers made it for me a long time ago. She copied the Sinclair logo, as you might guess.”

  “I like to think I would have.”

  “It’s sturdy, but not thick enough to stop a bullet.”

  Toppy wheezed again, then said:

  “Where are you calling from, Jack?”

  “I’m in Palm Springs…for what used to be the Dinah.”

  “I read about the Frenchman. It’s too bad. But a Frenchman is better than an Arab. You ever dealt with Arabs, Jack?”

  “No, I can’t say I have.”

  “It’s like trying to talk to a flock of low-flying ducks.”

  “How long will you be laid up, Toppy?”

  “Oh, I should be out of here in a week or two. Back out on the golf course in no time…hitting every club the same distance.”

  “I just called to see how you’re doing.”

 
; “Good talking to you, Jack. You know what some folks will say about what happened to me, don’t you?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Guns don’t kill dinosaurs, people kill dinosaurs.”

  He was wheezing again as I hung up.

  32

  Tuesday was date night. I’d suggested Tuesday evening and Thurlene said fine. Or okay. One of the two. I was picking her up at seven. My ankles would be taped by six.

  But first I was privileged to be entertained that afternoon by a crowd of demonstrators down on the street in front of the hotel. I wouldn’t have known they were there if I hadn’t taken a break from writing—or not writing—and gone out for a stroll.

  The demonstrators had assembled to let the LPGA know what they thought about France in general and the idea of horse meat for American dining tables in particular.

  There were handmade signs being pumped up and down and waved around by the “activists.”

  GIVE US BACK THE BISCUITS!

  YO, FRANCE! WE DON’T EAT OUR DERBY WINNERS!

  TRY THIS ON GERMANY AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS!

  I spoke to one of the Charles Mansons as he paraded with two Frau Bluchers, three turbans, a Keith Richards, and a Woody Guthrie. He said he had no thoughts on the subject. He had only joined the crowd because a “human rights” protest excused him from his job at Kinko’s.

  “I misunderstood,” I said.

  I approached one of the Frau Bluchers. She was in pedal pushers and a sweater and wasn’t carrying a sign.

  “I gather you feel strongly about this?” I said.

  “About what?” Frau Blucher said.

  “France.”

  “I love France.”

  “You do? What are you doing in this picket line, if I may ask?”

  “I hate golf.”

  “You hate golf? Why?”

  “Why? It’s all my husband does, for God’s sake!”

  As any of my friends can tell you, I’ve never been a big fan of protests. Take a good look at your average group of demonstrators and you realize they’re a mixture of out-of-work slugs and welfare units who’ve been hired by some far-left organization headed up by Joseph Stalin’s great-nephew to stir up shit for the TV cameras.

  I often wonder if the sport known as “civil disobedience” couldn’t have been stopped in the Sixties before it became a fad. Maybe if just one university president had grown a spine. He could have confronted the protestors on the ad. building steps and said, “Guess what? You assholes don’t go to school here anymore. Now get the fuck off this campus.”

  If you’ve ever been a college student, you have a good idea that the “revolutionaries” in the Sixties weren’t really protesting the Vietnam War anyhow. And it wasn’t about “free speech” either. They were using those issues as an excuse to not get drafted in order to stay home and partake of getting stoned and falling into piles of naked strangers.

  Old film clips and TV footage of those overly romanticized days are falling-down hilarious. Here are these swarms of unbathed hippie scum waving their “Make Love, Not War” signs, and the whole scene looks like The Last of the Mohicans meets mud wrestling.

  I confess that in the early Eighties at the University of Texas we looked for excuses to do our share of getting stoned and laid, but we thought of it as a weekend reward from studies, not an occupation.

  I had friends back then, however, who held that if everybody would make it a full-time occupation to stay stoned and wallow in piles of naked strangers, the world would be a better place.

  My argument against this was that the hard-ons would wear out soon enough, and one day there wouldn’t be anything left but the getting-stoned part, and then there wouldn’t be anybody around to invent the telephone, the steamboat, the reaper, the wireless, and radioactivity.

  For certain individuals, though, protests hold a special appeal. Protests are usually held outdoors, and nearly always in good weather, which means you can catch a little sun while you’re yelling at Republicans.

  The restaurant I selected for the evening was Guido & Luigi. It was on Palm Canyon, the main drag, at the corner of Rhonda Fleming Lane, not far from the hotel.

  I’d dined there twice in the past. I tried it in the first place because somebody told me it had been one of Frank Sinatra’s hangouts. I’d found it to be quiet, cozy, dark wood and brass—and the meat sauce didn’t come out redder than a University of Oklahoma football jersey.

  I gambled on it being the same as it was, hoping a new age quality-control nitwit menace hadn’t changed it. There’s an army of them out there, the new age quality-control nitwit menaces. They ruin everything they touch in the name of “improving life” or “seeking a broader audience.”

  They try to put avocado and quail eggs on cheeseburgers.

  They hide the gas tank release button on rental cars.

  They keep moving things around in grocery stores so that finding the bread that was on a particular shelf last week is a scavenger hunt now.

  They make it impossible to open a package of anything, large or small, without a chain saw.

  They’ve put cell phones in the ears of SUV drivers, thus making them more dangerous than Islamic jihadists, or people who own red cars.

  They make you press one for English even though you’re a law-abiding citizen of the United States, and what’s the point anyway if you’re going to be speaking to somebody in Calcutta?

  If you have a dish or you’re on cable, they’ve worked it out so that every TV screen in the eastern half of the United States will suddenly go dark at a single drop of rain in Anchorage, Alaska.

  They’ve made the paper jam a part of day-to-day living.

  They’ve changed the look of newspapers and magazines so that newspapers now look more like magazines and magazines look more like supermarket tabloids.

  But they never do anything worthwhile. Like, for example, invent a simple key on the computer that says, “Put All My Stuff Back Where It Was Before I Accidentally Hit a Key That Made It Disappear Forever.”

  Ginger greeted me in golf togs when I knocked on the cabana door to pick up my date. She’d returned only moments earlier from playing eighteen and practicing at Hollywood Dunes.

  “Whoa, it’s Mom’s date!” she said. “He’s suited up…ready to roll.”

  I was in my one and only black double-breasted blazer, gray slacks, a light blue open-collar button-down shirt, and cordovan loafers polished to a blinding luster.

  Ginger motioned me inside as she called out to Thurlene.

  “He’s here, Mom! Mr. Right…is…IN…the building!”

  “That makes it easier,” I said.

  “Don’t sweat it, Jack.”

  “What do you think of the golf course?”

  “It’s sporty. Kind of tight. Looks like par’s a good score. We’ll see. I’ll have a better idea after I play it again tomorrow.”

  “How’s the knee?”

  “Knee’s good.”

  “What are you doing tonight?”

  “I’ll be dipping into room service and TV.”

  Thurlene appeared. She came out of a hallway and into the living room, fiddling with an earring.

  If I hadn’t been a strong-willed person, the sight of her would have caused me to stagger and grab on to something.

  Her hair was down below her shoulders, straight and smooth, like that of the shampoo models on TV—and she could give any of those chicks two up a side for my money.

  She was wearing spike heels and black silk pants and a white silk halter top with what you call your plunging neckline.

  Going for wise-mouth to cover up my basic awe, I said, “Would you stand here and keep looking like this till I get back from the jewelry store?”

  “Does that often work for you?” she said.

  “Hardly ever. It usually takes explaining. How about…you’ve never seen Venice till you see it with me?”

  “What are y’all talking about?” Ginger asked.

 
“This is grown-up stuff,” I said.

  Thurlene said, “What else have you got?”

  I looked at her seriously and said, “Damn, you look terrific tonight.”

  “That’s the one,” she said. “Shall we go?”

  33

  The hundred-dollar bill did its time-honored magic. As soon as the bill reached the palm of the maître d’ in Guido & Luigi, a gentleman who looked like Tony Bennett’s long-lost twin brother, it upgraded us from a squalid table by the kitchen door to a quiet booth in an intimate corner that even came with a waiter.

  Word circulated fast about the hundred-dollar bill, because our waiter, Rossana Brazzi, brought our cocktails instantly. The Bombay Sapphire gin martini for me, rocks, four olives, and a bottle of Frascati for Thurlene.

  I hoped the waiter might say, “This was Frank’s booth,” but he only poured Thurlene a glass of the white wine and disappeared.

  I raised my martini to her. She raised her glass.

  She said, “I know how expensive this wine is. I would have been happy with a glass of chardonnay.”

  I said, “It’s not as expensive as the Tignanello we’ll have with dinner. Drink what you want and we’ll donate the rest to a Presbyterian night shelter and all the old golf instructors who live there. Here’s to dating.”

  The glasses clinked.

  On the limo ride to the restaurant I’d started telling her about the demonstrators I mingled with that afternoon. She hadn’t heard any of the commotion while she was reclining by the pool, but the poolside waiter who brought her lunch had told her there were some “whack-o-damia” nuts out in front of the hotel, but he said they were peaceful and harmless and only wanted to take out France.