The Putt at the End of the World

by Lee K. Abbott

  “What would he do if he knew we . . .” Gorman couldn’t say the words.

  “I don’t know. That was two years ago with the professor.”

  “Jesus Christ, and they put you on assignment to-gether?”

  “We were partners before any of this got started. I mean, how do you think any of it got started? We got very good at hiding it, of course. In fact it got to be a habit. It might even be what eventually broke us up.”

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned.”

  They were quiet.

  She said, “I wish I had a cigarette.”

  “I wish you’d told me some of this before we — ” He halted.

  “What would you have done?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know but I would like not to be humping somebody whose ex-boyfriend uses golf clubs on people, that’s all. I mean I just would like it better if no ex-boyfriend or golf club entered into it. It strikes me that that would be a good thing. That would be something to aim at.”

  “If he had his way, I’d never sleep with anyone.”

  “You mean he’s still . . .”

  “He doesn’t know,” she said. “I don’t see why you’re so worried.”

  Gorman got out of the bed and reached for his clothes. He had never felt so naked in his life. He couldn’t get them on fast enough.

  “What’re you doing?” she said.

  “I’m getting the hell out of here.”

  “You’re being ridiculous.”

  “Yeah. Well, remember — we never did this. I want to get back to my room in case Thomas calls or comes by. There’s only so many places a person can be here.”

  “It’s a big castle. He’s probably in his own room, sleeping. People have to sleep.”

  “I sleep heavy. Tell him that I sleep heavy. I don’t hear somebody knocking on my door. No, you don’t tell him that. I’ll tell him that. Jesus Christ, how could you do this to me?”

  “I haven’t done anything to you. You’re overreacting. It’s bloody stupid.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “And you hate golf.”

  “Don’t leave,” she said. “Please?”

  “I just hope it’s not too late.”

  “I’ll tell him we did this if you leave.”

  He stood there, half in, half out of his pants. “Edna, you’re — this is a joke. It’s — you’re joking with me.”

  “I’m serious. I’ll tell him.”

  “No, I mean about the whole thing — the whole golf club story and the professor and all that.”

  “The professor had his arms and legs broken. Both arms, both legs. They weren’t compound fractures. But they were broken. He had to dial the phone with his nose to call the police. But then he didn’t, finally, decide to press charges.”

  “What is this?” Gorman said. “That’s simple assault. The police can press charges.”

  “Well, no complaint was filed.”

  He went to the door and looked out the peephole. The corridor looked empty.

  “I’m telling you,” Edna said. “I don’t want you to leave.”

  “Okay,” he said, coming back. “How long do you want me to stay?”

  She moved one leg. “Long enough.”

  “Edna, couldn’t we meet again at a later time, say when Thomas isn’t along?”

  “I like the danger.”

  “Danger — for you? What danger — that you’ll be sickened by the sound of my breaking bones? We’ve got a mad bomber to catch, and I know that people have to lie down and rest now and then and all that, but we had fifteen good minutes here and I think that’s enough rest. I think that’s more than enough rest, at least for me, Edna, please don’t make me stay any longer. Because what if I’m lying in a hospital miles from here and we still haven’t found the plastique?”

  She had come from under the blankets and was on all fours, moving to the edge of the bed and licking her lips. Her features were ugly in the lascivious leer she affected, and he wondered how he had missed this ugliness a few moments earlier, wondered how he could have been stupid enough to miss the real relation between her and Franklin.

  “You want to find the plastique,” he said feebly. “Don’t you?”

  Rita got out of bed and went to the window. The rain was still coming down, but softer now. She could see a small break in the grayness far out toward the sea, a little shaft of something like sunlight. She opened the sash and leaned out. There was a ledge. She was very weirdly drunk — drunk with a kind of acumen, a sharpening of everything. She had ingested a little cocaine. She had swallowed some Benzedrine. One pill. A pick-me-up. Sprague was asleep on the bed. He looked guilty lying there. It was in the way his legs were curled up, his hands covering his face. Whoever said sleep was innocent? She climbed out on the ledge. What he would say when he woke and found her out here, where it was high and wet and far. She had no plans of dropping or falling or jumping. She knew this was dangerous and wanted to experience it. Everything had always been about her craving for more experience. There was never enough. She stood out on the ledge and moved from her window to the next one. The ledge was plenty wide enough — it felt sheer and dangerous because there was no railing, of course; but the ledge was a good three feet wide. Lots of room. She slid along with her back to the window, then she turned, carefully, so she could look in the next one. The bricks of the castle were uneven, so there were even places to hold on. She took herself to the next window, looked in. Empty rooms. She moved along, and here, in his bed with his pants down around his knees, was Castle Man, Mr. Franklin. She knew Mr. Franklin was dreaming about her. It was flattering, almost sweet. She moved one more window over, another empty room, so she went back to Mr. Franklin’s again. She told herself she wanted to see the finale. But Mr. Franklin seemed to be having some trouble bringing things to a conclusion. It came to her with a pang that, in his imagination, she was not cooperating very well. There was a look of frustrated anger on his face. He was concentrating, eyes closed. It struck her that here she was, naked, the goddess of his dreams, balanced on the ledge, on the sky right outside, so near, and she could give him the thrill of his life.

  So she knocked on the window.

  He opened his eyes, then seemed to gather his whole body in a bunch there in the middle of the bed. He rolled over — she saw his ass; it looked purple for some reason — and then he was standing, pulling the pants up. She tried to signal him, wanting him to know it was all right for him to continue. She wanted to say how flattered she was. But then he looked angry, outraged, and she decided to move along the ledge, past the next empty room and the next. She went on, moving with some speed. The air was cold now, and she was beginning to feel that this experience hadn’t been all that glorious. But she was curious as to what she would find in the next window, and then the next, on to the end of the long, massive wall. She got about eleven rooms down from her own when another sash opened and someone — it was Franklin, she knew — leaned out.

  “You!” he said.

  She waved at him. “Hi.”

  “You — ” He stopped. “Don’t do it!” This was said only halfheartedly.

  “I would’ve stood there so you could finish,” she said.

  He leaned farther out. “What?”

  And now, eleven windows back down the ledge, Sprague leaned out to call along the windswept height. “Good God, Rita!” he yelled. “Not now! Not after what we’ve decided!”

  She said, “Billy, meet Mr. Franklin.”

  “I met Mr. Franklin,” he called. Mr. Franklin had nodded embarrassedly to Billy, then looked back at her.

  “Mr. Franklin was dreaming of me, weren’t you, Mr. Franklin?”

  “This is most irregular,” Mr. Franklin said. “I shall call the police.”

  “I thought you were the police.”

  “Rita,” Sprague called. “I’m coming out.”

  “You stay there,” she called back to him. “Don’t you dare or I swear I will jump!”

  “Rita, you don’t h
ave to sleep with him. I promise.”

  She moved to the next window, and here she saw a man and a woman, both naked, the man sitting on the bed and the woman lying back with one leg bent at the knee. She looked languid and happy, and the man looked quite miserable.

  “Rita, please!”

  She tapped on the window. It seemed perfectly natural — naked people, naked together, separated only by a little matter of a window. They looked frightened. Especially, Rita thought, the man. The man looked abject. He didn’t come to the window, as Rita thought he might. He jumped and then he dove behind the bed. The woman rose and walked over though. Rita moved back along the wall so she could open the sash.

  “Hi,” she said.

  The woman said, “Yes. Fourteen floors, I think.”

  “No,” Rita said. “I meant ‘Hi’ as in hello.”

  “Oh. Hello.”

  Rita indicated Mr. Franklin. “Meet my friend, Mr. Franklin.”

  Mr. Franklin yelled, “I had not a thing to do with her, Edna.”

  “Mr. Franklin was dreaming about me. I saw him. Imagine the treat. You actually see a man fantasizing about you. And there you are, standing in the sky.”

  “I never!” screamed Mr. Franklin.

  All through this, Sprague was calling to her. “Rita! Oh, no — Rita, please.”

  “Perhaps you should go back inside,” the woman said. It dawned on Rita that she did not like the name Edna. She had played against someone named Edna years ago in a pro-am, and she had beat the pants off her. And that Edna had proved a rather bad sport, saying to the cameras that she was off her game or she would’ve won. Rita had said to the same cameras, “Look, none of us is playing each other. We’re all playing the course.”

  This seemed like the thing to say now. So she looked at Edna and said exactly that.

  Edna spoke past her. “You just wait, Thomas. Two can play this game. You know who I’ve got in here with me?”

  The man who was in the room with Edna shouted, “I JUST STOPPED BY TO TALK ABOUT THE BOMB!” He got a shirt on so quickly, but he was still naked from the waist down. “REALLY, THOMAS. I JUST THIS MINUTE STOPPED BY!”

  Rita pointed at him below the waist. “Uh, Mr. Franklin, I think he’s been here awhile.”

  Sprague was calling her name.

  “Let’s all get out on the ledge without our clothes,” Rita said. It seemed like a great idea. She felt the cold on her skin like a caress. She could see that Sprague had no shirt and remembered that he was naked too. It was wonderful. It seemed like the finest idea.

  Mr. Franklin was talking to Edna and the other man. “Okay. I think I have it parsed, I think I have it bloody well figured out.”

  “You have it figured out,” Edna said. “And I’ve got you and this tart figured out.”

  “My name is Rita, thank you.”

  “She came from over there,” Mr. Franklin screamed. “And now you’ve done it, Edna. You’ve gone over the line again.”

  “I WAS JUST HERE LOOKING FOR THE BOMB!” the other man yelled.

  “A bomb?” Rita said. “Who’s talking about a bomb? What bomb?”

  Mr. Franklin had ducked back into his room.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” the other man said and began running around, picking up his clothes. “How the hell are we supposed to work together if he’s breaking my arms and legs, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I hope I haven’t caused any trouble,” Rita said to Edna, who closed the window in her face. Now there was just poor Sprague, leaning out with that pleading look on his face. “All I need is a horse and some long hair,” Rita said to him.

  “Please,” he said. “Please come back.”

  “Okay,” Rita said.

  It was easy. The ledge was wet, it was still raining a little, and she moved with sure feet and wide strides to her window and in. Sprague grabbed her as she crossed the sill of the window and held tight to her, and she realized that she was quite cold. She couldn’t stop shivering. There was a commotion out in the corridor, banging, shouts. She was warm; Sprague had covered her with the blankets from the bed, and being so warm after the cold, she was abruptly very sleepy. So sleepy. She let him hold her, poor, silly Billy Sprague, whose life had turned around on a putt that exploded, like a little bomb, and as she drifted off into a rare, peaceful sleep, she wondered if this weren’t the bomb that unfortunate man had been yelling about.

  Chapter Seven

  FREE DROP

  by Dave Barry

  “She was naked,” said Sheena Cameron, crouched in the underbrush where she and François Le Tour had set up their observation post.

  “Oh yes,” said Le Tour. “Very.” He was still looking through his binoculars toward the castle ledge from which Rita had just disappeared.

  “What the hell was she doing out there?” asked Sheena.

  “I have no idea,” said Le Tour, still looking.

  “Well,” said Sheena, “she’s gone now.”

  “Yes,” said Le Tour, a bit too regretfully for Sheena’s liking.

  “So why are you still looking?” she asked.

  “She might come back,” said Le Tour, a bit too hopefully for Sheena’s liking.

  “She’s a big one, isn’t she?” she said. “Bit of an Amazon?”

  “Yes,” said Le Tour, thinking about the jiggle of Rita’s breasts, the way her thigh muscles rippled when she moved. He was imagining what it would be like to be in the grip of those legs.

  “A woman like that, she gets a little older, she puts on the pounds,” said Sheena. “In a few years, she’s a cow.”

  “Yes,” said Le Tour, still looking at the ledge.

  “A great fat lactating cow,” said Sheena.

  “Yes,” said Le Tour.

  “Moo,” said Sheena.

  “Yes,” said Le Tour.

  “You’re not listening to me,” said Sheena.

  “Yes,” said Le Tour.

  Sheena yanked the binoculars away, startling Le Tour.

  “What?” he said, turning to her.

  “We’re supposed to be overthrowing the old world order,” she said. “And you’re waiting for the return of Miss Tits on a Tightrope.”

  Le Tour smiled. He liked it when he made women jealous. And he had found that he could make any woman jealous.

  “Miss Shaughnessy has excellent balance,” he said.

  “Oh, it’s her balance you were admiring,” said Sheena, pissed off because she considered herself the kind of woman who never got jealous. “Perhaps you’d like her to balance on your pole.”

  “Perhaps,” said Le Tour, pondering it, which made Sheena even angrier. “But first, as you say, we have work to do.”

  “Aye,” said Angus MacLout, who along with Ox Ferguson had crept up to join them. Both men were filthy, their faces streaked with mud. “We’re finished out there.” He pointed with the shovel he held out toward the manicured links. “Time to show Phillip Bates who the true master of Rathgarve is. Time to end two hundred years of injustice. Time to return Angus MacLout to his rightful place.”

  Le Tour glanced at Sheena. “He says it’s time.”

  “Indeed it is,” Sheena said. She reached into her handbag and withdrew a pistol.

  “What’s that?” Angus said.

  Ox grunted.

  Sheena fired and there came a chuffing sound. A black dot appeared in the middle of Angus’s broad forehead. He wavered a moment, then pitched over backward.

  Ox had not moved. The look he gave Sheena suggested that he had expected as much all along. There was a second muffled report from Sheena’s silenced pistol and Ox toppled over Angus with a sigh that sounded very much like a grunt.

  “I believe Angus has assumed his rightful place,” Le Tour observed.

  “Thoughtful of him to bring a shovel,” Sheena said, replacing the pistol in her bag.

  “Wasn’t it?” Le Tour asked.

  “Before we get to that,” said Sheena, as blithely as if she’d just rung off on a troubl
esome phone call, “I want to talk about this plan of yours.”

  “What about it?” asked Le Tour.

  “Well it’s fucked now, isn’t it?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, in case your memory stopped working because all your blood rushed to your other head, Miss Naked over there had her golf ball blow up on the golf course today.”

  Le Tour, looking irritatingly amused, said, “So?”

  “So the place is already crawling with security, and now they’re on to us,” said Sheena. “They’ll check every golf ball ten times before they let it get near the big shots. I can’t believe you left that ball in her bag. What a stupid fucking mistake.”

  Le Tour was still smiling. “Did it not occur to you,” he said, “that perhaps it was not a mistake?”

  “What?” said Sheena.

  “I left the ball in her bag on purpose,” said Le Tour. “And it blew up right when I wanted it to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because now the fools will be looking for exploding balls,” said Le Tour. He used the toe of his shoe to lift Angus’s chin a few inches off the damp ground, then let it drop again.

  He prodded Ox but got no grunt. Satisfied, he glanced up at Sheena. “Which is exactly what I want them to do.”

  “This is fucking crazy,” Ned Gorman was saying, more to himself than to Edna. He slammed the window closed and began pulling on his pants. “I can’t fucking believe I did this.”

  “What’s the rush?” asked Edna.

  “What’s the rush?” Gorman asked, his voice breaking. “What’s the fucking rush? We have the most powerful people in the world in this castle right now, and we have François fucking Le Tour, a world-class terrorist, running around with enough plastique to blow this whole place to hell. And now I find out that your fucking boyfriend is — ”

  “Former fucking boyfriend,” interrupted Edna.

  “Excuse me, your former fucking boyfriend is a wacko psycho who any minute now is going to be pounding on the — ”

  Someone pounded on the door.

  “Open the door, dammit!” It was indeed Franklin.