“Do we tip the kid or what?” Otto whispered.
“After we’re through,” Sidney Blackpool said.
“Do we pay green fees or what? Is ten grand enough for green fees?”
“Relax. Victor Watson took care a everything,” Sidney Blackpool said. “Imagine what it’d be like working for a guy like him.”
“Imagine what it’d be like living in a place like this, Sidney. I gotta find me a rich woman in this town!”
The man waiting on the first tee was about sixty-five years old and fatter than Otto Stringer, but stood only about five feet six. He wore a floppy golf cap that came to the top of his ears and plastic-rimmed glasses that kept slipping down his nose. He smoked a cigar that was bigger than a twelve-ounce sap.
“You must be Mister Guildenstern,” Otto said, sticking out his hand.
“I’m the other one,” the man said. “Rosenkrantz with a K. Glad to know you boys.”
“He’s Sidney Blackpool and I’m Otto Stringer. Thanks for letting us play.”
“Glad to do a favor for friends a Victor Watson,” he said. “Call me Archie. What’s your handicap?”
“He’s about a twelve,” Otto said. “Me, I’m a beginner. Thirty handicap oughtta do it.”
“Last guy told me that beat me like a whorehouse rug,” Archie Rosenkrantz said. “So I give you fifteen strokes. Sidney, you give me three. How about we play for twenty bucks four ways. Front, back, automatic press on the back and totals.”
“Sounds okay,” Sidney Blackpool said. “You go ahead and show us the way, Archie.”
While Archie Rosenkrantz was getting himself ready on the first tee, Otto felt the panic bubbling. He whispered to his partner, “Did you trade President McKinley for a whole bunch a Andrew Jacksons? We never played for more than two bucks at Griffith Park!”
“We got money, don’t worry,” his partner whispered back.
Just then, a mixed foursome drove up in two custom golf carts and parked at the tee. One golf cart was Chinese red, built to resemble a baby Rolls-Royce. The man driving was older than George Burns. The girl in Ultrasuede was younger than Brooke Shields. Otto felt eight eyes on him. Disapproving eyes, he figured. He was sure they knew he was a Griffith Park hacker.
Then Otto heard a sound that reminded him of the Samoan’s hand colliding with his skull. Fat old guy, my ass! The freaking ball rocketed out there 220 yards. Dead straight.
“Can we just pay you now and get it over with?” Sidney Blackpool asked, as he stepped up and stuck a tee in the ground.
“Lucky shot,” Archie said, puffing on the Havana.
Otto kept glancing behind him at the clubhouse. He just knew there must be fifty people looking out through the tinted glass. He held his breath for twenty seconds and blew it out. He flexed his fists, forearms and biceps, then relaxed them. When he’d whiff at Griffith Park to the delight of some plumber, it was no big deal. But in this place?
Sidney Blackpool smacked it as hard as Archie Rosenkrantz, and being younger and more limber, he got an extra fifteen yards out of it. The ball faded but settled on the right side of the fairway.
“You ain’t so bad yourself, kid,” Archie said, chewing the cigar to bits. “I ain’t gonna get fat on you boys, I can see.”
Otto was starting to feel all wrong. His lime-green doubleknits suddenly bit at his crotch. His argyle sweater chafed his armpits. His golf shoes seemed to be rubbing blisters on his ankles though he hadn’t walked twenty feet. Even his goddamn Ben Hogan cap was too tight. He was a wreck.
Otto took a practice swing and sent a thirteen-inch slab of Tamarisk flying twenty yards. He ran off the tee and retrieved the chunk of turf while Archie Rosenkrantz puffed on the Havana and said, “There’s an eighty-year-old member here wears a toup looks just like that divot, cept his is orange. Don’t be scared, kid. Just kick back and L.T.F.F.”
“What’s L.T.F.F.?” Otto asked, feeling his jaws going tight
“Let the fucker fly,” Archie said.
But suddenly Otto’s golf gremlin showed up! His fear gremlin looked like Renfield, that giggling little fly eater in the old movie who leads you to your room in the west tower and tells you to ignore that flapping outside the window because it’s just some old drag queen from Bucharest and if you give him a peek at your bare bum and some warm milk with a Tollhouse cookie he’ll flutter on home. Sure.
“Let the fucker fly,” said Otto bravely.
“Heh heh heh,” said Renfield, crunching on a blood-bloated horsefly as big as a pistachio.
Otto let the fucker fly all right.
“That wouldn’t be bad distance,” Archie said, “if that was the ball instead a the club.”
“I can’t understand it!” Otto cried, looking over his shoulder at the mixed foursome who were getting a real bang out of the gifted athlete on the first tee.
Sidney Blackpool trotted out to retrieve the graphite driver and Archie said, “Tell you what, son, let’s call off the bets. This frigging game’s got enough stress built in. Let’s just go out and have some fun, enjoy the day, have a laugh or two and a drink later.”
“Okay by me,” Sidney Blackpool said, handing Otto his driver.
Otto told himself it’d be easy now. The pressure was off. Except that the women in the mixed foursome were whispering, and Otto’s ears were the color of the pink argyles on his tummy Still, he forced himself to move that club low and slow. He took it back slower than Don January ever thought of doing. He was feeling loose and dreamy. He was sooo slow. He was sooo relaxed he just might fall asleep. Except that just as he got that club past horizontal, Renfield said, “There’s nothing to fear but fear itself. Heh heh hee heeeee!” Otto knew that hovering rodent outside the window only had the face of Bela fucking Lugosi!
Otto gave it a Reggie Jackson fast-ball swing. With the same result. He whiffed that baby so bad he torqued like a licorice twist and found his head looking straight behind him like a cockatoo. Right at the two women in the mixed foursome who were beaming like two stews on Aloha Airlines: “Welcome to paradise, stranger!”
“So I lied,” Renfield shrugged, his teeth full of flies.
Archie Rosenkrantz almost lost his cigar. “Did I hear a growl?” he cried. “Lon Chaney needed a full moon to lunge like that!”
“Let’s forget the first tee,” Sidney Blackpool suggested. “Otto’ll settle down after we get out on the fairway.”
“Palm Springs ain’t heard a bigger swish since Liberace came to town,” Archie said. “Okay, let’s move along. My varicose veins’re breakdancing.”
The first hole was a five par, 483 yarder, which shouldn’t have caused too many problems. Otto was allowed to place his ball 200 yards out, near the drives hit by his playing partners.
“Now, Otto,” Archie said. “There ain’t nobody watching you so just step up there and look around at the mountains and smell the flowers and think how lucky you are that God gave you this happy day. Just say this to yourself: Aw, fuck it! And if I can’t fuck it, I’ll cover it with chocolate like old Mary See!”
So Otto stepped up and addressed the ball, letting his arms and forearms and wrists and hands and hips and legs go limp, and thought, “Fuck it or cover it with chocolate.” And he let er fly and heard a dull thunk.
“Where is it?” Otto asked, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Did it come down yet?”
“Worm burner,” Sidney Blackpool said.
“Bug fucker,” Archie Rosenkrantz said. “Not real bad though. You got maybe thirty yards.”
Archie laid into his shot with a three wood, and his short backswing put it out there nearly 200 yards, leaving him a pitch to the green.
Sidney Blackpool hit his three wood farther but drew it too much and faced a tricky wedge shot.