Free Knuckleheads by Jeff Kass Page A

walked over, scooped up the beastly trunk like it was somebody’s mini change-purse and shouldered it. For the next hour-and-a-half, he carried all three bags, handed off clubs, and raked traps for all three women. All I did was pull pins. At the end of the round, practically in tears, I apologized to him. He called me a retard and told me to shut up. Then he gave me a third of his tips, the only tips I ever got. “Buy yourself some gum,” he said. “Your breath stinks.”
     
    We are nineteen under par as we stride up the eighteenth fairway. Everybody in the tournament has heard rumors about our phenomenal round. Foursomes who’ve already finished and all the firm’s executive partners are clustered on the clubhouse balcony overlooking the green. They cheer lustily and raise beers in salute as Lisa, Natalie and Gordon all hit their second shots within six feet of the hole. We will have three adorable options from which to choose to putt for our inevitable birdie. We will finish twenty under par, at least a dozen strokes better than any other team. No one has ever dominated the tournament in such breathtaking fashion. Our status will be upgraded to mythic. My two eagles will be stitched forever into the firm’s historical fabric. I no longer have to worry about being let go. I will be named an associate soon enough, and perhaps one day, a partner.
    Two eagles. Two lucky shots in one day, the right day, and it feels like I’ve found a catch-release net for every failure of my former life. I can scuttle free forever from the kingdom of loserdom. The bag on my shoulder has never felt lighter. I could walk another eighteen right now. Hell, another thirty-six.
    Lisa and Natalie talk animatedly to each other as they wait for me to line up my shot. It’s symbolic, really, my shot. Academic. Nobody expects me to do anything. I’ve already done more than enough to earn my spot in the record books.
    “Can you handle your end?” Gordon says to me as I pull out my nine-iron. “Because I think there’s a kind of I’ll-do-it-if-you-do-it thing going on here. Lisa wants to go for it, trust me, but she wants Natalie to be complicit in the bargain. If Lisa’s gonna cheat on her boyfriend, she needs a moral accomplice. She doesn’t want to accept sole responsibility.”
    “Have you forgotten I’m engaged?”
    “Have you forgotten you’re not married yet? If you don’t go for it today, Eugene, when will you ever?”
    Gordon’s bald dome is baldy sunburned. I admire the man for refusing to bow to the elements and wear a hat, but his skull nevertheless resembles a maraschino cherry. It’s somewhat difficult to understand how Lisa can be attracted to him. There was a time when Gordon was beautiful, but this is not that time. Still, if Gordon says he’s in with Lisa, I believe him. I also believe him about what he says he needs me to do. This scenario has developed over four hours on a golf course, and if Gordon knows any damn thing at all, he knows his way around a golf course.
     
    Nancy and I met at an awful Indian restaurant. We were both eating alone on a Saturday night. I ate chicken tandoori while reading a murder mystery. She had a vegetarian curry and didn’t read anything. My food was bland, wooly in my mouth, blocky like chunks of tree-bark. We left at the same time and as I held the door for her on the way out, she also looked unsatisfied with her dining experience. I took a risk and said the one charming thing I’ve ever said in my life, before or since. I said, “Hey, I don’t know about you, but there’s a terrific Indian restaurant nearby. You hungry?”
    She countered with sushi and we did that, and later, we were in her apartment and the kissing was less tree-barky than the food, but not by much, and she said, “I’ve been hurt a lot. I’m a hurt person. Will you hurt me too?”
    “Not on purpose,” I said and, at the time, believed.
     
    This last shot is difficult.
    There’s a yawning ravine in