Six Strokes Under

Six Strokes Under by Roberta Isleib Read Free Book Online

Book: Six Strokes Under by Roberta Isleib Read Free Book Online
Authors: Roberta Isleib
with a golf club in hand.
    Two hours later, the mothers and nannies, wearing color-coordinated shorts sets, big hair, and strappy platform sandals, arrived to pick up their charges and transport them to the next lesson. Tennis, karate, swimming, and, because it was still the South, etiquette. God forbid they should be allowed to spend time on their own—who knew what trouble they might find. I moved down the range, picking up the clubs the children had left scattered on the Astroturf mats. Dad would never have allowed Charlie to treat his equipment with such carelessness.
    "Those are the tools of your trade," he told him a hundred times, as he supervised Charlie cleaning the grooves and then wiping down the grips. By the time I was old enough to play, Dad had lost interest in teaching, beaten down by my brother's persistent and petulant rejection, too tired to notice that I now followed his instructions exactly.
    I stashed the children's equipment in the pro shop and returned to the range with my own clubs. Kaitlin had surfaced from her impromptu press conference and parked herself two stations down from me. A tall, athletic man in magazine-perfect golf attire stood with his arm draped around her. He had the Deikon logo written across the bill of his baseball cap, on both the sleeve and the pocket of his golf shirt, and painted down the entire length of his bag. Based on what Laura would have called an idiot's educated guess, I assumed this must be her Deikon rep.
    "I shouldn't even be showing you this one," I heard him say. "Strictly experimental. I can't wait to see how you make it sing."
    Gag me with a spoon.
    He offered Kaitlin a driver, a long, slender club with an enormous copper head and silvery-blue shaft. I strained to make out his now-whispered words. I thought I heard "Ball Hog," "Tee Warrior", and "Fairway Bruiser." Kaitlin laughed, shrugged off his hand, and accepted the club he offered. He stood behind her, arms folded, and watched as she clobbered a ball out into the field, well past any reasonable range where the drive of my dreams would have landed.
    "Wow!" he said, pretending that the force of her swing had knocked him to the ground. She helped him to his feet, giggling, and brushed invisible debris off his backside with more meticulousness than the brief interaction with Astroturf seemed to merit. If I squinted hard enough, I could still make out the tic-tac-toe pattern of the cuts on her left arm. Hard to believe this was the same girl I'd seen crumpled up in Odell's office only a couple hours earlier. It seemed almost like theater. She had to know I was watching.
    I hit a few shots with my short irons, working on the precise placement of my fingers on the club shaft. "Close the zipper and keep the hot dog in the bun" was how I described it to the kids this morning. I'd stoop to anything it took to bring the excruciating difficulty of the game down to their level. Or my own. Next I worked on keeping the tempo I'd tried to teach Angela. But my mind couldn't let go of the length of Kaitlin's drives. Or the sight of her running her hands over the Deikon rep's buttocks. From the wash of envy that followed both events, I guessed the long dry spell without a real boyfriend was beginning to wear me down. My few static-filled, longdistance phone conversations with Jack left a lot of needs unsatisfied.
    I replaced the clubs in my bag. I'd have plenty of time to practice at the range in Florida. Besides that, if I didn't know how to swing a golf club by now, hitting a few more dozen balls at Palm Lakes sure wasn't going to help me survive Q-school.
    "I'm going home to pack," I told Odell. "My plane leaves early."
    "Good luck, sweetheart," he said. "I know you can do it. We're all behind you." All part of the problem, I thought. Too damned many people behind me, all leaning hard. Members of the country club and even some visiting tourists that Odell had persuaded to back me with their bucks.
    "She's goin' to be a

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