They had just finished the fifth hole.
“So where did you learn how to play?” Hugh asked Casey.
“I told you. I picked it up in college.” Casey smiled weakly. His attention made her feel self-conscious.
“Yeah?”
She was surprised herself by how smoothly it was going. “I haven’t played in three years or so. I’m not kidding.”
“Hmmm,” Unu said, looking skeptical.
“I swear.” Casey nodded to herself, because it was true.
“Shall we make this interesting?” Hugh interrupted. “A dollar per stroke.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” Unu answered.
They all looked at Brett, the weakest player of the four.
Not to be embarrassed, and believing earnestly that the pressure might do his game some good, he upped the ante. “Two. What the hell.”
There’d been no need previously to discuss handicaps, but now, with the final scores needed, the issue presented itself. Casey didn’t want to tell them her last handicap. It would freak them out. If the average course was seventy-two par, and this one was—that is, all eighteen holes could be completed by a very fine player in seventy-two strokes—then it had been her practice to finish such a course in eighty-six, thereby making her handicap fourteen. At the height of her playing with Jay, she often shot an eighty-five or eighty-six. That was a very good score for either sex. Golf was this useless hobby where she was a natural. It was especially useless and ironic since she could neither afford to be a member of a club nor have the leisure to play. She had no car and no friends or family who played who’d take her out to a course. Jay had been the only person who’d arranged these things for her, because he loved the game, and they had a great time playing together. Until recently, the idea of playing golf at all had, admittedly, hurt her heart.
Unu gave his handicap first: “Twenty.”
“C’mon,” Hugh said. “Really?”
“Yeah.” Unu smiled. “I got nothing to prove.”
Brett said, “Thirty-five? What’s max here?” The others were very good players, and frankly, the assistant’s playing had taken the piss out of him.
“Twenty,” Casey said.
“Get out of town,” Hugh said.
Unu cocked his head. “You can do better than that. You just shot two bogeys, two birdies, and one par, which was damn near an eagle except for—”
“Yeah,” Brett chimed in.
“What did you shoot in college, Miss Full of Surprises?” Hugh looked amused at her.
“Fourteen,” she said quietly.
“Damn, girl.” Hugh laughed so hard, he had to clutch his bag trying not to fall down.
They made her take fourteen, and the game went on.
Eighteen holes passed faster and more quietly with the bet in place. Although her game was steady, the twelfth hole gave her a smidge of trouble, and the seventeenth was screwy when she lost her ball in the water. In the end, she shot an eighty-seven—a very respectable score by any measure—but because of Unu’s larger handicap, Casey ended up placing third behind Unu and Hugh. She owed Unu and Hugh something like forty dollars. Everyone paid up quickly, but Casey didn’t have her wallet with her, so she promised to get them later at the dinner.
Everyone went back to the rooms to shower. After cleaning up, she futzed around in her bathrobe. She tried not to think about the seventeenth hole. It irritated her to think of how she’d lost her focus and the angle of her wrist. She’d chuffed. It happened. She powdered her nose, resolving to be braver at dinner with Unu. Maybe she wouldn’t have to deal with him. She wanted to believe that she could pretend not to be uncomfortable.
Casey slipped the sleeveless navy sundress over her head, twisting about to zip herself up. Wide straps, a square neckline edged in white, and nipped in at the waist. She’d brought along a pearl necklace, a high-quality fake, that skimmed above her clavicle and larger studs for her ears. She laced the ties of the linen wedge espadrilles about her ankles. The outfit cost a breathtaking eleven hundred dollars—more than half her monthly take-home pay. She’d become a card-carrying Wilma—willing to pay retail for the right look. In the side zipper of her tote bag, she had exactly sixty-seven dollars and a wallet full of maxed-out credit cards, and if she forked over the money she owed to Hugh and Unu, she wouldn’t have sufficient cab fare to get back home from the airport. She had no one to blame except herself. She could’ve passed on dresses and shoes like these. Said no to the bet made on the fifth hole. Her clothes cost more than what women brokers, bankers, and analysts wore, though they made ten times her annual salary. But clothes made her feel legitimate in her shifting environments; tonight, in this dress, she was a girl who’d gone to Andover, not Stuyvesant, and a girl who’d lost her virginity at the Gold and Silver in New York, not at a roller rink in Elmhurst. She had always curated her identity, matching locale with dress, and why should this night be any different? When she completed a hat, she named it, and with this name, she tried to imagine what kind of lover the woman who’d own such a hat would make. Would she be shy or demanding? Would she trust his touch utterly or fight her feelings? Would her body rise to meet his? Through clothing, Casey was able to appear casual, urbane, poor, rich, bohemian, proletariat. Now and again, she wondered what it’d be like to never want to look like anything at all—instead, to come as you are.