Sideways

by Rex Pickett

  “What happened?”

  “Like all men,” she started haltingly, then corrected herself. “Like most men, the romance is short-lived, and then you settle into something mundane, then they take you for granted. And then,” she puffed her cheek out with her tongue, “they cheat on you. Then they lie …”

  “Okay,” I stopped her. “I get it. Men suck.”

  She laughed spontaneously. “Not all men. Or so I’ve heard rumors.”

  Her pessimistic outlook made me laugh; it was refreshingly similar to mine. There was something about her dark intensity that cut into me like a deep feeling. We sipped our wine for a minute in silence, sealing our unspoken bond. A spirited yelp from Terra escaped from the back bedroom. We both turned abruptly and exchanged embarrassed looks. Jack was a big man with a megawatt sexual appetite, and though he had consumed

  Maya shrugged. “I guess they’re getting along.”

  “I guess so,” I said, sipping my wine.

  “Have you been dating much since your divorce?” Maya wondered.

  I cocked my head to one side, ransacking my memory bank for recollections of recent dates. “Here and there. Rarely goes past one. Almost never past two or three.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she chuckled. “Why is that?”

  I held up a finger. “Anorexia nervosa. Very common in L.A. And very unattractive.” I straightened up a second finger. “High maintenance. Low yield. Also pandemic.” Maya laughed in between sips of wine. “Wannabe writer, wannabe actress, wannabe something.”

  Maya shook her head.

  “Born-again Christian.”

  “What?” Maya said.

  “Went out with a woman who said she couldn’t have premarital sex because God disapproved.”

  Maya gravitated closer to me on the couch. “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her God was too busy to be interested in her sex life.”

  “You didn’t!”

  I laughed in response, letting her know that I’d made it up.

  We sipped the Tantara and talked on for what seemed like hours about every topic imaginable: novels, movies, wine, relationships. At one point she let on that she’d been

  Sometime in the wee hours, long after we had uncorked a second bottle, a sleepy-eyed, friendly golden retriever padded into the living room and curled up at the foot of the couch. Maya and I both reached down at the same moment to pet him. Unlike my mother’s impertinent little devil, this dog accepted our affections happily, panting contentedly.

  Noticing my way with Terra’s dog, Maya remarked, “You must be an animal lover.”

  “That’s what all the girls say,” I quipped.

  Maya threw back her head and laughed out loud. Then she shifted unexpectedly toward me—or fell toward me, I don’t remember exactly—and suddenly her lips were on mine, encircling and overwhelming mine so passionately that I felt that we were about to go somewhere I didn’t want to go. But I didn’t resist. Something came unleashed deep inside me, and I found myself kissing and groping Maya back with equal abandon. Our make-out session went on for quite a while; two drunken mariners drifting

  MONDAY: PLAYING BY THE RULES

  Sunlight broke in colored prisms as if shafting through stained glass windows. I rolled over and my head felt like a circus elephant had one foot perched on it, preparing to launch himself through a flaming ring. I propped myself up on my elbows, insensible to the world, blinking against the harsh, midmorning light. What was I doing in the motel room? What was the other bed doing unmade? What was Maya’s leather coat doing on it?

  I hauled myself into the bathroom and plopped down heavily on the porcelain. I scratched two fingers in my pubic hair and brought them to my nose. Didn’t smell like sex. Didn’t smell like rose petals either. I urinated with the force of a farm animal, then rose leadenly to my feet, braced both hands on the sink, and leaned my grizzled mug into the mirror. My unshaved face looked back at me with the mottled redness of a pomegranate gone to seed. My mid-length hair was incongruously thatched, lending me a visage reminiscent of self-portraits of Van Gogh in his asylum period. My light blue eyes floated in microcosmic

  I managed a shower and a shave purely out of trace memory, but after I had dressed I was too worried about Jack, and aggravated by my sledgehammer hangover, to do anything but lie back down on the bed and pray for redemption. Pray that I hadn’t called an old girlfriend in the middle of the night, pray that my car was outside and still in one piece, pray to God that I hadn’t acted inappropriately to Maya, a woman whose memory glowed warmly in the recesses of my wine-soaked brain. But when my thoughts turned to Jack, the unrepentant fiancé, in bed with her best friend, the unsettled feeling in my stomach turned into a raw nausea.

  My eyes eventually closed and I dreamt that I was destitute, that I was being hounded by the IRS., that no woman would date me, and that I was turning suicidal. A soft, persistent knock at the door finally drew my attention and I realized I hadn’t been dreaming. Before I could call out that I wasn’t ready for maid service—or any other kind of interaction for that matter—the door cracked open and a woman’s head peeped in, splitting the sunlight into twin spears.

  “Are you decent?” I recognized Maya’s throaty voice.

  “Physically, but not psychologically,” I slowly croaked.

  She chuckled as she slipped into the room, closed the door quietly behind her, walked over, eased down onto the edge of the bed, and opened a white paper bag. Familiar aromas of hot coffee and pastry wafted out.

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I managed, accepting a warm cup.

  “Croissant?” she added, swinging a flaky crescent between thumb and forefinger so I could get an eyeful.

  I shook my head.

  “No?” She took a bite out of the crusty croissant. “Mm. Good. Sure you don’t want one?” she offered again, extending it out to me.

  “No thanks. I’m trying to cut down on my cholesterol.” I sipped my coffee and smiled weakly. “Actually, I don’t think my stomach could handle it.”

  “How’re you feeling?” she asked solicitously.

  “Like a chimp in a head trauma study.”

  She laughed. “You were pretty funny last night.”

  “Don’t tell me, did I sing karaoke again?”

  “No. No karaoke.”

  “Thank God.” I met her eyes. “Look, if I did or said anything embarrassing, please forgive me. I was pretty sideways.”

  “Shh.”

  Feeling vulnerable still, I rambled on: “Finding out about my ex getting remarried kind of unsettled me.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I understand. You were fine. A perfect gentleman. Aside from a few stumbles and a couple of off-the-wall insights on the plight of humankind that I’m still pondering, I had a good time.”

  “I did, too. I think.”

  She took a languorous bite of her croissant.

  “Did you sleep here last night?”

  She nodded. Then she reached an arm over to the nightstand and picked up the unopened condom package and dangled it between us, tangible evidence of my failure.

  “I have no comment,” I said, shaking my head in embarrassment.

  “You wanted to come back to the motel for some reason, and then you didn’t want me to leave because you said you were afraid to be alone. I like you, Miles, but I didn’t want to have sex with you last night.”

  “That’s good. Because I would hate not to be able to remember it.”

  She rose from the bed. “Anyway, I’ve got to go. Got some errands to run.”

  “All right. I’d kiss you good-bye, but my breath is so rancid I’m afraid your lips would decompose.”

  She pulled on her coat. “Call me if you still want to go to the Pinot festival together.”

  I flung a hand to my head. “Pinot. Did you really utter that word?”

  “I had fun,” she said, standing in the middle of the room and towering over me. “Get some
sleep. You’ll feel better.”

  “What about our friends?” I asked queasily.

  She shrugged, hooked a hand in the strap of her purse, and trilled theatrically, “I don’t know. Could be trouble.”

  Maya was swallowed in a harsh rectangle of sunlight as she slipped out the door, shutting it quietly behind her. I lay back on the hard mattress, my head propped up on the pillow, and nursed the coffee. Her parting words—“could be trouble”—disconcerted me.

  The phone jangled, startling me up onto my elbows. I reached over to answer it, but stopped short with my hand poised over the receiver. It might be Babs, and I didn’t want to be babbling to Babs about where Jack wasn’t.

  I lugged myself to my feet and escaped the cramped confines of the room. The bright sunlight assaulted my

  It was Monday and Ellen’s was uncrowded, the noise level tolerable. I corkscrewed into a chair at a window table and looked for the waitress. Outside, there wasn’t much of a view except for the minimart across the street, but in the distance, low-rolling hills framed by an expanse of cloudless sky compensated for the depressing foreground.

  The waitress with the cleft palate appeared, bearing a menu and the same cheerful mien as the day before.

  “I’ll just have the oatmeal and a cup of coffee,” I said without taking the menu, my head still clutched in my hands.

  “Okeydokey,” she said. She poured me a cup of coffee, then turned around and went to serve another table.

  I sipped my coffee. It wasn’t as good as the cup Maya had brought me, but the place was quiet and allowed me some privacy to collect my thoughts. All right, no more wine until the Pinot festival, have got to flush out the poisons. Play some golf, movie in the evening, a little TV, hit the sack early. Tomorrow, I call Evelyn and see if anything’s happening with the book. Have to decide when to break the news to Jack that I’m not going to be his best man at the wedding so he can get a tux for Peter in time. A

  My oatmeal arrived. It looked inedible, lumpy and gray, but I wolfed it down anyway.

  I shambled back to the motel, the coffee burning a hole in the glop of oatmeal weighing down my stomach.

  Jack still wasn’t back. Jesus! The red light on the phone was flashing insistently, so I called the front office for messages. Predictably, Babs had phoned several times, but that was it. I dialed my place for messages. There was one from Victoria rehashing the previous night’s conversation. She speculated ominously about my behavior at the upcoming wedding and suggested alternatives, most of which included other travel destinations. If I wasn’t going to be able to come to terms with her remarriage, she said adamantly, quite obviously I might as well not come. I considered calling her back and telling her that it was just this sort of trenchant critique that had been responsible for our demise, but my heart wasn’t in it. Besides, it wasn’t true.

  Before I could adequately wallow in the shitty feeling Victoria had summoned up in me, the door blew open. Jack stood silhouetted in a trapezoid of bright sunlight, twirling a golf club, a sheepish grin on his unshaven face. His white cotton dress shirt was hanging half out of his jeans, wrinkled and grape-stained. The Marlboro Man back from the cattle drive, sore thighs and bedroom eyes.

  He took a couple of little half-practice swings. “Ready to hit the links?”

  “How’d it go?” I said, trying to disguise any sarcasm that might have crept into my voice.

  “Muy excellente,” he said, tin-eared to my mood as usual. “Fucking chick is unbelievable. Un-be-lieve-able.”

  “Get it out of your system?” I asked, hoping that his system was capable of readdressing the task at hand.

  “Fuck.” He shook his head with a smile. “You never get it out of your system, that’s the problem. How’d you fare, Shorthorn?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  “Can’t remember?”

  “We slept here. In separate beds.”

  Jack came into the room and shut the door. “Oh, how Ozzie and Harriet of you.”

  I laughed, in spite of his derision.

  “So, come on, let’s tee it up.”

  “Call Babs. She left a couple of messages.”

  He craned his head forward. “I hope you didn’t talk to her!”

  “All I said was that you were making good on your promise, but by Sunday you’d be all fucked out and ready for marriage, so not to worry.”

  “You did not talk to her I hope?”

  “Fuck no. What do you think, I’m crazy?”

  “Good.”

  “Call her,” I said sharply.

  “I will. Give me a sec, will you.”

  “Now.”

  He gestured with the golf club for me to wait outside. I got up from the bed and brushed past Jack on the way out. He hadn’t showered yet and he smelled pungent, redolent of sweat and massage oils and incense and the faint christening of sex.

  Outside, I sprawled on the hood of the 4Runner, pillowed my head with clasped hands, and gazed up at the Santa Ynez Mountains. An enormous feather of pearl gray fog drifted at the top of its westernmost ridge, a visible reminder

  Moments later, Jack came outside. He looked unsettled.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Let’s boogie.”

  We climbed into the 4Runner and rode down 246 in the direction of La Purisima Golf Course. Jack had one untied tennis shoe propped up on the dash and seemed to be meditating on something. “What’d you tell Victoria last night when you moronically called her from the restaurant?” he asked without looking at me.

  “I don’t remember, to tell you the truth,” I said, glancing over at him.

  “Somehow everyone’s got the impression that your coming to the wedding is a really big mistake now.”

  I focused on the road and didn’t say anything in response.

  “That could be the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Jack said.

  I turned toward him. “What?”

  He scratched his beard and nodded in a self-satisfied way. “Nothing,” he said, staring forward at some fixed point in his mind. “God, that chick, Terra, is sweet,” he reflected fondly, a picture of her naked loveliness clearly developing in his mind. He closed his eyes and shuddered exaggeratedly. “Goddamn, Miles. Nasty. Nasty nasty nasty.”

  I turned away, the oatmeal and coffee still locked in combat in my stomach. Bounding 246 were agricultural parcels, grassy ranchlands, and flower farms so dazzlingly

  “I’m not drinking until tonight,” I told him.

  “Oh, bullshit,” he said, knowing me better than that. “Turn in.”

  “They’re not open on Monday.”

  “Oh, man,” he groaned, slumping back in his seat. “I need a fluid change. Big time.”

  “Let’s just play some golf and take it easy today. Relax, enjoy nature.”

  Jack swung his bearish head toward me, lowered his sunglasses to the tip of his nose, and reproved me with a dismissive look. Then he just shook his head back and forth as if my remark merited no comment.

  La Purisima Golf Course is nestled in a humped valley, routed through canyons dense with scrub oak and bordered by grassy, pristine hillsides unsullied by any building or other manmade development. The nearest town is tiny, working-class Lompoc, a grueling two-and-a-half hour drive from L.A., so during the week the course is blissfully uncrowded.

  I parked in the nearly empty lot and Jack and I hauled our clubs out and trudged to the pro shop to check in and pay our green fees. We argued about whether to rent a cart or walk, but Jack—bad back, hangover, rubbery legs from all-night fucking—won, and we elected to ride.

  Standing on the first tee, we were buffeted by a strong, cool ocean wind that started early, developed to almost gale-force proportions in the afternoon, and didn’t let up until the sun was sinking on the horizon. I was a better

  “What’s that?” he asked skeptically while taking vicious practice swipes at the air with his oversized driver.

  “You play by the rules.”

>   “I always play by the rules.”

  “No, you don’t. You’re a cheating motherfucker. The best wood in your bag is your pencil. You haven’t recorded a legitimate score in your life.”

  “Oh, come on, what the fuck are you talking about, Miles?” he said, feet apart, challenging me.

  “We’re going to play strictly by USGA rules. The rules that all pros play by.” Jack was notorious for bumping his lies, surreptitiously kicking his ball out of hazards and deep rough, conceding himself all putts within four feet whether he holed them or not, as well as other flagrant infractions. “Play it as it lies, and if you have a rules question, ask me and I’ll set you straight.”

  “Six a side?” he said, disbelievingly.

  “Six a side. Fifty-dollar Nassau. Fifty on the side if you break a hundred, gross, from the tips. No equitable stroke control. Think you can handle it?”

  He rotated his shoulders, loosening them up. “Tee it up, Homes. USGA rules or not, I’ll still kick your ass. But, you’re paying this time. No IOUs.” He pointed his driver at me. “Even if you have to go back and filch from poor ol’ Mom again.”

  I pointed my finger back at him in response. “And don’t touch your fucking Titleist from tee to green unless you’re taking a legal drop or I’ll call it on you.”

  “Shut your trap and golf your ball.”

  I didn’t get off to a particularly good start and those six

  On the seventh hole—a difficult dogleg left par four—Jack lost his rhythm and hit a low snipe hook into the barranca on the left. He charged into the dense undergrowth and managed to find his ball and execute a nearly impossible recovery shot. He emerged all smiles, but his face fell when I informed him that I had to assess him a two-stroke penalty for soling his club.

  “Oh, fuck!” he exclaimed. “You’re joking!”

  “I said we’re playing by USGA rules. You can’t touch the ground with your club in a hazard.”

  “I didn’t even know it was a hazard,” he protested.

  “What do you think those red stakes are for? Decoration?”

  Rattled, Jack carded an eight to my five and the game was back on. But his competitive fire returned and he managed to finish the front side with a four-stroke margin.