After Annie (9781468300116)

by Tucker, Michael

“That’s not the shot,” says Maurice.

  “That’s not where you made it from?”

  “Yeah, but I made a completely different shot—dribble to the left, pull up and a one-handed jumper.”

  “You made the shot from here; I made the shot from here.”

  Maurice is laughing now. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “What, are you afraid, Maurice? That you’re gonna lose?”

  “Give me the fucking ball.”

  An hour later, they’re in the car again, heading downtown to the Russian Baths. “I’m glad I brought another pair of underwear,” says Herbie. “I hate walking around with wet shorts.”

  “Yes, you mentioned that.”

  “It’s kind of a creed with me.”

  At the Russian Baths, they take a long steam and then go off to their respective massages. Herbie draws a 250-pound bald Albanian with hands the size of catcher’s mitts. He gets pummeled for half an hour, then covered with kosher salt, which the guy rubs into every part of his body. The salt pulls out the toxins, the Albanian would say if he knew the language. By the time Herbie gets back to the steam room, he’s almost sober.

  “Now I know how a pastrami feels,” he says when Maurice appears, also looking a bit wrung out.

  “It’s good for us. We’ll live forever,” says Maurice. They adjust their sheets around their private parts and get as comfortable as they can on the hot, hard tiles. They’re the only ones in the steam.

  “So,” says Herbie after they sweat a little, “you’re running around on my daughter?”

  Maurice sighs a big one. “I thought you said you didn’t want to talk about anything today.”

  “No, I said I didn’t want to talk about me. You we can talk about.”

  Maurice stands up and starts to pace around the room. With the sheet he looks a little like Julius Caesar. “First of all, I’m not running around, as you well know. Candy’s trying to push this girl at me, which is a fairly obvious way of telling me that she’s done. That seems to be what’s going on here.”

  “Would it make you feel better or worse to know that she’s done this before?” Maurice stops pacing. “She’s weaseled out of relationships before by lining the guy up with another woman. She gets unsure for some reason and then she tests the guy. So far, they all failed.”

  Maurice shakes his head sadly. “What we have is good. It’s the best relationship I’ve ever had. We meet each other; we don’t dish a lot of crap out onto each other. It’s an honest, passionate relationship. What the fuck is she unsure about?”

  “Candy’s a little nuts is what. Maybe her parents fucked her up, who knows? But way down deep she can’t believe the guy loves her. If you want to be with her, you have to ride that out.”

  “I just pretend this isn’t happening?”

  “No, don’t pretend anything. Just accept it all. You have to take the whole package, Maurice. If you say, ‘I really love this girl except for this one thing—if I could just change this one thing, then everything would be perfect,’ then you’ve already lost her. Don’t try to change anything. Accept the whole deal— her mood swings, her little neuroses, her fears—not only accept them—you have to love them, rejoice in them. You’ve got to say, ‘there’s my girl; there’s my girl being herself.’ Then you’re a lover.”

  Herbie hasn’t cried since Annie died, but he’s crying now. The sweat and the steam cover the tears, but Maurice knows he’s not talking about Candy.

  The two men continue their discussion on the nature of true love through a shared double porterhouse at Peter Luger, fueled by dry vodka martinis of an untold number. After that they go to a chic whiskey bar in Tribeca and drink grappa until the manager throws them out. When Maurice drops Herbie off, they hug in the street. He’s going to make it, Maurice thinks, as the limo drives away.

  CHAPTER SIX

  GOLF?” CANDY MAKES THE WORD SOUND LIKE SHE’S trying to bring up sputum from her lungs. She and Herbie are having breakfast at Barney Greengrass on Amsterdam Avenue. This has become a daily ritual—daughter checking up on father and vice versa.

  “Yeah,” he says, “I thought I would go work on my game.”

  “Are you serious? Golf ?” If anything, she’s even more incredulous when she says it the second time. Herbie just sits there, refusing the bait.

  “You haven’t played golf since you lived in Los Angeles, have you?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “In fifteen years.”

  He nods. “But I’ve been watching them on TV, you know? And I think I’ve got it down now.” Candy smiles and trowels some cream cheese onto her toasted bagel.

  “Look,” says Herbie, “I don’t have a rational explanation— the other day I said to myself—the apartment, by the way, is becoming unlivable for me—it’s… creepy in there—and I said to myself, what do you want to do? So that you don’t go totally out of your fucking mind. And the answer was I want to play golf. I don’t know why; I don’t know where; I don’t know who, but that’s what I want to do. I’ll take some lessons, I’ll work on my swing, I’ll play thirty-six holes a day, I’ll get drunk and fall into bed. That’s what I want to do. That’s what I’m doing. Your mother hated golf. She said it took all day. Now I’ve got all day.”

  “Wow,” says Candy, shaking her head in wonder. This is the most Herbie has said in one breath since Annie died.

  “So I’m also thinking, what about you,” he continues. “Are you moving out of Maurice’s? Because if so, you can live in the apartment while I’m gone.”

  “You just said it was creepy.”

  “No, for me it’s creepy. For you, it’s… your parents’ place.”

  “Way creepy. And I’m not moving out anyway.”

  “Oh?”

  “No. We’re… taking another look at everything.”

  “Ah.”

  The waiter comes and fills up their coffee cups. Herbie tucks into his lox-and-onion omelet and Candy watches him for a moment.

  “So what did you guys talk about that day?”

  Herbie shakes his head. “What happens in the limo stays in the limo.”

  The golf thing calls to Herbie from a long way back, from when he was eleven years old and his family moved a half block away from a public golf course. It wasn’t much as courses go: it had bald spots all over the fairways that became mud holes when it rained and the clubhouse was just two unheated shacks joined together—one side was a locker room, but with some tables and chairs, a bar, and the starter’s desk, and the other side was the pro shop. Even for a public course it was pretty shabby, but to Herbie it was like a get-out-of-jail-free card.

  A schoolmate of his who lived up the street was a guy named Butch, who was a year older and well entrenched in the golfcourse scene. Butch spent his summers being the cart-boy, a position of immense responsibility for a mere kid. He had to rent out the little red pull-carts for thirty-five cents a round and then wrangle them when they got returned and put them in to neat lines around the side of the pro shop. For this he made good money. Butch brought Herbie over and introduced him to the pro, who was a jolly Irish fellow with a red face.

  “Well,” said the golf pro, “we need a boy to shag balls. Are you interested?”

  Herbie nodded although he had no idea what the man was talking about. Shagging balls, although it may sound like a medical condition for men over fifty, is a job on a golf course. It is the lowest job you can get. When the pro gives a lesson, he has a large canvas bag filled with old golf balls; he dumps them out at the spot where he’s giving the lesson, hands the bag to a young boy—the ball shagger—who goes out into the field and waits for them to hit the balls directly at him. Then, if he’s still alive, he picks up all the balls and brings them back. Herbie earned fifty cents an hour doing this and it was the first money he ever earned.

  Then he got into caddying, which made him a little more money and also gave him a chance to get out on the course and learn the noble game of golf. He caddied for on
e guy, Stan, who taught him a lot of the basics. Stan always used a Spalding Dot golf ball and he would tee it up just so—with the word “Dot” right where the club was going to connect with it. Stan’s wife’s name was Dorothy.

  “All right baby, here it comes,” he would say and then he’d smack the living shit out of the ball. Herbie took careful note of the satisfaction on Stan’s face after every drive. This was his first golf lesson.

  Then he met Mr. Cole, who was a fixture around the clubhouse and as far as Herbie could tell, played golf every day of his life. He was an older gentleman with a pronounced limp and a flavorful Kentucky drawl. When Mr. Cole spoke, everyone and his brother stopped what they were doing and listened to him. It was rumored that Mr. Cole was a very wealthy man and that he slipped his caddy a brand-new five-dollar bill at the end of each round. Five dollars.

  “Hubby, you big enough to carry mah bag? It’s that big red one over theyah. Ah think it’s bigguh than you are. Heh, heh, heh.” All the men turned and looked at him and laughed, but Herbie knew an opportunity when he saw it.

  “I sure can, Mr. Cole,” he said, nervously eying the enormous golf bag.

  “All right, Hubby, Ah tell yah what we’re gonna do. See if you can hoist that suckuh onto one of them pull carts. Ah don’t wanna kill ya the fust time out.”

  “No, I can carry it, Mr. Cole.”

  “You listen to me boy. You do as I say. Y’understand?”

  “Sure Mr. Cole.” And to the raucous laughter of the men in the clubhouse he lifted the big bag onto his shoulder and took it out to where Butch was tending the carts.

  “That’s Mr. Cole’s bag,” said Butch. Herbie nodded, staggering under the weight of it.

  “He’s gonna let you put it on a cart?” Herbie set the bag down on the cart and strapped it in securely. “Man, are you lucky.”

  Lucky, indeed. Herbie became Mr. Cole’s steady boy. Not only did he earn five dollars every day that summer, not only was he able use the pull cart every day, but Mr. Cole also let him play a few holes once they got out of sight of the authorities at the clubhouse. Once Mr. Cole and his three cronies hit their drives, he would hand Herbie the driver and a brand-new golf ball and tell him to take a whack at it. Then he’d give him a tip about how to swing better and they’d all walk down the fairway together to their next shots. With the warmth of the sun on his head, the smell of the newly mown grass and the promise of a crisp new five-dollar bill at the end of the day, Herbie felt a stirring in his eleven-year-old chest unlike any feeling he had ever had.

  That afternoon, he calls Jeffrey, who had left him a message. “Jesus, I got you on the first try,” says Herbie. “Must be my lucky day.”

  “How are you?” There is still that funeral director tone in Jeffrey’s voice.

  “I’m fine, Jeffrey. The funeral’s over, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “What did you call about? Not work, I hope, because I’m leaving town in a couple of days. I was going to call you. So all those wonderful jobs you were going to get me will have to stay on hold for a while.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Myrtle Beach, I think. In South Carolina. I’m gonna go play golf for a while.”

  “I’ve played there—when I was in college.”

  “You play golf?” There’s as much disbelief in his voice as there had been in Candy’s.

  “Yes, I was actually captain of my college golf team in Wisconsin.”

  “How could I not have known that?”

  “Are you seriously asking that? Maybe because you don’t know anything about me. You never have.”

  Herbie thinks about that for a second and realizes it’s quite true—except for the fact of Jeffrey’s sexual preference, he really doesn’t know a thing about his personal life. “Why is that do you suppose?”

  “Hm. You’re only interested in yourself, maybe?” He lets that sink in. “Annie knew everything.”

  “That you play golf?”

  “That and everything else—that I have nieces and a nephew and what their names are; that I’ve taken flying lessons; that I only have one kidney; she knew everything.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Annnnyway, that’s not why I called,” says Jeffrey, as anxious as Herbie to get out of this conversation. “I just want to report that our little condiment has an audition.”

  “Olive?

  “Yes. A very nice one, if I may say so myself. Uncle Vanya, to play Yelena.”

  “Jesus. Where?”

  “A regional theater—upstate. Tucked away where no one will see her.”

  “Good. That’s good.”

  “But she wants to talk to you. I think she’s a little terrified.”

  “When’s the audition?”

  “Friday.”

  “Sure, give her my number.”

  “Are you going to have your cell phone with you?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Herbie is notorious for not ever carrying his cell phone.

  “And you’re going to turn it on? And recharge it every day?”

  “Just tell her to call me, all right?”

  Herbie goes to his optometrist and asks him to make a pair of glasses that doesn’t have progressive lenses or bifocals—just his distance prescription. These will be his golf glasses. Then he goes to the pro shop at the Chelsea Piers driving range to see what the story is with all these new clubs that he’s seen advertised on TV, hybrids. They’re supposed to be for people like him, golfers who can’t hit with the clubs they already own. He spends an hour test-driving the demo clubs, smacking balls into a big net that’s been strung up in front of the Hudson River. Whenever he hits a good shot, he buys the club—conveniently forgetting that he’s just hit ten bad shots with it a few minutes earlier. That’s the secret to golf, he thinks, forgetting the bad shots. All I want to do, he says to himself, is swing away like I did when I was a kid. Just whack away at it without thinking about all that crap they tell you—one-piece takeaway, keep your head behind the ball, move your weight to your right heel, relax your hands, take a big shoulder-turn—Jesus Christ, it’s a miracle you can stay on your feet after all that crap. I’m just gonna whack away at it like I did when I was a kid, swinging my arms in the sunshine. He leaves with four new hybrid clubs that he’ll add to his old golf bag in the basement. He buys shoes, a glove, a couple dozen balls; he’s outfitted.

  Next he gets online and figures out where he’s going to stay. He had been to Myrtle Beach once when he was in his twenties—with three other unemployed actors he played a weekly game with. That’s what Myrtle Beach is all about—golf buddies who are looking for a cheap getaway where they can focus on the manly pursuits: golf, carbohydrates both solid and liquid, and a cheap, soft bed to crash in. Florida is for rich guys, whereas Myrtle Beach is for guys. He remembers a bar near the beach where a lot of golf bums hung out that had pretty good crab cakes. He rents a car for a month, books a room at a golf resort and makes an appointment for lessons with the pro. Then he calls his drug supplier and orders up a half ounce of weed. In fifteen minutes, the guy pulls up to the corner of West End Avenue in a brand-new BMW and they consummate the deal. Now he’s ready to go.

  That night he’s sitting at a bar on Amsterdam having the fried chicken special when his cell phone goes off. It’s Olive.

  “Hey,” he says, “I heard you got an audition. Way to go.”

  “Yeah, I’m a little nervous.”

  “Hang on a second, I’m gonna go outside where I can hear.” Herbie gestures to the bartender that he’ll be back and puts his coat on and goes out onto the sidewalk. Amsterdam Avenue is nearly as noisy as the bar, so he huddles against the building.

  “Why are you nervous? You’ve auditioned before.”

  “For musicals. This is completely different.”

  “Why?”

  “There I just work on the music I’m going to sing. I know I can do the music. But with the acting, I don’t know what they’re looking for.”

&n
bsp; “Ah. That’s just it—they don’t know what they’re looking for either. So your job is not to please them. Your job is to find yourself in her, in what’s her name—Yelena.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What did you do before—when you had to read for a musical? After you did the singing?”

  “I just said the lines so they made sense.”

  “That’s it. That’s all you have to do. And then don’t forget you’re her, not you. The sense that you make has got to be her sense. There’s a place where that woman and the woman that’s you come together. When you find that place, the lines will all make sense. You won’t have to do a thing.”

  “But she never really says what she’s thinking.”

  “Ah, so you’re playing a woman.”

  “Very funny. But she’s always tap-dancing, you know? So that people don’t see the real her.”

  “Why?”

  Olive doesn’t speak for a moment.

  “Okay,” says Herbie pointedly. “Now you know what you have to work on. Call me as soon as you figure it out. I’m leaving town but you’ve got my cell phone.

  “Where you going?”

  “It’s a long story. Go to work.”

  “No, where are you going?”

  He sighs. He’s tired of people being judgmental about his golf trip. “I’m going to play golf.”

  “I play golf!”

  Herbie is speechless. She plays golf. Probably wearing those cute Bermuda shorts that tend to crawl up her butt a little bit and those socks that just cover her feet so that her ankles are bare. And a tight little golf shirt with the logo on her left breast, like the alligator is going to chew on her nipple. Oh my God. Women on the golf course have always generated a very powerful erotic charge for Herbie. A woman who would not be all that attractive under normal circumstances can take on pornstar status when she’s swinging a seven-iron. It all started when he was shagging balls. There was an assistant pro named Rick, who was young and handsome and who hit the golf ball farther than anyone in the world. Rick gave all his lessons to women. They were lined up around the block. He actually did that thing where he put his arms around them from behind—to show them the rhythm of the golf swing. And from a hundred and fifty yards away, the young Herbie, carrying his canvas bag half full of golf balls, got a chubby watching them. It’s been that way ever since—woman, golf course, chubby.