It was the work of a clever monster. Clever to think of such a horrible payback and monstrous to set it up, but a complete fuckup to not have anticipated that it could work perfectly but fail to harm Genie.
Deep inside one of the vicious caverns of my imagination I could see Dengel’s fantasy: Genie in her wheelchair, pregnant, spinning around the kitchen fixing him a steak dinner, planning on giving him a king’s blow job later.
_____
After I’d taken a few deep breaths, I turned from the sink and said, “Genie, I know who it is, and you know who it is.”
“I can handle it.” Her voice was very quiet, and I pitched mine accordingly, uncomfortable with doing so, but doing it anyway.
“You’re insane.”
“I don’t want you talking to the police.”
“Genie!”
Her nostrils flared, and she took me by the shoulders. “Don’t. Say. Anything. I’m going to let Meredith handle this.”
“Meredith?”
“She’s getting in touch with my lawyer. And Donna’ll take it from there.”
“Yeah, but...” I shrugged off her hands. Something was making my ears ring, as if the explosion were still echoing.
“I’m not going to say a blessed word to them, and I’m telling you you shouldn’t either. Look, it’s not going to matter what you say, anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
“Donna will advise you, too. She’ll make sure this gets handled right.”
I shook my head and wiped my face with a towel. “I must be—”
“Look, Lillian. You can talk to the police all you want. After the tournament. All right?”
“After the—? Aren’t you going to withdraw?”
“I can’t do anything for Peaches now, can I? I can’t do anything but win this thing and dedicate it to him.”
I looked at her, my jaw hanging open.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But will you give me that? Can you do that much for me—and for Peaches?”
“What about his wife?”
“Meredith’ll call her.”
I now knew what people meant when, after going through a shock, they said they were numb. I’d always thought it had to do with emotional numbness. But I felt numb physically, specifically. I turned my clean hands over and looked at them. They did not appear to be mine. Someone could have driven a spike through my hand—or my arm, or my head—and I’m sure I wouldn’t have felt it. It was the oddest thing.
“Genie, I don’t like this,” I told her.
“It doesn’t matter what you like right now. Do you understand?”
“I guess it doesn’t.”
“Do this for me. Please, Lillian. Please. You’ve got to trust me on this.”
There was that depth in her eyes, that bottomless look, that made me just want to fall in and not have to think.
“All right.”
As we returned to the group of cops, I heard Stacy telling one that a woman had approached her in the parking lot and asked whether she’d be taking Genie home.
“And I told her yes, and I asked why, but she just patted my arm and went away.”
“In which direction?” asked the cop.
“The clubhouse. I just figured she was a fan and was maybe going to try to ambush Genie for an autograph.”
“What’d she look like?”
“Well, she—I don’t know, she was—”
“Was she white or black or—”
“She was white. Um, brown hair, I think.”
“What was she wearing?”
“Like a—a, well, she had a funny dress on, like a tennis dress or something. And a sweater, like a lightweight sweater. And a hat, a sunhat.”
“How old, how tall?”
“Oh. Maybe forty? Thirty? I don’t know...she was kinda husky.”
The cop kept asking questions, and two other cops got hold of me.
I told them only what I’d seen, what had happened. I volunteered nothing else. They were just beginning to get themselves organized. Everybody figured it was a crazed fan, you know, a Monica Seles-type thing. The police gave Genie a hard time for not cooperating, but it didn’t faze her. She expected them to understand that she needed to keep her mind focused on golf.
The public and the other golfers were informed only that there had been a terrible accident involving a caddie. The tournament people consulted with Genie and the other golfers yet to tee off. Given the choice, most athletes, primed for a contest, want to go forward. And that’s what they all said: Yes. Let’s go. Let’s do it. I’m ready.
After the cops wrote down where we were staying and gave Genie some more hostile hassle, she told me they were going ahead with the tournament.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
“ABC will tape it.”
“Uh—”
“We can finish before dark. Come on.”
“We?”
“Lillian, listen. You’re going to caddie for me.”
“What?”
“I need you to caddie for me. You can do it.”
“Are you—are you—”
“Lillian!”
I accompanied her to the first tee. Truby, pale and bewildered, looked on.
“I am up for this round,” Genie announced. “This one’s for Peaches. All right, now—” She looked around and called, “Where’re some coveralls for my caddie?”
“We’re getting them,” someone answered.
In a minute I had on the bright white jumpsuit with the tournament logo on it and a blank space on the back where MAYCHILD was on Peaches’s. Everything looked and sounded and felt completely wrong. Sounds were muffled. I felt shrunk down, somehow, as if I were hiding inside a bale of cotton.
“I’ll tell you everything to do,” said Genie, standing her bag and me to the side of the tee box. “I’ll choose my own clubs. You know how to wipe dirt off. Get her a towel, please—thanks—and just look after my divots. You know how to handle the pin.”
“Peaches has your yardage book in his pocket.”
“I got it.” She handed me the small spiral notebook, filled with notations for each hole on the distances of every hazard, every safe landing spot, the height of trees. It was still damp from Peaches’s sweat.
“You—”
“I got it while they were lifting him. I explained it was mine.”
“Oh.”
“All right?”
The starter announced her.
_____
I don’t remember much more about that day. I did get through it. I toted Genie’s monstrous bag down the fairways and up to the tee boxes. I fetched divots and stomped them back in. I avoided the curious eyes of the fans, and I made hushed small talk with the two other caddies in our group. I raked bunkers. I gazed, during pauses, at the grass and the sky and the trees and the mountains. I picked Genie’s birdie putts out of many cups. I watched her beautiful liquid swing over and over again, and I heard her tell me she was in the lead by a shot over Coco Nash as we were leaving the club and the sky was going slowly purple.
I must have done all those things, had to have, but I don’t really remember.
26
Genie slept deeply that night; I know because I barely did. I got up and talked to Todd in the den, then played Mad Scramble with him and talked to him some more. We dozed together for a while, on the nice carpet in there, then I went back to lie in bed. My shoulders and back ached from carrying Genie’s heavy leather golf bag.
By morning I was feeling more solid, more in control of my emotions. The bloody image of Peaches had faded somewhat; we’d gotten word that he’d been given a fifty-fifty chance of making it, which was more than I would have thought. I couldn’t let myself think about his suffering, and I couldn’t let myself think about what would lie ahead of him if he did make it.
Genie was in the zone. Man, she was hyper-there, hyper-Genie, but wrapped in a cloak of serenity. Dreamily, she told me, “I played out of my mind yesterd
ay.” She did her stretches and got herself ready for the day with placid determination, and I puttered around and thought.
By the end of yesterday, the word had gotten around that what had happened to Peaches wasn’t an accident. I wondered what Coco Nash was thinking. I wondered what Marian Handistock was thinking, knowing that she had to have seen me caddying for Genie. I wondered what Dengel was thinking—and where he was.
And I tried to put myself into their heads.
I remembered Coco telling me, when the subject of Peaches came up, “I’d love to take him away from her.” She wanted the championship trophy as much as anyone. Maybe I’d misjudged her. Maybe I’d been too generous.
The look that Coach Handy had given me on the airplane kept coming back to me.
Dengel wouldn’t be stopped by repeated failure, I was certain.
It felt to me that today, Sunday, the final round of the most sought-after trophy in women’s professional golf, would be the day when everybody would grab for their own personal brass ring, their own heart’s desire. And it was plain to see how high the stakes were—for all of us.
Incredibly, Genie wanted me on her bag again.
“Oh, Genie, no. Didn’t you ask the club to find you a caddie, a professional? My God, hon, for a day like today, you need somebody who knows what the hell they’re—”
“Lillian, you’re it.” Not only that, but, “I want Todd along, too.”
Since there could be no reasonable response to that, I just looked at her.
“I mean it,” she said.
“What?” I countered.
“Yes.”
“Todd is not coming onto the golf course.”
She took my hand and led me to the living room, where she made herself comfortable on a couch. I perched on its arm.
“It’s time for me to explain something to you,” she began. “You wanted to know about my new source of...special focus.”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s you.”
I hadn’t expected that; I had not. I twisted a strand of my hair into a knot and kept listening.
“I don’t know how,” she said, “but since I picked you out I’ve felt...I saw you and I knew. If I talk about it too much, I’ll ruin it. When you’re around me, I feel like—like there’s more of me. I feel unafraid. Golf feels effortless. Life feels effortless. Do you have any idea what that’s like to me?”
She took my head in her hands. “What is it like to be inside Lillian Byrd? To be Lillian Byrd?”
I said nothing, feeling her hands caressing my head—such fine hands, such good hands.
“You might think it’s a very funny joke for me to want Todd along today.”
“I don’t.”
“He’s your touchstone. You get energy from him. And you are my touchstone, I get energy—and courage!—from you. The two of you together are magical. I don’t know how or why I brought you into my life. I do know that I can’t ever let you go.”
“Do you want Truby to carry Todd along with us? That’s just no good. He’d get too nervous—”
“No, I want you to carry him in my bag.”
“Genie.”
She waited.
I said, “I’ll carry your bag, and you can pay for my hernia operation later, but I’m not carrying Todd, too.”
“Yes, I want you to carry him in the bag. In the big pocket on the front.”
“It’s too hot. He’d overheat.”
“Not if you keep a cold bottle of water in there with him. Rabbits like small spaces, don’t they?”
I had to admit they seemed to feel safe that way. Do magicians still pull rabbits out of hats? The reason they use rabbits is that they’re quiet animals; they keep silent and still in dark, close places.
But I protested, “Carrying Todd around all day—what if the bag falls over with him in it, Genie? He could get hurt! He could die! What if he panics? What if—”
“No!” She snapped her head emphatically. As it did when she whacked a golf ball, her hair flew into a golden halo, then settled into a perfect thatch. “The two of you together are magical. You’ll look after him. Nothing will happen to him. I know it. Lillian, I’ve got to pull out all the stops today. I’m leading by one.”
“And Nash is at your heels. Genie, not that I want to—oh, hell! Golf is just a game! All right? It’s a game! And Peaches—oh, God! This is ridiculous, Genie. And I’m sorry, but there’s something unhealthy about it.”
It is the measure of me that I allowed Genie to bully me into doing exactly as she wished. I rationalized it to myself: I could use Todd’s energy, his friendship, at my side today. This day. He was a patient, good rabbit who’d always been there for me. If he could understand what was going on, he’d want to help me.
_____
A Mission Hills security car picked us up and took us to the course. Genie’s bag was stored in the club’s bag room. Carrying Todd in a canvas tote, I used the caddie credential I’d been given the day before to claim the golf bag.
I carried it into a corner and slipped an icy bottle of water into the bottom pocket, then Todd, murmuring to him over and over what a blessed bunny he was, and what a goddamn idiot I was. I zipped the pocket almost shut.
All I could think of was Genie, my true love. After dinner last night and before she had fallen asleep, she’d taken me totally by surprise with a tempest of lovemaking. Yes. If I’d been paying attention, I would’ve noticed her desire building, her passion rising up out of the horror of the day.
It’s true: In the face of death, some people want to make love. A way of forcing back the terror, I guess it is, a way of showing grief who’s boss.
Until she touched me, I would’ve doubted I could even become aroused that night. But boy, she took me there. Never had I experienced such excitement, never such sustained pleasure, never such thorough release. She allowed me to reciprocate, then she took me there again, then we slept like logs.
Now she was in the clubhouse having a conference with Meredith who, I guessed, was keeping the media at bay. They were there, though. They were massing. I’d brushed past a few reporters already; they wanted to talk to me, find out who I was, find out what I knew about what happened yesterday.
I ducked around the back of the building and threaded through the throng near the members’ pro shop. Todd added about six pounds to the bag. “It’s gonna be a long day,” I muttered. I wanted to find a piece of shade until I needed to meet Genie at the practice range.
“Hey,” came a tight voice at my shoulder.
I glanced over and kept walking. “Finally,” I said.
Coach Marian Handistock followed me to a quiet spot at the north side of the building. Shade from an overhang made it slightly less blistering there than in the direct sun. I set Genie’s bag upright against the wall and coach Handy and I talked across it. Her face sagged in the heat, but her body was tense. I saw the muscles in her forearms twitch.
She said, “I don’t like you.”
I folded my arms.
“I don’t want you fucking around with her.”
I said, “Is that what you think’s going on?”
“You want something from her.”
I didn’t deny it.
“What’s your real name, anyway?”
I showed her my credential. She murmured, “Lillian Byrd,” as if she’d been expecting the name to tell her something.
I said, “Have you asked Genie about me?”
“No. She doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Why not?”
She thrust her aggressive chin at me. “I pegged you for a rat the first minute I saw you. She doesn’t need you. The last thing she needs is you.”
“Why are you wasting your time on me? How come you’re not—”
“Because you’re just as dangerous to her, and she doesn’t know it.” Searchingly, she asked, “Do you...care for her?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you pretend to, but all you
really want is to drain her dry. You—you—all you want is to suck the life out of her. Look at you.” She bared her teeth contemptuously. “You’re the kind of person who doesn’t bother to make your own way in the world. You just want to ride somebody else’s coattails. A parasite. If you care anything for her, if you really care, you’ll leave right now. Go back to wherever. Find somebody else to feed on.”
It was with tremendous effort that I refrained from punching her as hard as I could. She could’ve taken me anyway, I’m afraid.
Instead, I chose to obtain information.
Cracking my knuckles, I said, “I know what you went and did after we talked in your kitchen.”
Her breath caught in her throat. I heard it, like a match being struck. She couldn’t speak. I saw her mind working, her eyes staring straight out at me, desperate.
I waited.
“It had to be done,” she finally said.
Boy, had I nailed it.
“Genie called on you,” I said, “and you took care of it. And now she’s safe.”
“Not yet.”
Coach Handy reached over and fondled the black plush clubhead covers sticking up from Genie’s bag. She stroked them as if they were alive.
“Dengel doesn’t know what you went out and dug up, does he?”
She glared at me. “Get away from Genie.”
“Did you know before—”
“No. I didn’t.”
“And it doesn’t matter to you that—”
Coach Handy stepped around the golf bag, shoved me against the wall with her own solid belly, and twisted a fistful of my white coveralls.
“You listen,” she hissed into my face, “you nobody, you, you nothing. I created Genie Maychild. She is mine, more than anything in the world. I dreamed her. I dreamed her up, don’t you see? No one’s going to hurt her. Not you. Not anybody. I gave her the clothes off my back. I gave her—everything.”
“You loved her.”
“Yes, I loved her,” she breathed, still clutching the front of my coveralls, her face inches from mine. Her eyes were hot and hard. “I loved that girl.”
The Lillian Byrd Crime Series Page 38