Marrying Up

by Jackie Rose

“Well, miss, there are three bars in the hotel, and two pools, and the gym is on the—”

  She giggles. “No, silly! I mean, what do people around here do for fun?”

  “Like the locals?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Like the locals.”

  “Well…there are exactly two things to do in Naples—shopping and golfing.”

  “Golfing,” George repeats, as if it’s the first time she’s ever heard the word.

  Sensing he’s losing her interest, José adds cautiously, “And there’s the staff bar in the back of the hotel, if you were, you know, looking for something a little more laid-back…”

  The doors open onto our floor. “Thank you, but no,” I say, pulling George out of the elevator.

  “Thanks, José! You’re a sweetie!”

  After two divinely serene but boyless days at the beach, it’s becoming clear that José was right. Naples isn’t exactly the hotbed of singles activity I hoped it would be. George and I found the hotel bars to be pretty stodgy, while the nightclub in town recommended by the concierge wasn’t really our scene. (Picture Cocoon meets Cocktail, only with more Don Ameche and less Tom Cruise.) Fortunately, the weather has been wonderful, so George and I are having a blast just relaxing, sleeping in and enjoying the general opulence that surrounds us.

  On our fourth day, I make an executive decision—we’re going to get some action.

  “We have to start being serious, here, G,” I say as I finish off another eight-dollar blueberry scone by the pool. “We didn’t just come here to work on our tans, you know.”

  She rolls over onto her back and puts her hands up to shield her eyes from the sun. “Let’s not push it. I’m having fun just doing nothing.”

  “But we have to be open to the possibilities. Maybe we should expand our horizons a little.”

  “I’m afraid to even ask.”

  “New Year’s Eve is the day after tomorrow, right?”

  “Right…” she says cautiously.

  “And we haven’t met anyone yet.”

  “So? I can’t see how that’s our fault. The only eligible men around here are triple our age.”

  “Don’t exaggerate.”

  “I’m not! Did you see that old guy at the buffet this morning? He smiled at me and he had no teeth. No teeth, Holly!”

  “All the better to eat his prunes with?”

  “No! I don’t care what you say. I’m not Anna Nicole Smith. I can’t do that. Not even for a million dollars.”

  “Of course not! That’s not what I mean at all…her husband was like ninety-four or something. And that’s obviously pushing the boundaries of good taste. But within reason, a big age difference might not be so bad. Lots of women do it.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like Calista Flockhart, that’s who!”

  “Han Solo is not now, nor will he ever be, a senior citizen.”

  “Technically, I think he is.”

  “Apologize immediately or this conversation is over.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right—Han Solo doesn’t count. What about Annette Bening?”

  She shakes her head. “Warren Beatty’s still got a little bit of hotness left in him. He’s not old yet.”

  “Catherine Zeta-Jones?”

  “Michael Douglas is one thing, Kirk Douglas is what you’re suggesting.”

  “I am not.”

  “Look around here, Holly. There’s a lot more Kirk than Michael.”

  I scan the pool area. She has a point. But I’m not giving up. “Oh, lighten up. You’ve been halfway to old and back with your professor, so what’s the big deal?”

  “Stuart is fourteen years older than me. It’s hardly the same thing.”

  “Look, George—I’m not suggesting you have a romp in the old Craftmatic with Methuselah over there.” I motion towards the lone swimmer in the pool, whose diaper is peeking out from the back of his swim trunks. “All I’m saying is I don’t think it would be so bad, dating a distinguished older gentleman. Think Jack Nicholson or Robert Redford or someone like that.”

  “Well, I guess they’re not so bad. I did see a guy who looked like George Hamilton at the beach the other day. He was okay, I guess.”

  “He sure was!”

  She glares at me suspiciously. “I don’t know what you have in mind, Holly, just promise me you won’t go getting all…”

  “All what?”

  “All, you know…crazy.”

  “Crazy works well for me,” I say, slipping my newly pedicured feet into my flip-flops. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”

  When I return to the pool an hour later, George hasn’t moved.

  “I hope you put some more cream on.”

  “Tan is the new pale,” she groans and flips over to get away from me.

  “Wake up.”

  Silence.

  “Okay, fine. Be that way. But I’m going up to change.”

  “Change? For what?”

  “Our 1:30 golf lesson.”

  George sits up. “Golf lesson?”

  “Yup. I figured we better get busy or else we’re gonna look like complete idiots tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “We have a 9:00 a.m. tee time”

  “Tee time?”

  “Yes, George. Tee time.”

  She stretches lazily. “I don’t think I like that idea.”

  “Technically, I think it was José’s idea.”

  “Jose,” she says dreamily.

  “Come on. We don’t want to be late.”

  A cute little shuttle bus picks us up by the hotel’s side entrance and drops us off fifteen minutes later at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Resort. By the time we find the golf school, buy a couple bottles of iced tea and rent our clubs, I notice that George is looking more than a little flushed.

  “I don’t feel well, Holly.”

  “You probably have sunstroke and I’m not at all surprised. You’ve been baking yourself silly for three days. And you’re definitely not drinking enough water so you might be dehydrated, too.”

  “Ms. Hastings?”

  “Yes?” I spin around.

  “Hi. I’m Mateo.”

  A dark, sexy Spaniard with bulging forearms reaches out to shake my hand.

  “Nice grip,” I say to him.

  “Well, I do get a lot of practice.”

  “I bet you do….”

  He’s a bit older than the type of guy I normally fall for—forty, maybe forty-five.

  I sigh. You could drown in those eyes—dark, black almost, and fringed with a double row of lashes any supermodel would envy. He smiles back at me warmly.

  Hmm…

  Maybe this is a good way to ease into an attraction for older men. A little experiment. Just to see what would happen. Nobody would get hurt. Quite the opposite, hopefully…

  “Holly?” George says weakly.

  “Okay, ladies. So what do we have here?” He claps his hands together, takes a step back and looks us up and down. “First of all, halter tops are not permitted on the course. Collared shirts only. But since we’re going to be on the driving range today, I’m sure nobody will mind.”

  Although she already resembles a lobster in a wig, George blushes even redder and attempts a smile.

  “Come,” he instructs us. “This way.”

  “This is the thing, Mateo…” I say as we struggle to keep up. He’s tall, and for each stride he takes, I take two. George is at a full jog and fading fast. “We have no idea—and I mean absolutely no idea—what this whole golf thing is about and we need to learn fast.”

  “I’ve been playing for twenty years and sometimes I still feel like an amateur, so don’t get your hopes up. We’ll start with the basics, yes? Grip, stance, swing… And in a few weeks and a few more lessons—”

  “Sorry,” I interrupt. “Maybe I didn’t make myself clear. We need to look like we know what we’re doing by tomorrow morning.”

  He stops in his tracks. “This is impossible! Surely, you must
be joking, yes?”

  It’s going to take some encouragement to get him to see things our way.

  “I think I need to sit down,” says George.

  “Look, Mateo. You’re a professional. We both know that. And you’re also a very experienced teacher. So just teach us what we need to know in order to properly, um…handle the balls…and we’ll be all set!”

  George’s lashes flutter as her eyes roll back into her head. I can’t tell if it’s a reaction to my painful attempt at flirtatious double entendres or the sunstroke.

  Mateo’s dark eyes twinkle. “There’s more to this game than balls, Ms. Hastings.”

  “Please, call me Holly.”

  “Holly, then. But like I said, there’s more to it than balls.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. There’s the stroke to consider as well,” he says as he hands me a club.

  “The stroke?”

  “Yes, the stroke.”

  “As in, how many strokes does it take to…finish?”

  He steps behind me and puts his hands on my hips. “Spread your legs a bit wider. There, that’s it. How many strokes it takes to finish, Holly, depends on if it curves to the left or the right.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The holes. Some dogleg to the left, others to the right.” Mateo bends down and places a ball on the tee. “Now let me see you swing, yes?”

  I swing as gracefully as I can, trying to visualize what Tiger Woods looked like in that Nike commercial. Of course, I completely miss the ball, lose my balance and end up on my duff.

  “Holly?” George calls out. She’s sitting cross-legged on the grass about three yards away. I’m trying very hard to pretend that she’s okay.

  “Hang on, George! Have some more iced tea!”

  “That was appalling,” Mateo whispers in my ear as he helps me up.

  “But this is my first time—isn’t it supposed to hurt?”

  “My first time, I got a hole in one.”

  “Impressive…though I bet you had a titanium driver.”

  “Well, there aren’t many clubs like mine,” he agrees with a wink. “Forty-five inches.”

  And on it goes, until George actually faints and we have to call it a day.

  Despite my teacher’s best efforts, I only managed to make contact with the ball once, and even then, it didn’t go very far. Golf is definitely not my game. But at least I managed to write my room number down on a chit and slip it into Mateo’s pocket as he helped George board the shuttle back to our hotel.

  chapter 9

  Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes. I’m fine.”

  “We don’t have to go.”

  “I feel fine. I slept for thirteen hours, Holly.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “’Cause we can just stay here and rest if you want to.”

  “I want to go.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It’ll be fun.”

  Good ol’ George. She really is a trouper.

  Within an hour, we are back at the golf resort, waiting to tee off. The day before, the concierge had explained they would pair us up with two other players to make a foursome, and that the Executive Course—an easier par-3 with only nine holes—allowed mixed play. I took that to mean we had a very good chance of being matched up with two guys.

  “I have no idea how to play this game,” George marvels as she examines the golf clubs we’d rented. “It’s absurd, really.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Easy for you to say—Mateo probably showed you a thing or two so you won’t embarrass yourself.”

  “I can guarantee you I’m just as terrible as you are, if not worse. While you were drifting in and out of consciousness yesterday, I was busy proving that. But it doesn’t matter. They told me this course isn’t really for competitive players. We’ll be paired up with people just as bad as we are, or who don’t care anyway.”

  “But I don’t want to be embarrassed. Especially if they’re cute….”

  “I wouldn’t go getting my hopes up for a love match just yet. This is a real long shot, remember.”

  “I know.” She sits down on a wooden bench and sighs. “But didn’t you say this was the best place in town to meet guys?”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake! What’s the point, then?”

  “To have fun, remember? You said it yourself. And to try something new!”

  “Yeah, well I didn’t mean it,” she grumbles. “I thought we were here for the boys.”

  “It’s a golf course, G. Not a singles bar.”

  “Maybe we should skip right to the end, then, and head straight for the 19th hole. Have a few drinks and wait for a couple of cuties to come in after their games are over.”

  “You have to play to get in there.”

  “The green fees alone are more than a day’s work for me. If there were some boys, that’s one thing, but—”

  “Don’t worry so much! We have to stay optimistic. It’s gonna happen for us, one way or the other.”

  “Yeah, right.” She kicks a pebble, following it till it disappears into the edge of the grass.

  I don’t mean to take all the fun out of it for her. After all, I’m hoping for the exact same thing she is.

  “Maybe our partners will be cute,” I concede.

  “Really?”

  “Sure—why not? And rich, too. You know, Naples is not only the millionaire capital of America, but the golf capital, also.”

  “It is?”

  “Yup. There are more courses here per capita than anywhere else. So I naturally take that to mean millionaires like golf.”

  “I hope so.” George turns to look out across the course. The sky is a wash of blue, and out past the seventh hole, there is the ocean—an almost unexpected sight, bottle-green and fierce, its waves pushing the surf up into a periodic curtain of spray. “I’m sorry, Holly. I’m just being a baby. It doesn’t really matter if we meet anyone. I mean, look at where we are. This is beautiful. Heaven. I bet they’re digging out from a storm back home….”

  “Ahem.”

  We spin around.

  “I think we’re with you today, ladies.”

  The hum of a lawn mower off in the distance isn’t nearly enough to temper the awkward silence.

  “Are you sure?” George asks.

  “9:00 a.m.?”

  “Uhh…yeah. I think so,” I say, and George shoots me a panicked look. But there’s no use lying.

  “How’s that?” one of them ask.

  “Yes!” I shout. “We’re at nine!”

  “Shall we, then?” The other one grins and extends an arm, presumably for me to take.

  And that’s how George and I end up playing our very first round of golf with two of the three oldest living male triplets in the United States.

  Before we left for Florida, I saw Lacy one last time. I tried to stick it out with her. Really, I did. But past-life regression was definitely not for me, and I was in no position, financially speaking, to be dabbling in therapy my insurance provider considers “beyond the sphere of reputable and recognized psychological practice.” So I resolved simply to play it out until the last of my prebooked appointments, right before Christmas.

  “Does the name Clifford Boyer mean anything to you?” Lacy asked me at the end of our final session. Not that she knew it was our last session, since I’d decided just to leave her a message with the news over the holidays instead of telling her in person. I couldn’t afford to be convinced otherwise, and didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Of all the therapists and practitioners I’d encountered in my quest for sanity and self-acceptance, Lacy Goldenblatt was by far the most personally invested in her belief system.

  “Clifford Boyer?”

  “I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned him to me before,” she said.

  I wanted to say, “Ma
ybe that’s because I’m asleep, entranced, unconscious, whatever, during forty-seven of our sixty minutes together each week!” But I didn’t. Instead, I lied.

  “I have no idea who that is. Why?”

  “Oh—just thought I’d ask,” she shrugged. “He’s probably just a fragment from someone else.”

  “Another patient?”

  “No, silly. Another you.”

  “Oh.”

  But Clifford Boyer was no fragment. He was an odious little troll, the first boy I ever kissed. He’d cleverly wooed me by chanting “Tall-y Hall-y! Creepy Crawly!” throughout all of seventh grade. The event I’d been waiting for my whole life unfolded behind the garden shed during Marcy Drell’s annual Fourth of July pool party. I was expecting something along the lines of what I’d seen on General Hospital—basically, people pressing their faces against one another—so when he shoved his tongue in my mouth, I was so shocked and repulsed that I bit down. Hard.

  Of course, he ran off screaming and bleeding, and Mrs. Drell had to call his mother to come and get him. The subsequent fallout branded me as a sexual pariah for the remainder of Junior High. When we returned to school in September, Clifford told everyone I was a hermaphrodite who’d had his breasts surgically removed. And so I was left alone to hold up the walls during the Homecoming Dances, Valentine’s Day Socials and Spring Flings, while my friends bumped up against boys on the dance floor and snuck out behind the gymnasium to get felt up. I still get nauseated when I hear Stairway to Heaven, or Dream On by Aerosmith.

  It wasn’t something I was fond of rehashing with just anyone. In fact, I’d barely touched on it with any of my therapists.

  “Hey! You there!”

  I pretend not to hear, and keep walking toward the sand trap, but Milt just shouts louder.

  “You know what golf stands for?”

  “How should I know?”

  We are only on the third hole, but we’ve already figured out that the easiest way to get through this game as painlessly as possible is to play along. (And, in my case, when it comes to the actual golf part, sticking to a fifteen-stroke maximum per hole, then giving up and moving on to the next one.)

  Milt raises a bony finger in the air and pronounces, “Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden!”

  “Is that true?” George asks. The slightest whiff of misogyny and she’s on guard.