My Fair Aussie

by Jennifer Griffith

  Annnnd, I braced myself for the humiliation.

  ***

  By the seventh hole, however, the humiliation still hadn’t struck, much to my shock and awe. An hour and a half into it, and yeah, Henry didn’t have the lowest score in the group, but he was holding his own. None of them were heading to the Masters Tournament anytime soon, that was certain. But this course also didn’t grant any favors. The men weren’t here to compete against each other. At this course, with its rocky terrain and mean gusts, they were here playing against the earth itself, and Henry hadn’t let the course beat him down yet.

  As we advanced to the eighth hole, I walked beside him, feeling a definite buzz coming off his skin. He was enjoying this. I was enjoying watching him do so.

  “Nine over par? Not bad.” One fellow was at thirteen, and the other three were in the lower ranges.

  “Beginner’s luck.”

  Maybe the people from his past life, the ones who had made sure he enjoyed good orthodontia before they let him go wandering off to proclaim himself king of the bus station, had also given him a little time on the golf course and this was all muscle memory.

  “You haven’t hit the backside, though. It’s where the wind carries all the balls into the rough.”

  “I’ve spent some time in the rough, Elizer. I’ll keep my wits about me.” He walked on ahead, and I lagged back, watching him go using that cowboy stride, so long but lazy at the same time.

  Mo-No bustled up next to me.

  “Hands off. He’s not in your league.”

  “I was just warning him about the back nine being rough.” She was the one who had recommended me as his caddy, after all.

  “You’ll stop speaking to him, and moving in on him immediately, or I’ll show you what’s meant by rough. Hands off, I said.” She flounced ahead, but over her shoulder said, “Eyes, too.”

  Guilty as charged. My eyes slid over to where he was lining up a tee-off. His biceps and triceps had this rippling interplay going that was impossible to ignore. I stifled a sigh.

  Then on the tenth hole, it happened. Just as I predicted, he sliced—straight into the scrubby vegetation on the leeward side.

  “You want to take a mulligan, man? That’s how we play this course. We’re here every Friday.”

  “No mulligans for me.”

  “Fine, but take a penalty and keep going forward. That ball is buried deep.”

  “Remember we’re playing on a wager.” Henry hung back while the others teed off. “You don’t want to give me any kind of advantage.”

  “Advantage!” The one with the visor reading Rivershire Electric hit his ball into the rough as well, but not nearly as far. “Fine. But I still take my own mulligan.”

  “She’ll be all right,” Henry said, as if to mean, everything’ll be fine.

  What was he doing? He was going to completely botch this, lose the game—which I’d predicted in the first place, but now that he was actually in the running, I hated to see him squander a fairly good run—and blow all his capital with Mo-No. I knew her. She’d never keep throwing herself at a guy who bragged and then lost bets.

  “It’s risky, Henry.” I said it under my breath. I don’t know if he heard, but he met my eyes and blinked twice, as if to say, “Trust me.”

  Trust him. Last time I trusted him, I ended up at strike two over Chachi.

  The group of us moved our way down the course to where Henry’s ball languished. It took a minute to find it.

  Please. There was no way he was chopping his way out of this one without adding a dozen to his score. His ball was deep in sand within the rough, which amounted to a trap within a trap.

  He measured his shot, sizing it up with his eyes.

  We should quit. We should quit while he was ahead. He could tell Mo-No he’d changed his mind about lunch and about the jacuzzi jets and she’d squeal and be elated and assume she’d won him over with her charming golf clap and—

  Whoosh! In a single chip with the pitching wedge, his ball was back on the green and rolling toward the hole.

  I completely forgot how to golf-clap. I was applauding and shouting like someone at a rock concert instead. All eyes turned to me in warning, and I quit right away, but the golfer who also had a ball in the rough said, “Not bad.”

  Understatement—of the year.

  Ultimately, Henry sank his shot one under par for the hole.

  Mulligan Man ended up three over par—not even counting the penalty—for this hole, and he’d held the lead before now.

  Suddenly, Henry was a serious contender.

  At the eleventh hole, the wind kicked up. Sand peppered my arms and neck. Every single guy in the group sliced to the rough, thanks to the gusts of wind.

  “You want to take a rain check on finishing this game?” One guy put away his shade umbrella so it wouldn’t haul him away like some kind of parasail. “It’s getting serious.”

  “You’re just afraid this Aussie is going to whup up on you.”

  “I’m not afraid.” The guy’s hackles shot up, and he squared his shoulders. “In fact, I’ll forfeit any mulligan for this shot and go hit it out of the rough. If Henry can do it, so can I. Gentlemen?” He lifted his chin to challenge them all.

  They all accepted, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and started walking toward the rough.

  “Did this game just get interesting?” A fellow in a golf cart up on the green stalled beside us. “Did I hear a no-mulligan, no-penalty game is going down?”

  “It is.” Visor Guy nodded toward Henry. “The Aussie instigated it. You can tell management if you want.”

  “Already alerted.”

  What was going on? I looked over at Mo-No, who seemed a lot less mad at me—for the moment—enough so that she responded to clear up my unspoken confusion.

  “Oh, MacDowell told me that so rarely does a real challenge game happen on this course that they have to tell the club management so other golfers can either play through or choose to watch.”

  “Is that true? Some would watch? Rather than finish their own round?”

  The guy on the golf cart shrugged. “It’s a tough course. Hardly anyone takes it on at its full power.” He buzzed off in his little electric vehicle, and next thing I knew he was back with a cartload of golfers. They’d dropped their bags near the tee. I guessed management would collect those, in the San Nouveau way of things.

  “I’m up, then boys?” Henry wore a broad grin. While I adored the view of his teeth, I couldn’t figure out why he was so happy, considering that his ball perched on a pile of rocks surrounded by some sort of scrubby, stick-laden weeds that looked even worse than the surrounding chaparral. Never would he effect a second escape from a nasty trap as spectacular as his first—if he got out at all. That last shot out of the rough on the tenth hole hadn’t been beginner’s luck, it had been a divine intervention.

  Assessing the other guys’ shots, all on less rocky ground, I was sick for Henry. Plus, now an audience was stacking up, men and women, young and old. They filtered up beside and behind me, golf-claps at the ready.

  This was bound to be one horrendous choke.

  Mo-No slid next to me and started bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, her hands clutched together at her heart. “Come on, come on…”

  More people filtered in. Henry pulled out this club and then that club, and then he went back to the first one, settling on not the pitching wedge but a nine iron. That was more of an advanced choice, one a golf pro would make at a good course.

  I almost couldn’t watch. After that lucky shot on the tenth hole, everyone from our original group expected nothing less than amazing skills from Henry Lyon. Didn’t he know you underplay things at first and then come on strong, not the opposite? Otherwise you’re bound to disappoint.

  He lined up his shot. I almost couldn’t watch, but I definitely couldn’t breathe.

  Pulling back, Henry’s swing cut with a whoosh through the air despite the wind. Whack! Up chipped t
he ball, onto the fairway, down the stretch, and directly onto the green.

  No way.

  Pah! My breath exploded out from my pursed lips, but in spite of extreme elation, I managed a sedate golf clap. The others gathered added theirs as well, and Mo-No swiveled around and hugged me.

  “Isn’t he wonderful?”

  He was. For once, I couldn’t disagree with something Mo-No asserted.

  The rest of the round went like that. Teeing off, straight or not in the follow-through, and the wind catching each shot and hurling them into the pines or the cactus or the sand—if there was a trap, these golfers found it.

  But only Henry Lyon escaped each snare with a single stroke and came back to sink putts under par.

  Onlookers continued to amass, and with each of Henry’s successive victories against nature, they let their golf claps sound more and more like applause at a hockey match—until the elite of San Nouveau were all high-fiving each other and slapping each other’s backs. Bets on how he’d manage it, which club he’d use, were audibly being made all around me. The guys golfing with him didn’t even seem to mind how badly they were getting their clocks cleaned, the energy was that good.

  At the completion of the eighteenth hole, Visor Guy patted the air to signal for everyone to quiet down. Then, in a voice of gravity, he announced the score, with Henry coming in at four under par for the course. The crowd erupted in clapping, and then there arose cries of “Speech! Speech!”

  Oh, no. Hot lead fell in my stomach. What would he say? Had he ever been put on the spot like this? Please don’t let him say anything about his geneticist or the tour bus driver that gave him the dehydrated stroganoff.

  “I wanna thank the guys here today,” he indicated the other golfers, “for letting me jump into their game.”

  A woman near me gasped.

  “He’s Australian. I’m so hot for Australian accents.”

  I glanced over and she was fanning herself with her scorecard, despite the December wind. Good gracious. Her friend was biting her lower lip and giving Henry a lascivious stare.

  “I call dibs.”

  Oh, brother. Just look at that. Women were powerless against the magnetic pull of the Aussie-speak.

  Fortunately, Henry either ignored the women or didn’t hear their blatant flirtations, because he went on with his speech.

  “I played for charity, and I’m pretty sure that’s why the gods of golf were working all in my favor. Thanks to you all for coming along for the ride. This is a ripper of a golf course you’ve got yourselves here.”

  There was more clapping at his flattery, but someone called out to him, as if this were a post-Pebble Beach press conference.

  “But why could you do that well on your first time out here? We’re all aware this course is a beast.”

  Henry looked down a second, going all aw shucks on us, and making my heart get those annoying palpitations again.

  “Where I grew up, all we had was the rough. My brother and I took bets on who could chip it over the horse stables. I’m nothing by comparison to Frank. You should see his chip. He won every time.”

  The crowd clapped, and the two women wolf-whistled, so classy, and then started elbowing their way to the front of the throng.

  They would have needed to be shot from a compound bow to beat Monique, though. The second he took a bow, she’d super-glued herself to his side, long before the other two could spell trollop.

  “Henry, hon. Now should we grab that lunch? Actually, it’s getting late. Shall we make it dinner?”

  “Henry. Henry Lyon?” The disappointed girl next to me spluttered. “Is he the same Henry Lyon I read about this morning? ‘Aussie takes Frogs in the Sand Premiere by Storm.’ See? I thought he looked familiar.” She had her phone out and was flashing it at her also-ran friend. “Right here on GossipMongers.com.”

  Wait. He’d made the tabloids when he went to the movie premiere last night? I had to see that for myself. This could be great—or absolutely terrible.

  When I opened my phone, I saw a pile-up of texts from Polly. One of them, truncated, started with GossipMong…—so I knew she’d seen it, and that the rumor mill was grinding its grain today, with Henry caught under the millstone.

  As I was about to start digging out of the Polly Text Blizzard, I heard Henry say something over the other voices.

  “I don’t know, Ms. Monique-Noelle. I’ll have to check my schedule since I’m only here a few days looking at property. If you’ve got a horse to lend, though, I’d love to join you next week on your fox hunt.”

  Fox hunt!

  ACT II: Scene 10

  I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her [His] Face

  SAN NOUVEAU ISLAND, CALIFORNIA CHANNEL ISLANDS

  Wherein our hero proves himself even more resourceful and amazing, and our heroine may or may not be falling victim to her own prank, poor girl. She never had a chance, did she? What with those teeth, and all.

  The hyperventilation set in as soon as I got to the golf cart and headed down the asphalt path back toward the Bainbridges’ place. I’d left Henry in the clutches of Monique-Noelle and his scores of other adoring fans and bolted away on the electric car loaded with golf equipment.

  I’d created a monster. One lucky day on the golf course and he suddenly thought he could ride to hounds? With a gun? And kill a fox?

  The poor fox.

  Sometimes I thought San Nouveau was the most civilized place on earth, simply because of the screening process. It boiled down to a system where no one with any tendency toward incivility could set foot on the island, ever. Even the groundskeepers and pool boys had to possess top educations and backgrounds and manners to pass the background check.

  However, today—to find out there was an organized and, moreover, sanctioned fox hunt planned for the island? I—

  “Are you all right?” A man’s voice made me lift my foot off the accelerator. Up beside me jogged the man of the hour, his grin as wide as the sand trap he’d just escaped. And how had he escaped the other, more potent trap known as Mo-No, I had to ask myself.

  “I thought you’d be with your new toadies.”

  “Is that a Frogs in the Sand reference? Because I don’t want to have anything to do with that movie ever again.”

  Neither did I, but that wasn’t the point.

  “Obsequious admirers who do your bidding. Toadies.”

  “Oh, them. If you’re talking about your friend Mo-No, she’s making dinner reservations. After which we’ll be playing tennis at an indoor court. Apparently, there are tennis courts on the island which are sheltered from all weather conditions.”

  Maybe he’d had enough of this afternoon’s December wind already. I knew my own nerves were stretched tight enough to play a C above high C if plucked.

  “Good. I hope you enjoy her company.” A bitterness might have tinged my words. Or completely suffused them, more accurately, although I didn’t want to think about the possible reasons why that might be. Including the idea that I could be…jealous.

  “What’s going on, Elizer? Tennis not your thing?”

  “Actually, I’m decent at tennis.” Which might have been part of the green-with-envy thing going on inside me and seeping out like toxic ooze.

  “You were decent at golf, too. Is there anything you’re not decent at?”

  He thought I was decent at golf? He thought I was decent at a lot of things? I hated that swooning feeling that swept over me, replacing the toxic ooze and turning me into just a plain gooey mass of longing.

  “Heights,” I said. “I’m terrible with heights, especially over water, but that wasn’t what I—argh. Just because your superpower is changing the subject doesn’t mean I have to get sucked into that trap. I can get out of it like you can get out of the rough.”

  “I can see that.” He stepped closer to me, his hair all mussed from the wind, and his neck muscles taut. “What did you want to talk about? I take it you didn’t want to ask where I learned to golf like that. Becaus
e that’s what everyone else seemed to care about.”

  “And now you’re their best friend and off making other sports plans with them.” While the tennis raised my personal hackles, it was the other sports plans that turned my stomach. In fact, a fox hunt shouldn’t even be termed a sport; it was animal cruelty through and through. “Tennis and beyond.”

  I wouldn’t put it past the barbarians at San Nouveau Recreational Authority to bring in a fox that had been bred in captivity and kept for this special purpose just for the event. I shuddered in horror.

  “I take it you have a problem with my playing tennis with your boss. Because, if you’re worried I’ll come a gutser at it, I can’t blame you. It’s not as easy to fake tennis skills. I might need some pointers.”

  The mental image of Henry in tennis whites stymied me for a second, and I couldn’t respond. It got worse when I thought about guiding him through improving his backhand.

  “And since she wants to play a match right after dinner this evening, maybe now is the best time for you and me to get cracking on.” He reached out and rested a hand on mine, which was still gripping the steering wheel. “You can show me your serve. I’ll show you my thirty-love.”

  Now that was eye-rollingly bad as a pickup line.

  “Please. When I say sports, I’m not talking about tennis, and I’m assuming you don’t need any pointers on that either.” I eyed him narrowly and he gave an apologetic shrug, as if I’d hit on the truth and he was secretly Roger Federer and poised to win the Grand Slam. What was with him? How had he been so mighty as to assemble mad golf skills, plus tennis chops, and then ended up homeless, needing a phone to call someone overseas, and forgetting an appointment with a geneticist?

  Maybe he was actually sick, despite his protestations to the contrary. He’d claimed he was healthy as a horse, but the behavior and the geneticist reference clues pointed otherwise.

  Still, sick or not, he should not be participating in a fox hunt. After all, if he was direly ill, he’d be meeting his Maker soon, and a joy-kill of one of God’s creatures would weigh heavy on the conscience at the pearly gates.