Page 50 of Wood

“Third window from the left,” he says. “The one with the guy in a bathrobe.”

“There’s a guy in a bathrobe?”

“There’s always a guy in a bathrobe. It’s St Andrews. Maybe one of those crosses the leather dudes love. Anyway, play to the robe.”

I choke back a laugh about the crosses and robes and hit the iron, safe, obedient, and it lands in the fairway forty yards short of where a driver would’ve put me, short of where I’d actually like to be standing.

“Perfect,” Geoff says. “Boring. I love it.”

Hybrid second, bailed out right on purpose, thirty feet from the pin. Two-putt. Par. Polite applause. Yawn.

“That’s the shot,” Geoff says.

“You’ve said that about four different shots this week.”

“They’re all correct. That’s the beauty of believing the numbers.” He has that smug look that makes me want to spank him. Maybe on a cross.

I walk back to the tee, anyway. He doesn’t try to stop me, just crosses his arms and gets that face he gets, the one that says this one’s on you, I’ll humor you but I’m not chasing that ball.

Driver this time. I aim past the robe guy entirely, out toward the corner of the hotel, the part of the shot where the caddie usually starts praying.

“Oh, good,” Geoff says. “We’re doing the version where I have a heart attack.”

“That car of yours has a better chance of giving me a heart attack, Mr. Twenty-one-year-old.”

“Twenty-two in thirty days.”

“Ohh! Are you going on twenty-two? Oh, good for you! What a big boy!”

“Just swing already. Mess it up and it’s going in that pot bunker. It’ll swallow the ball and you’ll waste two or three shots just to get out.”

It comes off clean, a low cut riding the wind around the corner and it’s gone before I can see where it lands.

“Where’d it go?”

“Scotland, probably. Somewhere in Scotland.”

“Ha ha.”

We walk up and it’s sitting perfectly in the fairway. Wedge in, twelve feet, and I make the putt.

“See,” I say.

“I see a man who got away with something,” Geoff says, plucking the flag out like it personally wronged him. “That’s different from being right.”

“Felt right.”

“Lots of things feel right at the time. That’s how men end up divorced or in bunkers.” He hands me back my ball. “Sometimes both.”

“You’d know.”

“I would not know. I would simply be observing.”

We head to eighteen. He’s quiet for about ten yards, and then, without looking at me, “Do that on Sunday and I’m charging you. Emotional Labor.” His voice gets lower, for my ears only. “BJ. In the shower.”

“All you have to do is ask, baby.”

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