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“You're the one who can read his mind,” Skeet grunted. “You tell me.”
“Hey, Dallie,” Holly Grace called out, “those are about the worst two-iron shots in the entire history of golf. Why don't you forget about that little British girl and concentrate on earning yourself a living?”
Dallie teed up another ball with the head of his iron. “How 'bout you just mind your own business?”
She stood and tucked the back of her white cotton camisole into the waistband of her jeans before she wandered over to him. The pink ribbon threaded through the lacy border of the camisole turned up in the breeze and nestled into the hollow between her breasts. As she passed the end tee, a man practicing his drives got caught up in his backswing and completely missed the ball. She gave him a sassy smile and told him he'd do lots better if he kept his head down.
Dallie stood in the early afternoon sunshine, his hair golden in the light. She squinted at him. “Those cotton farmers up in Dallas are gonna take you to the cleaner's this weekend, baby. I'm giving Skeet a brand-new fifty-dollar bill and telling him to bet it all against you.”
Dallie leaned over and picked up the beer bottle sitting in the center of a pile of balls. “What I really love about you, Holly Grace, is the way you always cheer me on.”
She stepped into his arms and gave him a friendly hug, enjoying his particular male smell, a combination of sweaty golf shirt and the damp, leathery scent of warm club grips. “I call 'em like I see 'em, baby, and right now you're just short of terrible.” She stepped away and looked straight into his eyes. “You're worried about her, aren't you?”
Dallie gazed out at the 250-yard sign and then back at Holly Grace. “I feel responsible for her; I can't help it. Skeet shouldn't have let her get away like that. He knows how she is. She lets herself get tangled up in vampire movies, she fights in bars, sells her clothes to loan sharks. Christ, she took me on in the parking lot last night, didn't she?”
Holly Grace studied the thin white leather straps crisscrossing the toes of her sandals and then looked at him thoughtfully. “One of these days, we've got to get ourselves a divorce.”
“I don't see why. You're not planning on getting married again, are you?”
“Of course not. It's just—maybe it's not good for either one of us, going on like this, using our marriage to keep us out of any other emotional involvements.”
He regarded her suspiciously. “Have you been reading Cosmo again?”
“That does it!” Slamming her sunglasses down over her eyes, she stomped over to the bench and grabbed her purse. “There's no talking to you. You are so narrow-minded.”
“I'll pick you up at your mama's at six,” Dallie called after her as she headed toward the parking lot. “You can take me out for barbecue.”
As Holly Grace's Firebird pulled out of the parking lot, Dallie handed Skeet his two-iron. “Let's go on over to the course and play a few holes. And if I even look like I'm thinking about using that club, you just take out a gun and shoot me.”
But even without his two-iron, Dallie played poorly. He knew what the problem was, and it didn't have anything to do with his backswing or his follow-through. He had too many women on his mind, was what it was. He felt bad about Francie. Try as he might, he couldn't actually remember having told her he was married. Still, that wasn't any excuse for the way she'd carried on the night before in the parking lot, acting as if they'd already taken a blood test and made a down payment on a wedding ring. Dammit, he'd told her he wouldn't get serious. What was wrong with women that you could tell them straight to their faces that you would never marry them, and they'd nod just as sweet as pie and say they understood what you were saying and that they felt exactly the same way, but all the time they were picking out china patterns in their heads? It was one of the reasons he didn't want to get a divorce. That and the fact that he and Holly Grace were family.
After two double bogeys in a row, Dallie called it quits for the day. He got rid of Skeet and then wandered around the course for a while, poking at the underbrush with an eight-iron and shagging lost balls just like he'd done when he was a kid. As he pulled a brand-new Top-Flite out from under some leaves, he realized it must be nearly six, and he still had to shower and change before he picked up Holly Grace. He'd be late, and she'd be mad. He'd been late so many times Holly Grace had finally given up fighting with him about it. Six years ago he'd been late. They were supposed to be at the funeral home at ten o'clock to pick out a toddler-size coffin, but he hadn't shown up until noon.
He blinked hard. Sometimes the pain still cut through him as sharp and swift as a brand-new knife. Sometimes his mind would play tricks on him and he would see Danny's face as clearly as his own. And then he would see Holly Grace's mouth twist into a horrible grimace as he told her that her baby was dead, that he'd let their sweet little blond-haired baby boy die.
He drew back his arm and took a vicious slice at a clump of weeds with his eight-iron. He wouldn't think about Danny. He would think about Holly Grace instead. He would think about that long-ago autumn when they were both seventeen, the a
utumn they'd first set each other on fire....
“Here she comes! Holy shit, Dallie, will you look at those tits!” Hank Simborski fell back against the brick wall out behind the metal shop where Wynette High's troublemakers gathered each day at lunchtime to smoke. Hank grabbed his chest and punched Ritchie Reilly with his elbow. “I'm dying, Lord! I'm dyin'! Just give me one squeeze on those tits so I can go a happy man!”
Dallie lit his second Marlboro from the butt of the first and looked through the smoke at Holly Grace Cohagan walking toward them with her nose stuck up in the air and her chemistry book clutched against her cheap cotton blouse. Her hair was pulled back from her face with a wide yellow headband. She wore a navy blue skirt and white diamond-patterned tights like the ones he'd seen stretched over a set of plastic legs in the window at Woolworth's. He didn't like Holly Grace Cohagan, even though she was the best-looking senior girl at Wynette High. She acted superior to the rest of the world, which made him laugh because everybody knew she and her mama lived off the charity of her uncle Billy T Denton, pharmacist at Purity Drugs. Dallie and Holly Grace were the only really dirt-poor kids in senior college prep, but she acted like she fit in with the others, while he hung out with guys like Hank Simborski and Ritchie Reilly so everybody knew he didn't give a damn.
Ritchie stepped away from the wall and moved forward to catch her attention, puffing up his chest to compensate for the fact that she stood a head taller than he did. “Hey, Holly Grace, want a cigarette?”
Hank sauntered forward, too, trying to look cool but not quite making it because his face had started to turn red. “Have one of mine,” he offered, pulling out a pack of Winstons. Dallie watched Hank lean forward on the balls of his feet, trying to give himself another inch of height, which still wasn't enough to draw even with an Amazon like Holly Grace Cohagan.
She looked at both of them like they were piles of dog shit and began to sweep by. Her attitude pissed Dallie off. Just because Ritchie and Hank got into a little trouble now and then and weren't in college prep didn't mean she had to treat them like maggots or something, especially since she was wearing dime-store tights and a ratty old navy skirt he'd seen her wear a couple hundred times before. With the Marlboro dangling from the corner of his mouth, Dallie swaggered forward, shoulders hunched into the collar of his denim jacket, eyes squinted against the smoke, a mean, tough look on his face. Even without the two-inch heels on his scuffed cowboy boots, he was the one boy in the senior class tall enough to make Holly Grace Cohagan look up.
He stepped directly into her path and curled his top lip in a trace of a sneer so she'd know exactly what kind of bad-ass she was dealing with. “My buddies offered you a smoke,” he said, real soft and low.
She curled her lip right back at him. “I turned them down.”
He squinted a little more against the smoke and looked even meaner, it was about time she remembered that she was back behind the school with a real man, and that none of those squeaky-clean college-prep boys who were always drooling over her were around to come to her rescue. “I didn't hear you say ‘no, thank you,’” he drawled.
She stuck up her chin and looked him straight in the eye. “I heard you're queer, Dallie. Is that true? Somebody said you're so pretty they're going to nominate you for homecoming queen.”
Hank and Ritchie snickered. Neither of them had the nerve to tease Dallie about his looks since he'd beaten them up when they first tried it, but that didn't mean they couldn't enjoy watching someone else go after him. Dallie clenched his teeth. He hated his face, and he'd done his best to ruin it with a sullen expression. So far, only Miss Sybil Chandler had seen through him. He intended to keep it that way.
