Dakota Blues (10 page)

The man behind the cash register pointed out the window. “Folks, you’re up.”

Curt held the door, and as she passed, she glanced sideways at him, curious to examine his middle-aged face and body, but he caught her looking. They both laughed, and she looked away, blushing. At the carts, she saw he had placed her bag next to his. Patrick was left to drive solo. They drove through the crowd of golfers waiting their turn to play.

At the championship tees, the young man whipped his club through the air with blinding speed sending his ball beyond their ability to follow it, yet the lanky Curt outdrove him. Both of their shots landed far down the fairway, in the middle of the short grass. The gallery applauded.

Now it was Karen’s turn. She felt nervous at the prospect of hitting the ball for the first time in months. In fact, the last time she played was over a year ago at Pelican Hill in Newport, and she had been rusty then.

She pulled the rented driver from the bag. Golf was hard enough when you were familiar with your clubs. Playing with a strange set increased the challenge, and here she stood with a dozen men watching.

Waiting for her to fail.

Oh, she knew she shouldn’t think that way, and tried to force positive thoughts. She would not worry about her score. It was a beautiful day and she was here to enjoy the exercise and the company of her partners. The course was beautiful. The Bully Pulpit was laid out in the middle of the North Dakota outback. The steep bluffs and buttes of the Badlands shaped the course. Cottonwoods, willows, and elm trees lined the fairways.

She approached the tee box, trying to ignore the players who awaited their turn to start, but it was a challenge. Karen still felt awkward under the scrutiny of older male players. Things were changing, but Karen had been born into a transitional generation and still remembered the feeling of being unwelcome. She had learned to play in her late thirties, and only because she was tired of being left at the office while the men escaped for an afternoon of corporate golf. At first she held her own with good sportsmanship if not expertise. Later, as her skills improved, she began to enjoy the game for its own sake. Every time she played, she vowed to get out on the course more often, for fun rather than work. Somehow, that never happened.

Now she bent over and stuck a tee in the ground, knowing the men were watching her. If she hit the ball poorly, it would reaffirm their belief that women shouldn’t be taking up space on a golf course. Today the men’s chattering reinforced her insecurity. Where they had been appropriately quiet for Curt and Patrick, they now joked loudly among themselves, ignoring the first rule of golf etiquette. She took a practice swing and tried to focus on the beauty of the day, the birds singing sweetly, and the light breeze riffling the nearby trees.

It didn’t work.

She couldn’t shut out the noise. Were she to hit the ball now, she might shank it, justifying their low expectations. Yet with their distracting noise, they would be the cause. The whole scenario was beginning to seriously piss her off.

Karen turned to face the men. With one hand on her driver and the other on her hip, she struck a pose and waited, staring pointedly. The first one to notice shushed another, and one by one, they fell silent. Touching her visor in mock salute, she took a practice swing, lined up her target, and swung.

Crack! She tagged it right on the screws, her spine loose and balance perfect. The ball sailed into the air, drawing left a bit and then arcing back to the right. The men burst into applause and she waved, grinning.

“Beautiful shot,” Curt said as she climbed into the cart. “That went about two-ten.”

“What a relief.” Karen hit her next shot straight down the fairway, and all three of them finished up with a par.

“I thought you said you were rusty,” said Patrick. “Hate to see you when you’re not.”

They bantered easily, returning to the carts. When Curt steered around a corner and slowed to a stop, she drew in a breath. At her feet, the path dropped away to a valley where deep green fairways, mowed in a crisscross pattern, unfurled in front of them. The valley was surrounded by soaring pink and grey rock formations, cut by layers and rising at odd angles. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

Curt pointed at the eroded buttes edging the canyon. “That used to be swampland. We’ve found fossils of palm trees and crocodiles in the rocks.”

“We?”

“Me and my students at U.N.D. About twice a month we haul our equipment and sack lunches and go looking for stuff. It’s a lot of fun.”

“I’ll bet.” They sat quietly, the only sound was that of sagebrush rattling in the breeze.

After a moment he pressed the pedal to the floor. Karen grabbed the safety grips and held on, the two of them laughing as they sped down the slope toward the second hole. Patrick raced after them.

The next tee box was located on a hilltop outcropping from where they could see all the way to the blue-gray buttes on the western boundary of the state. The men pulled drivers out of their bags and walked toward the championship tees, heads together, talking. Karen stayed behind, enjoying the view and the sensation of the wind rocking the small cart. She was mesmerized by the silence, and the miles of open land in front of her. How different this was from home, with the contiguous cities and suburbs there. Her mother had understood this need to get out and away from everything, to simply listen to the silence. She must have known what Karen was giving up when she moved west, but never tried to change her daughter’s mind.

When Curt returned, he put one arm on the wheel, the other on the seat behind her. “Patrick told me you just lost your mom. I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”

She shook her head. “No, but thanks.”

He released the brake and rolled forward toward her tee box. “I met Pat when my parents died. That was about six years ago.”

“Both of them at once?”

“Mom passed, and Dad declined shortly after that. We had two funerals in six months. Pat and his family sort of adopted me.”

“Do you have siblings?”

“I have a sister who lives near in San Francisco.”

“How did you get through it?”

Curt stopped at the forward tees. “The pain doesn’t go away completely, but it diminishes. Every now and then it hits me hard, but as time passes, it happens less often.”

“Thanks.” She climbed out and pulled her club from the bag. In spite of her blurred vision, she managed to hit a nice long shot right up the middle.

They drove in silence to their shots. Curt climbed out, selected a club, and then leaned back in, one eyebrow raised.

“I’m fine. Thanks.” She watched him turn and walk toward his shot. He moved easily, his back straight, laughing over some silly-ass joke with Patrick, and she realized she was holding her shoulders up somewhere around her ears. She let go and took a deep breath, watching him follow through with his swing, pivoting at the waist, his shoulders achingly broad.

When it was her turn she grabbed her own club and walked across the thick grass, wondering if grief built up as a person aged, like calcium deposits in a faucet, eventually clogging your pipes and weighing you down until you couldn’t function anymore. Maybe that’s what we die of, she thought. It’s not old age; it’s the accumulation of suffering.

Karen shook off the gloom. Today’s round had been a great distraction. When she smacked her ball and watched it sail through the sky against the backdrop of the Badlands, her heart lifted a little. The physical exercise helped, and she felt pleased at how quickly her game had returned. The men were great company, too. They enjoyed having an audience for their good-natured ribbing, deriding each other’s shots and making fun. When Patrick got a call from his fiancée, Curt teased him about being on a short leash.

“I met Rachel at the university,” Patrick said. “She was Curt’s research assistant.”

“Do you teach?”

“Mostly geology,” said Curt, “and some life science, and I also do environmental consulting for a couple of oil companies.” He handed her a card.

“Environment and oil companies? Isn’t that a contradiction?”

Curt stepped on the gas. “Well, at Hoffman Environmental–”

“Very clever.”

“It looks good for the oil companies. They’re doing a lot of damage right now in Williston, for example. I can’t undo it, but I try to work with both the farmers and the oil guys. I have better luck with the farmers.” Curt steered the cart down a steep, curving path.

“How do you manage time to teach and do consulting?”

“Rachel teaches a lot of my classes, and between semesters I can get away. I sometimes travel on assignment during the winter. Go someplace warm.”

“Do you travel alone?”

He grinned and bumped her playfully with his shoulder. “Yep. I’m divorced. You?”

She shrugged, but her face burned.

“I saw the ring,” he said.

“It’s a fossil. From the Paleocene.”

Curt smiled at her until she couldn’t help but smile back. What was the harm? It felt good to flirt, even if she was seriously out of practice and felt like a total dork.

For the rest of the round, they found plenty of excuses to nudge and touch each other. When he accelerated along the curving path, forcing their bodies together, they laughed like teenagers. Halfway through the course, he parked the cart, his arm on the back of her seat as they waited for Patrick to hit his ball out of the rough.

When Curt looked away, Karen studied him. She liked watching his expressions, his concentration when sizing up a shot, or the way his eyes crinkled when he laughed. She thought she saw darkness behind his eyes when the laughter stopped, but it was probably her own need that made him look that way.

Hunger. As in lust. What a lovely, unfamiliar feeling. Yes, she wore a ring, but now she wondered why she bothered.

As she climbed a knoll toward the tee box, she bent down to stick the tee in the ground, aware of the fit of her clothing and the appeal of her long shapely legs. She knew that Curt was looking, and she liked it. She straightened up, took a practice swing and landed the ball right in the middle of the fairway, just as she had all day long.

“Boring,” Patrick said, faking a yawn.

Curt made some calculations on the scorecard and stuck it back on the wheel with an exaggerated sigh. “She’s beating us.”

At the last green, Karen watched him line up his putt. In a few minutes they would finish the round, return to their cars and go their separate ways, a prospect that made her feel lonely and old, but she didn’t have the guts to ask for his phone number. Technically, she was married, and besides, she was supposed to be grieving, not stalking a man.

His ball dropped into the cup. “Your turn,” he said, brushing past her.

Karen shook herself out of a hormonal fog, picked up her marker and lined up her shot. When her putt went in, the round ended. As was the custom, the three of them shook hands, Curt’s grasp lingering as he pulled her forward and kissed her on the cheek. They returned the carts to the garage and walked slowly across the nearly-deserted parking lot.

Karen knew she had to make a move, but she hadn’t asked a guy on a date since college. What was the protocol nowadays? What if he acted surprised, or worse, not interested?

It wasn’t like she wanted to marry him. She wanted to–what? Talk to him? Have dinner? None of the above, she thought as she watched him lift his heavy golf bag into the truck.

I want him naked.

The thought made her smile, but then the logistics struck her. Only Steve and her doctor had seen her naked in the last thirty years.

God, if it’s going to happen, it had better be dark.

You can’t do this. You’re married.

I’m separated. And anyway, that didn’t stop Steve.

What if he says no?

If I don’t ask, it’s like he already did.

Curt straightened up, closed the door, and turned to her.

“Some of my friends are coming by for a barbeque tomorrow night,” she lied. “Why don’t you join us?”

Curt leaned against the bed of his truck, studying her a moment before answering. “Thanks, but I have another commitment.”

“Okay, maybe another time.” She reached for the door of Pat’s car, sensing her future stretching out as empty as the North Dakota freeway, and cursed herself for taking a chance. Of course he would turn her down. He worked at a college surrounded by nubile young things, while she was a half a century old. Women her age didn’t date. They owned cats and went to the movies with girlfriends.

“Hey.” She felt his hand on her arm and the deep rumble of his voice in her ear. He was right next to her, their bodies touching; she could feel his heat through her blouse. She turned, wanting to touch the dark stubble of his beard and suck up his lips with her own.

He smiled down at her. “Did you happen to bring a dress?”

.

Chapter Twelve

C
urt’s hand warmed the small of her back as they joined the throng swarming up the granite steps of March Hall. As a student, Karen had dashed up these steps hundreds of times, rushing from one class to another, always with the thought that graduation would open the door to leaving. Now she was back on campus at the University of North Dakota.

A line of vehicles advanced towards the grand portico where valets dashed from car to car. Doors flew open and divas-for-the-night emerged, taking the arms of their tuxedoed gentlemen. Last night at Lorraine’s, the girls had sipped wine and pawed through a collection of party dresses until they found an icy blue number that draped Karen’s body like melting silk. Now she danced along on a pair of stilettos, barely aware of the earth under her feet. Overhead, a gentle breeze lofted banners announcing the city’s first ever Northern Plains Art Festival.

Inside, the crowd flowed toward the ballroom where silver and gold bunting spilled from ceiling to floor. Karen saw Marlene, who did a double take and waved them over to the VIP table. She hugged Karen and kissed Curt on the cheek. “I can’t believe you. She barely gets into town and already you two are an item.”