"We thought long and hard about it 'fore we did it, Dan and I did,"
Merrion said, feeling he was talking too much and too nervously, giving away more information than he wanted to, but hoping to create some harmless tangent that would divert Whalen from the topic of Dan Hilliard's finances. "We talked it over quite a bit, thought about it a hell of a lot. Our feeling then was that Yeah, it was too expensive, but this might be the only opening wed ever get. And even if it wasn't, we knew wed never see a better price. Financially, no, it wasn't the best time in the world for us, either one of us, no, but the way we looked at it, we had to move. The chance probably wouldn't come along again. They got enough other new members to get them over the hump, they'd close the membership again. So we said: "What the hell, only go around once," and went ahead and signed up."
"How much did it cost you, don't mind me asking," Whalen said.
"Hell no, I don't mind," Merrion said, minding a great deal indeed and silently cursing the man. "I'd tell you if I knew, but that was a long time ago. It was no small amount, I can tell you that much, but exactly, I don't remember."
"Tell me about, then," Whalen said, 'about how much do you think it was? A thousand or two thousand bucks?"
"Oh no," Merrion said, thinking Fuck, hoping he was still speaking calmly, "I know it was more'n that. I remember saying to Danny back then: "I must be nuts. I could trade in my car on a new one for this, get a brand new Olds for myself." So it must've been two or three grand." Whalen's eyes widened and he looked like he might be going to say something, so Merrion hurried on. "But we went through with it anyway. One way or the other we scraped up the dough. I ended up driving the same car for about nine years, I think it was, and the cars they built then didn't last as long as the ones they're building today.
It was always breaking down on me, really a pain in the ass.
"But now I'm glad I did it. Now I think it was worth it. You need something like that to stay sane."
"Maybe that's why the wife's always saying that I'm nuts," Whalen said mildly, his voice carrying no hint of sarcasm. "I never had nothing like that at all. No way to stay sane. Couldn't afford one. Not if it cost as much as a new Oldsmobile. Heck, I never even had a new Studebaker or something; I never had a new car."
"We always have a good time," Merrion said, beginning to feel some hope that if he could just keep talking, scattering shiny conversational chaff in the air between them until the prisoners started to come out, he would be safe. "Well, Danny usually has a better tim en I do, 'cause he usually beats me. I have fun, he wins the bets. Always gets me on the back nine. We come into the turn, I'm usually doin' all right, you don't know what always happens next. I usually got at least a couple, maybe three or four strokes onna guy. This time comin' outta the turn, I'm up four.
"Okay then, boys and girls, here we go, then, into the vicious back nine. Both of us double-bogey the tenth, as usual. The booby trap. I can never play that hole, but Dan can't play it either. Over twenny years we've been playin' that damned hole, and for alia those years it's been beatin' us silly, poundin' the shit out of us. I dunno why it is. It looks so goddamned easy. Deceptive, is what it is. Looks like you could get your par you played it half-asleep.
"Straightaway, par four, little over four hundred yards, four-oh-five's what the book says: Nothin' tricky, piece of cake. Nice wide fairway, all you gotta do's hit it straight and you'll be havin' candy.
Theoretically you want your second shot to be up onto the green, but for most of us ordinary mortals that's gonna be your third shot you'll be tryin' to lay up there nice and soft. But be reasonable here: I'll take a bogey-five on a four-hundred-yarder any day. Eighteen bogeys and what've I done? I've shot a ninety, is what; I never did that in my life.
"Well, a couple times, yeah, I did, but that was a long time ago. My hand-eye thing was much better then. Bound to slip some, you get older. I didn't think about things so much then; I just went ahead and I did them, and that's always the way to play golf. You get old, you get so you start thinkin' too much."
Whalen evidently wasn't interested in discussing the ravages of age; he said nothing. "But anyway, the green's uphill, and not only that but it's tiered, and the upshot of it anyway's we both take fuckin' sevens.
The tenth hole's beat us again.
