"When two hardheaded people get married, they learn to pick their battles." Dan spoke softly so he didn't distract Darnell, who was lining up his tee shot. "This one's all yours, pal."
Darnell hooked his ball into the left rough, and the discussion returned to golf, but later, as they were riding down the fairway, Heath asked Dan if he missed his head coaching job, which he'd left for the front office.
"Sometimes." As Dan checked the scorecard, Heath spotted one of those rub-on tattoos on the side of his neck. A baby blue unicorn. Pippi Tucker's handiwork. "But I have a great consolation prize," Dan went on. "I get to watch my kids grow up."
"A lot of coaches have kids."
"Yeah, and their wives are raising them. Being president of the Stars is a big job, but I can still get the kids off to school in the mornings and be at the dinner table most nights."
Right now, Heath couldn't see anything too exciting about either activity, but he took it on faith that someday he might.
He finished the round only three shots behind Kevin, which wasn't bad, considering his own twelve handicap. They turned in their carts, and then the six of them headed into the clubhouse's private room for lunch. It was a dingy space with cheap paneling, battered tables, and what Kevin insisted were the best cheeseburgers in the county. After a couple of bites, Heath found himself agreeing.
They were enjoying replaying their round when, out of nowhere, Darnell decided he had to spoil it. "It's time to talk about our book," he said. "Did everybody read it like you was supposed to?"
Heath nodded along with the rest of them. Last week Annabelle had left him a message with the title of the novel all the men were supposed to read, the story of a group of mountain climbers. Heath didn't get to read for pleasure much anymore, and he'd enjoyed having an excuse. When he'd been a kid, the public library had been his refuge, but once he'd hit high school, he'd gotten wrapped up in the demands of working two jobs, playing football, and studying for the straight As that would put the Beau Vista Trailer Park behind him forever. Reading for fun had gone by the wayside, along with a lot of other simple pleasures.
Darnell rested an arm on the table. "Anybody want to start the ball rolling?"
There was a long silence.
"I liked it," Dan finally said.
"Me, too," Kevin offered.
Webster held up his hand to order another Coke. "It was pretty interesting."
They stared at one another.
"Good plot," Ron said.
An even longer silence fell.
Kevin made some accordion folds in a straw wrapper. Ron messed with the saltshaker. Webster looked around for his Coke. Darnell tried again. "What did you think about the way the men reacted to their first night on the mountain?"
"Pretty interesting."
"It was okay."
Darnell took his literature seriously, and storm clouds were gathering in his eyes. He shot Heath a menacing look. "You got anything to say?"
Heath set down his burger. "Combining adventure, irony, and unabashed sentimentality is always tricky to pull off, especially in a novel with such a strong central conceit. We ask ourselves, where is the conflict? Man v. nature, man v. man, man versus himself? A fairly complex exploration of our modern sense of disconnection. Bleak undertones, comic high notes. It worked for me."
That cracked 'em all up. Even Darnell.
Finally, they quieted down. Webster got his Coke, Dan found a fresh bottle of ketchup, and the discussion turned right back to where everybody except Darnell wanted it to be.
Football.
After lunch, the book club took a walk around the campground and continued their discussion of the biographies of the famous women they'd read. Annabelle had dug into both Katharine Graham's and Mary Kay Ash's books. Phoebe had concentrated on Eleanor Roosevelt, Charmaine on Josephine Baker, Krystal on Coco Chanel. Janine had read several biographies of cancer survivors, and Sharon had explored the life of Frida Kahlo. Molly, predictably, had chosen Beatrix Potter. As they talked, they related the women's lives to their own, looked for common themes, and examined each woman's survival skills.
After their walk, they returned to Kevin and Molly's private gazebo. Janine began setting out an assortment of old magazines, catalogs, and art supplies. "We did this in my cancer support group," she said. "It was pretty revealing. We're going to cut out words and pictures that appeal to us and assemble them into individual collages. When we're done, we'll talk about them."
Annabelle knew a land mine when she saw one, and she was very careful what she chose. Unfortunately, not careful enough.
"That man looks a lot like Heath." Molly pointed to a hunky model in a Van Heusen shirt Annabelle had pasted in the upper left corner of her poster.
"He does not," Annabelle protested. "He represents the kind of male clients I want Perfect for You to attract."
"What about that bedroom furniture?" Charmaine pointed out a Crate & Barrel sleigh bed. "And the little girl and the dog?"
"They're on the other side of the paper. Professional life. Personal life. Totally separate."
Luckily, the dessert tray arrived just then, so they stopped interrogating her, but even a slab of lemon cake didn't stop her from lambasting herself for last night. Had she been born stupid or was this a skill she'd worked to acquire? And one more night stretching in front of her…
Twinz!" Heath winced as he spotted the pint-size demon from the blue lagoon clomping toward him through the sand in a polka-dot bathing suit, her red rubber boots, and a baseball cap that came down so far over her ears only the curly ends of her blond hair peeked out from beneath. He grabbed the newspaper from under his beach chair and pretended not to see her.
The guys had played a couple of games of pickup basketball after lunch, then Heath had gone back to the cottage to make some phone calls. Afterward, he'd pulled on his trunks and headed for the beach, where they were supposed to meet the women later for a swim before they all headed to town for dinner. Despite the time he'd spent on the phone, he'd started to feel as though this really was a vacation.
"Twinz?"
He pulled the newspaper closer to his face, hoping Pippi would go away if he ignored her. She was unpredictable, and that made him uncomfortable. Who knew what she'd come up with next? Off to his left, Webster and Kevin tossed a Frisbee with some of the kids who were staying at the campground. Darnell lay on a Mickey Mouse beach towel, engrossed in a book. Small, sandy fingers tapped Heath's arm. He turned a page.
"Twinz?"
He kept his eyes on the headlines. "No twins here."
She tugged on the leg of his swim trunks and said it for the fourth time, except this time it sounded like pwinz, and that's when he got it. Prince. She was calling him Prince. And wasn't that just cuter than crap?
He peered at her around the side of the paper. "I didn't bring my phone."
She beamed at him and patted her little round stomach. "I got a baby."
He dropped the paper and looked frantically around for her father, but Kevin was showing a skinny kid with a bad haircut how to get more mileage from the Frisbee.
"Hey, Pip."
He whipped around to the sound of a familiar female voice and saw the cavalry walking toward him in the form of his sexy little matchmaker, delectably dressed in a modestly cut white bikini. A rainbow-colored plastic heart gathered the material between her breasts into pleats, and a second heart, this one larger and printed directly on the fabric, nested next to her hip. He couldn't see a hard edge or sharp angle anywhere. She was all pliant curves and soft contours: narrow shoulders, nipped waist, round hips, and thighs that she, being a woman, undoubtedly thought were too fat, but he, being a man, judged extremely nuzzle-able.