Chapter 7

I started playing tennis with Brenda the next Wednesday afternoon. I came in early for my golf lesson, then I played eighteen holes with Mrs. Parsons, before having a late lunch by myself, and was out on the tennis court before four o'clock. Mrs. Parsons didn't really encourage me to play tennis with Brenda, but she didn't tell me that I couldn't do it either. It was unusual for her to skip lunch with me, but I assumed she had something else she wanted to do.

I didn't really care for tennis all that much, although I picked it up fairly fast, and knew right away that I could become a decent enough player, at least for purely recreational purposes. For me, the main attraction of playing tennis was that it would allow me to spend some time with Brenda.

It only took me about three minutes of standing on the court with Brenda to learn that she took her tennis seriously. On the court, she didn't participate in any small talk, or any other kind of talk, that wasn't tennis related. The only way to get her attention and approval was to learn how to play better tennis. I applied myself, and made quick improvements. Brenda was saying that we should enter the Saturday mixed doubles tournament together. I told her that I'd consider it, but only after I got proficient enough to not embarrass myself with a bunch of people watching me.

I had always had keen eyesight, and good hand and eye coordination. I was also a pretty good observer of other players. I picked up a lot of the correct footwork by watching other, better players, compete. If I'd had a greater interest in the game, I would have gotten considerably better, I believe. Tennis just lacked that special appeal to me that golf had from the very beginning. I tried to explain this to Brenda, likening her interest in tennis, to mine for golf, but she refused to accept my contention that tennis lacked any real appeal for me. To her, if she liked it, everyone should. Strangely, she didn't feel that the reciprocal was true about her liking golf.

After we finished that first practice, quitting a little early because Brenda was still a little bothered by her sore ankle, we sat in the bleachers watching other players, and talking about a topic other than tennis.

Richard and Claudia had been observed by two of the country club staff in a compromising embrace behind one of the sheds near the large golf cart recharging and storage building. This had happened on Monday, and Mr. and Mrs. Connor had been informed, along with Claudia's parents, sometime Tuesday. Both children had their club privileges suspended for the remainder of the summer. Brenda didn't know what they meant by "a compromising embrace", and no one from the country club would provide anyone, including her parents, with any further description of what had been observed. According to Brenda, Richard insisted they were only making out, but he too, refused to describe exactly what the words "making out" meant to him in this case. Mr. Connor wasn't pressing him too hard to reveal the exact nature of the offense that had been observed.

Brenda was very concerned, but mostly because she was afraid that the entire family might lose their country club privileges over the incident. I admitted to not having heard anything about it, and refused Brenda's request for me to see if I could talk with some of the club staff in order to try to learn more about what further action might be taken. I explained to her that I was more of a guest of the Parsons than a real member, and I didn't feel right in trying to do something that would possibly be taking advantage of the situation they had arranged for me. My refusal seemed to upset Brenda, but I held fast with it.

By the time Mrs. Connor arrived, Brenda and I were barely speaking. I sat in the front seat with Mrs. Connor for the ride over to my house, answering her questions with short replies of my own. Brenda was barely civil answering her mother's questions, and finally told her she didn't wish to talk about it. It, in this instance, apparently meant everything.

I didn't go to any more tennis sessions with Brenda for the rest of that week. I half expected her to phone me or else see me at the club, but I felt that she was the one that had gotten angry at me when I hadn't done anything wrong to her. I didn't mention any of this to Mrs. Parsons, and she didn't ask me any questions.

Bea was upset that I'd let Brenda get away. That is how she put it, get away. She asked me a lot of questions, and she too expressed an avid interest and curiosity as to what Claudia and Richard had been caught doing. She asked me to try to find out, but I also refused to do it for her. She told me she wasn't going to be nice to me anymore if I wasn't nice to her. I still refused.

When Brenda hadn't contacted me by the following Wednesday, I asked Mrs. Parsons if it would be all right if I went swimming at the club after our round of golf on Thursday. She asked me if I'd be riding home with the Connor's, or if she should send Hans to pick me up. I told her that I'd need Hans, and she smiled and told me that she would send him to pick me up at six thirty so that I'd be home in time for dinner at seven thirty. I thanked her, and that afternoon I shot a ninety four, my best score ever.

Dave had been working on my short game, both my chipping and putting. One of the biggest flaws in my game at that point, was from just off the green, and also with my putting. For the three lessons previous to my shooting the ninety four, half of my lesson time was taken up with chipping and sand trap play, and the other half was concentrated on my putting. I learned how to read the slope of the greens, and how to tell if I was putting with or against the grain. Dave showed me a lot of good tricks for eliminating long second putts. I learned how to lag the ball to a point within two or three feet of the hole. Instead of trying to make every putt, I learned to get close enough to make sure my second putt was makable. These lessons transferred immediately into my scoring, and Dave said I'd soon be breaking ninety.

On Thursday, I finished my lunch, again eating alone. Mrs. Parsons and I had played the back nine holes, and I'd shot a forty seven. She told me that she needed to get back early in order to see Bunny about some legal papers that needed her signature. After lunch, I changed and went to the pool. Brenda wasn't there, and this disappointed me. There were about ten or twelve kids that I recognized from the last time at the pool, and I nodded to some of them. I didn't know how to swim, which put me at a severe disadvantage in and around a swimming pool. I could get in the pool, but I didn't dare go past the shallow end. I watched other people swimming though, and it didn't look very hard. I was sitting on a lounge chair trying to be casual as I observed a few of the younger girls in their swim suits.

There was one girl, a girl I didn't remember seeing at the pool the last time. She had long black hair, but, when she went into the water, she stuffed it all under a swimming cap. I'm afraid I stared at her while she did it, unable to believe she could get all of that hair inside that cap. She did it though. She looked like she might be a little older than I was, perhaps seventeen or eighteen. She didn't seem to be with anyone either. Most of the other kids were congregated in groups of as many as five people. They put their towels beside each other, sitting close together. Usually, they even all went into the pool together. Of all of the kids there, the ones without their parents nearby, she and I were the only two sitting by ourselves. I thought that was strange.

I looked at my new watch, one that Mr. Chalmers had given me, as an early birthday present he said, and it was only three fifteen. I had over three hours to wait for Hans to come get me. I thought about going back into the club house and calling him for an early ride, but I decided against it. If I went home early, Mrs. Parsons would ask why my plans had suddenly changed. I didn't want to admit that the whole pool trip was only because I hoped to be able to run into Brenda.

At about four o'clock, the crowd of people at the pool started thinning out. By four thirty, there were only about seven people left. The pretty black haired girl was one of the people still there. I had been watching her more and more ever since I'd first noticed her. Her hair looked as dark as Bea's, and I wondered if she had as much hair between her legs as Bea did. Her breasts were smaller than Bea's, but they weren't small. She was wearing a blue one piece swim suit, and she had taken off the strings that tied the top on her neck and tucked them inside her suit. She was laying down on her back on a towel on the pool decking. Almost everyone else used a lounger, but she chose to lay on the concrete. She was only about twenty feet away from where I was sitting. The way she was positioned, her head was closer to me than her feet were.

I guess she was nervous about her top coming down, because she was always tugging it up with both her hands, one on each side of the suit. From where I was sitting, I got to see more of her breasts whenever she did that, because she also lifted the top out when she pulled it upward. For just half a second or so, every time she did the adjustment, I could see a lot more of her than usual. After fifteen minutes of it, I began to wonder if she knew I was watching her, and was doing it on purpose.

I got up from my chair, and went into the pool to cool off. I did a little splashing around, experimenting in the shallow end to see if I could propel myself through the water using my hands and legs. It wasn't quite as easy as I had earlier thought. I spent about fifteen or twenty minutes experimenting before getting out of the pool and going back to my lounge chair and towel.

I noticed, when I was walking back to my chair, that the girl had changed her position while I was in the pool. She was still on her back, but now her feet were closer to me. My first thought was that she must have realized the view she was giving me and had moved so that it wouldn't happen again. After I dried myself off, and was sitting back down again, I had a second thought.

This second thought was occasioned because the girl started adjusting her suit in her crotch area. She would reach a finger under her suit leg and bring it forward before releasing it. Sometimes she did it with her left hand, sometimes her right. Once, after she had done it, she reached between her legs and scratched herself, right on her pussy. Because of things that Bea taught me, I knew that this girl was doing it on purpose, teasing me. Bea had told me that girls and women never did anything accidental where guys were concerned. If they did something in front of a guy, there was a one hundred per cent certainty that they knew exactly what they were doing. This girl had spent almost an hour amusing herself by constantly keeping me on the edge of my chair, riveted to see what she was going to show me next.