Chapter 13

Kim and Tess got themselves all spiffed up for our dinner Friday night. Bonnie and Jackie Lee were going to be our guests for dinner, and we had left it to them to choose the restaurant. Tess had taken Bonnie aside and assured her that she need not worry about the right side of the menu.

We'd been forewarned by Tess that we'd be going to a pretty high-end eatery, and that worried me a little, because I had no formal wear with me. The very best I could do was my raggedy old blue blazer. "Don't worry about it," Tess said. "This is the Islands. They're very informal here."

I noticed all that Island-Culture informality wasn't keeping Tess from decorating herself like the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, and Kim, even on her tighter budget, was all sparkly and lip-stuck and mascara-ed within an inch of her life.

In some animal species, it's the males who are all colorful and well-turned-out.

But not us home sapiens types. "Maybe I'm going to be a fifth wheel tonight, anyway," I protested. "Maybe you ought to just let me call room service and get me a club sandwich. Then the four of you girls could really dish."

"Dish?" Kim asked. Kim's vocabulary in English was pretty much on a par with mine, despite my two-decade head start learning my native tongue. Still, once in awhile, somebody would say something that was new to her.

"It's just a sexist word," Tess explained. "When women talk to each other, in the absence of their more profoundly gifted, better-educated, and just plain smarter male colleagues, the women don't confer. They don't exchange ideas. They don't even talk at all. They 'dish.' It means 'to engage in empty speech.'"

"Oh," Kim said. She probably doubted that I would utter such an insulting remark. But if Tess said it was sexist, then that's what it must be.

"Christ!" I complained. "Everybody has to throw off on the poor little white boy. I'm soooooo sorry I used that awful, patronizing word. I wasn't aware of all its deeper connotations... I just heard it somewhere -- maybe on 'The View.' The real reason I'm offering to stay here is so that the four of you won't have to dumb down your conversation to make me feel comfortable."

"You're coming with us!" Tess said. "You look OK -- really! And I'm very confident that Bonnie and Jackie Lee are expecting you to be there. They'll be disappointed if you don't show."

Well, I went. And Bonnie showed up in a minivan with room for all five of us, and drove us down the coast a few miles to a gorgeous beachside restaurant with a veranda on the oceanfront that was as long as a football field.

The food was magnificent. We (all five of us) conversed happily through three courses and two after-dinner glasses of wine before adjourning. "I hate to end this," Tess said, "but Kim's got a final round to play tomorrow."

There was general agreement that we should make an early night of it. Bonnie, who'd followed portions of both Tess' and Kim's rounds on Thursday and Friday, promised to be in Kim's gallery Saturday for all 18 holes.

They dropped us off at the hotel at 10:35 p.m.

"They invited us to spend the weekend at their place," Tess told us as we walked to our suite.

"When was this?" Kim said.

"Bonnie took me aside. I think she wanted to ask me by myself, in case all of us hearing the invitation might make things a little... awkward."

"Because... why?" I said.

"It's just a guess," Tess said, "But I think they were offering us more than just room and board."

"And golf," I said. "Don't forget golf, on their little 9-hole gem, there."

"More than room and board and golf," Tess agreed.

"And... You declined?" Kim asked Tess.

"Yeah. I mean, it would have been fine. We could have done -- or not done -- whatever we pleased. Nobody was going to force us into an uncomfortable situation. Those two women are good people."

"So, then, how do you know they meant anything else, by making the invitation?" I asked.

"I guess I don't exactly 'know' they meant more," Tess said, "but Bonnie told me that her maid's daughter -- Vanessa? -- was straight, and that she -- Bonnie -- was certain that Vanessa and Our Boy Will, here, could have a very pleasant -- and private -- weekend together, if we all wanted to come back with them."

"So the implication was that, with me out of the way, the four of you could... ahh... dish?" I said.

"That's what I got out of it," Tess said. "I mean, they know that the three of us are together, and they surmised, I guess, that if Kim and I swung both ways, maybe we'd be interested in swinging their way, too."

"Well, I wish I'd have been consulted," I said with mock indignation. "That Vanessa was pretty prime!"

"Shut up, Will," Tess said, smiling. "What about you, Kim? Are you 'disappointed, ' too?"

"No," Kim said. "I like what we're doing. I even like what we do -- you and me -- when Will is zonked out and snoring. But I'm not really up for any further group activities, right now."

"I was a little tempted, to tell you the truth," Tess said. "It could have been quite an adventure, and Bonnie's home would sure beat any hotel -- even this one -- as a pleasant place to spend a weekend!"

"But?" I asked.

"But I feel kinda the way Kim does. Threesomes are terrific, but maybe I'm not quite ready for a 'fivesome' just yet."

"That's 'foursome, ' Tessie," I said. "Don't forget -- I was supposed to be off somewhere, boinking Vanessa."

"You sound a little regretful," Tess accused.

"Hell, I am a little regretful!... That Vanessa was such a babe!" I whined.

But I was only kidding, and Tess knew it. Vanessa had, indeed, been a babe, and it wasn't every day that I turned down -- or had turned down for me -- generous offers of shots at such fine specimens of womanhood.

But I agreed with my two golfers: Two -- or three -- more people in our current relationship -- even for the odd weekend -- was too much of a very good thing.

The worst of it, in a way, was that we could have accepted the invitation and gone on to have a restful, sex-free weekend with those two nice women. Bonnie and Jackie Lee weren't predators. All it would have required would have been giving them a subtle indication, once we got there, that there was no interest, on our side, in anything extra. We'd still have had gracious hosts for the next 48 hours.

We all agreed, though, that the signals had been conveyed, and that our acceptance would have strongly suggested that we were ready to play. At that point, wouldn't not playing have been insensitive?

Kim was the only one of us, though, who wasn't at least a little bit wistful about passing up the prospective Weekend Orgy at Bonnie's. Kim had her eyes on the prize -- always. She just wanted to get back to the other end of Oahu and check out the course at Kapolei. Who knows? Maybe we could hustle on down there first thing Sunday, check into our new hotel, and squeeze in an afternoon practice round on the tournament course.

Better than sex any day -- right?

Kim finished Saturday's final round with a two-under par 70, giving her, for the tournament, a one-under 215 -- eight shots behind Paula Creamer's winning score. Kim finished tied with several other women for 14^th place, and she was awarded $14,286. It was almost 50% more than an event's first-place money would have been on the Future's Tour, so it was, of course, Kim's biggest payday as a professional golfer.

She was thrilled. Tess forgot her own troubles and we both fussed over Kim for the entire evening. That night -- our last night at Turtle Bay Resort -- we double-teamed Kim in bed, making her the focal point of all our attentions. We didn't get to sleep until very late, but this was the kind of hotel where they didn't run you out at 10 a.m. We could sleep late on Sunday, and we did.

Kim, especially.

All the way back to Honolulu, Kim and Tess discussed money matters. Now that she had a little cash-on-hand, Kim wanted to increase her contribution to our joint expenses. Tess patiently argued that Kim already was doing enough to pay her own way.

A compromise -- a complicated one -- was reached. I didn't try to track it all, but I gathered that Kim would thereafter make a significant extra contribution to Tess' coffers, based on her winnings on the tour. If Kim won big (like she had this week) Tess would share significantly in the wealth. If Kim's luck was bad, she would go back to making only a nominal contribution, and would quietly accept Tess' help without the usual grousing about getting a free ride.

I was proud of Tess. Despite her acute distress at missing the cut in her first LPGA event, she'd bounced back nicely and now seemed eager to get ready for the Fields Open. Kim's good fortune, I knew, had contributed to bringing Tess out of her brief depression. All of us were happy about Kim's relatively high finish.

But I knew Tess also would be motivated by Kim's good play. Ton 'a Tits Tess was naturally competitive. I knew she would bust her butt in the effort to perform better in the coming week, no matter how strongly those island winds continued to blow.

Our new hotel was a small step down in class from Turtle Bay Resort, but nobody was going to confuse it with a Bowery flophouse. I kicked myself for noting little meaningless deficiencies it had, compared to our recent luxury digs.

What kind of effete snob was I allowing myself to become?

The truth was, before our arrival in Hawaii the week before, I had never seen the interior of a hotel suite that could compare to the one we were in -- right now. These were classy quarters, by almost any standard. I wondered whether our trim-but-tiny RV would look as good, now that we had seen Par-ee.

We didn't get in a Sunday round, or even a brief practice, but Kim was satisfied with discovering that there would be no barriers to a full day on the tournament course on Monday.

Tess had been sought out, while we were in Turtle Bay, for an interview by a USA Today reporter. The newspaper was planning an article about her rapid rise out of college into women's pro golf, and her initial impressions of the LPGA Tour.

I said nothing at the time, of course, but I suspected the paper's interest in Tess was at least partially motivated by the fact that she was so physically formidable -- and attractive. Tess' having missed the cut at Turtle Bay might put a damper on the feature story, but I figured the paper might just decide to hold on to the story until she did something more newsworthy, somewhere, on a golf course.

Now, it was Kim who had been contacted -- and by Golfing Magazine. A woman reporter from the magazine wanted to interview her. Kim had been the highest finisher among all Future's Tour graduates in the just-concluded SBS Tournament. In fact, she had been the highest finisher among LPGA tour rookies from anywhere. We had only been settled in our rooms for about two hours when the reporter had tracked her down there. Kim accepted her offer for an interview that evening, over dinner, courtesy of the magazine.