Fancy Pants (Wynette, Texas #1)(115)

With a stubborn set to her jaw, she passed over the fur for a flaming fuchsia shawl. Then, for the first time that evening, she really looked at herself in the mirror. Versace gown, pear-shaped diamond studs, black stockings sprinkled with a mist of tiny jet beads, slim Italian heels—all luxuries she had bought for herself. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she draped the fuchsia shawl around her bare shoulders and made her way to the elevator.

God bless America.





Chapter

24



You're sellin' out, is what it is,” Skeet said to Dallie, who was scowling at the back of the cab driver's neck as the taxi crawled down Fifth Avenue. “You can try to paint a pretty face on it, talkin' ‘bout new opportunities and expanding horizons, but what you're doin’ is giving up.”

“What I'm doing is being realistic,” Dallie answered with some irritation. “If you weren't so goddamn ignorant, you'd see that this is just about the chance of a lifetime.” Riding in a car with someone else driving always put Dallie in a bad mood, but when he was stuck in a Manhattan traffic jam and the man behind the wheel could only speak Farsi, Dallie passed the point of being fit for human company.

He and Skeet had spent the last two hours at the Tavern on the Green, being wined and dined by the network brass, who wanted Dallie to sign an exclusive five-year contract to do color commentary during their golf tournaments. He had done some announcing for them the year before while he was recovering from a fractured wrist, and the audience response had been so favorable that the network had immediately gone after him. Dallie had the same humorous, irreverent attitude on the air as Lee Trevino and Dave Marr, currently the most entertaining of the color commentators. But as one of the network vice-presidents had remarked to his third wife, Dallie was a hell of a lot prettier than either one.

Dallie had made a sartorial concession to the importance of the occasion by putting on a navy suit, along with a respectable maroon silk tie neatly knotted at the collar of his pale blue dress shirt. Skeet, however, had settled for a corduroy jacket from J. C. Penney's along with a string tie he'd won in the fall of 1973 pitching dimes into goldfish bowls.

“You're sellin' out your God-given talent,” Skeet insisted stubbornly.

Dallie whipped around to glower at him. “You're a damn hypocrite, is what you are. For as long as I can remember, you've been pushing Hollywood talent agents down my throat and trying to get me to pose for pinup pictures wearing nothing but my jockstrap, but now that I have an offer with a little dignity attached to it, you're getting all indignant.”

“Those other offers didn't interfere with your golf. Dammit, Dallie, you wouldn't have missed a single tournament if you'd done a guest shot on ‘The Love Boat’ during the off season, but we're talking about something entirely different here. We're talking about you sitting up in an announcer's booth making wise-ass remarks about Greg Norman's pink shirts while Norman's out there making golf history. We're talking about the end of your professional career! I didn't hear those network honchos say anything about you coming up into the announcers' booth only on the days you don't make the cut, the way Nicklaus does, and some of the other big boys. They're talkin' about having you there full-time. In the announcers' booth, Dallie—not out on the golf course.”

It was one of the longest speeches Dallie had ever heard Skeet make, and the sheer volume of words held him momentarily in check. But then Skeet muttered something under his breath, aggravating Dallie almost past the point of endurance. He managed to keep a rein on his temper only because he knew that these past few golf seasons had just about broken Skeet Cooper's heart.

It had all started a few years back when he'd been driving home from a Wichita Falls bar and had almost killed a teenage kid riding a ten-speed bike. He'd given up taking illegal pharmaceuticals in the late seventies, but he'd continued his friendship with the beer bottle right up until that night. The boy ended up with nothing more serious than a broken rib, and the cops had gone a lot easier on Dallie than he'd deserved, but he'd been so badly shaken that he'd given up booze right after. It hadn't been easy, which told him just how much he'd been kidding himself about his drinking. He might never survive the cut at the Masters or finish in the money at the U.S. Classic, but he would be damned if he'd kill a kid because he drank too goddamn much.

To his surprise, going on the wagon had immediately improved his game, and the next month he'd taken a third in the Bob Hope, right in front of the television cameras. Skeet was so happy he almost cried. That night Dallie had overheard him talking to Holly Grace on the telephone. “I knew he could do it,” Skeet had crowed. “You just watch. This is it, Holly Grace. He's going to be one of the greats. It's all going to come together for our boy now.”

But it hadn't, not quite. And that's what was pretty much breaking Skeet's heart. Once or twice each season Dallie took a second or third in one of the majors, but it had become pretty obvious to everyone that, at thirty-seven, his best years were just about gone and the big championships would never be his.

“You got the skill,” Skeet said, staring out the murky window of the cab. “You got the skill and you got the talent, but something inside you is keeping you from being a real champion. I just wish I knew what it was.”