Page 19 of A Flighty Fake Boyfriend
He studied me calmly. “You still doing okay?”
“If I say no, can I quit?”
He shook his head as if I’d truly disappointed him. “You have to get the loop-de-loop. Each stage of mini-golf is important. You learn vital life lessons that will last a lifetime.”
“Does your family run some kind of mini-golf mafia?”
“Hit the ball, Dad.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” I hit the ball, and this time I used exactly the right force to propel it onto the green. It took me two putts to sink it, but that was one more hole down. Only eight more to go.
As we arrived at our next hole, Epic squatted to look at a complicated system of swirly runnel-like features, one of which would lead my ball to yet another Astroturfed green.
“Now, I want you to really look at what we have here,” Epic golf-whispered. “It’s a lot like life isn’t it? There’s a choice to be made, and each path leads in a different direction. Some you can follow, and some are occluded because they go under the cartoon school bus. They require blind faith.”
I eyed the fiberglass school bus full of woodland creatures with scholarly aspirations. There were five channels into which I could putt. One spilled a ball out right next to the cup, another returned the ball from a hole behind me. Who knew where the other balls went? Please God, let there be one that led to an alternate universe where I could sit in an air-conditioned bar with a smoking section.
Epic stood, patted my shoulder, and said, “Choose wisely.”
At that point, I simply didn’t care. I tapped my ball, and it fell into a pink glistening channel that if I thought about it at all, seemed a little too obvious.
“Going with Freud on this one?” He glanced up at me. “When was the last time you got laid?”
I followed my ball, which—it turned out—had landed only three feet away from the cup. I knocked the ball in with one putt and felt rather proud of myself.
“I see how it is,” Epic teased. “The student becomes the master.”
“Hardly.” I might have smirked a little as we walked up to the next hole, which was just more of the same. This mini golf thing wasn’t unbearable, I thought. I could do this. Then the last hole gave me such fits we had to let two families and a children’s birthday party play through.
“C’mon,” Epic coached. “In every game of mini-golf, you’ll find the dreaded windmill. You have to learn to time your shot. Get the rhythm of it. Think of yourself as an inmate in a Turkish prison, timing the guard rounds. Freedom is life, baby. You’ve got this.”
“That’s oddly specific.” He had no idea how close I’d once come to such a fate, though it had been a Syrian interrogation site.
In this case, the windmill guarded the fairy-tale castle we’d seen from the highway. It was made up of four drawbridges that spun on a wheel. You had to get your timing perfect in order for your ball to go between them.
I started to swing. Epic shouted, “Quiet on the green, please.” And I missed my shot.
He laughed like a troll then spoke through his cupped hand, “While the game is not on the line here, Ryan Winslow is still looking for a personal best on this hole.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Look at the concentration on his face. That’s the look of a champion right there. He’s seen what he needs to do. He lines up his shot…”
I did it. It only took me about twelve tries. My ball swirled around the green and landed about three inches away from the cup. I tapped it in.
“It’s over, right?” I asked. “Please tell me it’s over.”
“It’s over when I say it’s over,” Epic held his putter like a rifle. “You don’t stand a chance, puny human.Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew.”
Every goddamn eye in the place was on us as he laughed maniacally.
“The castle is mine!”
Like a man freed from that prison he mentioned, I stared at the sky. A few little mare’s tail clouds drifted in from the ocean. I smelled plumeria on the breeze along with the bright verdant scent of ornamental grasses and chlorine from the park’s water features.
Epic might have had a point.Mini-golf is full of life lessons.
There was a place to drop off our putters and balls.
