2021 theme: RUPTURE

TEN SECONDS TO RUPTURE Cameron Morit California. Morning. Golf. The sun is still trying to get over those mountains in the east, the jagged peaks all backlit like someone traced ’em with a lashlight. A little colder than you igured for Palm Desert, even if it is January. Might have done you good to wear more clothing, but it’s too late now because Billy boy unfolds his long frame and exits the town car and it’s not about you anymore. Not when you recognize the guy coming toward him. The clock starts.

How it works is you got about ten seconds to igure it out, someone’s bothering your guy. Fewer, usually. You’ve seen eight. You’ve seen three. You’d better be tight if you get only three.

He looks familiar, this guy, but you know him from the East Coast. What’s he doing way out here? Looks like Elvis Costello with those fruity glasses. Looks like trouble. What is that ink on his neck, a pair of dice? What’s that dangling lanyard, a homemade press credential?

That’s one and a half seconds right there.

You want to get him to the ground to where you can put a Ferragamo on his neck, but you can’t do that. You’ve got to just stand there and wait. It’s a long wait, but pleasant for the agony. It’s in those moments that you are most alive because it’s then that you’re most aware.

Two seconds.

Alive? No. This job is killing you. It’s working a hole in your guts while you keep the other guy alive, the 42nd President of these United States. Killing you because you assume the worst in people and then go lower. Murphy. That’s your name. And that’s Murphy’s Law. It’s 2015, you’d think people would forget, but a guy is president once, he needs you forever, needs you so close you can smell what soap he’s using. Billy boy is an Ivory guy.

You’ve done your advance, you know it’s only a one-story clubhouse – swept, secure. You know which guys have the morning tee times, and which caddies have a record. But now there’s this motherfucker from the East. The artsy-fartsy glasses and crescent-moon sideburns, Elvis Costello but with red hair in full retreat. Freckles. Mid-thirties. Just last month he was standing there at the southwest entrance of the Time & Life Building in Midtown Manhattan, 163