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,

bells ringing, everyone drunk on Christmas. Billy boy, gone all vegan and slim, breezed past him and into the building for a Time cover. Sighting number two came at the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year deal at Chelsea Piers two days later, everyone was lapping it up as Billy boy talked teamwork and how we want to think we were born in a log cabin we built ourselves, when what you really wanted was to listen to Madison Bumgarner talk about mowing down Kansas City Royals. But there was Elvis, again, among all those New York magazine types. You see a guy twice in a row like that? You ile it. Could be nothing. Now, though, he’s in California. Once you’ve placed the guy, you’re at three and a half seconds. Billy boy strides onto the cart path, and that’s four. And here comes East Coast Elvis, his arm stuck out, nothing in his hand, ive seconds. He and Billy boy are inches apart, and then – contact – and now you got yourself a handshake, six seconds. The back of your neck is practically on ire as Elvis tells him how great he was at the Sports Illustrated thing. Seven, eight, nine seconds, and you start to relax, just a little. You’re thinking Elvis is all right, but Billy boy isn’t letting go of that handshake, he does that, so they’re still connected as they walk. They stop, and Billy ixes him with those blue beauties. “What’d you say your name is?” You’re thinking the guy is about to fall under the spell, that Clinton charisma, but then something changes quick, it always happens quick, like a freak rupture out of nowhere. “Motherfucker,” the guy says, throwing Billy’s hand back at him. “Gore lost because of you, we’re in Iraq because of you, I got ambushed in Fallujah because you couldn’t — ” He never inishes. Elvis’s lanyard proves handy as you yank him hard, backward and of his feet, those rock star glasses lying of his face and skittering down the cart path. Two things you should have noticed before: Those dice tattooed onto his neck aren’t dice, they’re dog tags, and he’s got a nice zipper scar runs right up between ’em. Military. “The fuck is wrong with you?” you ask. “Get out of here. Now!” Because something’s ruptured in you, too, looding you with chemicals from every ight you’ve ever had. The wire is popped from your ear. G.I. Elvis’s broken press necklace dangles of his shoulders. He gets his glasses, straightens. “Go,” you say, pointing at the jagged mountains. “I won’t ask twice.”

He smiles, a dumb, broken-toothed thing that will keep you up at night, and you look at each other for a long goddamn second. You’re half-hoping he comes at Billy boy again and gives you cause to improvise, do what you really want to do, but he makes the right call and walks. Shoots you a tough look over his shoulder as he goes, like it saves him face. The boss is ghost white as you fumble out an apology, pretty damn certain this is your last day of work. “I’m alright,” he says, holding up his hand like he’s being sworn in. “I’m ine.” But you’re not; you played this all wrong and now you got yourself an incident. You reset your earpiece and call it in as Billy boy ducks into a tent for some breakfast, shaking hands like nothing happened. You can’t eat. You love to eat. He has some fruit and goes outside, watches the golf from a little walledof garden area, and you try to organize your thoughts amid all that quiet, the smack of a ball, the izz in the air, the tinkly applause. “You don’t look well, Murph,” Billy boy says. You want to tell him you were supposed to pitch for the Yankees. You want to tell him you’re tired of the crazies, the guy in the wire-rims and Utah Jazz jersey said his cat watched the State of the Union on TV and had the Polaroid to prove it. The people who try to bring him ice cream or McDonalds, which, shit, you can’t allow that. And the women. Good Christ, the women. You see how all that stuf could happen with the intern and the one who couldn’t even spell her own name, Gennifer with a G, God help her. “I’m ine,” you say. He nods but neither one of you believes it, and he saunters of to ind more hands to shake, and you follow, always you follow, always thinking the worst. You’re not well, you’re not ine, because you’re stuck on your life, not his. Maybe it’s your birthday, turning 42 like Billy always will be, and thinking of Jennifer, your ex down in New Orleans who made your birthday meal how you like it, the lamb on the grill with the mint sauce. She hated you as a human shield, did this thing when she was stressed, her hands worrying a strand of purple beads around her neck. Worked the purple right of the beads, she did, but maybe it’s not too late because maybe you’re not dead yet. The rest of the day is quiet as a sleeping baby, which is how you like it. Elvis has left the building and Billy boy stays late to honor another serviceman on the 18th green, this one with the good manners not to scream at him. The

sun bleeds away, the chill creeps back into the air, and you want to call her and make it real, let her know you’re going to hang it up while you still can. Maybe she can come up to the city for your birthday, make that lamb again like she used to. Maybe the two of you can work the purple back on those beads.