Around 10, I wake up with a hangover. I put my head under the shower nozzle, let the cold water drain the alcohol from my eyes before I throw up over the drain. I call for a tee off time.There’s a cancellation at 1 pm. A foursome has signed up but bailed at the last minute.

This lady, her name is Pat, she asks me on the practice green if I mind playing the round with her. I say, sure, I’m game. Pat, she’s in her late 40s, early 50s, chubby. She talks a lot, mostly about the weather and the people at the golf club. I don’t say much. It’s hot and I have other things on my mind.

Sandra, she left me about a week before. She doesn’t say much when she leaves, as she’s been saying pretty much everything she needs to say for the last 6 months. She takes the car, which annoys me. I fracture a finger on my left hand when I find the car gone, punching the brick wall lining the driveway. The brick wall doesn’t mind much but my hand sure does. Luckily, it’s Saturday and the liquor store is still open. That takes the edge off of some of the pain.

I imagine having real problems playing golf with a split finger but I can swing easy and the pain is minimal. The day after Sandra bolts with her clothes and the car, I go out to Indian Hills, shoot a 106. It’s Sunday and there’s a north blow coming off the lake. Most of the golfers are wearing long sleeves in the middle of August. Me, I’m wearing shorts and an old polo shirt. I don’t feel feel much of the cold. I don’t feel much of anything.

Pat, she tells me she usually shoots in the mid 90s. That’s not too bad I think, for a chubby lady reaching her turning point. Her swing is sloppy at times, but she gets the ball down the fairway. When she’s putting, she talks all the time, as if she’s trying to distract herself. She wears an old visor to keep the sunlight out, sweat stains around the brim. I figure it’s her lucky hat.

I spend about 300 bucks at the liquor store when Sandra leaves and get one of the high-school boys to help me carry the bottles out to the rental car. “Having a party?” he asks, stacking the bottles in the trunk so they won’t roll and break. He waits to be invited.

“You might say that.” I give him $20 for no reason whatsoever and slam the trunk down. “Sorry, this one’s private.” I wink at him and drive off. I never wink at people.

2 days after Sandra leaves, I can’t play golf at all. My head hurts more than my finger and I snap my 6 iron over the coffee table.

“That’s a nasty break,” says the guy at the pro shop. He smirks and looks at my mangled club. “What do you expect me to do about it?”

“Fix it,” I say.

He laughs. “Ain’t no one going to fix that, friend. Kiss it good bye.” He suggests a few replacement clubs in the shop but none of them match my set.

“Screw it,” I say. I tee off without a 6 iron. When I need my 6, I use a hard 7 or a soft 5, whatever it takes to get the job done. I shoot a 102. This is at Camlachie and the August heat has returned. My damaged finger throbs all day long.

Pat tells me her husband works the night shift. He likes a good round off golf just as much as his wife, but he rarely gets out to play with Pat because when he’s up, she’s sleeping, and when he’s sleeping, she’s up.

“He’s sleeping, my husband, Don,” she tells me on the 2nd hole. We have to wait for the foursome ahead to fish a ball out of the pond. “He was coming in and I was going out.”

“You ever play together much?” I ask.

“Nope. Maybe on the weekends.”

I’m away and I hook my drive into the trees. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

4 days after Sandra leaves, I wake up on the floor of the workshop. I have a bruise on my head and the power saw is still churning. I shut it off. There’s cold sawdust on the side of my face and clothes. I brush myself clean and try not to look at the slats of wood that had once been our bed. It’s a beautiful oak, four poster bed- had been until I sliced it up. I don’t remember doing it but it sure got done. I have splinters in my hands.

“You feeling okay?” Pat asks me on our golf day. “You look a bit pale.”

“I’m fine. Just a small headache,” I tell her. She nods and pars the 4th.

Pat has just about every golf trinket you can imagine. If she hadn’t of fell into golf, I’m sure it would have been bingo. I can barely make out her leather golf bag behind all the rabbit’s feet and stuffed trolls she keeps for good luck. She has a little black book to keep her scores in. She asks me my handicap.

“I haven’t a clue,” I reply. I’m putting when she asks this and it’s a long putt that I miss.

“Me, I’m an 18 ‘capper. I keep all my scores in our computer and it tells me my handicap, my driving accuracy, greens per regulation, all that stuff. You should try it.”

“I don’t have a computer.” This is a lie. Sandra hasn’t taken the computer. We both know that is mine, just like we both know the car is hers. I wish she had taken the computer and not the car. Leaving me the computer is her touch of sick humour.

Sawing up the bed freaks me out so I go easy on the booze for a bit. I’m beginning to forget the small details and the golf game suffers. I want to break 90 by the end of the summer and it’s clearly not helping to be waking up on the floor of the workshop. My back is sore and when I swing a club, it’s a constant reminder of Sandra. Sandra has made my back sore and it is she who is preventing me from breaking 90. Every time I look at the red flag waving on the green, I see Sandra, or when I squash my tee into the ground I see her banging some faceless guy who looks a lot better than me. The cow. She’s always there and I want nothing there. I just want to break 90.

Pat, she talks all the time and I tune her out when I need to. She says some interesting things now and then.

“You see that couple over there, on the 8th green?”

I turn my head as we walk down the fairway, look to where she’s pointing. There’s a young couple walking off the green, the woman swinging her putter. “Yeah, what about them?”

“They just got married a couple of weeks ago. Right here at the club.”

“Really?” I don’t want to hear it.

“Had the ceremony out on the 18th green. We could all watch from the deck. It was really nice. The train on her gown got all covered with pesticide and it stained the silk, poor girl. She was a beautiful bride.”

I’m lining up my second shot. I flip at her, “Pat, can you hold the chatter when I’m shooting?”

“Sorry,” she says. “I talk too much.”

Sandra calls on the Wednesday, early in the morning. The phone rings and I don’t answer it. I think it’s the alarm going off and I throw the clock at the wall. But, the phone rings again and I get up.

“Baby, you okay?” She’s with someone else. I can tell by the way she speaks- quiet. She doesn’t want to wake someone up. She wants to wake me up, but not the guy she’s with.

“Who is this?” I play.

“Sugar, you know who it is?” Her voice is cool, as it always is. She could kill a baby and still sound cool.

I’m in my underwear and I ask her what she wants. She wants nothing, only to see how I am.

“I dreamt about you last night,” she says.

“Oh, you mean you actually found time to sleep?” It’s a cheap shot and I’m proud to fire it so early in the morning.

“We were jumping off the roof of the old building.” She ignores the abuse. “You know which one I mean?”

I know which one she means. The old building, where we used to live before I sold a book and then had money and bought a house big enough for a workshop. The building was 20 stories and we lived at the top.

“Who hit the ground first?” I ask. I am sharp.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see. I was watching us from a window, watching us jump and go sailing past, really fast. Gravity is strange. It pulls so quickly. I couldn’t catch anything if I tried.”

I repeat. “Who hit the ground first?”

“I don’t know,” she answers.

“Then we have nothing to talk about.” I hang up the phone. I pull out the phone book and find the number for Huron Oaks. There’s a tee off time at 3 and they can squeeze me in. I take it.

The phone rings again around 11 but I’m asleep. By the time I get out of bed, it has stopped ringing. I shower and go to the range and hit ball after ball until my spine will no longer twist. I down a beer and buy some tees.

“You should try these monster tees,” the guy in the pro shop offers. They look like white daggers in a bag, as long as my hand.

“Why not,” I say. I go out to Huron Oaks and break 100. 98 to be precise.

Pat tells me I’m lifting my feet when I swing. “My husband does the same thing,” she prattles. “When you get tired, you try to swing more and it throws off your whole balance.”

I try concentrating on my feet the next time I tee off. She’s right. My feet are lifting. The next shot I relax and swing loosely. My feet stay planted and the ball lands on the green, 8 feet from the cup.

“Thanks,” I tell her. I rap the ball in and birdie the hole. “Thanks for telling me that.”

“No problem,” she says. She marks her score in her black book and we begin the back 9.

I like Huron Oaks. It is good to me and I play again the next day, 5 days after Sandra left. I get up early and stretch out my back and legs. There are eggs in the fridge and I make bacon and eggs, sitting out on the front steps as I eat it. The sun is out and growing hot. I think about buying another 6 iron, maybe a whole new set of clubs. It doesn’t seem right so I let the notion drift in and out as I swipe the eggs up with my toast. The mailman comes.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” He hands me bills. One is for the car insurance.

“Might be.” I comment.

I’m warming up to Pat a bit. She really doesn’t mean any harm. Lonely, I figure. It’s not going to hurt me to listen to her talk. I am at 41. A solid front 9.

“How often you get out, Pat?” I ask her. We stroll down the 10th fairway. I’m gulping a tall beer from the snack shop and my ball is in the 1st cut.

“Oh, 3 or 4 times a week. We’re members here.”

This surprises me. She plays more than I do. I look her over without her noticing.

“You got the bug.” I grin foolishly and she looks at me. She doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

“It keeps me busy.” She drives her ball to the front of the green and marches ahead without another word.

Breaking 100 makes me feel good. I celebrate by going out for dinner at the Greek place up the road. They know me and give me a good table. They inquire about Sandra.

“She couldn’t make it,” I tell them, which is the truth. I eat burnt souvlaki and drink wine. There are a couple of girls sitting up at the bar and I think about going over, striking up a conversation. They don’t laugh much and probably wouldn’t mind the company. I tell the waiter to send them both drinks.

“Right away, Mr. Ferguson,” he says. He goes behind the bar and begins to prepare the drinks. I watch him mix the shots and I know I’m not up to making jokes. I drop a 50 and leave. Out in the parking lot, I find someone has dinged the back of the rental car. There are glass shards on the ground and the taillight is smashed. No one has left a card or note.

“Prick,” I say to no one.

I drive home and think about calling the rental company but then the phone rings and it’s Sandra.

“Been out on a hot date?” She’s talking more loudly this time and I know she’s alone.

“Like I’d kiss and tell,” I reply. I pour a shot and then tip it down the sink.

“You writing, Gord?”

“Why you asking that?”

She sneezes. “Because I think I would be good for you. For both of us. I like you a lot more when you’re writing.”

“Well, I’m not. So, you probably made the right decision to get the hell out.”

She sneezes a second time and I realize she has a cold. She has a cold in August. “Don’t get angry by the question.” She pauses for a moment, to check I’m listening. “You got a big brain, baby. You think about a lot of stuff up there. You need a place to put all that stuff so why don’t you just sit down in front of your computer and let it out. You’ll feel better.”

“Thank you, Sandra. Thank you, so much. You just confirmed my suspicion all along that you haven’t got a goddam clue about who I am!” I almost hang up the phone but remember I have one more thing to say.

“Thank you for leaving.” Then I hang up.

Friday, I play a round with 3 doctors. They’ve taken the day off, told their scheduled patients they’re out of town. They make big joke about this and expect me to laugh with them. I try but all I can do is cough.

One of the doctors, he puts my name to my words and realizes who I am.

“I’ve read your book,” he tells me as I’m bogeying the 3rd hole. On the 5th he asks me about Hal, one of the characters in the book.

“There’s one point in the story, I don’t know, I think it’s about half way through.” The doctor is eating a banana and he has a strange ritual, removing the entire peel before he eats it. “Hal goes to his father and asks about what happened that day on the boat. You know what I mean?” I’m about to tee off and I have to pause to acknowledge him. “I remember that,” I say. I take another practice swing. Easy.

“Well, why would he do that? I mean, he knows the answer he is going to get. It just didn’t seem to fit who he was. I don’t know why you did that.”

I let him finish and then swing at the ball. It soars off the club face, and lands in the middle of the fairway. It’s one of two good shots I hit all day.

“Hey man, I just told the the story. I didn’t write it.” I put a sock on my driver and take a seat on the bench. The young doctor doesn’t seem to like my answer. He drives into the rough and is quiet for the rest of the hole.

The other doctors are not. They drink from flasks they have brought with them, scoffing at the price of beer in the snack hut. They talk too loudly and at the wrong times. They play with expensive clubs and cheap balls. They take mulligans every 3 holes. I try to ignore them but they see me as part of their club.

“You got a nice swing but I think your right elbow sticks out too much on your follow through,” says one of them to me after I slice into the creek. I glare at him. He is a surgeon and he wears two golf gloves, one for each hand. I consider pointing out to him that most golfers only wear one glove, but I know it’s futile. He doesn’t understand.

“Thank you for noticing,” I push out through gritted teeth. Another of the threesome offers his ball scoop to me. I pass. I don’t want a drowned ball back. Unlucky.

On the 13th tee I do something I never do during a round, which is to add up my score card. I’m shooting a 71. This is par for the entire 18 holes and I’m disgusted. I think about packing it in, marching back across the course to the clubhouse and breaking every club in my bag over the hood of the rental car.

“What’s a few more dents?” I ask myself. “One more dent, one more drink, one more day.” I think of Sandra and know that if she calls tonight there will be things to be said.

“You’re up, friend.” The M.Ds have teed off, spraying balls into the deep sand bunkers lining the par 3. I think about the shame of walking back to the clubhouse, cutting across fairways while others wait for me to pass.

“Why not?” The yardage is 158 and without deliberation I pull out my 7 iron. There is dirt buried in the grooves of the club head but I leave it there. I fumble in my pocket for a tee only to find there are none. Fuming, I drop my ball on the bare grass and line up my shot.

“Why not?” I swing.

When the ball goes in the hole, the doctors let out a huge roar and begin to pound me on the back. The surgeon opens his flask and pours scotch into my throat.

“You bastard! You jugged it! A hole in 1!”

It is a hole in 1, my first and only hole in 1. I want to be alone. I want the doctors to be gone and all the world to be still so I can savour the moment, feel the swing that dropped the ball precisely 6 feet in front of the hole and then let it roll to the cup. I want someone who I care about, who understands what a hole in 1 means, to be there with me. I want to share this moment of perfection with someone real. Someone perfect. I want Sandra.

Instead it is the loud doctors- the surgeon, the GP, and the anesthetist who read my book.

“There’s something for you to write about,” he remarks as I pick my ball out of the cup. I want to smack him. I put the ball in one of the pockets of my bag and take out a new one. Beside the number 13 on my scorecard, I put a light 1 with my pencil. The others get up and down in 3 and we move on to the 14th.

“You just never know,” says the surgeon. “You just never know.”

When Pat and I reach the 13th, I tell her I hit a hole in 1 the day before.

“I’ll bet that’s one round you’ll never forget,” she says. She cleans the grooves of her 3 iron and rubs her rabbit’s foot.

“No, I won’t forget it.” I tee up my ball and go with the 7 iron again. The ball buries itself deep in the lefthand trap. “No, I won’t forget it,” I repeat.

I finish out my round with the doctors with a par on the 18th. My total is 111 and I want to scream. The doctors insist upon taking me to the bar to celebrate my hole in 1. They grab a table by the deck where we can watch the other golfers coming in shoot at the green. The surgeon tells the bartender I potted a hole in 1 and she gives me a drink on the house.

“Let us sign that card for you. We’ll be your witnesses,” says the GP. I hand over my card and they scramble for a pen. They all sign, not the illegible autographs they scribble off on the bottom of their prescription pads, but serious, slow and permanent ink signatures- Dr. William Abrahms, Dr. Steven Howard Diamond, Dr. Suniel T. Singh.

“You keep that card and frame it,” says the surgeon as I excuse myself to leave. I’ve had 1 drink, my complimentary rye. I tell them I will, walk out of the bar and grab my clubs from the rack. It’s growing dark out and I wonder to myself how long I can leave my bag unattended until someone will do me the favour of stealing it.

“You made a hole in 1?” Sandra’s voice is quiet and tired. I know why it is quiet and I try not to imagine why it might be tired. I wonder where she is calling from.

“I shot a 111.”

“Poor baby. Nothing is good enough.”

I have let myself go again, ordering a pizza from the shack up the road that used to be Kentucky Fried Chicken until it burned. Now it’s pizza and it tastes like embers.

The bottles are back out and I’ve settled into the gin, long glasses of gin, soda and ice. I can taste the bitter quinine of the gin and I keep mixing them that way, finding that the bitterness slows me up. I drink 5 of these and eat half the pizza.

The house is dark and I light some candles that Sandra kept around and put them on the kitchen table. There’s a station broadcasting from Detroit on the radio but I tune it out. I look at my scorecard from the day, the 6 on number 5, the fat snowman on number 11. The doctors' signatures leak into the scores on 17 and 18. I take a drink and let the card drift into the flame of the candles. It burns, just like the Kentucky Fried.

It is later in the evening when the phone’s electric warble bubbles the dark.

“Sandra, I want you to come home.”

I toss the scorched card into the sink and grab the phone. The game begins.

“No. That wouldn’t be good for either of us.”

“Since when do you know what’s good for us?” I challenge her. The gin is in top form. Easy.

“I left you the computer. You should use it.”

“It’s my computer, Sandra. My computer, your car. That was the agreement.”

She sighs and I see her brush the black hair from her eyes, long black hair that smells of fresh grass and honey.

“Why don’t you write about the hole in 1? That should provide a spark.”

“Why does everyone want to be my editor for Christ sake?” I look at the burnt score card, the bottle of gin. Across the room I can see the outline of my laptop. It is closed. “I don’t feel like writing anything. I’m really enjoying playing golf and watching night moths fly blindly into the bug light. It’s all rather soothing.”

“I’ll come home if you start writing again,” she whispers.

“I don’t want you to come home.”

“You just said you did.”

“I was talking about some other girl.”

I wonder if Pat has any kids of her own so on the 15th I ask her. Things are looking good and I’m trying to remain calm, keep my swing smooth and unforced. The last 2 holes have been pars and I’ve begun the long 15th, a par 5, with a straight drive that kept rolling and rolling, close to the 300 yard marker.

Pat’s drive is good too, shorter but just as straight. She has her 5 wood out. When I ask her about her family she stops on the fairway and takes a swig from her water bottle.

“Not any more,” she says. And then she keeps walking up the fairway to her ball.

“You need to get back to your writing,” says Sandra, louder now and I wonder if she has gone into another room on her end of the line. “That’s how we began, Gordon. You wrote the book and that’s when our life together began. You remember?”

I tried to remember how life had been before we moved to the house, how I would crawl over to Sandra’s apartment after writing all day and she would massage my neck, ask how things were going. We wrote that first book together, her and I. I used to get exasperated by all the questions she asked but in the end I begged her to ask me, to push me. I needed to be pushed and Sandra could do that.

“I remember,” I answer. I did remember.

“That’s how things will work out, baby. You’ll write and I’ll come home. Things will be just like they always were.”

“Don’t bother,” I say and hang up the phone. I blow out the candles and pour more gin and soda, no ice.

We’re on the 17th. Pat and I have been out under the summer sun for 3 1/2 hours now. I can feel my forehead getting tight and I know there will be a glow when I go home. I ignore the tightness and drain a putt from 20 feet. The world is firing on all cylinders.

“We had a son, my husband and I.” Pat isn’t one to look over her putts much. She just lines her club up and swings. “He killed himself. Took his own life 4 years ago.”

I stop to watch her lift her ball from the cup. I don’t know what to say. Pat doesn’t look at me. Something I haven’t felt in months clicks in my stomach- anguish, fire, the knot of a message.

“I’m sorry,” is all I can muster.

“Don’t be.” She wears a broken smile. “Playing this round with you has been a mixed bag of emotions for me. Mostly good ones. You’re about the same age Jim would be, if he were still alive.”

Pat strolls ahead to the 18th as if she has just told me to keep my head down when I swing. She is silent on the last hole and when I putt out, she picks her ball up even though it is 30 feet away from the cup.

“I’ll save it, I think,” she says and puts the ball in her bag. She comes over and gives me a small hug. I can see she’d like to cry. “I think you shot pretty good.”

“I think I did,” I tell her.

Pat went straight to her car and home to her sleeping husband. I hung around the putting green for a stretch, sinking balls from all angles. After about an hour of suspense, I took out my card and added up the round. 88. A good way to finish.

On the drive home I thought about Pat and her lucky trolls. I thought about the dent in the rental car and my sore back, which was sure to stiffen to a plank overnight. I thought about the dissected bed, Sandra, and dead sons.

When I got home I cleaned my clubs and put them in the garage. I put the kettle on to boil and made instant coffee. I fired up the computer.

Now I had something to write about.