Whiskey & Charlie (7 page)

“Eat the chickens?” one of the girls suggested.

“Exactly! And that's what this dance is all about—stealing chickens. We've got to be cunning as foxes, quick and fast and light on our feet. Otherwise we won't be getting any dinner.”

Charlie didn't know what it was about the fox-trot, but it was during that class that he began to feel he was at last getting the hang of ballroom dancing, gaining control of his elbows and hips, hands and feet, finally beginning to lead Anneliese instead of the other way around.

That same week, Anneliese started saying hello to him when she saw him around the school, although Charlie did not know if this was because of the dancing or because of whatever was going on between her and Whiskey. The week of the fox-trot was also the week when some of the guys started asking girls to the prom. As expected, Sasha Piper got snapped up pretty sharpish, by the student body president no less, and Charlie's second choice, Shantelle Simpson, wasn't far behind, also poached by a twelfth grader. So much for Charlie's list. Still, there was plenty of time left, and Charlie thought it would be a few weeks yet before most of the guys made their moves.

x x x

In week five, after they had learned the salsa, Mr. Randall announced that since they were progressing so well, it had been decided—by the teachers, presumably—that there would be a demonstration at the prom, for which couples would be chosen to perform one of the five dances they had learned. Charlie was surprised to find he was thinking more about the ballroom dancing demonstration than about how and when he might invite Melissa to the prom. Once he and Anneliese had gotten over their initial awkwardness, Charlie had started to enjoy dancing with her. Now, instead of embarrassed apologies, they laughed together when they made a mistake, sometimes shared a joke with each other or a bit of gossip they had heard around the school.

The couples chosen for the demonstration were announced in week six. Charlie and Anneliese were selected as one of the couples for the fox-trot. Anneliese gave Charlie a hug when the announcement was made.

“We did it, Charlie!” she said excitedly, giving him one of her beautiful smiles. Charlie felt himself redden. He was pleased that he and Anneliese had been chosen. He thought they had earned it. He did not know why he felt guilty about it, as though he had done something underhanded by dancing to the best of his ability, by wanting to be chosen.

x x x

Later that week, Charlie was lying on his bed, underlining key quotes from one of his English literature books, when Anneliese poked her head into his room.

“Hey,” she said. “Have you got a minute?”

Charlie sat up.

“Hey, Anneliese.”

Anneliese had been to their house a few times by then, but she had never been into Charlie's room before. He looked around to see if there was anything he might be embarrassed for her to see, kicked a pair of boxer shorts—cleanliness unknown—under his bed.

“Sure, come in,” he said.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

“
Heart
of
Darkness
,” Charlie said, holding it up. “Have you read it?”

“‘The horror, the horror!'” she said, clutching her throat.

They laughed.

“Where's Whiskey?”

“He's downstairs. I wanted to see if maybe we could…if you wanted to…if you didn't mind, we could maybe…you know…practice the dance.”

Charlie couldn't believe it. Anneliese Spellman was in his bedroom, asking him to dance. Sure, it wasn't slow dancing to “Never Tear Us Apart” in a darkened room, but it was probably as close to that as Charlie was ever going to get. So why was he hesitating?

“I got the music from Mr. Randall,” she said uncertainly, showing him a tape. “But if you're busy, that's okay…”

Charlie made up his mind. “No, no, you're right,” he said, virtually jumping off the bed. “It's a good idea to practice. Mr. Kurtz isn't going anywhere.” They laughed again. “Do you think there's enough room in here?” he asked, shoving his schoolbag into the wardrobe. He hoped she would say yes. He didn't want to go downstairs and practice in the family room, where they ran the risk of his mum or dad coming home from work and wanting to watch, not to mention Whiskey.

“Plenty of room,” Anneliese said. She put the tape in his stereo and pressed Play.

Dancing with Anneliese alone in his bedroom was completely different from dancing with her in the gym, along with forty other students and Mr. Randall, with his adjustments and wisecracks. Undistracted by anyone else, Charlie was suddenly acutely aware of how close he was to Anneliese, the places where his body met hers. He could smell her hair. They bumped and shuffled around the room, and he couldn't concentrate on the steps at all.

“That was our worst time ever!” Anneliese said when the music finally stopped.

“Maybe there's not enough room,” Charlie suggested apologetically.

Anneliese looked around. “It's not that. It just feels different here. We'll get used to it. Do you want to try again?” She rewound the tape.

The second time, Charlie pretended he was dancing with someone else. He did not allow himself to look at Anneliese's face or to think about his hand on her shoulder; he thought instead about his feet, his posture, his elbows and wrists, tried to remember everything Mr. Randall had ever told them. They were doing brilliantly until Charlie looked up and saw Whiskey standing in the doorway, smirking at them.

“Gold medal, guys,” he said sarcastically. “Lovely.”

Charlie and Anneliese broke apart. Nat King Cole carried on singing “The Lady's in Love with You.” Charlie wondered how long Whiskey had been watching them. He had an urge to apologize. But Anneliese beat him to it.

“Go away, Whiskey. It's embarrassing,” she said coyly. And then she shut the door in his face.

“Shall we try again?” she asked Charlie, unruffled.

Charlie thought she might be the most wonderful girl he'd ever known.

The second time Anneliese came into his room to ask him to practice, she shut the door before they began. “Rehearsals are closed to the public,” she said, and Charlie laughed conspiratorially.

The following week she didn't come over to their house at all. Charlie missed her. Dancing with her at school was not the same as having her all to himself at home, however brief and illusory it might be. In their Friday class, he asked her hesitantly if they might have a chance to practice the following week.

Anneliese looked uncomfortable. “I can't come over next week,” she said. “I've got too many assignments.”

Charlie thought she and Whiskey must have had a fight. Whiskey hadn't mentioned it, but he never talked to Charlie about those kinds of things. Usually Charlie heard them from someone else, most often Marco, who had a keen ear for gossip. If they had fought, Whiskey didn't seem bothered by it. He had been his usual self that week. But then, he always was. Girls were around for a while, and then they were not, but it never seemed to be Whiskey who was left crying. Charlie wasn't sorry things hadn't worked out between Whiskey and Anneliese. But he hoped Anneliese wasn't wasting any tears over Whiskey.

x x x

Later that week, Charlie heard from Marco that Whiskey had asked Anneliese to the prom and she'd turned him down, saying she was going with someone else.

“Who?” Charlie asked Marco, trying to keep his voice casual.

“I thought you might know that,” Marco said pointedly.

“How would I know? Whiskey never tells me anything.”

“Don't come the raw prawn with me, mate,” Marco said. “I'm in your phys ed class, remember? I've seen you two dancing together. I thought you might have beaten Whiskey to the punch.”

“As if,” Charlie said.

“They say all's fair in love and war, mate. I wouldn't blame you if you did.”

“Well, I didn't,” Charlie said emphatically.

Marco put his hands up. “Point taken. It's your business. But if I thought it, you can bet Whiskey has.”

“Thanks for the heads up, Marco.”

Sure enough, when Charlie got home, Whiskey was waiting for him, lying on his back on Charlie's bed, legs crossed, arms behind his head.

“Well, you've really done that dickhead Randall proud,” he said without even looking at Charlie.

“How's that?” Charlie asked warily, putting down his schoolbag.

“You've got the most cunning fox-trot going, Charlie. You certainly know how to steal another man's chicken.”

“I don't know what you're talking about, Whiskey.”

Whiskey nodded slowly. “So what really happens after she shuts the door and puts on the music?”

“We practice the dance.”

“Bullshit, Charlie!” Whiskey sat up suddenly, slammed the side of his fist against the wall. “When did you ask her?”

“Ask her what?”

“Don't screw around with me, Charlie. I already know you asked her.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“I'm talking about Anneliese, dickwad, and the fact that she's going to the prom with someone else. Ring any bells?”

“I don't know anything about it,” Charlie repeated.

Whiskey looked at him hard. “So you're saying you haven't asked her?”

Charlie shook his head.

“You haven't hinted at it though?”

He shook his head again.

“But have you ever said anything that might have made her think you were going to ask her?”

“We've never talked about it.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“So you're not planning to ask her?”

“Jesus, Whiskey, what is this? The Spanish Inquisition? I said no, didn't I?”

“Well, that's good,” he said eventually. “That's good. Because we're decent men, aren't we, Charlie? We wouldn't take what belonged to each other, would we?”

She
doesn't belong to you
, Charlie thought, but he didn't say so. He only shook his head again, worn out by the conversation.

“Shake on it?”

Charlie sighed.

“I'm asking you to shake on it,” Whiskey insisted, putting out his hand.

Charlie shook it impatiently. “There you go. Are we done now? Happy?”

“Close as I'll get,” Whiskey said, getting up off the bed. “Close as I'll get.”

x x x

Needless to say, there were no more rehearsals with Anneliese. When Kelly Varga broke up with Todd Jackson that week, Whiskey asked Kelly to the prom. During their biology class, Melissa told Charlie she was going with Brett Speedman. Charlie didn't even care. Miserably, he asked Bronwyn, couldn't even bring himself to feel bad about how excited she was, bringing in a piece of fabric from her dress so he could match his accessories to hers,
if
he
wanted
. He heard, from Marco, predictably, that Anneliese was going to the prom with Todd. A neat swap.

He told himself that if he could get through the last week of term, things would settle down. Once the ballroom dancing was over, he would hardly ever see Anneliese, have no reason to speak to her, would stop thinking about her eventually. There was only the prom itself to be endured. One dance with her, less than five minutes, and it would all be over. Charlie thought he could do it.

But he hadn't counted on Anneliese, on her lipstick and the strands of hair curled against her neck. He hadn't counted on her strapless dress, on the fact that he would have to touch her bare shoulder with his left hand. It took him to pieces.

“You look beautiful,” he said before he could stop himself.

“Not as good as Bronwyn though,” she said cattily.

“Don't be like that, Anneliese, please. You must know I wanted to ask you.”

“Then why didn't you, Charlie?”

“I couldn't, not after Whiskey had.”

“But why not?”

“He's my brother, Anneliese.”

“I don't see what difference that makes.”

He felt despair. He didn't know if he had ever truly felt it before.

“It wouldn't be right. I can't explain it. I'm sorry.”

Anneliese bit her lip and looked away from him. Charlie did not think about his heel-toe action or remembering to sway slightly on his chassés. The dance they had spent all term practicing no longer mattered. Whether Charlie danced poorly or perfectly made no difference now. He simply moved in time to the music, and Anneliese followed. He looked at her throat and her shoulders. He could smell her perfume. He tried to memorize its scent. Then the dance was over. Charlie bowed to Anneliese as they had been taught, and as he walked away from the first girl he had fallen in love with, to find the partner who had been his last resort, he wished Whiskey had never been born.

Charlie was sixteen when his father, who'd had a bad back for years, finally took the advice of his chiropractor and gave up running in exchange for golf. Bill asked the boys if they were interested in caddying for him.

“Golf's an old farts' game,” Whiskey said. “I wouldn't be seen dead on a golf course.”

“I thought it would be a good way for you to earn some pocket money.”

“Pocket money!” Whiskey was disgusted. “How old do you think we are?”

“Well, you're always complaining that you're broke.”

“I'd rather stay broke,” Whiskey said.

“I'll do it,” Charlie said.

x x x

Initially it was only the money Charlie was interested in, but as time went on, he found himself getting more and more interested in the game. He saw his father play with golfers good and bad, careful and indifferent, and he studied the shots, listened and remembered when he heard people say, “I should have used my 5-iron on that one.”

He had been caddying for his dad for a few months when, one Saturday, the fourth member of their group didn't turn up.

“We'll play with three,” one of the men said.

“We can't play with three, Greg; you know that,” a man named John said. “We'll have to drop out.”

Charlie's father had played with John before. Charlie remembered that he had been a stickler for the rules.

“What about your son, Bill? Why doesn't he join us?” Greg suggested.

“Charlie? He doesn't know one end of a golf club from the other.”

“Dad!” Charlie protested.

“Don't be ridiculous,” John said. “He's not a member. He's not signed in as a guest. He's not even appropriately attired.”

Greg ignored him. “What do you think, Charlie?”

“I'll give it a go,” Charlie said.

He found it awkward at first, harder than it looked, but after a few holes, he began to get a feel for it.

“You're doing pretty well, Charlie,” Greg said. “Is this really the first time you've ever played? You're a natural.”

“I taught him everything he knows,” Bill joked.

By the end of the game, even John had come around. “You ought to sign up for a junior membership,” he said enthusiastically, shaking Charlie's hand as they parted.

x x x

Though he lamented the loss of his own personal caddy, Charlie's dad encouraged his interest, and before long, Charlie was on the driving range or the putting green whenever his dad wasn't using his clubs. For nine months he caddied for competitions and corporate golf days to save the money for his own clubs, a half set to begin with, secondhand, but good ones and true. Even when he had a full set, Charlie carried on caddying, using the money to pay for lessons.

Charlie got up early on Sunday mornings to work through math equations, label diagrams of human organs, and write essays on Shakespeare and Joseph Conrad so that Sunday afternoons he could go out and play eighteen holes. A couple afternoons a week, he went straight from school to the golf course, not even bothering to get changed, practicing his putting and driving with his school tie rolled up in his pocket. And on Saturdays, he played in the competition, putting in card after card until his handicap was down to thirteen.

Whiskey was a surfer. He got up at five a.m. most weekends to get a ride down the Peninsula or along the Ocean Road with some friends from school. Even with five-millimeter wet suits, booties, and hoods, they emerged from the water blue-lipped, and it took them the hour and a half back to Melbourne with the car heater on high to thaw out. Whiskey never showed the slightest interest in golf, until Charlie won a trophy for the most promising junior. After all, Whiskey was the sporty one, the athletic one. If anyone was going to be winning trophies, it should be him.

“Maybe I should give it a go myself,” he said at Charlie's celebration dinner. He did not say, “There can't be much to it, if Charlie's winning trophies,” but the words were there at the table all the same. Only their father did not notice.

“Charlie's bloody good,” he said. “He's better than me, in fact, but you might be able to give him a run for his money, Whiskey.”

Their mother frowned. “What about your surfing, William?” She was the only person who still called Whiskey William.

Whiskey shrugged. “The ocean's not going anywhere.”

x x x

Charlie didn't want to play with Whiskey, didn't want to lend him his clubs so Whiskey could play with their dad.

He didn't want Whiskey hacking around the course with the clubs he'd saved up to buy. He had seen how Whiskey treated the things he borrowed—CDs stacked in piles without their cases, books with their covers bent back. If Whiskey wanted to play golf so badly, let him get a job and save up for his own clubs to ruin. Charlie wanted no part of it.

“You'd be better off sharing Dad's clubs, seeing as you're taller than me,” he said when Whiskey asked him, knowing full well it was against the rules to play out of one bag.

Charlie thought that would be the end of it, but he underestimated their father, who, though he had the utmost respect for the rules of the game, had what he called a
healthy
disregard
for the rules of the club.

“There's plenty there for both of us,” he said.

So Whiskey started playing with their dad while Charlie made excuses, saying he had a test to study for, an essay to write. Their dad didn't notice Charlie's reticence. Before Whiskey had put in a single card, he was telling anyone who would listen that both his sons were golfers now, joking that if only he could persuade Elaine to take it up, they could form a family team.

Charlie knew playing with Whiskey would take all the pleasure out of it for him, and he managed to avoid it for almost two months, until their father signed the three of them up for a competition, with his friend Neil making up the foursome. Charlie thought about making another excuse, but he knew what Whiskey would think, didn't want to give him the satisfaction of saying, “Charlie's scared I'm going to beat him.”

“What's Neil like, then?” Whiskey asked on the way to the club, already sizing up the competition.

“Well,” their dad said, “he's good company, Neil. I like playing with him, but to be honest, he couldn't hit a cow's ass with a shovel.”

Whiskey laughed. Charlie said nothing, thinking it unsportsmanlike of his dad to speak of his friend that way. But once they were on the course, Charlie saw that his dad was right.

Neil took a long time over his shots, seemed to plan them carefully enough, but once he stepped up to the tee, he went to pieces, shafting the ball as though it didn't matter to him which way it went. He made the same mistakes again and again, muttered to himself as he saw it, yet seemed incapable of correcting himself.

Their father was a different kettle of fish entirely. When anyone asked him how his golf was going, he always said
shithouse
, but in fact he played off a steady fourteen and, other than the odd bad day, was true to his handicap.

When he was younger, he'd been a first-rate forward, faster and more wiry than the rest of the team, unafraid of plowing headfirst into the tangle of legs that had so terrified Charlie when he had attempted to play rugby. Charlie remembered watching his dad standing mud-smeared on the side of the pitch while a gash in his eyebrow was stitched up, and then going back out to finish the game.

Whiskey took after their father. He had taken to golf the way he took to every sport he had ever tried. All those months of paddling out on his surfboard had given him the strength in his upper body to drive the ball a good long way, and his aim was good, his swing sure.

“He's not bad, is he, Charlie?” their dad asked at the third hole.

“Beginner's luck,” Charlie wanted to say but stopped himself.

He was playing badly, allowing Whiskey's confidence to erode his own, so blind with envy that they were on the seventh hole before Charlie could see that Whiskey lost his edge once he was on the green. He lacked the concentration for putting, and though he could have mastered it if he practiced, there was no chance he would practice. Charlie realized that golf was too careful a game for Whiskey, that though his swing was better than Charlie's, golf required a focus and single-mindedness Whiskey did not possess and would not cultivate. Once he had seen this, Charlie knew Whiskey could not beat him.

When the game turned, Whiskey became a stranger to the rules, failing to count penalties, throwing his ball out of a bad lie, nudging it with his toe.

“I hope you're going to count that,” Charlie said when he saw Whiskey dribbling the ball out of the rough as though he were on a soccer pitch.

Whiskey shrugged. “We're not playing for sheep stations.”

Charlie had the urge to take a swing at him, to break Whiskey's nose on the end of his club. “It's only yourself you're cheating,” he said.

They were on the eleventh hole when Whiskey finally lost his temper. Charlie had been playing steadily, making up what he'd lost earlier in the game. The better he played, the more agitated Whiskey became. When he teed off on the eleventh, he drove his first two balls straight into the lake. His face was dark when he took the shot for the third time. He stood for a long moment at the tee, and Charlie could see the tension in his shoulders, knew he wasn't going to make it. Whiskey didn't even wait for it to hit the water.

“Fuck it,” he said, and he swung the putter hard against the side of the buggy. Charlie heard it crack, watched Whiskey fling it into the bushes and stalk off, leaving the buggy behind him.

Neil was the first to speak. “Well, golf's not for everyone,” he said.

“No indeed,” Charlie's father said. “Looks like it's back to just you and me, Charlie boy.”