The Cavanaugh Quest by Thomas Gifford Page B

years ago. He smiled at some of the patio sitters who spoke his name and then we were on the grass, which was moist in the night. The last purple fingers had lost their grip on the western sky. He was heading instinctively for the shadowy bulk of the tennis courts, the high fences.
    “When she first showed up here, she was just kitchen help, then she did some waiting on tables, then she came to me in her spare time wanting me to teach her the game. She was very serious and very quiet and determined, very pretty. So I figured, what the hell, I’ll spend a little time on her—I admit it, I liked to watch her move around and work up a sweat. I figured she was safer game than a member—you start messing around with members, wives and daughters, which I’ve done, God knows, you’re running a real risk. You could get fired if you got caught at it … Well, she picked up the game, really showed me something, and she began to loosen up a bit, get a little friendlier, than a lot friendlier—hell, the thing was she wanted to be my assistant.
    “She was doing nothing more or less than a little cockteasing and I sure as hell went for it. She seemed to have some real supporters among the members and when I suggested that she’d be a real help to me running the shop, working with some of the members when I was booked solid—when I went to them with the idea, they said fine, she’d be a help, all right. She really impressed them, I think, industrious as hell.”
    We’d reached the courts and he hooked his fingers into the fencing and leaned against it as if he were counting the six courts. It was quiet; nothing moved but the wind in the willows.
    “Once she was working in the pro shop I sort of waited for a chance and one night it came. I tried a little straight-ahead stuff with her, she yanked away from me and the buttons came off her blouse like machine-gun fire. She wasn’t saying anything and I’d had a few drinks and didn’t know when to quit. I kept at her and pulled her brassiere off and there were these tiny round tits, smooth, with big stiff nipples …” He sighed and turned around to look at me. “I don’t know why I stopped. Maybe it was because she didn’t look flustered, maybe it was because she’d always seemed so distant and seeing her naked was so … unnatural, I guess. Anyway, I was really shocked at what I’d done.” He shook his head as if he were reliving the confusions of that moment years before.
    “She just looked at me, watched me looking at her chest, and told me that I was just one step from losing my job and facing a criminal action. She was so composed, Paulie, I just felt like I wanted to hide. She said she had friends among the members who would have me dismissed and give her all the legal advice she wanted. She didn’t seem angry or out of breath or anything. I’ve never felt such a chill—I thought my dick was gonna just drop on the floor.
    “I apologized and she said never to mention it again, to forget it. She just stared at me for a while, then she put her brassiere back on right in front of me, took a brand-new tennis shirt out of the cabinet, pulled it on over her head, threw the ripped blouse into a wastebasket, and left. I was absolutely terrified, for my job mainly. But she never did anything about it, nothing more was ever said … but she was a true-blue bitch, I’ve never seen anything to match it. She didn’t have a pot to piss in but she was right at the head of the class and I’ve had to deal with a lot of rich, nasty people in this job. She just threw me the hell away, looked right through me from then on … She doesn’t forget, not ever. Billy Whitefoot really got the full curse, poor son of a bitch. The job she did on him was goddamn incredible. Then when he was all used up, she moved on to Ole Kronstrom and that poor asshole she married, Larry what’s-his-name.”
    We eventually walked back toward the clubhouse.
    “What brought her up, anyway?”
    “Her