The Sand Trap (47 page)

They just looked defiantly at each other
across the table.

Burt broke the silence.

“OK. Are we going to start telling each
other the truth now?”

She looked less defiant but didn't
reply.

He continued. “Once we start absorbing each
other's history and life's experiences, the knowledge will bind us
together stronger than any lovemaking. It is history and the
intimate knowledge of a partner that keeps more relationships
together than passion or love. Do you want to go there? Maybe the
secrets we imagine each other having are more palatable than the
secrets we actually have?”

More than thirty years of hiding and
subterfuge suddenly caught up with Maria. “I am at a point in my
life where I need to find honesty. I’m willing to try and find it
with you, if you are with me.”

Burt took a big slug of his tequila. “She
has no idea what she is asking,” he thought. But he knew he could
not go the rest of his life living a lie. Or at least living it
alone. “How do we start?” he asked pouring another tequila for them
both.

“Let's ask each other questions? Sort of
like the truth or dare we played as kids? The answers have to
truthful, or else. You go first,” she offered.

“Or else what?” Burt asked rhetorically as
he paused to think where he should start. He knew he was not ready
to tell her everything and she was not ready to know, but any
question he asked would reveal some detail about his past or his
true identity. For a start he figured he could stay on topics that
were part of his new identity.

“Right. Each of us has to answer truthfully?
You agree?”

“Correct. I do.”

“OK. How did you learn to swing a club like
Moe Norman?”

She looked up at him surprised. “You’ve been
spying on me!” she announced visibly pleased. “When I was very
young he came to a golf course near where I lived and showed me how
to hold the club and swing. I’ve learned things from others, but he
gave me the basics. And ever since, golf has been a good walk
spoiled.”

Burt figured that didn’t give him much he
could not have guessed. “Interesting. So you read Mark Twain?”

“Actually it was 'The Allens' in a 1903 book
on lawn tennis. My turn now.” And before he could show his surprise
at her knowledge of golf she continued. “What’s your real
name?”

He looked at her surprised. “What do you
mean? My real name?”

“I know you are not Burt Van Royan. I met
him once and I can assure you are a better golfer and a better
person than he ever was. So who are you?”

Burt was surprised and laughed to himself at
how pissed off Mary would be that her carefully crafted disguise
was so easily found out. He was not quite sure how to respond or
how much to tell her.

“I had another name in another life. My
parents named me Gord.”

She threw him an exasperated look. “At this
pace we’ll both be dead before we ever learn anything. Maybe we
could agree to answer with just a little more detail?"

“Alright. It's my turn now.” He took a sip
of the tequila. “There is an old Newfy joke; you know what a Newfy
is?” She nodded hesitantly. “Well, this Newfy guy was going to
Spain for a holiday and he was worried that he didn’t speak Spanish
and couldn’t get along so he asked a buddy who had been there for
some advice. The other guy told him to “speeeak liiike thiiis –
verrrry slooowly” and he would be understood no problem. So the guy
lands in Spain and like a good Newfy the first thing he does is go
to a bar. The waitress comes up to him and he says. “Iiiii
wooooould liiiike aaaa driiiink pleeease.” The waitress looks at
him surprised and says. “Aaaaaare yoooou froooom
Neeeeewfooooundland?” And the guy answers equally surprised.
“Yeeess. Iiii aaaam!” “Meeee tooooo!” she replies excited. The guy
thinks for a moment and says to the waitress. “Buuuut liiiif Iiii
aaaam frooom Neewfoooundalaand aaand yoooou aaaare frooom
Neeewfoooundlaaand…whhhhhy aaaare weeee Speeeeakiiiing
Spaaaaaniiish?”

Maria laughed so hard she spilled her drink
and had to pour another.

“See here’s my question,” he announced,
suddenly quite serious. “If I am from Canada and you are from
Canada – why are we speaking Spanish?”

For a moment Maria was so shocked she didn’t
know whether to laugh or cry. All she could say was, “How did you
know?”

“That’s your next question. I have a Ph.D.
in Linguistics. I speak five languages fluently and would recognize
a Canadian Spanish accent anywhere no matter how long someone had
been pretending that Spanish was their first language.”

Maria switched to English. “It seems our
questions tell more than our answers. You’re a professor?”

“Not quite.” Burt switched to English as
well. “I have worked at a university but I just know languages
well. From your English I would guess that you are a westerner.
Manitoba or Saskatchewan?”

She ignored his deduction. “It’s still my
turn. So you are not Burt and you are a Gord. So where are you from
and how did you end up here with another man’s name?”

“That’s two questions. The short answer is
that I’m from Ottawa. I work part time for the Canadian government
and due to some work I did for them they needed to stage my death
and put me in a “relocation” program with a new identity. I wanted
to have a golf career so the Van Royan identity was perfect.”

She looked at him amazed. “Whoa … too much
information in one sentence. It raises more questions! But what
happened to the real Burt?”

“Apparently he just disappeared thirty years
ago so it was convenient for him to just reappear. He was involved
in organized crime so we just assume is he buried in the Arizona
desert somewhere.”

They were both silent for a moment. Burt
couldn’t believe that he just told her about Gord and the Agency.
This was crazy and going way too far too fast.

She broke the silence. “Well at least that
is way too strange to be a lie. I’ve lost track of whose turn it is
so why don’t we just forget the twenty questions? We’ve both been
caught out on our forged identities and somehow we need to fill in
each other’s historical blanks.”

“Is this what you really want to do?” he
asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go much further until he knew
more. “I agree that relationships can never be built on secrets and
lies. But unless they are strong relationships they can also be
destroyed by the truth. We already know things about each other
that no one else, at least no one else down here, knows. I assume
that you, like me, have a good reason for the subterfuge. What if
we each learn more and don’t like what we learn? What do we
do?”

“You mean it would be like the old spy joke?
I can tell you but I’d have to kill you?”

Burt winced. “Hmm, what I mean is that I
certainly feel something around you I have not felt for a long
time, if ever. Do we know that our relationship is well enough
developed, strong enough, to withstand more truth?”

Maria looked over at him, pushed herself up
from the chair and walked over to him. She touched his cheek and
reached down and kissed him. “Or maybe we could just work a little
more at that relationship?”

He stood up and hand in hand like two school
children they walked into her small bedroom.

(Back to Table of Contents)

During the next two months, their
relationship was displayed for all of San Jose to see. Maria often
stayed at Burt’s apartment and they had wonderful off days at the
casita. She stopped hiding her golf skills and spent hours on the
range and the course with Burt, getting back her old form while
helping Burt find his. They even bought new twin Honda XL250s. On
occasion they went further north up the road and had tacos and beer
on the beach in Cabo Pulmo. Neither pressed the other for any
additional biographical details than they shared that night at the
casita, and both seemed content to live the moment. The secrets
they already knew were only between them, and the conspiracy of
lies that they shared was as much entertainment as it was
relationship glue. They spoke only Spanish in public, to Doug and
to the rest of the people around the resort. Maria was still the
Spanish gardener from Mexico City who had the funny golf swing.
Burt was still Burt, and just a Canadian golf teacher who was mad
enough to think he could make the Champions Tour. Their lovemaking
was mature and satisfying. She experienced something more than just
sexual satisfaction for the first time in her life, and he found to
his surprise that he had left most, not all, of his dysfunction
back in Ottawa. He fantasized that Mary and Richard had done
something else to his body to make him return to fifty-two and that
they secretly had a miracle cure for ED that they were not telling
anybody. But they would have to have known that he suffered from it
in the first place and that made him shudder. What ever was
happening, it was working and if it wasn't for his aching knee,
hands, shoulders and back he was actually starting to believe he
was fifty-two.

Both would probably agree that it was on the
golf course where they had their most fun, and by April they knew
each other’s games intimately. They played every day after work and
they hit balls into the dark every night and when they kept score
she won. Her shot making precision was breathtaking. She was also a
good teacher; watching and helping Burt improve his own game.

Early in April, over dinner on the porch at
the casita one night Burt raised the issue of the qualifiers. “So,
do you think I am good enough to make it?” They had often talked
about his aspiration for the Champions Tour.

“I think you have the skill now. Your
putting is average. Without that belly putter you would really
suck. The rest of your game is professional level as far as I can
tell. But I have never played on the tour so how would I know. I do
know that at that level the game is mostly played in the space
between your ears.”

“Bobby Jones right?” He guessed. They often
traded golf quotes.

“Ben Crenshaw!”

“I am going to give it a try you know. The
California Q School is in June so I’ll go to California in May and
practice some of the courses. Will you come with me?”

Maria didn’t know how to respond. She would
love to go away with Burt, or Gord, or whoever he was. They had
long passed the point where they questioned their commitment to
each other. But she only had a forged, and out of date, Mexican
passport. It was good enough for civil purposes in Mexico, but it
would never pass U.S. immigration. She had thought of applying for
a real Mexican one but that would put her at real risk of exposure
and probably jail for fraud or something like that. She didn't know
what to do so she just stalled.

“We’ll see. I have my work here. Besides,”
she asked as she grabbed his ass with one hand, “aren't good
athletes supposed to give up sex during competition?”

“Naw,” he responded with his own hand. “The
priest coaches of Catholic high schools in Quebec thought that up.
In the schools I went to it was mandatory to have sex before
competition, darts, pool, bowling, football, doesn’t matter, sex is
necessary. A required part of the athletic curriculum.” He changed
the subject. “Do you ever think about how you are a little
different than anyone else? I mean in the sports you play, golf,
martial arts. Do you ever wonder why you are so good at golf? Ever
wonder why you and I can take on a bunch of twenty-somethings?”

“Good looks? Talent?”

“Sure. Some of that I guess. But there is
something else. Let me show you. Stand up.”

He stood facing her. “This is a little game
we used to play where I worked. We called it palm slapping. Put
your right hand out and put the palm on top of mine. The goal is
for me to pull my hand out from under yours and slap the top of
your hand. If I can do it I win a prize – a kiss from you will do.
Let’s try it.”

As much as he tried he could not act fast
enough to slap the top of her hand. This was actually a test the
Agency used to find people like them people with special reflex
skills. He had never paid much attention to the technical
description of the syndrome; he just knew from conversations with
Mary that it was an identifiable trait of many outstanding
athletes. As soon as he saw Maria fight, and saw her hit a golf
ball, he knew she had the syndrome and, in fact, had it to a far
greater level than he did. If Richard knew her special skills she
would be a recruit for sure. Over the past couple of months he had
been researching the syndrome on line and now wanted to explore it
further.

“Tell me. When we fight do you see things in
a sort of slow motion? Can you actually see the golf club strike a
ball?”