"Dead Solid Perfect" by Chris A Jackson

Dead Solid Perfect

By

Chris A. Jackson

I woke to the sound of dirt falling onto a wooden panel two inches from my nose, and a splitting headache.

This can't be good, I thought, taking a deep breath.  There wasn't much to breathe in here, and the air was thick with a metallic odor that was all too familiar.

Blood…

I worked my hand up to my head and felt the matted hair and the huge sore spot where something had dented my skull.

"What the hell?"  My voice sounded muffled in the confined space, a space that I was beginning to realize fit the dimensions of a coffin all too well for any level of comfort on my part.

Another crump of dirt hitting the other side of the wood in front of my face brought full-force panic.  Someone was burying me alive!

"Hey!" I screamed, pounding against the solid wood of my subterranean prison.  "Hey!  I'm alive!  Let me out!"

Another crump of dirt, more muffled this time, told me whoever was doing the burying either didn't hear me, or didn't care.  I pounded against the lid of my coffin, screaming for help.  I pushed, heaving against what must have been tons of dirt weighing down on my grave.  I screamed louder, but it just caused my head to pound, and probably used up what little air I had left that much quicker.

I tried to think, to suppress the panic.  I don't think I succeeded, but my breathing slowed and I stopped screaming.  That was a start.  Screaming and pounding on an inch-thick wooden box would not save my life, what little was left of it.  I had to think.  That had always been how I made my way in life…  I might not be strong, tall, athletic, or any of those things that the magazines said you should be to have a perfect life, but I was smart, and smart would get you a lot.

It had gotten me a lot.

So, the first question was, who would want to bury me alive?

The answer came as I groped around the confines of my coffin for something, anything to help me escape.  My fingers touched a long metal shaft about a quarter inch in diameter.  At the end was a wedge-shaped piece of metal, at the other, a comfortable neoprene grip made especially for my hands…

It was my seven iron.  My favorite club.  And the face of the wedge was crusted with dried blood and bits of hair… my blood… my hair….

Someone had clocked me in the skull with my own seven iron, then threw me in a box and buried me alive.

But who?

My memory was a blur of pain, but it was coming back in fits and starts.  Something about that club, about when I had held it last…  The flash of a face framed in fiery red hair… beautiful… sultry…  perfect… 

Perfect… That had pretty much been my life.  I had everything I ever really wanted: great job, good money, beautiful wife, awesome kids...

Now if I could just get my golf swing down.

I probably spent a good twenty hours a week on the links, trying to perfect my swing, my stance, my grip…  But I could never even come close to breaking par.  My handicap remained squarely fixed at an abysmal twenty, no matter how I tried.

Then she came into my life…

Oh, I know what you're going to say: seduced by a pretty face, long legs, great figure and a voice that would have most men begging on their knees in five minutes, but as I already told you, I had a beautiful wife and everything I really wanted.  I wasn't looking for female companionship, and I wasn't looking to be flattered by a drop-dead gorgeous woman.  I knew that trap.  I'd seen many of my friends fall into it and come out looking like a surfboard after a shark attack.

So I was a little skeptical when I heard this sultry voice over my shoulder as I'm just settling down to hit my first drive on the first tee.

"You're grip's not right, Sam."

My concentration snapped like a virgin bride's garter belt on the wedding night.  Irritation at having my swing interrupted must have put a pretty sour look on my face as I looked back at the stunning woman standing there leaning casually on a driver, one eyebrow cocked in amusement at me.

"Do you mind?" I asked, heaping as much scorn as I could onto the phrase.  I mean, this was a private club, and not a cheap one.  I was paying five figures just for the membership!  That ought to buy some privacy while I tried to work on my swing.

"Not at all," she said, hefting her driver and producing a ball from someplace I could not imagine, considering her attire didn't exactly lend itself to pockets. 

Before I could say a word of protest, she walked past me, bent and trust her tee into the turf like was performing the coup de grâce on a vampire.  She stood and glanced back at me, just to confirm that my eyes had wandered over her shapely backside as she bent to place the ball on the tee.

"You might want to step back, Sam."

"Look I don' t know who you think--"  but before my protest could even be fully voiced, she took a stance and addressed the ball.  Not even a warm-up swing, and the ball shot as straight as an arrow right down the fairway.  It was the longest drive I'd ever seen!  The ball hit dead center on a beeline to the pin and carried another hundred yards before coming to rest at least four hundred yards from where her club had struck it.

"Holy ****!"

"Dead solid perfect," she said as if it were a matter of fact.

I couldn't even react to the sheer arrogance she exuded, the absolute 'I am the center of the universe' attitude she projected with every move.  I was mesmerized, and not, as you might think, by her; no, I was captivated by her swing.

"How did you do that?" I asked, unashamedly awed by her prowess with a driver.  She'd just hit the ball almost twice as far as I every had in my life.

"Would you like me to show you?"  She walked back to her bag and slipped her driver home like she was placing a flag at the top of Mt. Everest.

"Of course," I admitted, "but I've had more lessons than you've seen years, Lady, and I still can't break par.  I've had the best instructors money can buy, and I still suck."

"Well, I'm no lady, and I don't give lessons, but I'll show you what you're doing wrong if you want me to."

"Yes," I said, not knowing what else to say, then adding, "please!"

"Let me show you, then."  She motioned me to take up my stance, and I did, then, I'll be damned if she didn't sidle up behind me and put her arms around me.  I stiffened as she pressed up behind me, every curve of her warmth against my back.

Her hands settled over mine and I swear they must have been ten degrees above body temperature.  I started to break out in a sweat.  Then she whispered in my ear, "Relax, Sam.  I'm not trying to seduce you, I'm just trying to show you how to swing."

"Okay," I agreed, shocked not only by her manner, but by her forthright admission.  I tried to relax, loosening up my shoulders, my hips, and settling my grip.  When I thought I was ready, I nodded.

"No, Sam.  I mean, relax…" and her hands pressed over mine, adjusting my grip with subtle pressure, her hips moved against my butt, and my stance shifted, suddenly more stable, more relaxed.  Her breasts pressed against my back, straightening my posture minutely, easing the pressure in my shoulders, aligning the muscles, releasing the tension that I had not known was there.

"There.  Can you feel it?"

"Yes," I said, and meant it.  I could feel a great many things, and would have been uncomfortable if I hadn't been experiencing a most euphoric 'Zen' moment that was so much more profound than any sexual experience I'd ever had.

"Yes, I think you do," she said, easing away, disengaging her embrace with the deft moves of a dancer.  "Now, knock the hell out of the thing."

And I did.

It was the best drive I'd ever made.  It didn't match hers, but the ball settled no more than a couple dozen yards short of her mark.  I stood there, slack jawed, awed by my own performance.

"Holy…"

"Dead solid perfect," she said, and I looked back at her smile and laughed out loud.

"How the hell did you do that, Lady?  I've spent enough on lessons to put my kids though the best schools in the Ivy League, and you gave me a perfect swing in thirty seconds!"

"I told you, I'm no lady."  She held out her gloved hand and smiled at me as though I'd just made a joke.  "My name's Nahemah"  Her grip sent a wave of heat up my arm.

"Nice to meet you," I admitted.  "How do you know my name?"

"Oh, a friend sent me up here to help you out with your swing.  I've done a little coaching here and there, and he thought I might be able to help you."

"Oh?  Who?"

"Never mind."  She picked up her bag and nodded toward mine.  "Come on, lets finish the front nine and you can buy me a drink."

"Okay."  I picked up my bag and followed her swaying skirt down the fairway easement toward our balls.  What else could I do?

It was the best round of golf I've ever played.  Two under par after eighteen glorious holes.  She shook my hand at the end of they day and said she'd see me around.  I never thought I'd break par on this course, and here I had with only one lesson, and it hadn't even been a conventional lesson.  She never once told me how to stand, grip or swing, she just did that thing and told me to relax, and like magic, my shots were perfect.

Perfect…

No, not just perfect; Dead Solid Perfect, which was what she said after ever shot.  It almost sounded like a mantra after the first nine holes, and I started muttering it myself.  It became my own mantra, and every time I said it my shots were perfect.

That was when my life started to go to hell.

Coming home to a hysterical wife holding an envelope full of eight-by-ten glossies of you in the arms of a beautiful woman, albeit in the milieu of a golf lesson, is not how I recommend any man spend an afternoon.  I tried to convince Lori that the relationship was only golf-related, but that flew just about a well as one of my pre-Nahemah drives.  It landed flat in the bunker, and Lori threw the photos in my face and ran away to lock herself in the bedroom.  After a miserable night on the couch, and a worse day at work the next day, I came home to an empty house and a note.

Lori had taken the kids to her parents' house, and I could expect to hear from her lawyer.

This had gone far enough.

I spent three days hunting Nahemah down.  I finally found her on the back nine of a community course under renovation on the South Side; not exactly where I'd expect to find a woman like her playing golf.  There was equipment all over the place, backhoes and bulldozers cutting artificial hills and bunkers into the flat course.

"Sam!  How are you!  How's the swing?"

"The swing is fine, Nahemah, it's my life that's in the toilet, and you know damn well why!"  I advanced on her and threw my golf bag on the grass.  "What do you want?  Money?"

"What?  I don't understand, Sam.  What's wrong?"

"You know perfectly well what's wrong."  I jerked one of the crumpled photos from my bag and thrust it at her like a weapon.  "Who are you working with?  Why me, and why do this?  You never even asked for anything, you just ruined my life!"

"Hmm, not my best side, is it?" she said, cocking one immaculate eyebrow at the picture before taking up her six iron and advancing on her ball.  "So, I gather she didn't appreciate the… uh… proximity of our lessons, hmmm?"

"What do you want from me, Nahemah?"  I advanced on her and stood right in the way of her shot.  "You've ruined my marriage and taken my children.  If you don't help me straighten this out, I'll… I'll…"

"You'll what, Sam?"  And she swung.  Her club missed my nose by half an inch, and her ball passed between my legs, missing me by half that.

"You're ******* crazy, Lady!"  I jerked my seven iron out of my bag and held it like a weapon, ready to knock her pretty teeth right down her pretty throat.  "Give me my life back, or I'll wrap this thing around your neck!"

"Calm down, Sam," she said, unimpressed with my tirade.  She slipped her iron into her bag and shouldered it.  "I can give you your life back, but you've got to do something for me."

"Oh, here it comes!"  I stepped in front of her, not about to let her walk away.  "How much do you want?  Ten thousand?  Twenty?"

"I don't want money from you, Sam.  I just want you to sign a contract."

"What kind of contract?"

"Well, that's the trick.  You can't read it.  You just have to sign it, and I'll fill you in later."

"You've got to be kidding me.  You want me to sign a blank sheet of paper and you fill in the contract after?"  I let a hysterical bark of laughter escape my throat.  "That'll never hold up in court!  It's ridiculous!"

"Nevertheless, that's what I want."  She produced a rolled bit of paper from behind her back and pulled loose the thin black ribbon holding it.  The paper, or parchment, I guess would have been a better word, for the edges were irregular, and the stuff looked more like cured animal hide than any kind of paper I'd ever seen.  And it was utterly blank.

"You want me to sign that?"

"Yes."

"And you'll give me my life back.  You'll explain this whole thing to Lori?"

"You sign this, and I promise that the rest of your life will be perfect, Sam."

I don't know if I believed her, but there was no way she could screw my life up worse than she already had, so I said, "Fine.  Give me a --"

She handed me an old fashioned fountain pen, black, with a crimson nib.  I was too pissed off to notice, or care.  I grabbed the pen and tried to sign, but the parchment just flapped in the breeze.  I tucked my seven iron under my arm and tried holding the document flat, but it wouldn't stay.

"Here, give me that."  She took the club and turned her back so I could lay the parchment flat and sign.  I briefly fantasized about driving the flashy pen through her perfect back, but sighed and signed.

"There," I said, handing the paper back to her.

She glanced at the page, and before my eyes, angular script flared across its surface in a wave of flame.  I thought I was hallucinating for a moment.  I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep the last few days, and I was spread a little thin.

"Now, give me my perfect life back, Nahemah."

"Okay, Sam.  Here's you perfect life."

Her eyes flared with the same fire that had swept across the paper, her hair writhing as if made of flames.  She whirled in a lightning pirouette and lashed out with my seven iron.  As I fell to the dry grass of the fairway, I heard her laugh, and her last words rang in my ears…

"Dead solid perfect."