She's Got Game (15 page)

LATER THAT NIGHT
, Jamie was editing a video on her laptop in the studio when Dash called.

“Hey, what are you doing?” he asked.

“Depends.” Jamie asked “What are you doing?”

She loved the way that even the most basic conversations had romantic overtones when you were falling in love with someone. It had taken this relationship with Dash to make Jamie understand the meaning of the term
sweet nothings
. She could've talked to Dash about the weather, the size and shape of the Venetian blinds in her studio, the number of stitches in his golf shoes—and she would have been perfectly happy and entertained.

“I'm talking to my girlfriend,” he teased. “Listen, I've got a big game coming up, and I was hoping you could come.”

“I think I can do that,” Jamie said. “When is it?”

“This Friday,” Dash answered. “The twenty-sixth.”

Jamie's pulse quickened. Friday was the day after Thanksgiving, so there was no school. But it was also the day
before
Binky's
quince
, officially known among the members of Amigas Inc. as
Quince
Eve. And while on Christmas Eve you generally spent a quiet evening at home with your family, wrapping presents, eating yummy food, and anticipating the big day, things were different on
Quince
Eve, which meant running around putting out fires and, more often than not, dealing with a late night full of last-minute details. Alicia and Carmen would
kill
her if she skipped any of it. Maybe if she promised to pull an all-nighter…

“I'll be there.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. How long could a golf game last, anyway? She'd be away from her Amigas duties for four hours, tops.

“Awesome,” he went on. “I leave for Palm Beach Thursday, but my father and Binky are coming up for the day. I was hoping you'd come up with them.”

“Palm Beach, wow. That's far away,” Jamie said. “For some reason I thought it would be a nearby thing. I kinda was supposed to work.”

“Totally; I get it. Work trumps cheering your boyfriend on. Your poor, sad, lonely boyfriend, who might just blow the biggest game of his life, because he will be missing you…”

Jamie caved.

“I'm
so
coming with you,” she said, beaming into the phone.

“That's more like it. And to thank you, we'll have dinner at the Breakers afterwards,” Dash said. “Hopefully, it'll be a victory dinner.”

The next day, Jamie dashed into Bongos for a meeting with Carmen and Alicia. She had called them and told them that they had to talk, but not told them why. She'd dressed for the event in a Lilly Pulitzer dress with a pair of fishnet tights and hot pink combat boots.

“Preppy much?” Alicia asked when Jamie slid into the booth where they were waiting.

“Yeah, I never figured you for the Lilly type,” Carmen agreed.

“It was a gift from Dash, and I kinda dig it,” Jamie said. “I put my own spin on it with the fishnets and the boots.”

“Like it,” Carmen said, nodding.

“Me, too,” Alicia said. “It's unexpected; that's cool.”

Jamie just wanted to spill, but before she could, she had to wait for the usual catching up, a few minutes of
quince
talk, and then a few more of deciding on food. Finally, after the tapas and snacks were ordered, Jamie broke her big news.

“I've got to go to Palm Beach on Friday to see Dash play in a championship match,” she said, the words tumbling out of her mouth like bumper cars with no brakes.

Carmen and Alicia exchanged glances. They were silent. Until…

“Are you kidding?” Alicia shouted.

“That's
Quince
Eve!” Carmen cried, horrified.

“It just that Dash has this huge match.…” Jamie began.

“And
we
—as in,
your partners
—have got this huge party to throw,” Alicia pointed out snippily.

“Well, technically, you could look at it as part of work,” Jamie said tentatively. “I figure that spending two hours in the car with Binky—I mean, Bianca—is a good way to calm her nerves the day before the big event.”

Carmen and Alicia weren't buying it. “What about the nerves of her twenty-four relatives who are flying in from all over the country—and Venezuela—who need to be picked up at the airport and greeted at the hotel with maps and welcome baskets?”

Jamie took a deep breath. She tried a different, slightly less honest approach. “I have no choice, you guys. Mr. Mortimer himself personally requested my attendance.”

“Come on, Jamie, let's keep it real,” Alicia said. “There's a yachtload of work to do, and you just want to blow it off so you can take a road trip with your boyfriend. The boyfriend, I might add, whom you never tell us anything about and who has seemingly changed you—a lot.”

Jamie felt as if she'd been slapped. She had known that Carmen and Alicia would be mad at her, but she had hoped they would cut her some slack this time. She always pulled her own weight. Binky's
quinceañera
was no exception.

She took a deep breath, trying not to lose her cool completely. “I'm asking for eight hours off, that's all. And I don't complain when I'm alone in my studio at all hours, pouring sand through a funnel into two hundred and fifty message-in-a-bottle invitations. How about this? I'll do all the welcome baskets by Thursday. Then I'll have the Mortimers' driver take me to the hotel so I can drop off baskets and maps for the guests before we leave on the trip.”

Carmen shook her head. “Alicia's right,
chica
. I don't know what's gotten into you. First you're all Bronx and anti–rich girl. Then it's like you're the Bride of Golfenstein and you're wearing country-club dresses and talking about having the Mortimers' driver do your work for you.”

Jamie fought to blink back the tears, but it was impossible. They started flowing, and once they started, they wouldn't stop.

“You guys are being so mean right now,” she said through her sobs. “Do you think it felt good all those times I was the fifth wheel to your perfectly matched sets? Alicia, you had Gaz. Carmen, you had Domingo. And now I've
finally
met someone, and I'm so so happy. Isn't my happiness bigger than one day of errands?” She picked up her purse and put ten dollars down on the table, payment for food she wasn't staying to eat. “It's okay,” she said. “You don't have to answer, because I've already decided. Being happy, being in love—finally—is bigger to me than Amigas Inc. Consider this my notice. I quit.” She rushed out, bumping into Domingo on the way.

“Hey,” he said, grabbing her arm. “Everything okay?”

“It's not,” Jamie said. “But it will be.”

Back in the restaurant, Alicia and Carmen were in shock. “She's gone off the deep end!” Alicia said, laughing hollowly.

“It's like she got hit in the head with a five iron,” Carmen said.

They paused and looked at each other.

“We weren't too hard on her, were we?” Alicia asked hesitantly.

Carmen shook her head. “She shouldn't have ditched us at the last minute, boyfriend or not.
Quinces
are a huge amount of work. Nobody knows that more than Jamie.”

Jamie took the bus to her favorite consignment shop, So Five Minutes Ago. She needed to clear her head. She felt better the minute she opened the door and heard the familiar bell clang.

The owner of the store, Aerin Lauper, was ringing up a customer, so Jamie just waved hello and began browsing.

When Aerin was done, she came over. Aerin had grown up in Hawaii, the daughter of a Korean mom and a German dad. She put a plastic lei around Jamie's neck. The Hawaiian welcome was part of what made her shop so popular.

“
Maholo
, Jamie, what kind of
quince
magic are you trying to make today?” Aerin asked.

Jamie looked down at her hands. “Well, actually, today, I'm looking for me. I've got some credit for the Air Jordans I sold you a few months back, right?”

Aerin laughed. “Are you kidding? You could buy half the store for what those Jordans are worth.”

“Excellent,” Jamie said. “I want to get some more dresses like this.” She pointed at what she was wearing. “And maybe some kitten heels.”

“Busting out a new look, huh? The Bronx meets Jackie O. I like it.” Aerin said.

“Something like that. I've got this new boyfriend, and he's a big-time golf player, and I'm feeling in need of a change.”

“Most of the girls who come in here want to change their look
after
they break up, not when they first start dating.” The older woman began walking through the racks, deftly pulling out argyle cardigans, pastel polos, and ice-cream-colored miniskirts in Jamie's size.

“Well, you could say that I'm breaking up and falling in love with a new guy at the same time,” Jamie said. She explained how she'd quit Amigas Inc. and was going to focus all of her attention on her art and her relationship with Dash.

“But you love planning
quinces
,” Aerin pointed out.

“I know, I just…” Jamie could feel the tears coming again. “I just need a break, that's all.”

“You didn't ask for my advice, but you remind me so much of myself when I was your age that I've got to give it: don't just do the country-club prep thing without putting your own spin on it. I think this makeover needs a little more Latin flavor.”

“What do you have in mind?” Jamie said, studying her reflection in the dressing-room mirror. “I'm game for changing
everything
.”

ON FRIDAY MORNING
, Jamie had awakened with a start. At Aerin's suggestion, she'd completed her clothing makeover with a new hairdo. The girl who now stared back at her in the bathroom mirror had Shakira-style dirty blond locks.

Her first impulse was to take a picture of herself with her cell phone and e-mail it to Alicia and Carmen. But as neither of her best friends had spoken to her since the Bongos blow-out, she didn't think the update would be much appreciated. Instead, she changed her profile picture and status on Facebook, asking the question: Is it true that
rubias
have more fun?

Aware that the last time she had gone out with the Mortimers her style choices had left something to be desired, she dressed carefully for the big match. She wore a strapless red and white Baby Phat dress, a red varsity cardigan with white stripes on the cuffs, and a pair of vintage-look red Miu-Miu wedge heels. She glanced at the image in the mirror. “A little uptown, a little downtown, a hundred percent me,” she said to her reflection.

Ferris was waiting in front of her house with the Mortimers' car. When she appeared, he jumped out and opened the door for her.

“Hiya, Ferris,” she said. Peering inside the empty car, she asked, “Where are Bianca and her dad?”

“They decided to go up yesterday to see Dash's early round,” the driver explained. “I hope you don't mind.”

“No problem,” Jamie said. Tentatively she added, “It's still kind of early in the morning for me. Would it be okay if I took a nap in the backseat on our ride up?” It was less that she was tired and more that by sleeping she could forget that she was ditching her girls—
had
ditched them.

“But of course,” Ferris replied. “I keep a silk pillow and a cashmere blanket in the trunk for exactly such occasions.”

Jamie found herself thinking, not for the first time, I could get used to this.

She woke up just as the car pulled into downtown Palm Beach. It reminded her a little of South Beach in its scale and architecture, but the people here were older, tanner, and wearing about ten times as much bling.

When they arrived at the golf course, Jamie was surprised to see hundreds of people milling around outside the front gate. It was what she might have expected to see at an arena-rock concert, not at a golf tournament. Even after she'd fallen for Dash, she'd remained fairly confident that golf was to professional sports what Latin was to modern languages—obscure and obsolete. This crowd was proving her wrong.

Ferris looked back at Jamie in the rearview mirror. “It can get pretty rowdy in there. Should I park the car and escort you to the VIP section?”

Jamie shook her head. “I think I can manage. Thanks.”

Ferris handed her a laminated pass that read:
PALM BEACH CLASSIC, JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIPS, ALL ACCESS
. Then he wished her luck and gave her his cell-phone number in case she got lost or needed his help.

Jamie thanked him and left the car. She'd been trying, ever since she met him, to figure out who it was that he reminded her of, and now it hit her: Alfred, in the Batman movies. Like Batman's confidant, Ferris was efficient, British, sensitive, and smart. The thought made her smile.

Jamie made her way through the crowd, surprised at its diversity. Maybe most of the players were white men, but the fans seemed to come from every walk of life. It took her a full twenty minutes to wend her way through the throng to the VIP section, where she spotted Binky and her dad.

“Whoa! I barely recognized you,” Binky said when Jamie walked up. “I like your dark roots—very rock-and-roll. Have the others seen the new style?”

“Um, no, and, well, I felt like I needed a change.” Apparently Alicia and Carmen were keeping quiet about Jamie's departure from the group. She was on the point of breaking the news when Mr. Mortimer smiled approvingly and said, “Change can be good.” After that, the moment seemed to have passed.

Growing more and more comfortable by the minute, Jamie relaxed and began to look around. The fairways were so green and perfectly manicured that they looked movie-set fake. The golfers and caddies, dressed in their classic hats, pants, and shoes, were almost too well coordinated to be true. And Jamie was fairly certain that she'd never seen so much plaid in her life. What she didn't see was the reason she'd gotten up at the crack of dawn and driven three hours to be there.

“Where's Dash?” she asked.

Binky nodded toward the right. “Press box.”

Looking in that direction, Jamie saw him, talking to a group of reporters. He seemed absolutely unfazed by all the cameras or the mikes that were thrust two inches from his mouth. He looked as comfortable answering questions from complete strangers as he had talking to Jamie that very first night at Ojos Así.

At that moment, he looked up, caught her eye, and tugged at his hair. Jamie wasn't an expert at reading lips, but she thought it looked as if he were mouthing,
What's up?

She gave her hair a shampoo-commercial-worthy toss and waved. There'd be time to fill him in later.

Play started, and almost immediately, Jamie realized that she had narrowly averted making a huge mistake. She thanked the shoe gods that she was wearing a pair of wedges and not the stilettos she'd initially pulled out of her closet. How was she to know, when she'd gotten up at six in the morning, that in golf, the fans followed the players, rather than sitting in the bleachers looking cute, the way they did in tennis. She also hadn't known how quiet everything—and everyone—would be.

“What am I looking at?” she whispered to Binky as they walked along the first hole. “Explain the basics to me.”

Binky shrugged. “Besides the fact that each of the guys are trying to get the ball in the hole in as few moves as possible, I don't know much. Mostly, I just try to stay hydrated and gorgeous.”

As they followed Dash to the next hole, Jamie tried to get Mr. Mortimer's take on what was going on.

“Oh, it's a magnificent game,” Mr. Mortimer said. “I consider it on a level with a martial art, for its combination of mental acuity, strength, and speed.”

Jamie had a hard time making the connection between golf and karate, but she went with it.

“One of the things that makes Dash so good is his strength; he opens so strong,” Mr. Mortimer went on. “He averages more than three hundred yards off of the tee.”

Jamie had no idea what that meant, exactly, but she got the feeling it meant Dash was very, very good.

“Did you teach him to play, Mr. Mortimer?” she asked in a whisper.

The question made Dash's dad smile. “I started bringing him to the club with me when he was just a toddler,” he said. “One year, when Dash couldn't have been much older than three, a client gave him a tiny little set of golf clubs as a Christmas gift. Ever since then, no toy, no food, no TV show ever interested him as much as this game. That is, until he met you.”

Jamie blushed. Surely, Mr. Mortimer was just flattering her. But why would he need to? If anything, one would have imagined that he'd have done just the opposite, trying to keep the Bronx girl away from his rich and increasingly famous son.

She was trying to figure out the perfect response—
I really like your son, too
, or maybe,
I quit my job with Amigas Inc. to be here today; that's how crazy I am about Dash
—when the unthinkable happened. Her cell phone rang. In the middle of all that silence.

Dash had been just about to make the putt, and according to the press accounts that would later appear, it was an easy one. But Jamie's ringing phone distracted him. He missed the shot.

All of a sudden, hundreds of eyes were on her, and because her giant purse was a bottomless pit, it took five full rings for her to find the phone and turn it off.

“Sorry,” Jamie whispered, looking at Dash. She apologized to Binky, Mr. Mortimer, and everybody else who was within earshot.

Luckily, her ringing phone didn't in the end cost Dash the game. She wasn't sure exactly how it was that he finally sealed the championship, as she kept her head down for the rest of the play. But as Mr. Mortimer explained it, “Dash crushed the tee shot for a third straight birdie, and that gave him control of the match.”

After his final putt on the eighteenth hole, Dash pulled Jamie out of the crowd and gave her a big hug.

“Thank you for coming,” he whispered, holding her close.

“Thank
you
for winning,” she whispered back.

He laughed. “Thank you for turning off your cell phone before my big game.…Oh, wait, you didn't do that.”

Jamie cringed. “Okay, okay, my bad.”

“Next time,” Dash said, in a teasing tone, “maybe leave your cell in the car with Ferris.”

She shivered at his words. Next time. There would definitely be a next time.

As they walked back to the club so Dash could shower and change, he ran his fingers through her hair. “It's different,” he observed.

“Different good or different bad?” she said.

“I think different good,” he said. “But I find myself wondering who the real Jamie is.”

She squeezed his hand and said, “You know what? For a long time, I was so into representing the boogie-down Bronx and playing the game that I think I got stuck in something that wasn't real. I'm not sure who the real Jamie is, either. But I'm having fun figuring it out. Do you think I look like I'm faking it?”

Dash kissed her on the lips and said, “There's absolutely nothing fake about you, Jamie Sosa.”