Once Upon a Tee Time

A week later, Ray stood by the kitchen window, staring at the mailbox in front of his home. Steve, the postman, generally arrived in his van around 2:00 p.m. It was now 1:52. Ray had been on vigil for twenty minutes. He was anxious to start hitting a ball again.

Despite his week off, maybe because of it, Ray had been drinking lots of the good stuff at the Nineteenth Hole. Harvey had been shrewd to negotiate use of a full year’s average of Ray’s scores; the mean over the last month would have been a couple of strokes higher. Although Knickers and Mulligan pulled out their wallets without complaint, they looked forward to having the real Ray back.

As a spectator, Ray enjoyed watching the others more closely than usual. He even made suggestions for improvement based on stuff he’d seen on the Golf Channel. He noted that Harvey, with his feet close together in his stance, tended to stab down at the ball too much. By spreading his feet more, he could sweep the ball with a more consistent blade angle. As for Knickers, the only detectable flaw was in his putting stroke. Despite being a student of the game, he ignored the cardinal rule of following through with his putter after contact. He jabbed at the ball as if he were bunting a baseball. Mulligan’s main problem was psychological; he rarely used enough club. If Knickers could hit a seven iron 160 yards, Mulligan figured he should too. Thus, he swung too hard and lost control too often. When Mulligan ignored his advice, Knickers intervened, explaining it was the number on the scorecard that mattered, not the one on the bottom of the club.

The highlight had been the new direction of conversation. Finding the right home for Knickers’ money was a serious subject, one that brought out a reflective side in men who were typically comics in each other’s presence.

Harvey had done everyone’s homework. He reported that over $300 billion had been donated to charities by Americans in the last year alone. Churches were the top beneficiary of that generosity, with almost a third of the total. Nearly $50 billion was donated in the name of education, with colleges leading the way. In total, there were over a million registered entities serving every imaginable cause. There were also rating services that detailed how efficiently they operated.

Ray assumed Mulligan would be the dominant force in the discussions. He also guessed he would make a compelling case for cancer research. Although Mulligan never talked about it, most of Leisureville knew his wife Mary was a cancer survivor. A decade earlier, her name had already been chiseled into a gravestone when a new, experimental treatment saved her. Despite that, Mulligan championed the Veterans Administration, citing the care his brother received over a decade of battling a variety of health problems. Until then, his playing partners were unaware Mulligan even had a brother.

That revelation led to others. Harvey, while an advocate for education for the most part, believed Hospice deserved consideration. Lucy’s mother and father had received the organization’s support in their final months, while she and Harvey were busy with their jobs. That led the other men to talk about their own parents, about both their lives and their passing.

Ray shared thoughts about the importance of environmental protection, a regular topic in Alaska over the years. He shared stories about mining projects that destroyed salmon spawning grounds and the infamous oil spill near Valdez back in 1989. Subsequent questions about Alaska spurred hours of talk, during which he shared his life story with the others for the first time.

Through all the chatter, Knickers mostly smiled and nodded and made Ray wonder: Was he really coaching them to be better people? Was he inspiring them like he said he would?

Touched by it all, Ray had risen early on Sunday morning and visited Friends, the homeless shelter near Leisureville’s southern gated entrance. He didn’t have deep pockets like Knickers - his were empty in comparison - but he wanted to do something to help people. Upon entering, he was greeted by a young man who appeared to be the host. Ray asked if he could talk to whoever was in charge.

The man directed him to the breakfast line instead. “You don’t have to ask for help here,” he said, patting Ray on the back. “Have a healthy meal and we’ll be over to get a case file started.”

“You don’t understand,” Ray returned. “I want to volunteer. I can clean and even cook. I can do whatever you need.”

“That’s a great attitude,” the host responded. “I’ll bet we can find you a paying job and get you back on your feet in no time.”

Then it was clear. The host assumed he was homeless or destitute. Ray realized why. He had a bandage above his nose and broken glasses drooping across his eyes. Although his clothing was fashionable - yellow slacks, a navy blue and green-striped polo shirt, and a green cap with the Leisureville insignia - he looked no different than twenty people eating breakfast at the tables. Apparently, the senior population was dying off rapidly enough to keep the shelter well supplied with donated clothing. The group was dressed like customers at the Nineteenth Hole.

Impressed with the clean and friendly facility, but dispirited that he wasn’t needed, Ray dropped some bills in the donation box before heading back home. He’d have to find another way to serve mankind.

Tired of waiting for the mail, Ray walked to the living room and picked up a Ping putter that leaned in its customary spot in a corner. The club was a twin to one in his golf bag, the one he called Pinger. Three balls sat on the floor beside it, and he pushed them to the center of the room. His target, a corner leg of the dining room table, was twenty-five feet away and four inches wide, almost the same size as a regulation cup. Having attempted the putt a thousand times, he knew a ball would break a few inches to the left. He missed first to the right, then the left, and again to the right. It wasn’t that long ago that he hit the leg half the time. Discouraged, he put the club back in the corner.

His next glance out the window was rewarded. The mail truck had arrived. He went to the refrigerator and grabbed a can of Arizona Green Tea for Steve. In addition to the normal collection of envelopes and advertising, the mailman held a small, white box. The men quickly exchanged gifts.

Steve popped the can. “You’re the best, Ray. Thanks!”

“No, you’re the best,” Ray said, looking at the Eagle Optics label on the box. “I’ve been waiting for these babies.”

“Glad they arrived then! Give my best to Pat.”

“As soon as she gets home.”

At the kitchen counter, Ray cut the seal around the box with a steak knife. Two white plastic lens containers and a small bottle of ophthalmic solution were nestled inside.

Grabbing one of the containers, he rushed to the bathroom to install his new eyes. After opening the compartment labeled “L”, he put the lens on the tip of his right index finger and removed his tattered glasses. Tilting his head back, holding the eye ajar with his left thumb and index finger, he dropped the lens into place the way Pat had shown him. After his eyelid fluttered, he grinned in the mirror. Bull’s eye!

He studied himself through the single eye. Where his bandage had been, the bruise looked more ominous than it had through his glasses. So much for clearer vision, he thought. Outside of the damage and stitches, though, he loved his more vivid image. He glanced around the bathroom and nodded excitedly. High definition came to mind. If only he had known this possibility existed years ago!

“Watch out, Mulligan and Knickers,” he announced. “There’s a new man on the tee!”

Now the right lens. He placed it on his eye, blinked, and was stunned by an explosion of light, like someone had taken his photo with a flash. He closed the eye and reopened it cautiously. The brightness returned, but he tried to stare through it. He seemed to be on the other side of a camera now, looking through the viewfinder, a circular viewfinder. Had he put the lens on backwards? Was that even possible? Something was very wrong.

He opened both eyes. His sight disintegrated into a mass of clutter and pain shot through his forehead. He closed the right eye and exhaled when normal sight returned. He stumbled to the toilet and sat down to collect himself.

After removing the problematic right lens, he returned it to the case and collected the second set of lenses from the kitchen. The other right lens was fine. The left one also worked. The one lens was a mistake, a lemon. He would send it back to Eagle Optics for replacement, or at least Pat would take care of the chore.

Feeling energized, he hurried to the garage and backed Birdie Chaser into the driveway. He unwound the garden hose and started scrubbing down the cart. She would look her best for his return to the course in the morning.

While working, he constantly looked up at the new grandeur of the neighborhood. The bushes and trees were no longer just shapes, but clusters of individual leaves. The flowers in the garden were brilliant, inviting his nose to sniff them. Knickers’ recent reference to the Land of Oz whirled into his mind. Nope, he wasn’t in Kansas anymore. This world was pure Technicolor. Had it even looked so glorious when he was a boy? He couldn’t imagine it. Thank you, Gladys Beckerman!

Out of nowhere, a huge head popped into his imagination. He was still exploring Oz, apparently, because the giant face was the all-powerful wizard, the same one that frightened Dorothy and her friends when they first visited Emerald City. The image morphed into an oversized version of his own face, one that was looking back at him through the viewfinder in that odd right contact lens. The presence of a circle had shocked him so much that he hadn’t realized what he saw within it. He dropped the hose and rushed back into the house.

In the bathroom, he returned the lemon lens to his right eye. His image became clearer as the eye adjusted to the light. The view triggered a surprising flashback. He was young again, a boy of maybe ten. He was visiting an amusement park in California while on vacation with his family, enjoying an attraction called the Funhouse. A hallway had a series of full-length mirrors that distorted his image in a variety of weird ways. One mirror made his legs appear to go all the way to his chin. Another made him look like he weighed 300 pounds. Still another, like the one he now faced, made his head look huge. In overall effect, he was seeing himself through a magnifying glass, a circle of clarity surrounded by gray fog. Vision was limited to only what was directly in front of him.

His nose was grotesque. Each gaping pore seemed large enough to hold a flagstick. The depressions on the sides of his upper nose, a result of forty years of wearing glasses, looked like bunkers. Hideous gray and black hairs jutted from all over his cheeks and chin like willows on winter tundra. He reached out to touch the mirror, to confirm the reality of it all. His fingers touched nothing but air. He was lost in space.

Shutting his right eye, he opened the other. His hand appeared, just inches in front of his right cheek, nearly two feet from the mirror that appeared to be so close. It was all a curious illusion.

Was the lens a trick gadget? Could Knickers be playing one of his elaborate practical jokes? Was he sitting somewhere laughing, wondering what his friend’s reaction would be? Knickers’ pranks had surprised him more than once over the years.

No. It couldn’t be. He knew Knickers well enough to see through his damn tricks. He couldn’t pull off something this difficult.

Ray stepped back and looked around through the new toy on his right eye. The bathroom mirror looked ten feet tall! A folded washcloth was the size of a bath towel. The sink seemed more like a bathtub.

Concerned with the length of his whiskers, he decided to shave again. He took a can of shaving cream and his razor from the medicine cabinet, chuckling at the sight of them. They were a barrel and a rake through the lens. A mundane chore became a challenge; he had to adjust his movement to compensate for the lie his eye was telling him. Nothing was anywhere near as close as it seemed. After the shave failed to hide the stubble, he pledged to buy a sharper razor.

He decided to tour the rest of the house, his Funhouse, with the odd lens. The tidy bedroom was suddenly a mess. The royal blue carpet looked as if Mulligan had dropped cigar ashes all over it. The debris - clinging lint, hair, and crumbs - had been invisible a minute earlier. He hauled out the vacuum and went over the entire surface twice, but couldn’t get it clean. He added a more powerful vacuum to his shopping list.

In the living room, his right eye focused on Pat’s substantial library, shelved on a wall thirty feet away. He could read every title and the name of every author. The books seemed to be within reach.

He glanced toward the dining room. The leg of the oak table, his putting target, was a damn telephone pole! How could anyone miss that?

He glanced at his jumbo putter and three baseball-sized Titleists. Taking the club, he pushed the balls into a line and stroked one toward the phone pole. It rolled barely halfway to the target.

“Remember,” he told to himself, “you have to compensate.” His second putt was a foot short. The third took a chip from the oak.

He proceeded to putt all over the house for the next ten minutes. Every chair and table leg became a flagstick. He hit one target after another, without even thinking. He couldn’t miss! Pure magic. A supersized putter was simple to align. The larger ball was easier to steer. The pin was the proverbial side of a barn. His putter seemed to be on autopilot. Autoputtit, he thought, laughing aloud.

Dashing to the telephone, he considered which of his friends to call first, then stopped himself. Why tell them about it? Why ruin his fun? How would they react when he started making putts for a change?

Moments later, he was in Birdie Chaser, heading for the practice putting green near the clubhouse, pushing the speed limit. His newfound jewel was secure beneath his right eyelid while he steered with his left eye.

During his first year at Leisureville, he spent an hour on the practice green every day, searching for a way to shave a few strokes from his score. While all the rest of his clubs performed their jobs well; Pinger had always been an underachiever. In pursuit of improvement, he had tried every grip he could imagine. He spread his hands, overlapped them fully and partially, even tried his left hand below the right. He interlocked four fingers and just a couple. The same went for his stance. He stood with his feet close together and far apart, toes pointed in and out, knees flexed and straight, bending over and standing tall. He even copied the exact form of his favorite pro, only to find that the pro himself changed styles the very next week. Harvey once suggested that he experiment with a different model of putter, but he stayed loyal to his old mallet. Divorcing Pinger would be unfair after all their years together, not to mention those two club championships.

During the past year, he hadn’t stepped onto the practice green even once. Now he felt as if he were heading there for the very first time. Motoring along, he waved to other drivers and dog walkers. A few of the pet owners frowned in return - perhaps at his excessive speed, possibly because he didn’t stop to deliver treats. Some folks winked as if they somehow knew his secret.

But how could they know? Was all this a dream?

No, he realized. They winked at him because he appeared to be winking at them. One of his eyes was pinched shut.

Ray stopped behind the ninth tee to admire the view through the new contact lens on his left eye. While Alaska had amazing vistas - majestic Mt. Denali, calving glaciers, streams teeming with salmon, herds of caribou dotting the tundra - nothing touched his heart like the sight of a golf course.

Remembering that his right eye would give him a very different perspective, he opened it. Blinding sun snapped the eye shut, sending his mind reeling. So, he wondered, that’s it? I’m only going to be a great putter in my living room? I can’t take it outside where it matters?

A short-legged fuzzball at the end of a long leash walked up to Birdie Chaser and barked. Ray looked apologetically to the owner, a cotton-topped lady who apparently had her own hair styled by the dog’s beautician.

He held up his hands and shrugged. “I’m so sorry. I don’t have any Milk Bones today. I left the house in a hurry.”

The lady wore sunglasses and a sympathetic smile. “That’s what happens when you spoil her all the time, Mr. Plumlee. Little Wendy is always on the lookout for you!”

“Sunglasses!” Ray yelled out. “I need sunglasses, that’s all.”

“My sunglasses?” she asked. “You want my sunglasses?”

He had to laugh. “No, no, no. I need sunglasses like yours. They look so great on you.”

She nodded. “You aren’t the first man to tell me that.”

Ray wondered where he could get sunglasses quickly. He’d never worn them in his life. The bill of a baseball cap had always provided sufficient shade.

“In fact,” the woman continued, taking off her tinted glasses, “a lot of men think I look very young for my age, although I’m really not that old.” She batted her eyelashes and beamed.

Ray grinned. “And you’ll stay looking young if you keep up with your exercise. Have a great day.”

He touched the throttle, then the brake. Harvey kept sunglasses in his golf bag. And the bag was right behind him. Seconds later, Ray wore wrap-around shades that felt great. After so many years, glasses were as much a part of him as his nose and ears.

The scene changed dramatically when he opened his right eye again. The woman’s departing dog became a polar bear! The little lady was an imposing giant. What captivated him most was that the world beyond them had disappeared into mist. After a few more steps, both the woman and dog were enveloped by the cloud and gone.

Ray closed the right eye and opened the other. The world returned to normal. The woman was only thirty yards away. A red car approached and passed her.

Ray switched back to his right eye. The car was right on top of him! Instinctively, he dove headlong out of the way, ripping his pants and bloodying his left knee on the edge of the road.

Reopening his left eye, he saw that the car had stopped in the middle of the street. The driver rushed over to him. “Are you okay?” the man asked. “Why did you jump like that? You scared the hell out of me.”

Ray put the puzzle together. He only thought the car was close. The strange right lens tricked him into leaping for his life. “I’m sorry,” Ray mumbled, getting to his feet. “I had one of those hallucinations or something. I thought your car was going to hit me.”

“But I was nowhere near you,” the man protested, shaking his head. “I was driving around you, going slow. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You’re absolutely right. I’m sorry to have scared you like that.”

“You aren’t going to try to sue me or anything?”

Ray shook his head, limped to the back of his cart, and unzipped the ball compartment of his bag. He took out three new balls and handed them to the elderly stranger. Here’s something for your trouble. Call it a goodwill gesture.”

The man took the balls and examined one. “Wow! ProV1! I’ve been playing Noodles. Thanks, mister.” He returned to his car and drove off smiling.

Back in the cart, Ray tried to process what was happening. The lens supersized everything, but only allowed him to see up to maybe 25 yards. What was he supposed to do with such limited vision? He felt a tingling sensation on his right eye, a reminder of exactly what he was going to do. It was time to putt.

A lone person stood on the practice green, the same man he saw on the driving range last week. The wide-brimmed hat and long shorts were a dead giveaway. Ray pulled Pinger from his bag, along with five balls, and joined him.

Even through his left eye, the green looked freshly inviting. Nine holes were scattered across it, each with a short flagstick. He dropped the balls about twenty feet from one, kneeled behind them to gauge the break, and turned to his right eye. The condition of the grass carpet changed even more dramatically than the rug in his bedroom. Scattered clumps of grass stood taller than the rest and clods of dirt littered the surface. Granules of fertilizer reminded him of the rock salt he used to scatter on his sidewalk and steps in the winter. Most notably, the cup itself looked as large as a bucket. He stepped back from his Titleists and switched to his left eye. The hole shrank. The green was smooth as a table top.

He stood over a ball, opened his stance to allow a better one-eyed view, and focused on the center of the flagpole with his right eye. His hands quivered. His knees trembled. The toes of both feet bounced around in his shoes. Was he nervous or afraid? Or just plain excited?

He stepped back and drew a couple deep breaths, releasing them slowly. He remembered the leg of the dining table. This was no different. Why was he making it different? Why was he suddenly worried about a soft grip, locked wrists, and smooth shoulder movement? In the house, he had stroked without thinking.

He stepped back to the ball and gave it a whack. It tracked right at the flag before stopping a few inches short. He hung his head and groaned. There were many ways to miss a putt, but coming up short was the most inexcusable.

Moving to another ball, Ray realized the first putt blocked the cup. He aimed at the final “t” in Titleist, at what appeared to be the center of the roadblock, and hit the second ball. It struck the target perfectly, knocking the first ball into the bucket.

He proceeded to roll the next two putts into the hole as well. The final ball would have joined them if there had been more room in the cup around the stick. To confirm the reality of his accomplishment, he checked the scene with the left eye. There were his balls, seven long strides away, gathered around the flag, overflowing the cup.

How often did he make putts of that length on the course? In his heyday, a few years back, maybe once in five tries. Nowadays he rarely made any. The reality of his new ability suddenly overwhelmed him. His body quaked and his bladder erupted. Dropping Pinger, he ran toward the clubhouse restroom, hot lava running down his left leg. He couldn’t remember ever doing such a thing, but didn’t care a lick. Piss on everything! The lens was a damn miracle!

After cleaning up, he returned to the green. The man in the straw hat held Pinger, examining the club closely. He handed Ray the putter. “That’s some stick you have there, Mr. Plumtree. I never saw nobody make so many long ones like that.”

Ray figured Plumtree was close enough. “And what’s your name?” he asked, offering a handshake.

“Harold Perkins. I saw you get clobbered on the driving range last week. Whew! That was a bad one.” His gaze dropped to Ray’s torn, wet, bloody pants. “Looks like you’re havin’ trouble today too.”

Not as much trouble as you think, Ray thought. “It’s good to meet you. Let’s see if I can keep it up.”

Ray selected a more distant target, thirty feet away. The previous putts only foreshadowed his capability. After removing the flag from the cup, he made four of five putts while Harold whooped and hollered. Even at an amazing forty feet, he drained three more! There was slope to the green, significant break, but it didn’t matter. His right eye recognized the right path to the hole instantly. All he had to do was keep Pinger moving in a straight line and hit the ball hard enough.

As Ray continued, the tingling beneath the right lens grew into an irritating sting, then an aggravating burn. His little bottle of eye drops was still in the kitchen. He closed the eye and rubbed the lid, triggering even more pain. It was time to head home.

Driving back, he tried to think through the growing discomfort. How could he putt like that? How could anybody? While the holes seemed huge, they weren’t disproportionate to the size of his golf balls, right? Why was it all so easy? It made no sense.

Or did it? Was it a matter of focus? When looking at the huge hole through the round window, he saw only the target. Nothing else. No distraction. The lens reminded him of the four-power scope on his old Remington hunting rifle. If he remained still while squeezing the trigger, there could be no miss. That was especially true if the caribou or moose was motionless, like the hole in the green.

But how did that account for the way he could read the terrain? A bullet was fired in a straight line, with occasional allowance for wind or distance. Putts on a golf course were rarely straight. Maybe size made all the difference with vision. He could glance at the tilt of the green, the slant of the grass, and simply know what to do.

Forget abouthowit works, he told himself. Why was it delivered to him? If there was such a product on the market, wouldn’t he have heard something? Harvey certainly would have read about it and told him. Wouldn’t all golfers be using them?

He waved to three elderly women, all lined up and power-walking, striding and pumping their arms in unison. Amanda, Dorothy, and Linda ... no, Lois. Very impressive. Maybe he would start exercising more vigorously once he reached eighty.

A thought hit just after he passed them. He U-turned and caught up.

Matching their speed with the cart, he called out, “Hey, Amanda.”

She glanced over from under the bill of a white ball cap, a ponytail of her natural gray hair bouncing behind it, but didn’t miss a stride. “Hi, Alaska. I thought that was you, but the sunglasses kind of threw me. I haven’t even had a chance to write and thank you and Pat for the anniversary card.”

Ray could only wonder when the anniversary may have been; Pat was clutch. “Save a stamp. I’ll let her know. How’s your Sid doing?” She and her husband always called each other my Sid and my Amanda. Real lovebirds. Pat and he used to socialize with the couple when they first arrived in Leisureville.

“He’s home packing the car. We’re off to Minnesota tomorrow.”

Ray remembered that they owned a cabin on a lake there. It was a remote place where they stayed all winter without electricity or anything. Sid spent days on the lake ice-fishing and she mostly sewed and baked. Everyone joked that they were reverse snowbirds, but tough old birds seemed like a more apt description.

“I was thinking,” Ray said. “Wasn’t your Sid an eye doctor?”

“An optometrist.”

“Do you think he’d mind if I dropped by to say hello?”

“Of course, not. He’d be delighted.”

The Wexlers lived only a block from Ray’s house. The men had met at the golf course and played a few rounds together, which led to dinner invitations back and forth. That was seven years ago. Ray felt guilty about not maintaining the relationship, but his new golf partners absorbed all his time. The garage door was open and Sid was packing the trunk of his car.

When he looked up, Ray asked, “Are you off to the Far North?”

Sid smiled broadly. “Alaska! It’s been too long.” In the shade of the garage, Ray removed his sunglasses and gave him a hug.

When the older man stepped back, he noticed the ding on Ray’s forehead. “What happened to you?”

“You’re probably the only person in Leisureville that hasn’t heard. I was hit by a golf club that got away from Mrs. Beckerman.”

“Gladys? I didn’t know she was a golfer.”

“She’s not. She was taking a lesson.”

“How serious was the injury? You’ve got an eye closed. Did she hurt your eye?”

“Naw, she just broke my glasses. Now I have contacts. I know you’re busy getting ready to leave, but I wondered if you could look at one of my lenses. I think it’s unusual.” Ray removed the right contact and felt instant relief.

Sid took the lens on his fingertip and stared at it. “Let me go get my Loupes,” he said, referring to a magnification device. He went into the house and returned a minute later. “I want to look at this outside, in better light, but it appears to be a defective lens.”

Holding the lens up to the sky with his left thumb and forefinger, he studied it through his magnifier and nodded. “I’m not that familiar with the manufacturing side of things, but I’ve seen countless lenses and I know how they should look. This one maybe got some air trapped in the acrylic when they molded it. Come here and I’ll show you.”

Ray looked at the magnified lens through his left eye. Sure enough, there was something inside it, something round. A thin crack?

Sid said, “Yep, only an air bubble would turn out perfectly round like that. See the clear circle within the lens? It must be a defect. Can I see your other lens?”

Ray removed the left one. Sid examined it and said, “This is a healthy lens. Send the other one back and they’ll give you a new one. Mistakes happen.”

He turned to Ray. “Now open that right eye for me. I thought I saw some inflammation.”

Sid squinted at the eye through his Loupes. “That’s very irritated. Why would you wear that bad lens for more than a second? It has to distort your vision.”

“It’s definitely not like the other one,” Ray acknowledged.

“A contact lens directs light to the center of your eye, where it needs to be for normal sight. That flaw in your lens would interfere with that.”

“It makes things look bigger than they really are. Much bigger.”

“See? That’s distortion. Take this magnifying glass for example. It has a convex lens, meaning it bulges outward. It bends light rays in a way that changes how we see an object. Your lens could be thicker in the middle because of that bubble. Send it back immediately. And never put it on again. It really rubs that eye the wrong way.”

“Don’t worry,” Ray said, taking the lens back. “Have a safe trip. That’s a long way to be driving.” He turned to leave, then glanced back. “Don’t catch all the trout in that lake. Leave a few for the summer fishermen.”

What an incredible stroke of luck, Ray thought. His new putting talent was all due to a manufacturing error. What were the odds of that? Was it heaven sent?

When Ray opened his garage door, he saw the Lincoln. Pat had finally made it home. Before entering the house, he put the right lens back on his sore eye so he could demonstrate his superhuman vision.

“Where have you been?” she shouted at the sound of the closing door. “It’s four o’clock and we have to be at Lucy’s for dinner at five.”

Ray found her in the bedroom, modeling a red dress in front of the mirror. Two other candidates were laid out on the bed behind her.

“You aren’t going to believe this,” he said, beaming.

“Why are you squinting?” she asked.

“Never mind that. Let me take you to the practice green so you can see what I can do!”

“You’re kidding, right? I have to get ready.”

“My contacts arrived today. It’s unbelievable.”

She stepped closer to her husband. “Why is your eye closed?”

He opened his right eye, automatically closing the left, then stared at his wife in disbelief. She had a mustache! He slammed the wicked eye shut.

“Your right eye is bloodshot,” she said. “What was that shocked expression on your face all about?”

“Don’t worry about the eye. I think maybe a bug flew into it.” He had fibbed on the fly. After fifty-three years of marriage, he knew dishonesty was sometimes the best policy. If his wife knew what Sid Wexler said, the lens would be gone in a second. For his part, he’d learn to live with some discomfort. What was the old expression? No pain, no gain?

Pat twitched her nose. “What’s that smell?” She lowered her eyes to the stain running from his crotch down a leg of his tan slacks. “How did that happen? And how did you rip the knee of your pants?”

He hurried from the room to put his underwear in the washing machine and drop another pair of trousers in the garbage. On returning, he said, “I got excited ... the most excited I’ve ever been.”

“How did you scrape your knee? You need to clean that up and get some antiseptic on it.”

“I tripped is all. Didn’t you hear me? I’m reborn!”

“I knew you’d be happy with contacts,” she said, picking up a blue dress from the bed.

“Happy? I’m not happy. I’m exhilarated. I can putt like a pro. How can you be taking this so lightly?”

She held the dress in front of her and posed. “You’ve always been a good golfer. I’m reminded of it every day.” She nodded at the two Leisureville Championship trophies on the dresser.

He was getting nowhere. “See the painting on the wall over there?” he asked, reopening his right eye. “What’s the name of the artist in the right-hand corner?”

“I already know, dear. It’s Francis or something. I picked out the painting.”

“It’s Frankson. F-R-A-N-K-S-O-N.”

Pat looked across the room at the painting of a fishing boat anchored in a picturesque cove. “Very good. I can’t see any name at all.”

“So … what do you think about that?”

“Well, I think it’s probably time for me to get an eye exam too.”

The pain in Ray’s eye was spreading to his entire forehead. He went to the bathroom and removed the right lens. After returning it to the storage case, he replaced it with the normal one.

Pat called to him from the bedroom. “Put some drops in your eye. You know where I keep them. Get cleaned up for dinner.”

Under the spray of the shower, he took stock of the situation. As much as he wanted to tell everyone about the lens, he sensed it would be better to say nothing, at least for now. Pinger could do all the talking.

Still, as he stepped into clean trousers, he couldn’t help himself. “It’s amazing that I could read that name on the painting, don’t you think?”

“The Eighth Wonder of the World,” Pat deadpanned.

Exactly, he thought. “Why do we have to be at the Greens so early?”

“You know they don’t believe in eating after six. It’s a health thing. Cocktails at five and dinner at five-thirty. They want to show off their grandsons. They’re staying there for a few days while their parents are on a second honeymoon.”

Ray slipped into a sport jacket and was ready to go. He put the contact case with the special lens under his pillow for safekeeping.

“If you need something to do for the next twenty minutes,” Pat said, pulling a flowered white dress from her closet, “you can get some gas in the car. I drove all over the place today.”

The Lincoln! He hadn’t given the car a thought since recording the mileage last week. “Is the gauge still on full?”

“Yes, but I know better.”

He grabbed the keys off a hook in the garage and got in the driver’s seat. From behind the visor, he took the paper with the mileage number. He wrote the number from the odometer above it and did the subtraction. The car had been driven 149 miles in the last week. Pat had been busy.

“Okay,” he said aloud. “Let’s get this mystery solved right now.”

At the gas station, he slid his credit card into the pump. The flow into the Lincoln’s tank stopped in just seconds. 1.9 gallons! He squeezed another two tenths into the tank, filling it completely. Almost seventy miles to the gallon? In traffic? Suddenly, he had an inspiration.

Back at home, Pat still wasn’t ready. Ray found her in the bathroom, applying makeup. “What did Mr. Tanner do for a living?” Ray remembered he had been a scientist or something in his working days and always tinkered around in his garage.

“He was a chemical engineer, wasn’t he? Remember the box of heat packets he gave us at Christmas one year? He helped develop those.”

Ray grinned. An explanation was taking shape. A person could take one of those packets, scrunch it up, and the chemicals inside reacted in a way that gave off warmth for hours. They were perfect for stuffing in boots or gloves in cold weather. Quite phenomenal really. And there were the gel packs in the freezer too. Mr. Tanner helped design those. Stick them in a cooler and they’d keep beer cold all day. Mr. Tanner was an inventor! Obviously, he came up with a way to make his car engine more efficient. That was the answer! A person who could a turn a packet of granules into an all-day furnace could do anything.

Ray hurried to examine the car. He had the hood up, looking for something unusual, when Pat came into the garage.

“Time to go,” she announced, settling into the passenger side of Birdie Chaser.

Ray noticed nothing unusual about the engine. Then again, why would he? He knew zilch about automotive mechanics. He slammed the hood shut.

“Do you realize we’ve been getting seventy miles to the gallon in this car?” he exclaimed.

“That’s good, right?”

“Good? No. It’s fantastic! It’s the best mileage I’ve ever heard of. Motorcycles get mileage like that.”

Pat smiled and nodded. “What do you suppose we’re having for dinner?”