Virgin Territory Read Free Page A

expert, but to me it doesn’t look that exceptional.
    “What’s going on?”
Mr. Schulman shouts from the other side of the fairway. He and Mr. Loomis have moved themselves into the shady sidelines, and I can see that Mr. Loomis had taken his hat off and he’s mopping his bald spot with his monogrammed sweat towel.
    I wave at them, hoping to offer some kind of reassurance but at the same time signaling for more time.
    “So,” I say to the woman, “are you guys finishing up here, or are you going to be a while?”
    She gives me a hard look, and I can tell that I’m a disappointment to her. She steps closer to me, places her hand on my arm again, and whispers, “Look. It’s Mary. Can you not see her?”
    “Mary?”
    “Yes. The Mother of Our Lord. The Blessed Mother. Right there. On the tree. She’s here for you.”
    The woman’s words send a chill up my spine.
She’s here for you
.
    The Blessed Mother is here for me?
    Jesus
, I’m thinking.
How am I going to explain
this
to Mr. Schulman?

Down to Earth
    Under normal circumstances, I would’ve run home, gone straight to my room, and Googled the Blessed Virgin Mary. I could’ve learned all kinds of interesting facts—like what she was up to and why she’d chosen a tree on a golf course in Jupiter as the site of her latest appearance. But that’s not the way it happens.
    “What d’ya want my laptop for?” Doug asks as he pulls his whole head back and squints down his nose at me. I’m feeling like a menu with no featured special.
    I don’t mention the tree or the women or the golfers. I’m also not going to discuss the threats and ultimatums that Prendergast made in an effort to get the women to vacate the premises. I figure something like the Blessed Virgin Mary showing up at the golf course on a Tuesday afternoon is a situation too complicated for Doug to understand coming off his workday. There’s a moment when I think maybe he might appreciate a description of the police car bumping and careening across the fairway withits lights flashing and sirens wailing. We were all pretty impressed at the time. But then I realize that it’s more of a you-had-to-be-there situation, so I just shut up. I also don’t mention how the cops had treated the women as though they were a bunch of armed jihadists with a plan to blow up Jupiter. And I leave out the part of the story where the women were physically escorted off the course while being told by Jack Felder, the owner of the club, not to set foot on his property again or he’d be forced to take legal action against every last one of them. In the end, I tell Doug that I’m doing a report on the Virgin Mary for extra credit for my world religion class.
    “But it’s summer,” Doug reminds me.
    “I’m getting a jumpstart,” I tell him. “It’s part of my new plan.”
    “Yeah, right,” Doug scoffs before moving on to the next thing, which is a beer.
    His back is turned toward me, and as he pops the cap of the beer bottle, I notice that there’s a clod of dirt stuck to his neck. I don’t say anything about that, either. Why bother.
    Doug didn’t always work in the dirt. Back in New York, his place of employment was an editing bay; he sat for long hours in an airtight studio, staring at a video monitor, pressing buttons, and making the lives of various brides and grooms add up to something. His job was to record the goings-on of longtime friends and family who’d come to celebrate the love of a brand-new Mr. and Mrs. He’d edit out the embarrassing bits, addsnazzy graphics, and generally make everyone look a lot better than they looked in real life. He delivered the edited memories to the bride and groom in the form of a single mastered DVD, all for a set fee. In those days Doug was always in demand. Someone was always getting married and as a result, I didn’t see much of him.
    When we moved to Florida, everything changed. Doug and I are now practically joined at the hip. He insists that we eat