Water My
Melon

High noon, mid-July. The sun sat directly overhead like a disapproving referee. I was playing alone, or I thought I was, until a stranger in a bucket hat asked if he could join me on the fourth at PopStroke Palm Beach.

His name was Desmond. He was a retired orthodontist. He putted with a stance I can only describe as structural.

On the sixth, a downhill slider, maybe fifteen feet, the green falling away toward the creek like a tablecloth being slowly pulled. I gave it a breath of a touch. It curled, curled, and dropped. Birdie. Desmond applauded with real feeling.

I ordered us each a watermelon cocktail right there on the course, which felt like the most civilized thing I had ever done.

When it came, I nearly wept. Tito's vodka, clean as fresh linen on a line. Fresh watermelon, the taste of every Fourth of July I have ever spent barefoot. Mint, cool and green, like stepping into shade. A whisper of simple syrup. Lemonade, tart and sunny, holding the whole thing upright.

Pink. Ice-cold. Absurdly refreshing.

Desmond raised his glass toward the seventh green. "To the slider," he said. We finished all eighteen together. He shot a seventy-one and told me my teeth were excellent.