Beginner's Luck

by Laura Pedersen

  Plato's philosopher kings? Sure, whatever he says. Because for twelve bucks an hour he's the boss and he can call me a yard person or a philosopher queen or anything else he wants. In fact, I'll wear a name tag. Now that I think of it, Mr. Bernard and Ms. Olivia could both be communing with fairies. I've read that dementia runs in families just like alcoholism. He offers a leisurely wave good-bye as if I'm a ship pulling up anchor. The gravel crunches under my tires, and as I pedal past the mailbox at the end of the driveway I notice the name rush underneath Stockton. Maybe it's a government-subsidized halfway house. Who cares, as long as their checks are good. Though I suppose I'll find out soon enough. In the meantime, I'm starving, and decide to raid the church pantry.

  Chapter 9

  The Inside Dope «

  As I'm making a left onto Vine Street I hear a car honking from behind, the horn just barely audible over "We Are the Champions" blasting from the radio. Jane screeches to a halt alongside of me and sprays the roadside ditch with a wave of gravel.

  "There you are!" says lane. She turns down the radio. "Come help us deliver donuts. We had to sell them to raise money for the homecoming dance."

  Sure enough, there are at least thirty boxes of donuts crammed into the back.

  "Okay, okay. But only if you've got something for me to eat."

  Gwen leans her head over to the driver's-side window. "Plenty, if you like donuts."

  Jane helps me attach my bike to the roof rack while Gwen throws my bag into the back. Jane and Gwen couldn't look more different. Jane has a short athletic frame and a shaggy chestnut-colored ponytail, and is a full-fledged sleeps-with-a-mitt-under-her-mattress jock. In fact, because Jane constantly needs to be around bats, balls, and sweatbands she works at the sporting goods store for only four dollars an hour when she could make almost twice as much baby-sitting.

  Gwen, on the other hand, is tall with violet eyes and a mane of honey-blond hair that falls perfectly around her heart-shaped face and dances on the tops of her shoulders. Meantime, I mostly keep my kinky apricot-colored curls in two braids so as not to frighten people or attract the attention of nesting animals in the colder months.

  Gwen and Jane like to insist that I am imagining the ill effects of being sixteen, and so they clip articles for me about how teenage girls with poor body self-image and low self-esteem are twice as likely to develop eating disorders or commit suicide. Does my habit of a half dozen chocolate donuts a day qualify as an eating disorder? And if I eventually choke on one of them will people say it was suicide, or worse, donutcide?

  Jane spins the wheel and sings along to Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill album while Gwen examines her perfectly sculpted eyebrows using the passenger's-side mirror. It's my job to sit in back and prevent the donut towers from toppling over and also to employ my knowledge of Euclidian geometry and the surrounding environs to determine the best route. On the delivery sheet Gwen has scrawled the mysterious acronym V2 instead of a street address.

  "What's V-squared?" I yell above the music.

  "Video Village," she replies. "My mom sold those on her lunch hour."

  Gwen will marry a rich man or have a trust fund, or both. So her leniency with the alphabet and numbers won't be a problem. I, on the other hand, am heading to Las Vegas the minute I can afford a car.

  The geographer in me dictates that we should first complete our deliveries near Main Street and then work our way out toward the surrounding neighborhoods. At one end of town is a block of municipal buildings. At the other is the high school, Grange Hall, YMCA, and the public library. In the middle section is the movie theater, grocery store, and white stuccoed funeral parlor. The funeral parlor makes me think of Craig. What if I die without ever kissing him again? I eat another chocolate donut. It's just what the magazine articles warn against—substituting complex carbohydrates for love.

  "So what do you know about Craig Larkin and Brandt's sister, Sheryl Shaeffer?" I direct this question to Gwen, since she runs the electronic dating bulletin board that tracks couples.

  "Splitsville. Sheryl found some college guy whose daddy is a big-deal real estate tycoon," Gwen reports authoritatively. "You know—yellow sports car, winter ski cabin, beach condo in Florida. She must have inherited her mother's expensive tastes," Gwen adds sarcastically. Sheryl's mother is always stylishly dressed in tight-fitting designer suits with short skirts, her nails all lacquered up, and lots of jewelry stapled to her, as if a safe filled with gold bullion split open on her head. Actually, Sheryl and her mom look more like sisters than mother and daughter.

  After Gwen returns from making the drop at Video Village, she tosses Jane the money to put into a manila envelope with a thin red string attached to the flap.

  "I love your shorthand," I say, once again scrutinizing the delivery sheet. "What do three plus signs mean?"

  "They're crosses, stupid. Our Lady of Perpetual Agony." That's Gwen's code name for her church, which is really Our Lady of Perpetual Sanctity.

  I instruct Jane to turn left off the main drag. She blasts Madonna's version of "American Pie," spins the wheel with one hand, hides a cigarette below the dashboard with the other, and sings, "I was a lonely teenage broncin’ buck with a pink carnation and a pickup truck.. . ."

  We pull up to the ornate Catholic church that has some housing for nuns in the back, a small primary school attached to the side, and annoying electronic bells that can play all twelve verses of any hymn.

  "Do you think ... that they, you know, Craig and Sheryl, were having sex?" I ask.

  "Are you kidding me?" Jane shouts above the radio.

  "Of course they were having sex," Gwen states authoritatively. "Sheryl flunked seventh grade, so she's, like, almost nineteen. That's why she dumped him. Sheryl's over high school guys."

  While Gwen walks the donuts to the rectory, Jane and I work on our nun jokes. Only we pretend it's the nuns sitting around in their habits, throwing back a few whiskeys and cracking wise about their students.

  "What's green-and-blue plaid and spins around in circles?" asks Jane.

  "What, Sister Mary Jane?" I play along.

  "A third grader with her homework caught in the wheel of the bus."

  Gwen returns minus the donuts and we're off to the outlying neighborhoods.

  "Turn right into Mush Acres," I announce. It's what we called Marsh Acres, the most run-down section of town.

  "Do you want us to find out if Craig still likes you?" offers lane.

  "Oh please, how could a guy like Craig actually have a crush on me?" I know this is like raising a pink flag to the Oprah-fiers, but sometimes a girl needs a push.

  They both make the appropriate sighs and then Gwen goes first. "Of course he could still like you. If you hadn't been so idiotic about who was supposed to call who after you made out at that party, then you'd be wearing his football jersey today." Craig and I had briefly exchanged saliva over the summer while Sheryl was off having her dimples bronzed. He was an incredible kisser—just the exact right amount of spit, tongue pressure, and groping. Only we never kissed or even spoke again after that night.

  Jane goes next. "Guys don't make out with you where other people can see if they don't want it on the public record. And excuse me, but I'm sure that Craig did call your house. You just never get any phone messages with all those kids answering the phone and chanting 'The Alphabet Song' to whoever's on the line."

  Jane has a valid point. Communication is challenging, with the twins constantly using the cordless phone to play "near" and "far" along with Sesame Street's Grover.

  "I'll ask Megan to ask her boyfriend Mike whose older brother Brian is best friend's with Craig's cousin Todd to find out if he likes you," says Gwen.

  There you had it. Four Degrees of Gwen.

  "Okay, but don't make any calls on my behalf. I mean, ask if you think of it. It's no big deal. Don't go out of your way, like don't go home and phone him just to ask."

  Studying the list, I say, "The last stop is way out on Ran
som Road."

  "That's a guy my dad works with," says Gwen. "He can bring them to the office on Friday, when he gets back from his business trip."

  I fail to mention that by then the donuts might be, well, they might be better employed as paperweights. But I don't feel like going all the way out there either. Ransom Road is in the boondocks, where all the farm kids live. Though with the current rate of suburban sprawl a lot of wheat farmers are selling out to developers. Sprouting up in place of amber waves of grain are outlet centers and warehouselike bulk supermarkets.

  "You know, Hallie," Jane tells me solemnly, "you'd better get a body double if you're going to keep ditching school, because that creepy Attendance Nazi, Mr. Collier, was staking out your desk during first period this morning."

  "Thanks," I say. "What a selfless act of devotion on his part. I can feel the love."

  Gwen invites me back to her house for a makeover, where she has her own bathroom equipped with ldieg lights, foundation for a nation, and rotating magnification mirrors. "If you'd just blow-dry your hair, apply mascara, and use sunscreen so your nose isn't always clown-red, you wouldn't need to spend so much time wondering if guys like you. They'd be chasing you."

  "Yeah, Gwen, guys will be chasing me with Band-Aids, a silver cross, and a handful of garlic is more like it."

  "Oh, Hallie," Gwen says, as if it isn't her fault that I'm destined to be a permanent "before" photograph in her hall of beauty.

  "You probably should stay at Gwen's," advises Jane, though not for cosmetic reasons. "If Collier was stalking you in homeroom, then that means he went to your house today."

  The girls offer to drop me at home, but it's Monday night and I have a steady engagement that requires my presence. At least it does if I ever want to be able to afford a car in order to get to Vegas and start my new life.

  Only it isn't until the station wagon is out of sight that I realize Jane has accidentally given me her World Cup duffel bag in place of my own. Shit. I hope she doesn't have a take-home test or something else she needs in there. Then I realize I'm the one in trouble, since that's where I thought I'd put my betting money. However, I relax upon locating my stake in the small pouch attached to the seat of my bike and quickly head around the corner to the church.

  Chapter 10

  Deal Me In ♠

  When I reach the back entrance of the solemn granite-faced house of worship, the sun has already set behind the bell tower and though the vestibule light is not switched on there are four cars in the parking lot and the door is unlocked. Inside, deep voices rise from the basement stairwell and I cling to the splintery railing while carefully making my way down the rickety wooden steps.

  The basement is dimly illuminated by three bare urine-colored bulbs. Bluish cigarette smoke clogs the air and the scent of freshly opened salt-and-vinegar potato chips competes with the powerful aroma of bayberry coming from an open box of candles that sits on a broken pew next to a dust-coated Christmas manger. In the center of the noxious haze four middle-aged guys huddle around two card tables pushed together while the bulkiest and the only African American, Officer Rich, acts as banker and issues red, white, and blue plastic poker chips in exchange for cash. He's still in his uniform except for the dark brown tie and stiff cap, which hang off the chair behind him.

  "Oh great," sneers Herb Rowland, the local pharmacist, seeing me standing at the bottom of the staircase. "It's ladies' night."

  "Just think of it as more money for you to win, Herb," Officer Rich suggests. The fact that he's wearing a badge adds a natural diplomacy to his words. "So what are you in for, Hallie? A Jackson Five?"

  But I don't have my usual five twenty-dollar bills tonight. "Just a saw-buck." I toss the crumpled ten from my oil strike onto the table and take the empty chair next to Pastor Costello and directly across from Al Santora, a technician at the municipal water-treatment plant. Pastor Costello says hello and Al grunts, anxious to deal the first hand.

  "Spend all your money on boxing lessons?" asks Herb, obviously alluding to my shredded elbows and scabbed hands.

  "I'd hate to see how the other guy looks," says Officer Rich.

  "You won't," I remark dryly. "He's dead."

  We play poker for a little over three hours, with a short break for some sandwiches that Father Costello picked up at the deli. The food is usually compliments of God.

  Herb wins the first few rounds, which makes him cocky, so he overbets and has to go back to the bank. Al catches a bunch of hands near the end, but they're chump change. Officer Rich folds often and folds early. He has an extremely overbearing wife. But he plays well and manages to win a couple of big rounds. Pastor Costello wins and then loses and then wins and then loses and mumbles, "The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away." I'd wager that if you calculated his overall balance sheet from playing cards, it'd come to exactly nil. He's proof that life is a zero-sum game.

  If it doesn't cost much to stay in, then I don't fold up, or else the guys will think every time I do stick it's because I've got the cards. Sometimes you have to bluff just to get caught bluffing. However, I manage to take three healthy pots, and that puts me slightly ahead.

  Finally, it's the last deal of the night. I hold a dead man's hand of two pair—aces and eights. Pastor Costello drops a one-eyed jack in front of me, which he'd called as wild, so now I have a neat boat. I clean up a tidy profit of seventy dollars. Only it's mostly from Al, and so I won't be able to collect until he gets paid in three weeks, on the first of the month.

  It was almost two years ago that I'd happened across this discreet low-stakes poker game, which follows the Monday night Grounds Committee meeting. Actually, it is the Monday night Grounds Committee meeting. The way the guys figure it is that they all meet on church grounds. Also, Grounds Committee is a carefully chosen moniker that brings to mind pruning and snowplowing and therefore doesn't attract the womenfolk.

  Most people would probably wonder how a teenage girl managed to get herself invited to a weekly poker game with three beer-swilling locals and a man of the cloth. And the truth is that I wasn't exactly invited. When I don't feel like heading home for dinner I stop by the church to raid the apple juice, ice cream, and graham crackers, all kept in good supply for the Sunday school. And sometimes, if there's been a meeting of the Ladies' Craft Group, or better yet, a board meeting, I can scrounge up cinnamon swirl coffee cake and even a leftover turkey sandwich. This is all thanks to the fact that the basement window is never locked. Actually, the metal frame is so caked with rust that it won't even close all the way, a little ecclesiastical inside information to which Marty Benson, the town drunk, is also privy.

  Anyway, one night I pried open the window, and when this huge cloud of smoke hit me in the face I swear I thought the whole church was going up in flames. Pastor Costello quickly appeared at the back door, probably assuming I was seeking spiritual solace, rather than some old-fashioned appetite appeasement. And after explaining that I was just sniffing around for a crust of bread he quickly trundled me downstairs and offered me access to the seven-card-stud buffet. In fact, I was hustled inside so fast that it seemed he was worried someone might be following me.

  Initially the guys denied my request to join in for a few hands. But then I whipped out a hundred bucks and asked if they knew high-low seven-card stud. That definitely swung the mood in my favor. And when I mentioned how it was funny that I'd never heard any of their wives talking about the game, I was immediately offered not only a seat at the table but a stack of poker chips and my own bowl of pretzels.

  "I should report you to the cops," Al says with mock disgust when the game is finally over.

  "The police are already here," Herb chimes in from across the table. He nods in the direction of mild-mannered Officer Rich.

  "Good point," says Al, gathering up the grease-stained red diamond-backed playing cards.

  "You're not even old enough to drive," he taunts me.

  "Am so! I turned sixteen last Monday, and now that my los
ing streak is over I'll soon have enough for a used car."

  "Remind me again, Rich," Al says dryly. "Why do we let her play in our guys only poker game?"

  Officer Rich rises and straps on the clunky black belt that suspends his holster and parking ticket book, the latter looking more used than the former.

  "You know why. Because she knows too much."

  Even though the game is over, Al shuffles the cards out of habit before replacing them in the worn cardboard box. He casts an accusatory glance in the general direction of Herb. "That's your fault," he says.

  "Goddammit—sorry, Father—nothing is going on with Jemma!" Herb declares defensively. "She works for me, and so I just offer her a ride home once in a while ... when the weather is bad."

  "Oh yeah, Herb," I reply and laugh right in his face. "And the entrance to Harriman woods is on the way to both your homes."

  "I wish you would get a car," says Herb irritably. "That stupid bicycle of yours goes too many places."

  "Well, it's not as if you're out keeping the streets safe for virginity," I retort.

  "Jesus Christ—sorry, Father—why doesn't everyone mind their own beeswax," Al says, mostly to me, apparently back on Herb's side. He's aggravated that he has to write an IOU. An IOU to a teenager. To a girl.

  "Maybe you should withdraw the money you owe me from your secret Saving-For-A-Boat account down at the bank," I say. "The one that your wife doesn't know about."

  "And how the hell did you hear about that?" Al stands up and glares at me, not so good-naturedly. "You think you're so smart, don't you, Hallie Palmer?"

  "Smart enough not to take a hit playing blackjack when I have seventeen and the dealer is showing a six."

  "All right, all right," interjects Pastor Costello. "I think that's enough revelry for one evening, gentlemen." He glances over at me. "And lady."