The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman

by Meg Wolitzer

  He had tried to put it all out of his mind. Instead, he’d been focusing on learning to play well.

  “The total amount,” said Mrs. Slater coolly now, “is eight hundred and eighty-five dollars.”

  Duncan certainly couldn’t tell his mother that, even though he and Carl stood a very good chance of winning a lot more than eight hundred and eighty-five dollars by the time the weekend was over.

  But Duncan had to get to that tournament. If he didn’t go, he would return to being an invisible nothing at school. He would be Lunch Meat forever. He would be no one, and he would have nothing. He wouldn’t get his portion of the prize money, and he and his mother would never get to move into their own home. He would be a person of no significance.

  Scrabble would save him; it had to. Sometimes at his great-aunt’s house he went into the hall closet and took out his mother’s old maroon Scrabble set, then he sat at the kitchen table by himself and moved the letters around on the board, thinking more deeply than he ever had in his life.

  “Okay,” Duncan said to Mrs. Slater in a small voice. “I’ll let my mom know.”

  Carl shot his mother a look, then mouthed something to her behind his hand. She mouthed something back. They stood in front of Duncan, talking behind their hands. Then Carl said, “Listen, Duncan. Just in case you don’t have the eight hundred and eighty-five right now, here’s a way to make it work. My mom and I have discussed this, and she wants to say something.”

  “If paying me back is a problem, Duncan,” Mrs. Slater said, “I would like to offer you a job.”

  “A job?”

  At age twelve, Duncan Dorfman had never held a job, unless you counted raking leaves in Aunt Djuna’s tiny front yard, which Duncan had done for free every weekend that fall.

  “Yes,” said Carl’s mother. “I work in advertising. One of my clients is a company that needs a great campaign. You know what a campaign is?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said.

  “It’s a way of getting people to know a product. We want to put up ads on billboards and at bus stops. We thought we’d start advertising locally, and see how it goes. I was thinking that the ads could feature you and Carl playing a game together. Of course, we wouldn’t show an actual Scrabble board, because that’s not allowed. And after all, this isn’t an ad for Scrabble. But we could make the board look kind of blurry, and show you and Carl concentrating hard. You would just be two wholesome boys playing a friendly game of . . . whatever.”

  Duncan thought about it, then said, “That sounds okay, Mrs. Slater.”

  “Isn’t that great,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette in an ashtray that had been hidden behind one of the statues. “If you do the photo shoot, consider the whole weekend in Florida taken care of. You and your mom won’t have to pay a penny.”

  Duncan was relieved about the money, and he and Carl went upstairs and began to play. They sat on the floor of Carl’s room, which was decorated to look like the inside of a ship, with a porthole for a window, and brass rails. Duncan and Carl sprawled out on the ocean-blue rug, eating Hoo-Has. It was obvious to both of them that Duncan was getting rapidly better at Scrabble, even without using his fingertips to pull the best tiles from the bag.

  “But, dude, once you actually do use your crazy talent at the tournament,” said Carl, “then we will rule.”

  Ever since they’d become partners, Carl had tried to convince Duncan that using his fingertips during the tournament wouldn’t be cheating. “Chill out,” he said whenever Duncan worried about it, or reminded Carl that he was uncomfortable about the whole thing, or that he was only planning on using his power as infrequently as possible. “I hear you,” said Carl. “I know you’re nervous. But just remember that you won’t be using a cheat sheet. You’ll only be using your fingertips and your brain, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Think of it this way: some kids have math heads, and they can figure out all the possible scores that different moves would get them. The ones who are best at Scrabble can do numbers as well as letters. But should they be disqualified because of it?”

  “No,” said Duncan.

  “Correct, Dorfman, correct.”

  Still, Carl explained, even without the ability to feel tiles or figure out points really fast, there were even more “tricks” you could learn to become a stronger player. Today, sitting on the rug in his bedroom between games, Carl taught Duncan about six-letter bingo stems. These were a combination of six letters which, when scrambled, could have a single letter added to them in order to make a bingo. That single letter could be a blank, Carl said, or it could be one of many different letters of the alphabet.

  “Dorfman, listen up. This is a little confusing. The most popular bingo stem is SATINE,” Carl said. “If you happen to have these letters on your rack, you can add one of a bunch of different letters to them, and then scramble them all up to make a bingo.” Carl took out a notebook in which he’d written the letters and words down. They included:

  A, which, when added to SATINE, got you the words ENTASIA and TAENIAS

  And then:

  B, which gave you BASINET and BANTIES.

  Going through the alphabet, you could wind up with the following:C: CINEAST, ACETINS

  D: DESTAIN, DETAINS, INSTEAD, SAINTED, STAINED

  E: ETESIAN

  F: FAINEST

  G: EASTING, EATINGS, INGATES, INGESTA, SEATING, TEASING

  H: SHEITAN, STHENIA

  I: ISATINE

  K: INTAKES

  L: ELASTIN, ENTAILS, NAILSET, SALIENT, SALTINE, SLAINTE, TENAILS

  M: ETAMINS, INMATES, TAMEINS

  N: INANEST, STANINE

  O: ATONIES

  P: PANTIES, PATINES, SAPIENT, SPINATE

  R: ANESTRI, ANTSIER, NASTIER, RATINES, RETAINS, RETINAS, RETSINA, STAINER, STEARIN

  S: ENTASIS, NASTIES, SEITANS, SESTINA, TANSIES, TISANES

  T: INSTATE, SATINET

  U: AUNTIES, SINUATE

  V: NAIVEST, NATIVES, VAINEST

  W: TAWNIES, WANIEST

  X: ANTISEX, SEXTAIN

  Z: ZANIEST, ZEATINS

  Duncan was overwhelmed. “But I don’t know most of those words!” he said. “I mean, I know a few. Like SALTINE, of course. I’ve eaten those. Or . . . or . . . SEITANS, which is a vegan thing that my aunt cooks. Or . . . TEASING. I’ve been teased a lot. But most of them, they’re just nonsense to me. Like BANTIES.”

  “Yep, good old BANTIES,” said Carl. “I taught myself to remember that one. Here’s how I did it. The word sounds a little like BANTAM, which is a chicken, right?”

  “If you say so.”

  “It is. And it also sounds like—this is embarrassing—PANTIES. I know this is going to sound strange,” Carl explained, “but, see, I pictured a chicken wearing girls’ underpants. And a few months ago, I was playing a game and guess what? I had a blank and SATINE. And I suddenly remembered BANTIES. That little word gave me a ton of points, Dorfman.”

  With Scrabble, Duncan saw, you didn’t need to be a genius. You didn’t even have to know what the words meant, though it could be more interesting—and sometimes useful—if you knew the meanings of some of the strange ones. Duncan thought about the word AA, for instance, which he had looked up in the Scrabble dictionary and found out that it meant “rough, cindery lava.” If he hadn’t known it was a noun, he might have tried to add ING onto the end of it, thinking it was a verb. And, of course, AAING would’ve probably been knocked right off the board by his opponents.

  Or if someone had put down the word FOCI, which happened to be a plural of the noun FOCUS, and Duncan hadn’t known it was already plural, he might have tried to add an S to it, making FOCIS, which also would have been knocked off the board.

  But as Carl said, it wasn’t necessary to know what the words meant. You mostly had to know which ones were good, and which ones weren’t.

  When the games were done, both Duncan and Carl felt restless from sitting for such a long time. “Come on,” Carl said, and he grabbed
a soccer ball and they ran outside into the Slaters’ enormous yard. The wind was like a whip, but they kicked the ball, which was sent smashing by Carl and sent slowly rolling by Duncan. Today, it didn’t really seem to matter that Duncan was lousy at soccer. It felt good to be outside in the cold, running around and clearing his head of anagrams and openings and bingo stems. The ball hurtled toward him and somehow Duncan managed to block it with his head, sending it thundering back to where it came from.

  “Nice one, Dorfman,” Carl had to admit, and Duncan wanted to have a chance to smack another ball back, but Carl’s mother waved them inside. It was time for Duncan to leave.

  Mrs. Slater drove him to Thriftee Mike’s Warehouse, where Duncan’s mother was finishing up her workday. Caroline Dorfman had wanted him to meet her there so that Duncan could try on a few more shirts she’d picked out for him. During the ride, Duncan sat beside Mrs. Slater in the black car, which smelled like old smoke and perfume. There was a long, awkward silence, as there often was when you were alone with the parent of a friend.

  “So, Duncan,” said Mrs. Slater as the car pulled into the parking lot of the superstore. “Be sure to tell your mom that we’ve got everything taken care of for the big weekend. And also, please tell her I’ll be sending her a release form about those ads. We’ll need her signature.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s going to be a great campaign,” she said. “Even though some people have a problem with the product.”

  “What do you mean?” Duncan asked. “What’s the product?”

  “Cigarettes.”

  Duncan stared at her. “Cigarettes?” Had he missed something when she was explaining the photo shoot?

  “Yes,” she said. “But it’s all extremely moral. You see, the company really, really doesn’t want kids to smoke. Until they’re old enough to make that decision for themselves. It’s a personal decision, of course. And we live in a free country.”

  “I didn’t know it was for cigarettes,” Duncan said in a faint, queasy voice.

  “Oh, I’m sure I mentioned it.”

  Duncan was becoming surer and surer that she hadn’t, but he didn’t know what to do. He felt panicky, and he gripped the door handle as though he could simply make a run for it.

  “As I’m certain I explained,” Mrs. Slater went on, “the ads are for the low-tar cigarette Smooth Moves. You and Carl will be shown playing a game together. And below the photo it will say something about how kids should only participate in wholesome activities. How they shouldn’t think about whether they want to smoke until they’re fully grown.”

  It seemed wrong to pose for an ad for cigarettes, Duncan thought, even if the ad said the company was against kids smoking. The company, he knew, was just waiting for today’s kids to grow up and become tomorrow’s smokers. An alarm went off inside him, telling him this wasn’t something he should take part in. It was the same alarm that sometimes rang in him when he thought about using his fingertips during the tournament.

  Get out now, he said to himself. Get out now. But he couldn’t; he didn’t know how.

  The car pulled up at the entrance of Thriftee Mike’s. “Thanks for the lift,” Duncan said miserably.

  “You’re welcome. I’m glad we worked everything out. I think you kids will have a terrific time down in Yakamee. It’s only thirteen days from now, isn’t that right? So exciting.”

  Duncan got out of the car and dizzily walked into the store. It was the end of the day, and Thriftee Mike’s was almost empty. A man and a woman stood in the huge, brightly lit space examining a lobster-shaped oven mitt they had picked out of a bin. Nearby, a little kid was pawing at a can of Cheezy Chips from another bin. Way across the store, a blond woman in a red smock waved to Duncan. It was his mother.

  He walked slowly toward her, wishing he could confess everything. What would his mother possibly say to him? She would be knocked out by all that he revealed. “Cigarettes? Are you serious? And about your power—Duncan, I asked you not to show anyone,” she’d say in a heartbroken voice. And then, “You know, if you use your left-hand fingertips that way at the tournament, it will be cheating.”

  “No it won’t,” he would insist. “Carl told me it won’t. There’s nothing about fingertips in the rule book.”

  But he didn’t trust Carl Slater’s opinion. He didn’t trust Carl or Carl’s mother.

  But still Duncan couldn’t tell his own mother the truth.

  He wasn’t sure that he’d be able to convince her it wasn’t cheating, and he wasn’t sure he could even convince himself. Now, on top of that, Duncan had to convince himself that it was okay to pose for an ad for Smooth Moves. There was no way his mother would ever sign that release form. With a sick feeling, he realized he would have to forge her signature.

  Duncan would have liked to sit down on one of the lawn chairs that were for sale in aisle four of Thriftee Mike’s, and talk to her. Back when they lived in Michigan, it seemed that they talked so much more.

  Here she was now, after a long day of work. I’M THRIFTEE CAROLINE was printed on the name tag on her red smock. After glancing at it for a few seconds, Duncan mentally moved the letters in CAROLINE, and saw that they formed COLINEAR. That was a word he had heard in math class. You didn’t only learn Scrabble words by reading dictionaries or word lists or being tutored by a better player. A lot of the words you knew just from living in the world.

  Duncan’s mother smiled when he walked up to her, though he could see how tired she looked. “How was your day?” she asked. “Everything okay?”

  “Fine. You?”

  “Oh, not too bad. A customer had a screaming fit in Ladies’ Shoes—her head basically spun three hundred sixty degrees—but otherwise it was quiet. Did you have a nice time with Carl?”

  “Yes.” Duncan hesitated, wanting to tell her what was on his mind. “You know what, Mom?” he said instead. “Guess who lives right down the street from Carl?”

  “Who?”

  “Thriftee Mike.”

  “What?” said his mother.

  “Yeah, he lives in one of the other mansions in The Inlet. Carl said he’s actually not very thrifty at all. Of course, he’s never actually met him. The guy apparently doesn’t come out of his house a lot, except when he goes to the store at night.”

  Duncan’s mother’s mouth was tight, and she didn’t say a word. Duncan realized he probably shouldn’t have said something even slightly negative about the owner of the store while they were in the store. Maybe none of the employees ever talked about Thriftee Mike. Maybe it was forbidden. He was sorry he had brought it up.

  Chimes sounded over the loudspeakers, and a voice announced, “Thriftee Mike’s will be closing in fifteen minutes. Please bring all your thriftee purchases up to the register.”

  “We’d better make it snappy,” his mother said. “I picked out some nice shirts. They’re just like the mustard-yellow one I bought you, but in different colors. One is the color of ketchup, and the other one’s like relish. It could be a set.” Duncan rolled his eyes.

  She motioned toward the nearest counter, which had a dumb sign over it that read, THIS COUNTER IS FOR CUSTOMERS WITH UNDER THRIFTEEN PURCHASES.

  Thrifteen?

  But this wasn’t the time to complain about his shirt, or make fun of the “word” thrifteen. This was the time—if he was a much braver person, which he wasn’t—to say: Mom, I have to tell you something. I know you’ll be mad, but I told everyone in school about my fingertips even though you warned me that something bad would happen. And now I’m supposed to use them at the tournament on December twelfth, which is basically cheating.

  And by the way, the whole trip costs eight hundred and eighty-five dollars, but don’t worry, because I’m going to pay for it by posing for a cigarette ad.

  Oh, and I’m planning on forging your signature on the release form.

  Mom, Duncan wanted to say, that bad thing you warned me about seems to be happening.

  But even so, Mom, I’m
going to the tournament, I’m really going. And even though I’m dreading it in many ways, I also have to tell you this: I am so excited I am jumping out of my skin.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Nine

  DECEMBER 12th

  Welcome to the Grand Imperial Hotel, the finest hotel in all of Yakamee,” said the friendly woman behind the desk in the marble lobby. “How may I help you? Wait, don’t tell me! Y’all are here for the Scrabble thingy.”

  “Yes, in fact we are,” said Caroline Dorfman.

  “You and everyone else in this place,” said the woman.

  The big hotel lobby was packed with people. Many of them were kids, and many held Scrabble sets under their arms, or wore T-shirts that said the name of their Scrabble team. Most were headed toward the escalator, where a sign read: YST ON MEZZANINE LEVEL, with an arrow pointing up. Everyone’s voices were loud, because there was a rushing waterfall in the lobby, and a man in a white tuxedo playing a white piano.

  But mostly they were loud because December twelfth had finally arrived.

  “The reservation is under Dorfman,” said Duncan’s mother. “If possible, we’d love to check into our room right away and go take a little rest.”

  “Are you serious, Mom?” said Duncan. “We don’t have time. Registration is going to close at one!”

  Many of the players traveling by car, bus, or train had arrived the night before, but the Drilling Falls team had taken a plane at the crack of dawn that had gotten them here with little time to spare.

  “Now, let me see, Ms. Dorfman,” said the woman behind the desk. “I can give you a nice classic regular with two queen-sized beds on twenty-three. Although, hmmm . . .” She scrunched up her mouth as she looked at her computer monitor. “It says here that this guest room is by the ice machine. And maybe y’all don’t want the buckety sound of thunk-thunk-thunk disturbing your sleep at night.”