The Game Player

by Rafael Yglesias

  My new friends were concerned with social issues or with the personal triumph of good values (equal relationships, open and non-competitive friendships) over the harsh, isolated interests of most New Yorkers in pursuit of successful careers. I found that after all those years of fighting back my suspicion of Brian’s worth as a human being, I had lost the battle. I don’t think I was defeated because I finally agreed that a person who cored about winning was bad, as most of my leftist friends would. True, his values were those of a capitalist: he believed he deserved his advantages; he thought nothing of increasing them without regard to the consequence; and his emotional life was either permanently closed off to others or nonexistent. But I think I would have accepted his individualistic view of life, though my friends never would, if he were an artist; then at least his selfishness would be part of the mechanism that produced beauty for people. No, in the end, what bothered me about him was that, once I had money and position in the world, and the activities of the world were no longer limited to playing games, I saw nothing awesome about him. He was a good-looking, polite, rich kid on his way to a year-round tan and stock options.

  He returned from Europe and entered Harvard Law School in the fall of 1975. When he visited his parents for Christmas I invited him to the nickel, dime, quarter poker game I played in with others on the magazine. I explained that it was friendly in a fierce way, with a lot of kibitzing, and asked if that would bother him.

  “Well, it might be a little dull,” he said in a puzzled tone. “You play in that regularly?”

  “Yeah, it’s fun. I mean, it’s not—I’m not into that kind of heavy gambling we went in for.”

  “Unhuh,” he said, as if he had decided not to tease me about this ridiculous game. “Well, I hope we’ll get a chance to talk. I haven’t seen you in almost two years.”

  I assured him, after protesting that it was only a year or so since our last face-to-face meeting, that we would have dinner alone. I was almost embarrassed by walking in the Village with this healthy, tailored young man. The gays would look at him as if checking whether this was a closet homosexual just in from the Midwest; and the plump, dungareed writers would glance at me as if offended that I was going out with what must be a publicity man.

  He talked of cars, clothes, his excitement over learning tennis, the school politics of Harvard, as if these were the sum of existence. When he asked about the business details of the magazine, he seemed incapable of understanding that it wasn’t run for a profit, that most of us worked without a salary, and that both those facts weren’t indications of failure, but the result of principles. He looked bewildered when I, in answer to a question about why I wasn’t working on another book, told him I had turned down a three-hundred-thousand-dollar contract to write my autobiography (A Memoir at Twenty-three was the coy title an editor suggested) because I was tired of vulgar publicity and writing lightly about life.

  “Why not just do it for the money?” he said as if that was a marvelous motive.

  “Why the fuck should I make myself miserable just to make money?”

  He laughed. “I don’t know,” he said with a smile made brilliant by his winter tan. “To buy delicious food with?”

  His charm caught me in time to prevent an outburst. “You know that I only spent ten thousand of the bread the book earned me?” I asked, once I had mastered my immediate annoyance. “Dad’s invested the rest for me at ten per cent and that’s an income of forty thousand. And I’m still going to inherit another hundred thousand from his business.”

  He watched me nervously explain my reason for complaisance about money with his opaque, amused eyes. “That’s great,” he said, smiling with his lips closed and with an encouraging nod of the head. “I didn’t seriously mean you should do a book you didn’t want to do just because of money. I’m just surprised that you don’t feel that memoir idea would allow you great freedom as to subject.”

  I had felt so sure of myself, a proud and masterful individual, until he, as if with a magical intuition, zoomed in on this weakness. Others took it for granted that I was being noble in resisting the pressures of the book industry to corrupt myself. Only once or twice before had it been necessary to explain that when they pay you three hundred thousand dollars, they expect a commercial book and I didn’t wish to write one. That was always accepted as the last word, but Brian leaned back in his chair and stared at me for a moment before saying, “Howard, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I have a very good memory. And I always listened especially carefully to you when you would talk about your ambitions and your plans in relation to publishing.” He stopped as if that was all he need say.

  “That’s true,” I said warily. “What’s your point?”

  “Well, it’s just that you said nothing could be accomplished until you became a best-selling writer. I was the one who would disagree and say that good work well done would eventually be rewarded and important.”

  I laughed. “I guess I was wrong and you were right.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, but you did both at once with your first book.”

  “I don’t know if I did.”

  “I’m telling you, you did. That’s the sense I’m getting from you. Which is that your reason for not signing that contract and for working on this sort of polite magazine—”

  “We’re hardly polite, Brian. We’re radicals.”

  “I mean polite in ambition and impact. You have the capacity, by writing a book, of reaching hundred of thousands of people, most of whom would learn something from you. But instead you’re writing for a magazine that reaches—what?”

  “Fifty thousand or so.”

  “Most of whom already agree with you, right? What’s the point of that?”

  He reached through the fragile barrier I had built between my fears and the recognition of them. I had thought all this during those ghastly hours of sleeplessness that followed my rejection of the contract, but when I presented my problem to Karen and others, they said no harm could be done by waiting a year or two before writing another book, and that the magazine was a broadening and vital experience. Of course, I wanted them to tell me that and I had guided the discussion to encourage such advice, but I had done so to prevent them from reacting routinely to the huge sum I was offered. So I presented this final defense to Brian, conscious of its timidity and cowardice.

  “Sure,” he said. “And in two years, you’ll decide another two couldn’t hurt. And so on. Come on, Howard”—he reached across the table to slap my shoulder. “You can’t squander success like that. It’s not something you can turn on and off. You’re young. You have to grow, you have to work at your skills. How many times have you told me writing is a craft? Well, does a carpenter take two years off because he built a beautiful house? No, he gets paid more and goes on to something more difficult. What stops you from working on both the magazine and the book?” He was relentless and wore me down to the point where I admitted that I was scared I couldn’t do another book. He then began to recount, with a terrible accuracy, the twenty or so ideas for critical works that I had told him, over the years, I dreamed of doing. I answered that I didn’t know enough to do them, that publishers were interested in more on the same subject as my first book, and so on in a vomiting of excuses.

  “So fail!” he yelled in the middle of my litany. “Is that what you’re trying to convince me of? That you’ll fail? Good, I’d like to see you fail. You’ve had such a fucking easy time of it. That’s why everybody else isn’t urging you to write.”

  “Who said that?” I argued. “No one’s told me—”

  “Oh, come on,” he said, closing his eyes and sweeping his hand across the space between us to silence me. “Good friends wouldn’t let you stagnate. You didn’t let me fall apart. Why the hell should I let you off that easy? They’re scared you’ll succeed. They know that if you do nothing, you’ll fail. You have nothing to lose by writing, if your alternative is to do nothing. It’s disgusting to hear you worry that you’ll
blow it. Nothing’s worth doing unless there’s defeat for a penalty.”

  “Brian, it isn’t a question of defeat and victory. Those terms don’t apply to literature and—”

  I stopped because he had stood up, the check in his hand, and when I looked up, almost scared of him, I saw his face tense and controlled, right next to mine. I watched his lips speak: they moved rapidly and cruelly. “Howard, you’re not a person who has to tell himself that. You’re a winner. Shut up and enjoy it.”

  I did, at least to the extent of walking quietly to the game, except when Brian asked what people drank and I tried to dissuade him from bothering to buy two six-packs of Heinekens. He was a big hit at the game, not only because of the beers, but because he cheerfully took the teasing about his clothing and tan, and during the last two hours of play, while he was winning thirty dollars (a big sum for our game) he patiently explained his bluffs and strategies and helped some of the players decide what to substitute or whether to stay in. I had worried that Fran, a bright and witty woman who was a stickler for feminist conventions, and occasionally ravaged bourgeois men for looking cross-eyed at her irrepressible breasts, would be infuriated by him. But he treated her casually, even-handedly, and fearlessly, not rising to the bait when she, upon finding out that he had never played with a woman before, asked if that bothered him. I thought, Oh, God, don’t say she makes it a prettier occasion, but somehow be funny. “It’ll bother me if you keep calling me when I bluff,” he said, and they promptly had a normal discussion when she asked if she was calling too much. They were amazed by his rapid analysis of what each player was attempting and his ability to recount the exact holdings of players in hands that were several hours old. He clinched their admiration when, holding his thirty dollars in winnings, he went up to Jeff, who handles subscriptions for us, and asked, “How much is a year’s subscription?”

  “Twelve dollars.”

  “Okay,” he said, counting out twenty-four and putting them in Jeff’s hand. “I want one for my parents and one for me. It’ll do my father some good,” he said with a smile at me. “Do you have paper? I’ll give you the addresses.” He even tried to give the remaining six dollars to the host for the two sandwiches he ate but they stopped him and people at the game often nostalgically recall his generosity, citing it as proof that all goyish gallantry isn’t dead.

  But he was an aberration nevertheless and I was glad that he didn’t live in New York and present me with the constant problem of fitting him in. His only comment besides a polite one that they were very friendly, showed his contempt for them: “It’s the only game I’ve ever played in,” he said, “in which people apologize for winning a hand. It must be much less exhausting, at least verbally, to lose.”

  We promised to write, but apart from a card he sent that summer while he was traveling cross-country, and another visit the following Christmas, we had no contact. Of course, in that one dinner he had influenced me more than anyone else. I began my history of the American Communist Party a week after his lecture in the restaurant, cutting my workdays at the magazine to two a week, as I found my research an endless task, each discovery compounding into several new areas to investigate.

  It was a stingingly cold February night in 1977, at four in the morning, just a half-hour after I had given up attempting to finish a chapter, that Karen woke me, repeating the words, “It’s Brian on the phone. He says he has to talk right now.” She finally got through to my tired brain and I grabbed the phone receiver from her as if it were a life preserver. “Hello.” My hoarse voice sounded like a slowed down, scratchy record.

  “Howard, damn it! Damn it, what’s your address? I can’t remember.”

  I was too disoriented to worry about his tone: it was an effort to remember our address. “Ninety-eight West Twelfth. Second floor. Two-B.”

  “That’s it, twelve, uh! And I could hardly remember your phone. I’m coming over.”

  “Now?” I sounded like an upright character in a movie. But my question went unanswered. I didn’t hear the click of the phone and I spoke to the silence a few times before the dial tone told me he had rung off.

  I sat up in bed for a moment, clenching my teeth to fight off the queasy fatigue, and Karen’s voice from under the blanket asked, “What was that about?”

  I threw off the blankets and stared at my legs. I was playing over the varied tones in his voice. It had quavered when he told me he had had trouble recalling my phone number, as if he were about to cry, but it had sounded furious only a second later when he announced he was coming over. Karen repeated her question. “I don’t know. But it must be something heavy. He’s coming over.”

  “Oh, no,” she groaned.

  “You go to sleep.” I kissed her paternally and got out of the bed to hustle into my pants, the cold waking me with chills. My subconscious must have been more aware of the crisis than I, since I found myself making coffee as if I would not be returning to bed for some time. I had just finished when the intercom buzzed. I rushed to answer it because Brian was leaning against the button, the harsh electronic hum going without a break. I opened the door and heard him taking the steps two or three at a time, breathing hard. He bounded into view and walked over to the door, almost doubled over from trying to catch his breath. “What did you do?” I asked, putting a hand on his back to guide him in. “Run all the way here?”

  “I had to park, oh! miles, miles away.”

  “God, your jacket is freezing!” He was dressed only in slacks, a shirt, and a corduroy jacket that felt like ice.

  “I don’t feel it,” he said, but he was shivering like a greyhound, his discomfort transformed into a kind of heightened alertness.

  “They don’t send up much heat in the middle of the night. I don’t know how I’m—come in to the kitchen and I’ll give you hot coffee.” I gently pushed him in that direction while checking the living room radiator to see if it was switched on and whether heat was coming out. It was on low and I turned it up, luckily hitting on one of their heating periods. I waved to Brian, who was watching me forlornly, “Here, sit in this chair next to the heat. I’ll get you coffee.”

  He obediently walked to the radiator, standing with his back to it, his hands behind him, his head down, and his eyes closed. I hurriedly poured us coffee, spilling quite a bit by adding too much milk and stirring the sugar too violently. But at last I got it to him and he drank half in one gulp. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “I like your apartment, did I ever tell you that? Well, I was only here once, there was no reason to.” He finished his coffee with a second gulp.

  “You want more?”

  “Okay.” His voice was resigned, contrite. He gave me the cup. “It’s a home, you know? Not like our old place. It just had furniture that it should have, but this—” I didn’t hear the sentence’s finish because I was pouring the coffee. “How come you’re not married?” he asked when I re-entered and gave him the cup.

  “We will when we have a kid. What’s the matter? Or,” I said with a laugh, “is this just a visit?”

  “Okay,” he said, after taking a sip and putting the cup down. His voice became resonant, and he paced while speaking, as if delivering a newscast. “Yesterday afternoon at four o’clock my father, while playing tennis on Randall’s Island, died of a heart attack. He was DOA. Somebody there, maybe an opponent, tried to massage his heart, but it was a massive seizure they say and nothing could be done.”

  There was a private moment in my brain in which I knew that if I hesitated in answering, I would become speechless, so I said the obvious, “I’m sorry.”

  Brian was half turned away from me, not shivering or nervous, just looking with great concentration at one of the walls. “I was gonna call you a hundred times today.”

  “You should have called me immediately,” I said quickly. “It must have been horrible. You were in Boston?”

  “Yeah,” he said in a faint voice. “I was taking a shower when my mother called. I had soap on me
. I nearly didn’t answer it.”

  If he didn’t, I knew he must be thinking, it wouldn’t have happened. Somehow his missing the call would revive his father. Even I had to remind myself that reality is permanent, that Mrs. Stoppard would have called back, and Brian’s father would still be dead. His death had no meaning for me, apart from concern for Brian. I had met Mr. Stoppard only four or five times at any length, and the last time I had seen him was almost three years before. But he was an intensely healthy man, with his son’s nervous intelligence juxtaposed by relaxed periods of introspection; they were thoroughbreds: shy and skittish unless racing, when their speed and power could mesh perfectly. Mr. Stoppard had died at fifty-five and, just as I had transferred his health and power to Brian, I transferred this tragedy as well: I thought their intense withholding of emotion had to end in an implosion of the heart. I watched him, silent and his head inclined forward as if awaiting benediction, thinking he was marked—doomed by his perfection.

  The phone rang, a startling sound not only because of the solemn moment, but because of the hour. I rushed to get it, worrying about Karen’s sleep. “Is this Howard?” asked Mrs. Stoppard.

  I knew her voice despite its unnaturally high tone. “Yes, Mrs. Stoppard. It’s me. Brian’s here, he told me the news. I’m terribly sorry.”

  “Is he all right? He rushed out of here without saying where—I’m worried. But if he’s with you, I’m sure he’s fine.”

  “Would you like to speak to him?” She said yes, and I put him on the phone. He took it almost impatiently. His manner reminded me of the way he took the phone when a girl friend was not accepting his termination of a relationship: as if it were a call from a recalcitrant debtor, pleading for an extension.