by Louis Sachar
61
They Need Us
The playing area was not just one room. There were two giant ballrooms and seven or eight smaller rooms, all filled with rows and rows of people playing bridge. And that, I found out, was just on one floor. Toni and I took an escalator down a level and found the identical setup on the floor below.
It was only a little after four o'clock, so they were still in the middle of the afternoon session. Pairs, knockouts, and something called board-a-match were all taking place in different parts of the hotel. I was surprised by how many younger players were there. Many weren't much older than Toni and I. I even saw several kids who looked about Leslie's age, playing with a parent or grandparent.
One of the downstairs ballrooms was designated as the novice area. It was for players with fewer than 200 masterpoints. Just outside that room was a sign announcing various guest lecturers, including Syd Fox.
"That's the guy!" I exclaimed.
The name meant nothing to Toni.
"Remember when we played against those jerks, when Annabel redoubled?" I reminded her. "As we were leaving the table one of the idiots complained that you had suddenly turned into Syd Fox."
We decided we'd go to Syd Fox's lecture, which was at six-fifteen, and then we'd play in the seven o'clock session. Just us, with no help from Trapp or Annabel.
We found a hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop two blocks from the hotel and grabbed a quick dinner. My sandwich had sausage and peppers on it, and Toni ordered one with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil.
I only mention what we ate because we both said our sandwiches were "amazing." That's pretty funny if you think about it. We were about to enter a national championship, turning cards for Trapp and Annabel, but our sandwiches were "amazing"!
One of the legs on our table was shorter than the other three, so the table kept wobbling as we ate. "How long has Annabel been talking to you?" I asked.
"Always," said Toni. "As long as I can remember."
I told Toni about the time I'd first met her, at Trapp's sixty-fifth birthday party, when she ran up to me and shouted, "Shut up! Leave me alone!"
She didn't remember, and felt embarrassed about it. "I'm really sorry," she said.
"I didn't mind," I assured her. "I thought you were funny."
She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. "You know I wasn't talking to you, right?"
"I know that now," I said.
It wasn't surprising that she didn't remember. It had been a big deal to me because it was the only time I'd been to my mysterious uncle Lester's house, and then I met this girl who acted so strange. She had been to Trapp's house many times. To her, it was just another day.
"I do remember that there were times I wished she'd go away and never talk to me again," Toni admitted. "I wanted so much to just be normal. Everybody kept telling me there was something wrong with me. I had to go to a psychiatrist. And then I was supposed to take these pills, but Annabel would say, ‘Don't take the pills, Toni.'
"But most of the time, I was glad she was there," Toni added. "It was like having a fairy godmother. I loved her. I still do."
"Do your parents know you talk to Annabel?" I asked.
"No, not really," Toni said. "My mother just thinks I have special insight. But then again, they do send me to a shrink."
I asked her if that was why she was homeschooled, too, but she said she didn't think so.
"My parents don't believe in what they call ‘institutionalized education.' Something about fitting square pegs into round holes. It's not like they keep me locked up in a padded cell or something. I have friends."
"No, I know," I said. "You quilt together."
"You think that's funny, don't you?"
"No," I lied.
"Yes, you do."
"No, really," I said. "So what do you suppose they're doing right now?"
"Who?" asked Toni.
"Trapp and Annabel," I said. "You think they're going over their bidding systems, like everyone else around here?"
"They're not doing anything," said Toni. "They need us."
Syd Fox was about sixty-five years old, with wild Albert Einstein hair, and he wore glasses with heavy black frames. Behind those glasses, you could catch a mischievous, almost childish gleam in his eye.
His lecture was surprisingly entertaining. You were supposedly playing bridge with some king. Fox used a whiteboard, where he'd put up different card combinations. He'd show you what cards were in dummy and what cards were in the declarer's hand, and then tell you how many tricks you needed to take.
If you succeeded, the king would let you marry the princess, or prince, depending. But if you failed, the royal executioner would chop off your head.
Here was one:
You had to choose a line of play that was guaranteed to win three heart tricks no matter how the remaining hearts were divided between East and West.
Syd Fox called on several people. I was afraid to raise my hand, and just whispered my answer to Toni.
The first two people got it wrong and had their heads chopped off. One of them had given my answer.
"Too bad, you're dead," Toni said to me.
A woman finally got it right. She said she'd lead dummy's ace. Next she'd lead dummy's three, and if East played low, she'd play the eight.
"Congratulations," Syd Fox told her. "You may marry the prince."
"I'll take the princess, if you don't mind," the woman said, and everyone laughed.
He gave us four different diagrams. I lost my head on each of the first three, but on the fourth one, I got to marry the princess.
Toni smiled at me.
Going back to what I said earlier, I don't think she would have dared to smile at me like that if we'd been sharing the same room.
62
Twenty-five Percent Slam
Syd Fox's lecture got us fired up and ready to play, and no novice game for us! We wanted to take on the big boys.
We entered something called a side game. The main pairs game was a two-session event that had started in the afternoon. The side game was only one session. It was mainly for those who had been knocked out of a KO in the afternoon, or for people like Toni and me, who had only just arrived.
We were in one of the large ballrooms on the lower level. There were several different events taking place in there. We used our real names and ACBL numbers. Our table assignment was KK-8, North-South. The two Ks are not a typo. There were a lot more than twenty-six sections in the tournament, so they had to double up on letters. Somewhere else in the hotel, another pair was sitting North-South at table K-8 with only one K.
Two women sat in the East-West seats. West stared at me a moment, then said, "Alton, right?"
I was shocked.
She and her partner introduced themselves as Lydia and Renee.
I didn't introduce Toni to them. She'd be using three different names at the tournament, Toni, Annabel, and Teodora, and I didn't want to have to remember which people knew her by which name.
"We met Alton at a sectional," Lydia told Toni. "He was helping his blind uncle." She turned to me. "Is he here?"
I hesitated. "I think he's coming later," I said.
"He's an amazing player," said Lydia. "And I'd say that even if he wasn't blind."
"I didn't know you played too," said Renee.
"I'm just learning," I said.
"So am I," said Renee. "And I've been playing for twenty-five years."
"The time you quit learning is the time to quit playing," said Lydia.
Okay, I realize you didn't come all the way to Chicago to watch Toni and me play in a side game. That would be like a sports reporter who's supposed to be covering the Super Bowl going on and on about the pregame charity touch-football match between the players' wives. It was bad enough I made you sit through Syd Fox's lecture.
The thing of it is, Toni and I played great! We used a lot of the new bids I had learned, but it was more than just that. I no longe
r thought of bidding as a bunch of rules to be memorized. It was a conversation. I imagine it's like learning a foreign language. After a while you stop translating every word in your head and start thinking in that language. This was a language based on symbols and logic instead of words and phrases. Every bid Toni made, and even the bids she didn't make, like the dog that didn't bark, gave me information about her hand.
Syd Fox's lecture helped too. None of those exact card combinations came up, but he had gotten me thinking along the right lines, and I made all but one of my contracts. When the scores were posted with one round to go, Richards and Castaneda were in fifth place with a 53 percent game.
Toni was worried about our last round, however. "They bid that lucky slam against us," she griped. "I bet no one else bid it."
It turned out she was right. When the final results were posted we had fallen to 49 percent.
She complained all the way to the elevator, using language I usually hear from Cliff. "All because of that spade slam!" (Adjective deleted.) "It took two finesses! (The same adjective deleted.) "A twenty-five percent slam! If you'd had the king of spades, or if I'd had the queen of clubs, instead of the other way around, we would have set it. Switch our hands and he would have been down two."
I looked at the hand record. "How could East jump to three spades on that garbage? He has nine points, and flat distribution."
"We were fixed," said Toni.
I laughed.
"What's so funny?" she demanded.
"Listen to us. We sound like everybody else."
She smiled. "Yeah, isn't it great?"
Do you know that thing about how nobody ever talks on elevators? Not true when it comes to bridge players. Mostly, they complained about their partners.
"We pushed them into an unmakeable contract," complained a short round man, "but my partner sacrifices at five hearts, because, she says, she had no defense. She had the ace and king of clubs!"
No doubt his partner was on another elevator complaining about him.
63
A Long Hesitation
I hope you don't think this is too personal, but I don't like firm pillows. My pillow at home barely has any oomph to it.
It wasn't just the hotel pillow that kept me awake all night. My mind was racing around in circles. It occasionally stopped at new places, but mostly kept returning to the same old ones, again and again and again. I worried that Trapp wouldn't show up the next day. I replayed bridge hands from the side game. I relived the unlucky six-spade hand, and how it kept us from breaking fifty percent.
My brain would not shut up!
There was one place in particular where my mind kept returning, more than any other. It was the moment right after Toni and I exited the elevator.
We just stood there in the hallway as if waiting for something. Finally, after a long hesitation, Toni said, "Well, good night."
There was another long hesitation; then I said, "Night."
If we had hesitated that much during a bridge hand, our opponents would have called the director.
All night, as I flopped around in my too-soft bed, on my too-hard pillow, I kept coming up with different charming and witty things I should have said. Whole conversations unfolded. I would say . . . then she would say, then I would say, and then, and then, and then. . . .
Something had almost happened between us in the pantry at Trapp's house. We both knew it. But it didn't, I reminded myself. And it can't.
If she had never met Cliff, then maybe, probably, things would have been different between us, but she had. He was the one with whom she took moonlight walks on the golf course, not me.
Toni and I were bridge partners; nothing more, nothing less.
I wondered if she was lying awake thinking about me. I wondered if she was wondering whether I was wondering about her.
Shut up, brain!
I must have fallen asleep, because her telephone call woke me up. I glanced at the clock. It was 10:43.
I said hello in my deep and scratchy just-woke-up voice.
"I'm sorry, did I wake you?" she asked.
"No, I've been up for a while," I lied. "I was just lying in bed thinking."
"I'm starving!" said Toni.
She had just gotten back from swimming laps in the hotel pool and wanted to meet for breakfast. She sounded alert and invigorated.
I groaned as I got out of bed. I hadn't gotten any sleep for two nights in a row, and the pillow had given me a stiff neck. I took a quick shower, got dressed, and met her by the elevator.
"You look awful," she said.
I thanked her for her kind words.
We ate breakfast at the same sandwich shop where we had eaten dinner. The food was still amazing.
I asked her if she had heard anything from Annabel. She hadn't.
"What if they don't come?" I asked. "I mean, we never did find the can of peas."
"So what?" she said. "If they don't, they don't. We'll still have fun. You played great last night. We would have come in fourth if it wasn't for that stupid six-spade bid."
She was still angry about it.
She told me she had checked the scores this morning after her swim. Our opponents had been the only pair stupid and lucky enough to bid six spades. She figured out that if they hadn't bid the slam, we would have come in fourth, and earned .8 masterpoints. And if we had set six spades, which would have happened if either she held the queen of clubs or I held the king of spades, we would have come in third and earned almost 1.5 gold masterpoints.
Yes, these imaginary masterpoints are colored. At bridge clubs, you win black points. At sectionals, you win silver points. At regionals, they're gold or red, depending on whether you come in first. Gold is better. At nationals, you also win gold masterpoints, except for the major national championship events, where the points are platinum.
I almost laughed when Toni explained this to me. It was like when my third-grade teacher used to give us gold stars for doing our homework. But at least back then I could actually see the gold star.
I found it funny that grown-up people cared so much about earning these imaginary masterpoints, and even funnier that they cared what color they were.
But you know what? I'm no different. I was disappointed when I realized how close I had come to winning my first masterpoint. I was doubly disappointed when I learned it would have been gold!
64
The First Hand
Game time was one o'clock, but we didn't actually get started until almost twenty-five after. The line to buy the entry was almost as bad as the lines at Disneyland.
We were in the large ballroom on the upper floor. There were sixteen sections, A through P, with thirteen tables in each section. We'd be competing against the top players from the United States and around the world. It would be a two-day, four-session event. Only those who finished above 50 percent after the first day would continue for the second day.
Our table assignment was G-10, East-West. The sections all had single letters for this event. This was the real deal!
We put the names Annabel Finnick and Lester Trapp on our entry form. We put Annabel's name first, since it was less likely to be recognized. Even if there were people here who might have known her fifty years ago, they would have known her as Annabel King.
The boards had been predealt. There were tiny bar codes on each card. A special card-dealing machine had dealt according to specific hand records. In every section in the room, the person sitting at table ten West was looking at the same thirteen cards I was looking at.
It was a good hand. I counted twenty-one points, although I wasn't sure I could count three points for the jack of clubs—one for the jack, and another two because it was a singleton.
I still hadn't heard from Trapp.
My hand was clearly a one-heart opener, but first I had to wait for South, the designated dealer, to bid. She was an Asian woman who wore very tiny glasses. She reached into her bidding box, then set her bid on the table.
<
br /> I tried to maintain a blank expression as I stared at it. That was the bid I was going to make.
My mind started racing. What was I supposed to do? Should I bid two hearts? Double? One no-trump? My second-best suit was diamonds. Should I bid two diamonds?
"Pass," said my favorite uncle.
I reached into my box and calmly set a green pass card on the table.
65
The Donkey Hand
North and East also passed, and so, for the very first hand of the tournament, the contract was just one heart. The declarer only needed to take seven tricks, but Trapp and Annabel set it by three tricks! That gave us a score of 300. I wondered what the results had been at all the other table tens in the room.
Toni told me later that when you pass with a good hand because you expect to set the opponents, it's called a trap pass. Not exactly synchronicity, but close.
We played two boards per round. After each round, Toni and I moved up a table. There were no skips.
Most of the time I had no problem hearing my uncle, but occasionally he was fuzzy. I didn't know if the problem was on my end or his. Maybe it had something to do with my stiff neck, and not being able to hold my head at the necessary angle, or maybe the reception was just worse at some tables than at others.
Even if it was fuzzy, I usually could figure out what he was trying to tell me. After all, I did almost earn my first gold masterpoint.
There was only one really bad screwup. I clearly heard him say "Ace of spades," which, I admit, seemed odd at the time, since Toni had played the king of spades; however, I had seen him make a similar play before.
"Eight, not ace, eight!" he said as I set the card on the table, but by then it was too late.
Since I had won the trick, it was my turn to lead. I waited, but got nothing from him. I don't think this was due to a problem with communication or perception. I think he was pouting.