The Cardturner (11 page)

His bid basically said, "Bid something. Anything! Bid your longest suit!"

But what did Toni do? She passed.

The final contract was one heart doubled. If this had been the week before, she probably would have lucked out and gotten a top board. But this week her luck had run out. If anything, her mistakes were magnified. The declarer made two overtricks for a score of 560 points.

Toni screwed up big-time!

"My fault," Trapp said when the hand was over. "I haven't taught you about takeout doubles."

She should have known anyway,
I thought.
I did
.

As the game progressed, Toni continued to make mistakes. I almost felt sorry for her as she and Trapp got one bad result after another.

Almost.

They finished with a 41 percent game. Afterward he had me get boards six, ten, and twenty, and went over the hands with her.

"Take a look at your hand on board twenty," he said.

Toni removed her cards from the North slot and spread them on the table. "Yuck!" she said.

There was not a single face card in her hand.

"You had a very rare hand," said Trapp. "It's known as a Yarborough, a hand with no card higher than a nine."

I looked again at the spread of cards. There wasn't even a ten.

Trapp said that before bridge was invented, there was a game called whist played in England. "They played for money, not masterpoints, and people were always complaining about being dealt lousy cards. If somebody won, well, that was because of his superior skill. If he lost, it was bad luck. Hah!"

Trapp went on to explain that the Earl of Yarborough got so sick and tired of all the griping that he offered a kind of insurance. He gave thousand-to-one odds. A whist player would give the Earl of Yarborough one British pound, and if that player was dealt a hand with no card higher than a nine, the earl would pay him one thousand pounds.

"Did he ever have to pay off?" I asked.

My question startled him. He had been telling all this to Toni and I think he'd forgotten I was even there.

"Not very often," he said. "The Earl of Yarborough made a lot of money."

"Yarborough," said Toni. "That was the name of your company, wasn't it?"

"Yarborough Investment Group," said Trapp. "We were able to find value in things that other people thought were worthless. And that, Toni, is how you should have approached your hand. When you pick up a hand that seems worthless, you should think:
This is a rare hand. A Yarborough! One in a thousand
. You should ask yourself,
Where is the hidden value?
After all, even Alton would be able to win a trick with an ace or a king. It takes great focus and concentration to win a trick with a six."

He went on to explain how, if she had discarded diamonds and saved her clubs, she could have won the last trick with the six of clubs.

27
A Phone Call

The second I walked in the door, my mother practically shouted in my face. "Toni Castaneda called! She wants you to call her back. I wrote down the number."

"Okay," I said as I walked past her, then started down the hall.

"Wait, where are you going?"

"To take a leak, if you don't mind. It was a long drive home."

"I mind your attitude."

In the bathroom, I splashed my face with cold water and stared at my reflection.

It's never been easy for me to just call up a girl on the phone. I had to psych myself up first.

You would think it would have been easy in this case, since I hated Toni, and since I was just calling her back.

You would think.

My mother was waiting for me as I stepped out of the bathroom, Toni's phone number in her hand. For someone who supposedly hated the Castanedas, she was awfully insistent.

I went to my room and called Toni on my cell.

"Hello?"

"Toni?" I asked.

"No, this is her father. Who's this?"

For the record, although his initial hello might have been slightly high-pitched, Toni's father had a normal masculine voice.

"Alton," I said.

"I didn't get that."

"Alton," I repeated.

I don't think I've ever said my name just one time to anyone.

A short while later Toni came on the line. "Hi, Alton," she said cheerfully.

"My mom said you called," I said cheerlessly.

"Your mom seems really cool," said Toni.

That answered that question. Of course, everyone knew the Castanedas were bonkers.

I stared out my window at the disaster known as our backyard and waited for her to say whatever it was she had called to say.

She got right to it. "Why do you pretend you don't know how to play bridge?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" I asked, neither admitting to nor denying her accusation. I felt like I'd been caught, but I wasn't quite sure what I was being accused of.

"You knew about the takeout double," she said. "I saw it in your eyes. And you're always trying to guess what card he'll play before he plays it."

"I may have picked up a little, watching him play," I said.

"You need to tell him!" she said. "He'd love it if you played bridge. He's always saying how he wishes more young people would take up the game. He's afraid that bridge is like a dying culture. He's worried that in like thirty years, there will be no one left to play it."

"Well, I've never actually played," I said. "And I never can figure out what bid he's going to make."

"Bidding's not that hard, once you learn the basics. Trapp and Gloria use a complicated system and I'm trying to learn it, but you don't have to do all that. You just have to know which bids are
game-forcing,
which ones are
invitational,
and which ones are just
cooperative
."

The words meant nothing to me. "O-kay," I said hesitantly.

She laughed. "I can teach you," she offered.

I thought it over.

"Okay, sure," I said.

"Maybe we can have a game," she said. "Do you know two other people who might want to play?"

I knew one for sure. Leslie had been dying to play.

"My sister," I said. "She's only eleven, but she's real sharp. And I have a friend who's really good at cards."

"Great," said Toni. "How about tomorrow?"

I told her I'd check with my friend first and call her back.

It's funny how you can go from hating a girl to maybe liking her, maybe liking her a lot, just because she shows a little interest in you. I pictured Toni in my mind. Her shy smile. The freckles across the bridge of her nose. The way she concentrated so intently when she was playing bridge with Trapp.

I was reminded of the girl who had sat next to me in freshman algebra. We didn't have traditional desks. Two students shared a table. I'd watch her out of the corner of my eye as she tried to factor algebraic equations. She was oblivious to the world around her, oblivious that I was sitting next to her, as she chewed on the tip of her eraser. It made my heart ache, she was so beautiful.

That girl had blond hair, and Toni's hair was dark, but they both had that same look of innocent and total concentration.

I called Cliff.

I should tell you that so far, when I've recounted my conversations with Cliff, I've left out certain
descriptive
words. It's not that we're especially vulgar or crude. It's just that those kinds of words seem worse in print than they do when we would just say them in an offhand way. I think I've been able to omit those words and still give you a fairly accurate account of what was said between us.

However, if I were to try to repeat what Cliff said when I asked him if he wanted to play bridge, I'd have to leave out every other word. Let's just say he wasn't overjoyed with the idea.

Still, he was my best friend, and when he realized I was
serious
(adverb deleted), and that it was
important
to me (adverb deleted), he agreed to
play
(adverb deleted).

"But afternoon only," he said. "Katie and I have plans for tomorrow night."

He normally wouldn't have mentioned Katie. He would have said something like "I'm busy tomorrow night." I think he just wanted to twist the knife a bit, since he'd agreed to do me a favor.

As I expected, Leslie was thrilled to finally get to play bridge. She wasn't too thrilled, however, that Cliff would be our fourth.

"He's a big goof-off," she said. "He won't concentrate on the game. He'll just make stupid jokes."

Leslie was a lot like her uncle Lester. She took her bridge very seriously.

"Besides . . . ," Leslie said.

"What?"

She didn't say, but I knew what she was thinking. She blamed Cliff for what had happened between Katie and me.

Like a football coach getting his team ready for the second half, once again I had to pump myself up to call Toni. You would think it would have been easier for me the second time, but you would be wrong.

She answered the phone this time.

"We're on," I said. "You, me, Cliff, and Leslie."

I told her two o'clock, and she said she was looking forward to it.

"So why did you call me?" I asked, regretting the question as soon as it came out of my mouth.

"What do you mean?"

What I meant was this: we hadn't exactly been friendly at the bridge studio. She mostly ignored me, and my attitude toward her can best be described as surly. But I didn't say that to Toni.

"Never mind," I said. "I mean, I was just . . . surprised you called."

"My grandmother told me to," said Toni.

"Oh. Okay," I said. "Well, see you tomorrow. You'll really like Cliff."

28
Toni's Grandmother and President Nixon

I had felt so awkward asking Toni that question that I readily accepted the answer she gave, and really didn't think about what she said until after I hung up. Her answer was even stranger than my question.

Everybody has two grandmothers, I realized; in fact, Toni had three, if you count the woman Henry King married later on. I had no reason to assume Toni was talking about Trapp's "perfect partner," his ex-wife's insane sister. I had also assumed that person had died.

If she was still alive, and living with Toni's family, it would explain why Trapp went there for dinner. But why didn't he play bridge with her anymore? Did she even remember how to play, or was her mind too far gone?

But that wasn't what made Toni's answer so strange. Why would Toni's grandmother (whichever one it was) tell her to call me? I had never met any of them, except perhaps at Trapp's birthday party eleven years ago. To use an expression my own grandmother used to say, they didn't know me from Adam.

Besides, since when does a teenage girl call up a boy at the suggestion of her grandmother?

I wandered back out into the kitchen.

"Well?" asked my mother.

"Well, what?"

"Well, Toni?"

When I told my mother about our upcoming bridge party, you would have thought from her reaction that she must not have heard me clearly. She must have thought I had said the Queen of England was coming for tea.

She immediately started cleaning everything in sight as she worried about what she would serve.

"Potato chips?" I suggested.

"Don't be ridiculous," she replied, then ordered me to vacuum the living room.

My father came home in a bad mood. He had spent half the day filling out forms at the unemployment office, and hardly said a word during dinner. Not that I'm such a sparkling conversationalist either. Usually the most they can pry out of me are a few "Uh-huhs" and "Pass the applesauce."

"It's bad enough losing a job," he said finally. "Then some condescending government worker treats you like you're some kind of welfare cheat. It's my money!"

"Pass the applesauce," I said.

"I've paid unemployment insurance for seventeen years," my father continued. "All I want is what's rightfully mine. Those government clerks never worked at a real job in their lives."

My father doesn't like government workers any better than he likes car salesmen and pool contractors. He didn't like people on welfare, either.

My mother interrupted his diatribe to tell him that "the Castaneda girl" would be coming to our home the next day.

"We're going to play bridge," Leslie said happily.

My father withdrew back into his silence.

"Is Toni's grandmother still alive?" I asked. "Or did she die in the insane asylum?"

My mother stared at me like I was the one who belonged in an insane asylum. "Now, don't you go asking Toni a lot of stupid questions about her grandmother. Try to act like a normal human being."

"I was just curious what ever happened to her," I persisted.

"She went crazy," said my mother. "They locked her in an asylum."

"I mean after that. Did they ever let her out? Is she still alive?"

"She's dead," my father said flatly. "She died in the asylum. Nixon led the investigation into her death."