The Cardturner: A Novel About Imperfect Partners and Infinite Possibilities Page 15

  Still, I enjoyed the stories. It was nice hearing everyone talk about Trapp. I was reminded of something he’d told me. His body might be gone, but the idea of Lester Trapp was still alive.

  Wallace told about the time that Trapp was declarer in a five-diamond contract, without a diamond in his hand. “We had a slight misunderstanding during the bidding.”

  Even I laughed at that.

  “But when I passed his five-diamond bid,” Wallace said, “you would not have known anything was wrong from looking at him. The opening lead was made, I set down the dummy, and he simply said, ‘Thank you, partner,’ as if he were in a perfectly normal contract. As I watched him play the hand, I kept wondering, Why isn’t he pulling trump? Finally, an opponent led a diamond, and he discarded a spade. Only then did I realize that we might not be in the best contract.

  “‘No diamonds, partner?’ I asked. He glared back at me. The thing is, he managed to hold it to down two. We lost eleven IMPs on the board, but if he had been down three, we would have lost by thirteen. We won the match by one IMP.”

  “Lucky he wasn’t doubled,” said Leslie, surprising everyone, I think, with her bridge knowledge.

  “No, he would have been happy to have been doubled,” explained the woman who sold me my car. “Then he would have gotten another chance to bid.”

  “I have a story,” I said, suddenly finding my courage.

  I told about my first day as Trapp’s cardturner, and how he had called me a moron and imbecile when I first tried to give him his hand. “I didn’t know what I did wrong, but you should have heard him scream at me!”

  “We did,” said someone I recognized from the club.

  I then told about the car ride home and those thirteen letters, “G-b-c-d-i-o-a-o-r-y-t-g-l.” I asked if anyone could repeat them, but nobody volunteered.

  “Then he gave me the same letters in a different order. G-i-r-l, b-o-y, c-a-t, d-o-g.”

  By the time I got to cat, several of them were saying the letters right with me.

  “Thirteen letters,” said Arnold. “The number of cards in a bridge hand.”

  “Divided into four suits,” said Wallace.

  Toni smiled at me as if to say, “You did good.”

  By the way, if you’re wondering how I could have recited those letters out of order, I used a little trick, which I think might be the same trick Trapp used. I began with the first letter of girl, then the first letter of boy, then cat, then dog; then the second letter of each word, and so forth.

  That is the way I wrote it in chapter ten of this book, but that was just a guess. I can’t say for certain in what order Trapp gave me those letters.

  Arnold’s wife, Deborah, had the best Trapp story. The story took place before she and Arnold were married.

  Trapp was living in an apartment in Norwalk, Connecticut, at the time. There was a regional in Bridgeport, not too far away, and Trapp had let Deborah crash on his sofa for the tournament.

  “It was my first day there,” Deborah said. “He was playing in a pairs game and I was in a knockout, so I got back to the apartment before he did. There was only one bathroom, and being the good guest, I took my shower before he came home. It wasn’t until after I stepped out of the shower that I noticed there weren’t any towels.”

  “Typical,” said Lucy.

  “So, very wet and very naked, I peeked out the bathroom door, to make sure the coast was clear, then ran into the hall and quickly tried to find a linen closet.”

  “Uh-oh,” said Leslie.

  “Uh-oh is right,” said Deborah. “I suddenly heard the front door start to open.”

  Leslie gasped.

  “I ducked into some sort of utility closet,” said Deborah. “A second later I hear Trapp just outside my door, muttering to himself about some stupid bridge hand. ‘If I try to pull trump they’ll tap me in hearts. But if I don’t pull trump they’ll ruff clubs.’ This goes on for I don’t know how long. I’m in there, freezing my”—she looked at Leslie—“freezing my nose off, and he’s right outside muttering to himself.”

  “Wasn’t there anything in the closet you could use to cover yourself up?” asked Leslie.

  “There was a vacuum cleaner,” said Deborah, “but I couldn’t figure out how that would help me. I also noticed some rolls of toilet paper, and actually thought about trying to wrap myself, but I figured that would be more embarrassing than being naked. Finally I just decided that the best defense was a good offense. I stepped out of the closet, in all my glory, and demanded, ‘Where do you keep the damn towels!’”

  Leslie covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Trapp looked up at me for no more than half a second; then he handed me this torn envelope with a bridge diagram scrawled on it and asked, ‘How would you play four spades after the lead of the three of clubs?’”18

  53

  A Fresh Start

  I have a confession to make: before leaving my uncle’s memorial, I asked Toni if she wanted to play bridge sometime, “as a tribute to Trapp.”

  “He’d like that,” she agreed, wiping away a tear.

  So, does that make me a rotten human being? Was I just exploiting my uncle’s death to pick up a girl?

  I don’t think I was doing that. I think I really did think that playing bridge with Toni would be a fitting tribute to Trapp.

  If I really was just trying to make a move on Toni, then it was doubly rotten. Not only was I exploiting my uncle’s death, I was betraying my best friend.

  I was pretty certain that there was something going on between Cliff and Toni, although it’s hard to tell with Cliff. He isn’t the kind of guy who brags about girls. Not like Gilliam, for example. Whenever Gilliam talks about a girl, you can only believe about one-tenth of what he tells you. Cliff is just the opposite. He has a way of saying very little but somehow implying a lot. You always wonder what good stuff he left out.

  Anyway, Toni and I agreed to play on Thursday, her usual day with Trapp. She e-mailed me eight more pages of bidding instructions, and I was in my room, going over them with Leslie, and trying not to think about Cliff, when my parents entered.

  “Ed Johnson just called,” said my father.

  Don’t bother flipping back through the pages trying to find that name. I didn’t know who Ed Johnson was either. It turned out he was Uncle Lester’s lawyer, the one who helped prepare his last will and testament.

  My mother summed up our inheritance in three words. “We got squat!”

  “He gave it all to charity,” said my father. “Diabetes research, I can understand that. But cancer research? He didn’t even have cancer!”

  “So the lawyer just called you up to say you weren’t getting anything?” asked Leslie. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly nothing,” my mother admitted. “We got the same as every other relative. What did Mr. Johnson call it? A fresh start.”

  All my parents’ debts would be paid off, including credit cards, car loans, and even the mortgage on our house. In addition, all of my and Leslie’s future college expenses, including room and board, would be paid for.

  “If we had known,” my father said, “if you had talked to him like you were supposed to do, then we could have borrowed more money.”

  I didn’t know a lot about my parents’ finances, but it was my guess that their credit cards were already maxed out.

  “Can’t you borrow the money now?” Leslie asked.

  “No, it’s whatever our debts were at the time of his death,” my mother explained. “We have to provide documentation.”

  “What about the pool?” Leslie asked.

  The estate would pay for the amount we owed for the work already done, but not to complete the job.

  My father complained that some of our other relatives lived in bigger, more expensive houses, with bigger mortgages, and that others had more kids who would go to college.

  I remembered something Trapp had told me once about his bridge-bum days. Eve
n though he had had very little money, those days were the happiest of his life.

  He told me that the secret of success was to never spend more than you had. “Don’t use credit cards. Don’t owe anyone money.” Once you go into debt, he had said, you lose your freedom.

  Trapp’s donations to various charities included a huge chunk of change for animal welfare groups and another for Seeing Eye dogs. He also set up a fund to teach bridge in schools. The fund would pay for a bridge teacher for any school that wanted to start a bridge club.

  “But don’t think all the time you spent with him was for naught,” my mother said sarcastically. “He also left something just for you, Alton. A book!”

  I didn’t think my time with him had been for naught. Like my mother had once said, it was for the joy of spending time with my favorite uncle. My only regret was that it didn’t last longer, at least until after the nationals.

  The book arrived by special courier the following day. Maybe, like me, you thought it would be a bridge book. I was wrong. It was his 1945 hardbound copy of Cannery Row.

  The dust jacket was torn and felt brittle when I rubbed my fingers over it. It was blue-black with a dreamlike oval picture of an industrial waterfront. The title was written in yellow script above the picture, and the author’s name, John Steinbeck, also in yellow, was printed below.

  Trapp and Annabel had each held the book I was holding. I opened it and started reading the same pages they had read.

  54

  Transfer Bids

  Of all the bids Toni e-mailed to me, the most confusing was something called a Jacoby transfer bid.

  It works like this: if your partner opens one no-trump and you have five or more cards in a major suit (hearts or spades), you don’t bid that suit. Instead, you bid the suit ranked just below it.

  So if your partner opens one no-trump and you have five hearts, you bid two diamonds. Your partner is now supposed to bid two hearts. That’s why it’s called a transfer bid. You’re transferring the bid to your partner.

  If you mess up and bid two hearts by mistake, there’s no recovering. Your partner will think you are transferring to spades.

  A Jacoby transfer bid is tricky because you bid a different suit than the one you mean. If you bid diamonds, it means you have hearts. If you bid hearts, it means you have spades.

  I was beginning to understand how Trapp and Wallace had ended up in five diamonds that time when Trapp was void in diamonds. Expert partnerships use all kinds of complicated bidding systems. Like trapeze acrobats without a net, they need to be perfectly in sync or face disaster.

  I picked Toni up at her house. As we drove to the bridge studio she asked me if I understood transfer bids.

  “No problem,” I assured her.

  She seemed doubtful. “If you forget, that’s okay,” she said. “It’s just one board. Trapp always said the best way to learn a new bidding system is to screw it up a few times.”

  I was actually encouraged by her lack of confidence in me. If she was willing to let me screw it up until I got it right, then maybe she didn’t see this as just a onetime thing.

  “So how’d you like the movie?” I asked.

  “What movie?”

  “I heard you and Cliff went to a movie.”

  “No,” she said. “Who told you that?”

  I considered mentioning Katie but decided against it.

  “I think it might have been last week,” I said.

  “We never went to a movie,” Toni said, and for a moment I grew hopeful that maybe I had been wrong about Cliff and Toni. But just for a moment.

  “We went to a party at the country club,” she said, “if that’s what you’re thinking about.”

  “I guess that’s it,” I said.

  “It was so lame!” she added. “I had to wear this stupid poodle skirt, and every song sounded like ‘Rock Around the Clock.’ I don’t get why people think the fifties were so great.”

  “I know what you mean,” I agreed, once again allowing myself some hope.

  “Cliff hated it too,” said Toni. “So we left and ended up just taking a walk around the golf course. That was really nice. There was a full moon, and there were like all these scary shadows everywhere.”

  I could imagine. I could imagine way too much. I tried to get my mind back on bridge. Two diamonds is a transfer to hearts. Two hearts is a transfer to spades.

  At the bridge studio, we asked for table three, North-South. Trapp’s table.

  I sat in my usual spot, only this time I had no chair to my left and slightly behind me.

  “Feels weird, doesn’t it?” asked Toni.

  “Very,” I agreed.

  Two women joined us, taking the East-West seats. They smiled sadly at me, and said how sorry they were to hear about my uncle. I thanked them. They tried to engage me in conversation about him, but I just gave one-word answers to their questions. I was glad when the game got started.

  We began with board five. I opened one spade, and the next thing I knew I was the declarer in a four-spade contract. I went down one trick, because I didn’t realize my ten of diamonds was good. I knew the ace, king, and jack were gone, but I didn’t remember seeing the queen.

  “Sorry, partner,” I said, “I guess my game’s a little off today.”

  “No sorrys allowed,” said Toni.

  In the back of my mind I heard Trapp ask, “And when has your game ever been on?”

  These were my cards for board six:

  Toni opened one no-trump, East passed, and I had to make a decision. Do I pass or bid two hearts?

  My hand was totally useless unless hearts were trump. But if I bid two hearts, then I’d have to take eight tricks. If I passed one no-trump, Toni would be the declarer, and she would only have to take seven tricks.

  Still, a heart contract seemed right, so I reached for the 2 bid.

  I suddenly heard Leslie’s voice screaming at me inside my head. “Stop! Two hearts is a transfer to spades. You have to bid two diamonds!”

  I caught myself just in time. I set the 2 bid on the table and hoped that was right. I actually felt my heart pound as I waited to see what Toni would do.

  West passed. Toni didn’t even hesitate. Out came the 2 bid.

  I came that close to screwing up the Jacoby transfer bid. At the last second, I heard Leslie’s voice in the back of my mind, screaming at me to remember.

  Everyone passed, East made her opening lead, and I tabled the dummy.

  Toni looked at my cards and smiled. “Thank you, partner,” she said, sounding as if she meant it.

  Would you believe it? She actually made an overtrick.

  I felt great. It was like an assist in basketball. I passed Toni the ball, and she slam-dunked it.

  55

  Post-mortem19

  The round was called. The boards were passed to the next lower table, and the people moved up a table. Our new East-West opponents told me how sorry they were to hear about my uncle.

  I thanked them and quickly removed the cards from the South slot.

  My hand was worth seven points: two for the ♠Q, three for the heart void, and two for the singleton club.

  East passed, and I was about to do the same when I heard Trapp say, “Four spades.”

  I stopped in midreach.

  I need to explain something here. Earlier, when I told you I heard Leslie screaming at me to bid two diamonds, that was only because she had helped me study. I associated her voice with the bids. And before that, when I told you I heard Trapp ask, “And when has your game ever been on?”, well, that was my attempt at being clever in a self-deprecating sort of way.

  This was different. I heard Trapp say “Four spades.” It was as if he were sitting to my left, slightly behind me. Maybe heard is the wrong word. I perceived it.

  One thing I had learned as his cardturner was to never let my emotions show. My heart might have stopped for a few seconds, and my brain was doing backflips, but I simply took a breath, then reached
into the bidding box, removed the 4♠ card, and set it on the table.

  The guy on my left looked at me like I was crazy. I couldn’t have agreed more.

  He doubled.

  Toni thought awhile, and for a second I was afraid she was going to redouble, but she just passed, as did everyone else.

  The opening lead was the ace of hearts. I tried to gather my thoughts and concentrate on the bridge game.

  As Toni set down the dummy, I hoped she’d have the ace or king of spades, preferably both.

  She had neither. She was void in spades.

  “Thank you, partner,” I managed.

  I told Toni to play the 3, and then I trumped it in my hand with the ♠2, winning the trick.

  Now what? I thought.

  “Queen of spades,” said Trapp.

  That would have been my last choice. The queen of spades was sure to lose to the ace or king. I would be throwing away the only high card in my hand.

  I led the ♠Q. Sure enough, West played the ♠K.

  I won’t go through the rest of the hand. Maybe you can figure out how to take ten tricks. I did, apparently.20

  Four spades, doubled, was worth 790 for us.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have doubled,” grumbled West. “All I had was a twenty-three-point hand, including the ace and king of trump!”

  Trapp told me what card to play, and I played it. I’d done it a thousand times before.

  56

  Welcome to My World

  Toni and I came in first place with a 70 percent game. You’d think we would have been all excited, but Toni and I barely said a word to each other the whole time. I mostly felt overwhelmed, and more than a little scared. I got more and more scared as we continued to get one top board after another.

  Throughout it all, Toni remained grim-faced. I knew Trapp and Gloria never acted too gleeful when they got a top board. It’s considered rude, since it means your opponents just got a bottom board. But Toni took it to the other extreme. As she recorded our scores, she seemed angry.