The Cardturner: A Novel About Imperfect Partners and Infinite Possibilities Read online

  The bidding proceeds clockwise around the table. A typical auction might go like this:

  North: One heart. (I have a good hand and at least five hearts.)

  East: One spade. (Well, I’ve got a pretty good hand too, with at least five spades.)

  South: Two hearts. (I’ve got some hearts to go along with my partner’s hearts.)

  West: Three clubs. (To hell with all of you! I’ve got a boatload of clubs.)

  North: Pass. (Even though I still like hearts, I don’t want to bid at the three-level. I’m not sure we can take nine tricks.)

  East: Pass.

  South: Three hearts. (I’m willing to take a chance.)

  West: Pass.

  North: Pass.

  East: Pass.

  The bidding ends when there are three passes in a row.

  For simplicity’s sake, that auction would be written like this:

  The final contract is three hearts. Hearts are trump, and North has to take a total of nine tricks (three plus six). If he succeeds, his side will score some points. That’s called making his contract. If he fails, the other side will score some points. That’s called setting the contract.

  Since North was the first person to bid hearts, he plays the hand. He is known as the declarer. His partner, South, becomes the dummy.

  As in other sports, there are an offense and a defense. The defenders in bridge try to prevent the declarer from making his contract, just like a football team tries to prevent the other side from scoring a touchdown.

  There is a fifth suit I haven’t mentioned: no-trump. No-trump is ranked higher than spades.

  So the bidding could go:

  No-trump means what it says. If the final contract is one no-trump, then no suit is trump. There are no wild cards. If you can’t follow suit, all you can do is discard.

  There are two additional bids I haven’t mentioned yet: double and redouble. In the bidding box, the double card is red, with a large white X. The redouble card is blue, with XX.

  If you double, you’re saying you think your opponents bid too high. If they make their contract, they’ll get double the points, but if you set them, then you’ll get double the points.9

  I hadn’t seen anyone use the redouble card yet, but I suppose it increases the number of points at risk. Leslie put it this way: a double card says “No way!” and a redouble card says “Way!”

  One last thing about bidding, and this has to do with keeping score. You don’t always want to bid as cheaply as possible. You get a big bonus if you bid game.

  To bid game in hearts or spades, you have to bid at least four, 4 or 4♠. They’re called the major suits. To bid game in diamonds or clubs, you have to bid at the five-level, 5♣ or 5. They’re called the minor suits. You only need to bid 3NT to be in game in no-trump. That makes sense, since it is harder to win tricks when there are no wild cards.

  You get an even bigger bonus for bidding a slam. That means bidding at the six-level, regardless of the suit. You’ll have to take twelve tricks to make your slam contract.

  A grand slam is when you bid seven. You have to take every single trick, but you get a huge bonus for it.

  It’s not enough just to take every trick. You first have to bid it.

  You may wonder how anyone could bid a slam unless they were dealt practically every ace, king, and queen in the deck. But each bid you and your partner make gives you information about your hands. When Trapp and Gloria bid, it’s like they’re talking in code, describing their hands to each other as they try to figure out what suit should be trump and how high they should bid.

  One time, they both bid spades, and then at some point in the auction, Trapp surprised me by bidding five clubs. He only had two clubs in his hand.

  I didn’t ask, “Are you sure?” I kept my face expressionless as I set the 5♣ bid on the table.

  Gloria then bid six spades. Trapp never wanted clubs to be trump. His bid had somehow told her that he held the king of clubs, which was all she needed to hear to bid slam.

  She made her contract, and scored 1,430 points for it.

  Every other pair who had played the same board also took twelve tricks, but most had only bid four spades, so they only scored 680 points. One pair didn’t even bid game. They stopped at two spades, and scored 230 points for taking the same twelve tricks.

  The bidding determines which suit will be trump, which player will be the declarer, and which player will be dummy. After the bidding there will be a final contract. You always add six to the number bid, so if the final contract is four hearts, it means that the declarer needs to take ten tricks, and hearts are trump. If the final contract is three no-trump, it means the declarer has to take nine tricks, and no suit is trump.

  24

  My Sick Fantasy

  You’re probably wondering why I didn’t tell my uncle I understood, sort of, how to play bridge. I was getting better at predicting what card he would play. Why not let him know? Why not ask him to teach me the finer points of the game? I could be his protégé too, instead of his trained monkey. What better way to “bond” with him than to show an interest in the game he loved?

  You’re right. That would have been the normal and sensible thing to do.

  But in case you haven’t noticed, I have a deranged personality. I don’t like people telling me how to do things. It makes me feel stupid. I have this need to figure things out for myself.

  Ask my mother, she’ll tell you. “You can’t tell Alton anything!”

  Besides, after my uncle’s Go Fish remark to Toni, I wanted to prove to him just how wrong he was.

  I had this fantasy. He’s playing in a real important game, maybe for the national championship, when suddenly Gloria gets sick. Nothing serious, mind you, but she has to leave the table.

  “Well, that’s it,” he says. “We’ll have to forfeit.”

  Then I say, “I suppose I can fill in.”

  “You? Hah! We’re not playing Go Fish!”

  “I’ve been watching you play,” I say. “It doesn’t look too hard. Besides, what have you got to lose? It’s better than forfeiting.”

  So he reluctantly agrees. Leslie takes my place as his cardturner, and I take Gloria’s seat. I then astound him with my brilliant play, and of course, we win, thanks to me. I know, it’s sick.

  25

  Lab Rats Pushing Buttons

  Trapp wasn’t perfect. He didn’t always win. The following Wednesday he played with Wallace again, and this time they had a 48 percent game. More than half the field did better than them. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The funny thing was that he and Wallace hardly argued at all.

  While I was driving Trapp back to his house, I felt the gas pedal start to vibrate, which was always the first sign of trouble. I increased my pressure on the pedal, but helplessly watched the speedometer go from sixty, to fifty-five, to fifty….

  Cars were speeding past me on both sides. The guy behind me was right on my tail. I swerved into the right lane, nearly getting us killed.

  “If I returned a club, he could have discarded his losing spade,” my uncle muttered.

  My foot was pressed to the floor and the speedometer was down to thirty, but I had to be careful. This had happened before. At any moment something would catch and I’d be going ninety.

  Suddenly the engine roared, the car lurched, and just as suddenly it died. I managed to coast to a stop on the side of the highway.

  “Am I home already?” asked Trapp.

  “Not quite,” I said, then explained the situation. “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “It happens all the time. We just have to wait about twenty minutes while it fixes itself.”

  “It fixes itself. That’s quite a car.”

  “That’s what happened the last time,” I said. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess I know as much about cars as Captain knows about global warming.”

  He laughed a double “Hah! Hah!” then asked me if I had one of those new cell phones thingamaji
g.

  He had me call a tow truck. He was going to have the car taken to a certain dealership he knew on Jackson Street.

  I tried to tell him that car dealerships overcharge for repairs, and that I knew a good mechanic who was cheap.

  “If he’s so good, then why does this happen ‘all the time’?”

  “Good point,” I said.

  He told me not to worry; the owner of the dealership was a bridge player. I took that to mean she’d give me a good deal on the repairs.

  While we waited, he asked me what I thought of “this game of bridge.”

  I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to tell him.

  “You don’t have to answer,” he said. “I’m sure it seems boring to you. No flashing lights.”

  “No, it seems very challenging,” I said.

  “So, what do you like to do?” he asked. “Do you play any games?”

  Once again, I considered telling him that I’d been dealing out bridge hands, but instead I mentioned playing video games with my friend Cliff. That was a huge mistake.

  He didn’t think too highly of video games. “You don’t play the game,” he said. “The game plays you.”

  I tried to explain that some video games take a lot of thought and skill, but he said it was “like lab rats pushing buttons. A light flashes, and the rat presses his nose against a button, causing a nugget of food to drop out of a chute.”

  The tow truck arrived and took us to the car dealership. When we pulled into the lot, the owner came out to greet us. She was a red-haired woman wearing boots and a cowboy hat.

  She gave Trapp a hug when he stepped out of the tow truck, then immediately launched into bridge gibberish. “I pick up ace, queen fourth, king third, void, and six solid clubs, missing the ace. My partner opens one diamond—my void, of course—and I bid …”

  That was fine by me. I figured the more they talked bridge, the less she would charge to repair my car.

  “Do you play bridge?” she suddenly asked me.

  “Me?” I asked. Maybe if I told her I was trying to learn, I thought, she’d fix the car for free.

  “Alton likes video games,” said Trapp.

  So I bet you’re thinking that my uncle paid for the repairs?

  Nope. He bought me a new car.

  I was stunned. I must have babbled incoherently for about ten minutes as I thanked him over and over again. I even asked the dreaded question “Are you sure?” at least five times.

  It was one of those fuel-efficient hybrids. “If I’m going to have you driving me to bridge tournaments,” he said, “just so I can indulge my ego, it seems, at the very least, we should get good gas mileage. No reason to unnecessarily pollute the environment and waste the natural resources of other people who are struggling to lead real lives.”

  The owner of the dealership told me to bring her the pink slip for my old car at my convenience.

  It was embarrassing getting all my junk out of the trunk of my old car and putting it into the new one. Fortunately, Trapp couldn’t see my crumpled schoolwork and dirty socks.

  “Who’s to say what’s a real life?” I asked, once we were back on the road.

  You would think my parents would have been happy about my getting a new car, what with my father losing his job and all. You would think.

  My mother complained that it would raise the cost of our insurance. My father demanded to know how much I got for the trade-in.

  I’m not kidding. He was afraid I got ripped off.

  My father doesn’t trust car salesmen. He also doesn’t like lawyers, bankers, plumbers, electricians, politicians, or swimming-pool contractors.

  “We still have the pink slip,” he said. “That means it is still legally our car.”

  He wanted us to go to the dealership and take the car back. He was sure we could sell it ourselves for a lot more than the dealer paid for it.

  Once again, Leslie came to my rescue. She reminded him that the woman was a friend of Uncle Lester’s. If we made her mad, Uncle Lester might cut us out of his will.

  I realize it’s a cliché for a teenager to be embarrassed by his parents. Cliff often complained about his parents, but I always thought they were pretty cool. Was it possible, I wondered, that there was somebody, somewhere, who thought my parents were cool?

  26

  Yarborough10

  Toni Castaneda was once again Trapp’s Thursday partner. She was already in the North seat, smiling brightly as we approached.

  “Hi, Alton,” she greeted me.

  I grunted.

  I was shuffling the cards when she suddenly asked, “So do you like your new car?”

  “How do you know about that?” I asked.

  “Trapp had dinner at our house last night. That must have been scary when your car died in the middle of the highway!”

  “It was no big deal,” I said with a shrug.

  Have I told you how many times my mother had tried to invite Uncle Lester to our house for dinner? Mrs. Mahoney always declined on his behalf. Recently she’d been using Teodora’s special diet as an excuse, but Trapp had been refusing my mother’s dinner invitations long before Teodora started working there.

  Not that I blamed him. I wouldn’t eat dinner at my house either if I didn’t have to. Still, it bothered me that he went to the Castanedas’.

  “I thought you were on some special diet,” I said to my uncle.

  “We’re vegetarians,” said Toni.

  “Sophie’s a terrific cook,” said Trapp. “She made a lentil and barley soup that was incredible. With just a hint of mint.”

  The game got under way, and Toni screwed up on the very first hand. Toni passed, East opened “One heart,” and Trapp said, “Double.”

  I set the red card with the big X on the table.

  I had seen Trapp make that bid before. It didn’t mean he expected to beat one heart.

  This was his hand:

  His bid is called a takeout double. He was telling Toni that he had a good hand, and the three other suits. He didn’t know which suit to bid, so he was leaving it up to her.

  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 th
ousand 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.