I Think You're Totally Wrong (5 page)

CALEB:
We just passed Baring. One grocery store/post office. Same building. We're near Stevens Pass.

(parking in front of a run-down house)

(long silence)

DAVID:
Okay.

CALEB:
Let's go in.

DAVID:
Okay.

CALEB:
We've got different senses of humor.

DAVID:
I find stuff funny. I just don't laugh all the time.

CALEB:
Look at that house. You'd stay there?

DAVID:
Why not?

CALEB:
I wondered whether to do this. I told my wife, and she said, “Really?” You'd have a stoic expression, and I'd tell you that it was a joke, and you'd say, “Huh?”

DAVID:
You should do it, whatever it is. Ah, I see. I'm an idiot. You were going to pretend this horrible place is where we were staying, and I would freak out.

CALEB:
Pretend?

DAVID:
If you're joking, it would be the kind of thing I'd laugh at.

CALEB:
This house hasn't been lived in for ten years. No lights, grass four feet high, broken windows. I was working up to telling you we're staying at a meth lab. Sensors, wires, and pit bulls. You'd stay here?

DAVID:
I could handle it.

CALEB:
(driving farther on the dirt road)
I give up.

CALEB:
Skykomish, September 29th, 2011, 8:57 p.m. We're about one mile south of Highway 2 and three miles west of the town of Skykomish. We turned off Money Creek Road, down a dirt road, a driveway, and are entering Barouh's house.

DAVID:
This is nice.

CALEB:
He should rent it out. The ghost of Barouh is all around. I just wanted to check the gas stove. If the gas doesn't work, we'll go to Khamta's.

CALEB:
Khamta's house.

DAVID:
This isn't our place, is it?

CALEB:
Outdoor basketball court, kids' wading pool, hot tub. He's got four-wheelers and a riding mower. It's no cabin.

DAVID:
Christ, it's gorgeous. I'm going to send a picture of it to Laurie.

CALEB:
(playing a CD inside the house)
You're friends with the singer.

DAVID:
Is it Rick Moody's band?

CALEB:
Mountain Con.

DAVID:
Oh my god! James sounds great. Wow! Man! They sound terrific. It's so cool that you looked him up.

CALEB:
I didn't. I saw him perform about eight years ago and bought the CD. When you mentioned Mountain Con in that essay, I looked at my CD and noticed James Nugent's name.

DAVID:
They sound great. It's so polished. What's the name of the song?

CALEB:
“Future Burn Out.” You didn't recognize it? You've written about them.

DAVID:
I must admit I didn't. I have the ear of a penguin.

CALEB:
You ready for some music and chess?

CALEB:
There's a cold war going on: art vs. life. Shields vs. Powell.

DAVID:
Man, I can barely remember.

CALEB:
Are you that rusty?

DAVID:
I'll give it a shot.

CALEB:
Ain't like riding a bicycle.

DAVID:
I'll try. If I get killed, so be it. This is the queen
(thump)
. Queen on color.

CALEB:
She has a necklace. These pieces
are
odd looking. It's the chess set my dad had as a boy. The king has a beard.

DAVID:
I'll start and go out with a bang.

DAVID:
(thump)
I like the idea of a little chess game where I get mad. It'd be hard to transcribe. I'm playing a little recklessly. What was my mistake? Shoot. Dumb. What am I thinking?

CALEB:
(laughing)
That's staying in.

DAVID:
Like Wallace when he loses at Ping-Pong. Hmm. My mistake. What an idiot. Oh my god.

CALEB:
You haven't played chess in a while.

DAVID:
Helpless. You're good, but this is all pretty basic stuff. I'm oblivious. Boy, I was just excited that some of the moves came back to me. This one's over.

CALEB:
(setting up the pieces)
I can't play chess at home, on the road, or around Terry.

DAVID:
Why not?

CALEB:
If I play, I tune out and she goes bananas. I never play chess on my computer.

DAVID:
Why not?

They begin another game
.

CALEB:
Same as why I stopped smoking pot. I wouldn't be able to stop. On our honeymoon, she and I were in Flores, Guatemala, and stopped off at an internet café. Terry finished her email and I told her that I wanted to finish my chess game, so she went to our hotel, about a five-minute walk away. An hour later—she'd say three hours—she comes back and I'm still playing chess.

DAVID:
Computer chess?

CALEB:
Yahoo Games.

DAVID:
Have you gotten good?

CALEB:
My game has stayed more or less the same as it was in high school. A friend and I play through email. One game lasts weeks. Anyway, from the first game I could see that you haven't played in a while. You made an unorthodox opening.

DAVID:
I played seriously the year I had a broken leg in high school. The apex of my chess career was dreaming in chess notation.

CALEB:
Want another beer?

DAVID:
No thanks.
(thump, thump, thump)
Let's see, I move there, you grab this guy … 
(thump)
I get confused sometimes.

CALEB:
I'd like to teach my daughters chess. Chess helps you think. You can make a lot of analogies to life. Most people think intuitively. Chess exposes this. Namely, what looks good at first glance, prima facie, might be an error. And from that you learn to question judgment. Speed chess, on the other hand, is more instinctual.

DAVID:
Obviously.

CALEB:
“Look before you leap” or “see a chance—take it.” What do you do? Okay, you have two objects: one is worth a dollar more than the other, and they are worth a dollar ten total. How much is each object worth?

DAVID:
Unless I'm missing something, isn't one object a dollar and the other a dime?

CALEB:
That's a difference of ninety. One's worth a hundred and five. The other's worth five.

DAVID:
True that.

CALEB:
You have doors A, B, and C. Behind two of the doors are goats and behind one is a car. You pick door A. The announcer goes to door B and opens it: it's a goat. He asks you if you want to take door C or keep door A. Should you switch doors?

DAVID:
The guy could be lying, so what difference does it make?

CALEB:
Assume he's not. Three doors: behind two are goats, and behind one's a car. Whatever door you pick, you get what's behind.

DAVID:
And you want a car?

CALEB:
No, you live in the Himalayas and want a goat. When you pick door A, he opens door B and there's a goat, and he hasn't opened door A or C yet, but he gives you the option of switching from A to C. Do you switch?

DAVID:
I gotcha.

CALEB:
Do you switch?

DAVID:
To door C? Umm, I would say no. I'd stay.

CALEB:
Wrong. If you switch, you'll have a two-in-three chance of getting the car. If you stay, you have a one-in-three chance.

DAVID:
Isn't there still, at this point, an equal one-in-two chance?

CALEB:
No. You switch and you always have a two-in-three chance of getting the car.

DAVID:
Is that really true?

CALEB:
By switching, you can expatiate your wrongness two out of three times.

DAVID:
I'm not sure “expatiate” is the right word.

CALEB:
You have to switch.

DAVID:
Are these math puzzles?

CALEB:
Math and logic.

DAVID:
Are you good at math?

CALEB:
I scored two hundred points higher in math than verbal on the SAT. I was an average English student.

DAVID:
I barely passed trigonometry. Hearing all these logic puzzles makes me think about something a student told me the other day about David Wagoner. Did you ever study poetry with him?

CALEB:
No.

DAVID:
Perfect example of misapplied logic.

CALEB:
Hold that thought. I've got to pee.