Playing Dirty (17 page)

“And
I’m
supposed to be a New Yorker?”

Her mother was right. That was ridiculous. “I’ve never specified that I grew up in New York City. I could hail from somewhere else in the area. Maybe Schenectady.”

“Gracious, how do you expect me to pull
that
off? I’m bound to slip up and order a glass of iced tea. Couldn’t you move us to Louisville, or Richmond?”

“Richmond doesn’t exactly have that hard rockin’ edge I was looking for.”

“
Schenectady
,” her mother repeated. “You might as well have made me from
Los Angeles
.”

“
You
don’t have to be from Schenectady,” Sarah explained. “You grew up in Alabama, but you moved to Schenectady when you were—”

“Twenty,” her mother finished. “And had you right away. That would make me fifty now.”

“I’m glad you’re into the fantasy,” Sarah said dryly.

“And I’ve moved back to Fairhope to live out my
days in quiet solitude, without my only child interloping at inopportune times, such as Christmas.”

“I was in
Rio
!”

“They have airplanes in Rio.”

Theoretically
, Sarah thought.

That night, she drove Quentin to the hotel where the bridge tournament was held. She marveled that in the car, he never once complained about the strange turn their date had taken. When they registered in the lobby, he towered over the women and stooped elderly men wandering about, yet he seemed completely comfortable. The uncomfortable one was Sarah.

The moment came. Her mother stood at the edge of the lobby, watching for Sarah, silver hair coifed in its neat bob, chic pantsuit impeccable. Her mother didn’t recognize her.

Sarah took Quentin’s hand and pulled him toward the inevitable. Her mother noticed them then, but she seemed to recognize Quentin first. Only then did she turn her gaze to Sarah. She wore her poker face, without even the raised eyebrow. Absolutely no reaction. It was almost worse than screams of
What have you done to your hair?
which was why, as a teenager, Sarah had never attempted to shock her mother.

Then they embraced, and Sarah introduced her charming mother to charming Quentin. For a few moments, she could almost imagine that she had a normal, loving mother. Even the mother she’d had
before her dad died, though not normal, would do. She could almost imagine that she was introducing her normal mother to her handsome boyfriend, who was not in love with someone else.

Her real mother returned. “I never thought I’d say this,” she drawled, “but I do believe I’ll be glad when this tournament is over tonight. In one hand during the afternoon session, Beulah didn’t lead my suit after I bid it three times!” She glanced at her watch, then toward the ballroom filled with card tables. “Almost time!” She patted Quentin’s arm. “Have fun!” She swept into the ballroom as if she owned it and her partner, cowering at a table, was her maid.

Quentin stood directly in front of Sarah and looked down at her. “I see where you get your poker face,” he said. “But you kept yours, too. You took it real good.”

“Thanks.” She looked up into his beautiful green eyes and wished she could spend the evening in his arms. Without even having sex. She just wanted to be held by him. “I hate bridge.”

They took their assigned places at one of the tables and played for three tedious hours, with their opponents rotating to new tables every so often. Most of the other players seemed to be of the paste-eating variety, and some of the women and all of the men alternately stared at Sarah’s hair and ogled her cleavage. Natsuko would have accepted this as part of the territory, but Sarah minded.

And it wasn’t even any fun to play bridge with Quentin. Playing poker with novices was difficult
for Sarah, because she never knew whether they were making a savvy move or just getting lucky as they bungled their way through the game. Bridge was similar, except that in bridge, Quentin was supposed to be her partner. It was almost impossible to play this partner game by herself. Now she knew how her mother felt.

A collective gasp echoed in the ballroom. Sarah looked over to see a large elderly lady at another table melt out of her chair and puddle onto the floor. Instantly a man was on top of her, pressing her chest and giving her mouth-to-mouth.

“Your turn,” the west player said.

With a shocked look at Quentin, Sarah set down a spade, then glanced back at the woman and the man performing CPR. Other people watched, too, and were periodically hounded by their opponents to keep playing their hands.

The east player suggested, “We should move our table so the stretcher can get through.” The four of them picked up the table and shifted it toward the wall to clear a path on the ballroom floor.

“Your turn,” West said again to Sarah.

The hand ended. They had to wait for the other tables, slowed by rubberneckers, to finish before their opponents could rotate to different tables.

Quentin stood and stretched. “I’m taking a little break.”

Sarah nodded. Probably he needed a moment in the lobby, or a drink from the bar, to collect himself
after witnessing the shadow of death, or the Vulcan Regional Duplicate Bridge Tournament’s crassness in the shadow of death.

Instead, he walked to the supine woman, tapped the now slowing man on the shoulder as if cutting in at a ball, and took his turn pressing the lady’s chest and giving her mouth-to-mouth.

West asked East, “How does Annabelle look?” East shook his head.

“Is she a friend of yours?” Sarah asked in horror.

“A dear friend,” East said. “But she was doing what she loved to do.” He turned to West. “You really should have led the three of diamonds on that hand.”

The ballroom doors burst open and two paramedics rolled a stretcher in. It took both of them plus Quentin to lift the lady onto the stretcher, and it was Quentin rather than one of the paramedics who placed an oxygen mask over her face. Finally, as the paramedics wheeled the burdened stretcher out, Sarah thought she heard one of them call to Quentin, “Queen to king two.”

The ballroom door closed behind them. The hand ended. The east-west pairs switched tables, with the bustle more animated now that there was something to talk about. Several people patted Quentin’s back as he made his way to Sarah, sweat glistening at his temples.

Sarah asked a passing waiter to bring Quentin a glass of water. She was going to hug him, but he bent over
to look into her eyes first. “Are you okay?” he whispered. “Your dad didn’t die playing bridge, did he?”

“Oh, no,” Sarah assured him. “Sitting at home in his favorite chair, listening to Bach.” She shook off a sob. “Is she going to be okay?”

“No,” Quentin said with finality. “She was already dead when I took over.”

“Then why’d you keep trying?” Sarah whispered, flashing back to Quentin’s strong arms pressing the dead chest.

“You have to try,” he said calmly. “You never can tell.”

Sarah turned to the closed ballroom doors. “Did you know that paramedic?”

“Yeah,” Quentin acknowledged. “When the Cheatin’ Hearts hit the big time, I was working at the hospital.”

She murmured, “That explains your cavalier attitude toward IVs.”

Lost in thought, he looked through Sarah. “Did he say queen to king two?” He swore. Then he focused on her again. “We’ve had a chess game going for three years.”

He moved past her to pull out the chairs for their last opponents, Sarah’s mother and Beulah. Sarah’s mother asked, “So, enjoying this geriatric excitement?” as Quentin scooted her up to the table.

“You mean sitting around playing bridge for kicks, right?” Sarah said reproachfully. “I know you’re not making a joke about that poor woman.”

“I suppose I’m inured,” her mother said. “It happens so often. It happened to my partner at the Fort Custer Regional Duplicate Bridge Tournament in Kalamazoo last year.”

Beulah eyed Sarah’s mother uneasily.

Sarah exclaimed, “Oh my God, Mom! What did you do when she died?”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, sweetie. It’s not polite. I was able to find another partner by the afternoon session.”

Quentin made a noise, about to burst into laughter. He covered it by clearing his throat.

“It’s because you’re all so sedentary,” Sarah told her mother. “You need to get your butts off these extremely uncomfortable chairs and go for a jog.”

“
Sarah,
” her mother scolded scathingly.

Sarah realized what she’d said. “
Butt
is not a curse word,” she defended herself. Remembering an argument with her mother from fifteen years before, she added, “And neither is
snot
.”

Playfully her mother reached over to cover one of Quentin’s ears. “Please don’t use that kind of language around me, even to make a point,” she said. “Your marathon isn’t the answer to everything.”

“Neither is bridge.”

Quentin was dummy on this hand, appropriately enough. He laid down his cards for Sarah to choose from and watched her intently as she played. Sometimes he scrutinized Sarah’s face, then her mother’s,
then hers, fascinated or—if he shared Sarah’s opinion—alarmed at the likeness.

Sarah was able to contain herself while she controlled the cards, but when she finished and the bidding began for the next hand, she couldn’t stand it. She hardly ever sat still for this long. Just one more hand. Hyped from her run that morning, she tapped her feet under the table.

“Don’t fidget, sweetie,” her mother said as Beulah, the dummy for this hand, left the table. Sarah had noticed during the session that Beulah seemed to take a break from Sarah’s mother every time she was dummy, which didn’t surprise Sarah in the least.

“Don’t scold, Mom,” Sarah said. “It doesn’t become you.” Then, as she watched her mother rearrange Beulah’s cards to her liking with busy efficiency, she asked, “Has Beulah done any better this session?”

“Beulah,” her mother said derisively, “just took me to four with only five points in her hand, as you can see, and we’re vulnerable.”

“Maybe you should play poker instead of bridge,” Quentin suggested, the first words he’d spoken other than bridge bids since Sarah’s mother sat down. “Poker and bridge are a lot alike. Your poker face would come in handy. And you wouldn’t have to count on anybody but yourself.”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” her mother said dismissively, studying her cards.

Quentin said, “Of course, poker’s more of a man’s game.”

Sitting back in her chair with an amused smile and one eyebrow arched, Sarah’s mother examined Quentin like a tiger looking over a piece of meat. “Is it, now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said guilelessly.

Sarah’s mother leaned toward the table again and began to play the hand. “Perhaps it’s you who needs to play bridge instead of poker. If your whole life is poker, playing the game isn’t fun.”

Quentin shot Sarah an alarmed look. Sarah shrugged. Her mother liked to scare people.

Her mother scared Quentin again at the end of the session when she asked him to accompany her to the teller machine in the lobby as her bodyguard. She asked Sarah to get them a table for dinner in the restaurant. Clearly this was a ploy to grill or threaten Quentin alone, but Sarah knew that attempts to dissuade her mother weren’t worth the effort. She moved to a table in the restaurant and waited obediently.

Quentin looked stricken when they returned, but he managed to pull out the chair for Sarah’s mother before informing Sarah that he’d be waiting for her at the bar.

“Won’t you join us for dinner?” Sarah’s mother asked, sounding genuinely disappointed.

“Oh, no, ma’am,” he said. “I already et.” He actually said
et
. “I’m sorry you missed the barbecue I grilled up earlier.”

“You were supposed to be working on my album,” Sarah said.

“I did that, too. I was multi—” He ran out of words.

“Multitasking?” Sarah suggested.

“You amaze me with your book learning.” He leaned down to kiss her lips softly, then held her gaze with his green eyes for a few seconds, giving her strength, before crossing the room and easing onto a barstool.

Sarah didn’t blame him. It could be that he’d already eaten, or that he wanted to give her time alone with her mother. Most likely, fifteen minutes of Sarah and her mother sparring was all he could stand. Sarah knew the feeling.

“Happy early birthday, sweetie,” her mother said, passing her five hundred-dollar bills under the table, as if she was afraid they’d be mugged in the hotel restaurant. Sarah tried to accept the gift graciously. She didn’t mention that she still had three thousand dollars in poker winnings in her bag.

They chatted for a few minutes about relatives, and Sarah’s lying, cheating, soon-to-be-ex-husband, and Wendy, whom Sarah’s mother had met several times and disapproved of as “brazen.” But Sarah’s mother had nothing but praise for Quentin.

“Such a gentleman,” she said between dainty sips of she-crab bisque. “And so
handsome
. If only we could get him out of that faded T-shirt.” She glanced up at Sarah. “So to speak.”

“He’s not exactly the corporate mogul you always said you wanted for me, Mom,” Sarah pointed out. “And he’s very talented, but he doesn’t seem all that bright. This is one of those times you’d be telling your bridge friends, ‘Thank goodness intelligence descends through the mother.’ ”