The Cardturner (10 page)
Authors: Louis Sachar
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.
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.
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 thingamajig.
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?
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.
