The Game Player

by Rafael Yglesias

  “He does?”

  “Yep.” Brian’s face was passive. “Don’t your parents like Kennedy?”

  “No!” I smiled to soften what might be an insulting amazement.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, there’s the Bay of Pigs and the missile thing. And also Dad says that Papa Kennedy made his money in a horribly corrupt way.”

  Brian laughed. “My father likes Joe Kennedy.” He thought for a moment. “He’s sarcastic about him, but he obviously admires him.”

  “Oh, so he doesn’t think Joe Kennedy is a spy or something.”

  “No, just stupid.” Brian ate his food steadily, unlike me—I ate in bursts, followed by disgust.

  “So,” I asked, “do you agree with your father?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care.”

  I accepted this because I didn’t feel strongly that one should care, even though I thought intelligent people ought to.

  “What does your father do now?” Brian asked.

  “He owns a hardware store.”

  “He had saved enough to buy it?”

  “No,” I said, and stopped, hoping for a moment that Brian wouldn’t ask anything else that would add to my father’s schleppiness. But he did ask, so I was forced to admit that he had inherited it from my grandfather. “What does your father do?” I asked. Perhaps I hoped Brian’s answer to this question would lessen my embarrassment about my father’s work, or perhaps I was just curious.

  “My father’s a self-made man,” he said, addressing himself to my sore point. “He put himself through college by holding down a full-time job at the same time. He got, I don’t know, something like four hours’ sleep a night. One year, he says, he drove a cab on weekends on top of that.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  “Yeah.” Brian was matter-of-fact about it. He didn’t seem to be trying to impress me. “Yeah, he’s kind of amazing. Anyway, he got an engineering degree and worked for the defense plants during the war. And in the evenings he got an architectural degree.”

  “So why did he get an engineering degree in the first place?”

  “To be able to get a job immediately. You get paid lousy when you’re a young architect. And they really needed engineers during the war.” Brian hadn’t looked me in the eyes during this speech. For a moment, I thought he might be lying. “Anyway,” he continued, “because he had already done so much work as an engineer, the firm he joined gave him a big building to do in Chicago. And they liked it and, in a couple of years, when another firm offered him a lot of money to leave, they kept him by making him a partner.”

  “So he must make a lot of money.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Brian, still uncomfortable, got up and went to the window. “He bought stocks and they did well. He doesn’t have to work anymore, but he says he can’t stand being idle.”

  I looked at Brian’s thoughtful face. He had a high brow covered ingenuously by locks of curly hair that made his cold eyes softer. “Are you gonna be an architect?” I asked.

  “Huh?” He looked surprised. “No, I don’t know what I’m gonna be.”

  I thought this a sad remark, not because I felt he ought to know, but because of his tone.

  “Do you play Monopoly?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I love playing.”

  “Do you have a set?”

  “Yeah, in my closet.”

  “Can I use the phone to get us some players?”

  “Sure,” I said. It was exciting how quickly he turned my quiet afternoon into fun. Danny, Frank, and Adam—Brian’s quarterback—all came over in minutes, as if they had been on call. After an agreement to stick to the letter on the rules, we began play.

  The first three trips around a Monopoly board are crucial: most of the property is bought by that time and everything in the game depends on what property you possess. An unlucky round—say, landing on Chance twice and being placed on Water Works—is death. Brian’s first trip around the board, except for the purchase of one of the unimportant light-blue properties, was a fruitless one. Frank bought two cheap pieces of land and Indiana Avenue, an important red property. Danny had the best round: after buying a railroad, he got red, yellow, and green properties. Adam, however, was only able to buy two deeds, both on the cheap side of the board—he even had to suffer the indignity of paying Danny twenty-four dollars rent on his green property. I got a railroad, which is silly land, but I am sentimental about it, and Pacific Avenue—one of the heavy green properties.

  I figured that Adam and Brian were finished and that Danny was the man to beat. But Brian rolled doubles and moved quickly past the cheap land. Since a double gave him another roll, he then landed on the remaining red property, leaving it divided three ways. Frank got another of the light-blues, which left him needing Brian’s for a Monopoly. Brian immediately offered to give him the Monopoly for Indiana Avenue, one of the reds, if Frank also gave him five hundred in cash. “Five hundred in cash!” Frank screamed. “The red property is worth more than the blue. You should give me money.”

  “Come on,” Brian said, in his low, menacing voice. “I’m giving you a Monopoly. All I’m getting is a chance for Danny to refuse to trade.”

  “Yeah, but if you do get a Monopoly—”

  “That’s right,” Danny said. “If he gets a red Monopoly, he’ll kill ya.”

  “How am I gonna get a red Monopoly,” Brian asked contemptuously, “unless you give it to me, Danny?” He turned to Frank. “And he won’t give it to me. I don’t have anything to trade for it.”

  “If it’s such a bad deal,” I asked, “then why do you want to do it?”

  Everybody laughed, even Brian, who then said to Frank: “Okay, how about a head-on trade?”

  “Don’t do it, Frankie,” Danny said.

  “I don’t think you should give him a Monopoly,” I said to Brian.

  “I’ll do it,” Frank said, barely able to conceal his feeling that he had just gotten the better of Brian. Brian tossed him the light-blue deed and took Indiana, lining it up neatly below his other red card. Adam rolled and got a hundred bucks from Community Chest, while I had to pay Frank twenty-eight dollars on his new Monopoly. “I’m gonna win this game in two rounds,” Frank said.

  “You’re an asshole,” Danny answered calmly.

  “Come on,” Brian said. “Roll.”

  Danny landed on the Electric Company and bought it, and then Brian rolled another high number, which put him, to our groans, on the remaining green property. I was surprised that Brian showed no pleasure at his extraordinary luck. The only satisfaction he allowed to break through his calm demeanor was at the symmetry of his red and green cards. Frank landed on my railroad and I got twenty-five of my dollars back, while Adam landed on Free Parking and complained about our insistence on obeying the rules against putting penalty money in it. I rolled double fives and landed on New York Avenue, a decent bit of property that I would have bought even if it weren’t named after my home town. Then I landed on bought land and paid rent.

  And now we all waited tensely while Brian rubbed the dice between his hands. He was five and seven away from the two choice properties: Park Place and Boardwalk. I was sure that he would roll a seven, until the moment he released the dice, when I decided my feeling was silly.

  Danny yelled, “Oh, fuck!” before I had a chance to read the dice and see that Brian had rolled a four and a three. The strips of color that now topped his deed cards were of the finest: red, green, and the deep, rich blue of Boardwalk.

  “He’s won the game,” Frank cried in despair. He was obviously subject to wild swings of confidence.

  “Come on,” Brian said. “I don’t even have a Monopoly yet.”

  Frank landed on one of the orange properties that New York Avenue is part of. He complained that it was stupid to buy it, he needed the cash to build on his Monopoly. Brian, not looking at Frank, or speaking with much intensity, said, “Then put it up for auction.”

  Frank didn’t know he had that
option and it had to be explained to him, in a loud and exasperated voice, by Danny. Though I had played Monopoly many times, I had never seen anybody turn down the opportunity to buy property—no matter how innocuous. But he did.

  It was a mistake, as the bidding proved. Danny, Brian, and I all wanted that deed badly and would have paid Frank for it. Instead, the money disappeared uselessly into the slots for bank bills. Danny began the bidding at one hundred dollars, forty bucks below the face value. Brian immediately bid one-forty and I was now confronted with the galling prospect of having to pay more for the property than I should have if I had landed on it. I bid one-fifty and Brian greeted my offer with an amused smile that looked good on him.

  “All right,” Danny said, as if someone had been harassing him. “One-eighty.”

  “Two hundred,” Brian said, in a quick, clipped way.

  “I don’t believe this,” Frank moaned.

  I was the person most incredulous, however. I was the only player who had another deed of the auctioned property’s color. Of course, I thought, they want it in order to trade with me for the green property. But even realizing how important it was for me to buy the card still didn’t immediately break down my unwillingness to spend so much for it.

  “Two twenty-five,” Danny said.

  “Two-fifty,” I countered, sure that that would end it.

  “Three hundred.” Brian’s voice was full of tired contempt.

  “Oh, fuck you,” Danny said. “It’s not worth it. You can have it.”

  I felt paralyzed. Brian just looked at me. His eyes seemed to have a touch of sympathy and that was depressing. “Three-fifty,” I said so tentatively, it was almost a question.

  Brian sighed, but then announced abruptly: “Four hundred.”

  “Jesus!” Adam rolled his eyes. “That’s more than Park Place.”

  “He’s a jerk,” Danny said to me. “Let him have it.”

  “It’s yours,” I said. I was relieved to be out of it, but I knew, I just knew, that I had made a mistake. While Adam, I, and Danny all rolled and landed on bought property or meaningless Chance squares, I looked at Brian’s array of deeds and realized that to build a Monopoly on the orange, red, green, or blue properties, you had to deal with Brian Stoppard.

  Eventually, after I had gotten the remaining orange property—which made my being outbid even worse—and Danny had landed on Park Place, while the two unbought yellow deeds were picked up by Adam and Brian, we all started negotiating with Brian. Frank had built up his light-blue property to the hotel level and we had nothing to threaten him with. It took a long time, particularly because of Frank’s complaints and Danny’s ill temper, but when the smoke cleared, Brian had the Park Place-Boardwalk and yellow property Monopolies. Danny got the green and I, the hopelessly mediocre orange. They were bad deals for us, but they were our only hope of winning.

  It took many hours for us to build up our land and then for people to finally go bankrupt, but I doubt the end was ever in question: Danny, the only other player who had a chance to win, was finally ruined by his inability to pay a two-thousand-dollar rent on Boardwalk. Brian’s victory was therefore appropriately convincing.

  3

  Show me a gracious loser, and I’ll show you a loser.

  —Charles O. Finley

  BRIAN STOPPED BY every afternoon and arranged entertainment with astonishing ease. We must have played a different game every other day, exhausting the imaginative resources of Parker Brothers. He didn’t win every time. Occasionally, the dice, or some other vehicle of chance, would work against him too violently for his skill to triumph. But he wasn’t a sore loser like Danny. He didn’t become abusive or complain that fate was being cruel. He didn’t blame you for benefiting from his bad luck.

  One of the most remarkable qualities of Brian and his friends was their restlessness. I was accustomed to playing only two or three different games with my friends. It wasn’t just the difficulty of convincing our parents to buy so many games: we simply didn’t tire of them so quickly. But with Brian’s group, though we returned again and again to Monopoly, some expensive board games were played only three or four times. Almost as much effort was put into learning rules as was put into competing. I thought, at first, that this was simply part of the greater wealth of my new neighborhood. But after two months of switching games, I realized it was due to Brian. He was supplying us with this variety and we went along gladly because he won so crushingly that we could only hope some other competitive task would be beyond his dominance.

  But they weren’t. Sometimes, after a long, compulsive afternoon of playing, I would look around at my fellow losers and then at Brian, his dark face relaxed, closed, and self-satisfied: I felt the angry depression of the others gather up mine and mix it into a fearful resentment towards Brian that I can best describe as respect. The closest we came to normal fun was when we faced the fact that Brian would be first and played for second unabashedly.

  Eventually this was carried so far that our actions would guarantee Brian victory—if there had been any doubt. The only complaint he ever voiced was when this occurred. He threw his version of a fit (his face unsmiling and his eyes leveling me) when, in a game called Diplomacy, I admitted that my reason for maintaining a suicidal alliance with him was because I knew that it would make his larger resources (blocks of oil, weaponry, and wheat) irresistible—indeed, the opposition was ground into dust in record time—and would mean he’d leave my destruction until the end. I was given a free ride to second place. Brian had thought it was merely stupidity on my part until Danny accused me of the cowardly plan in his presence. I made the mistake of gloating in response, since I knew a blatant admission would gall Danny because he often played our games with a similar strategy. Brian waited until we were alone and asked me if I had been joking.

  “No,” I said, unaware of danger. “That’s what Danny does all the time. I just wanted to teach him a lesson.”

  Brian stood at my desk, the graying, sad light of the afternoon covering him. He fitted the board carefully on top of its paraphernalia, bending down for the cover, and then paused, holding it in a casual, arrogant pose. “You’re a fool.”

  I said nothing because even if I weren’t surprised by his contempt, I was frightened by its deliberateness and the sense that it restrained terrible power.

  “Maybe you can be excused.” His voice had an actor’s volume and resonance. “The rest of them must have driven you mad. That’s the only thing I can think of to explain it.” He turned away from me to put the cover on the box and then picked it up, tucking it under his arm, as if he were about to go. When he faced me again, he said, “Are you just joking, or are all of you not even trying to beat me?”

  “Look, Brian, nobody can beat you. Either you get bad luck or beat yourself. But we can’t play better than you do.” This was sincere flattery and I suppose I didn’t expect him to remain annoyed because praise usually mollifies people.

  “That’s disgusting,” he said. “It’s either bullshit or you’re so weak that you’ve come to enjoy it.” He looked at me during the silence that followed this; his eyes were unrelenting. I couldn’t find words to break through my hurt, my anger, and my sense of his being both unfair and absolutely right. He was motionless, unforgiving. “Don’t ever do it again. Not because I don’t want you to, but because it’s disgusting and makes you worth nothing.” And then he suddenly broke his body’s stillness to move quickly, contemptuously, out of the room.

  There is no anger like the kind an awesome being inflicts. I was left with judgments I couldn’t dismiss or accept. No matter that I thought he was right; I felt abused; I felt alone.

  I made no mention of the quarrel at dinner with my parents because I was ashamed of its terms. I knew that they would defend me as a matter of routine, and I would feel even more isolated. They would never understand that I had failed not only Brian but the deepest part of me—my soul.

  I had agreed, before the fight over Diplomacy,
to join Brian and the others in their morning baseball game the next day. But I assumed that Brian wouldn’t wish me to come after this disapprobation and so I stayed home, allowing my newly healed arm to fust unused. I was more scared than pleased when my mother told me that Brian was on the phone. I checked the clock and noticed that their game should have started fifteen minutes before.

  “Hello,” I said into the unsympathetic darkness of the phone.

  “Well, kid, where are you? I told you ten o’clock.”

  “I didn’t know. I wasn’t—”

  “You don’t want to come?” His voice was innocent, matter-of-fact.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Then hurry. You’re on my team and you’re due at bat in, uh, let’s see, if Billy gets a hit, this inning!”

  “Okay,” I said into the air because I had already begun to hang up the phone. I ran out of the house and down the hilly road to our local baseball diamond. Brian smiled at me while I ran towards him, my arms flailing from the remarkable speed I had achieved. He had a bat in his hands and when I reached him he handed it to me and said, “You should hit a home run so you won’t have to do anymore running.”

  I was not surprised by the professionalism of their baseball game. I had been told about their now defunct Little League and so their equipment’s sophistication, the fact that we were using a hardball, and that an umpire stood behind an armored catcher, were all expected. Of course, I was intimidated, but I had warned everyone that I had no experience at this level of play, so they had no basis for criticism.

  When I stood at the plate to bat, the sun glanced across my eyes, bleaching my vision of the left side of the field into a kind of half-blindness. It was fortunate that Danny, the opposing pitcher, was left-handed, because the ball would come at me from the right side. The bat felt strange, suddenly too small or too heavy, depending on the quality of each rush of anxiety. Danny’s first pitch, his motion, its speed, and its erratic flight, was terrifying. I swung wildly, with my whole body, and hurt my shoulder because my legs twisted one way while the weight of the bat went another and my attempt to hang on to the wood pulled a muscle.