The Cardturner: A Novel About Imperfect Partners and Infinite Possibilities

by Louis Sachar

  I usually got by with saying “Standard.”

  It basically works like this. A high card encourages. A low card discourages. Let’s say your partner leads the ♣3, and the ♣A is played from the dummy. Since you are unable to win the trick, you can signal your partner for later. If you held the ♣K62, you would play the ♣6, encouraging, telling your partner you had something good in clubs. If instead you held ♣862, you would play the ♣2, discouraging your partner from leading clubs again.

  Those are called attitude signals because you are telling your partner your attitude toward clubs. But sometimes it’s hard to tell. Is the six high or low? If you have ♣K32, the ♣3 is the highest card you can signal with. If you have ♣987, the ♣7 is a low card.

  That’s the problem I was having with Toni. I couldn’t read her signals. I didn’t know if she was encouraging me or discouraging me. And I’m not talking about bridge anymore.

  “Seven of hearts,” said Trapp.

  I set the card on the table and tried to focus on the game. It was dangerous to let my mind drift.

  I looked across the table at Toni. She was the picture of concentration.

  Toni saw me looking at her. She smiled and winked.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” I told her after the opponents had left the table. If the opponents had seen her wink at me, they might have thought she was giving me some kind of secret signal.

  “Done what?” she asked.

  “Wink.”

  “Wink?”

  “You winked at me.”

  “I did not!” she insisted. “Why would I wink at you?”

  A new East-West pair sat down at our table, abruptly ending our discussion and saving me from further embarrassment.

  I removed my cards from the South slot and sorted my hand.

  “One heart,” said Trapp.

  I set the bid on the table.

  She had winked. I could still see it in my mind: a slight upturn of the left corner of her mouth, then the quick but purposeful flick of her right eyelid.

  Before I knew it, it was my turn to bid again. Trapp’s voice was extremely fuzzy, no doubt because my mind was still thinking about the wink.

  I looked at my cards, and at all the bids on the table. I bid two no-trump and hoped it was right.

  Toni bid three no-trump and everyone passed.

  I must have made the correct bid, because Trapp didn’t call me a donkey. He was the declarer, and I forced myself to concentrate on his instructions.

  Halfway through the hand, I realized I’d been wrong. Toni hadn’t winked. There was no way she would have risked doing that in the middle of a bridge hand. She was also too shy.

  The wink had come from Annabel.

  69

  Q

  With two rounds to go, Annabel Finnick and Lester Trapp were first N-S in section H, with a 63 percent game. When the final results were posted they had dropped to 62 percent and second. They earned 1.68 platinum points.

  There was also a capital Q next to their names. All around me, people were talking about whether or not they had Q’ed.

  It took me a while, but I finally figured out that the Q meant we had qualified to play the next day.

  I extricated myself from the crowd and looked for Toni. Instead, I saw Lucy and Arnold coming right toward me.

  I hurried to meet them halfway. I didn’t want them anywhere near our posted results.

  “How’d you do?” I asked.

  “We Q’ed!” said Lucy. “Fifty-eight percent.”

  I congratulated them. That more than made up for their 46 percent in the afternoon. “How about Deborah and Carl?”

  From the way Arnold sadly shook his head, you would have thought they had died.

  “How’d you and Toni do?” asked Lucy.

  The question was obligatory. I knew she didn’t think we had a snowball’s chance in hell, but she had to pretend otherwise.

  “We’re still in it,” I said, as if I didn’t quite believe it myself.

  You could tell Arnold and Lucy were experienced bridge players by the way they congratulated me without revealing any of their shock.

  “Well, you had a great teacher,” said Lucy; then, choking up, she added, “He would be very proud.”

  Arnold explained that for the next day there would be some carryover of that day’s results, but only to a degree. It was like a car race in which after the race is half over, half the cars are eliminated. The remaining cars are kept in their same order, but they’re bunched closer together, so even those at the back still have a chance.

  “That’s fair,” said Arnold. “Some of the pairs may have gotten high scores today because they got to play against much weaker pairs. But tomorrow all of the weak pairs will have been eliminated, so it will be a much fairer test for the rest of us.”

  I appreciated the fact that he included Toni and me with the stronger pairs, even if he didn’t believe it.

  Lucy grabbed some hand records, and they invited me to join them for a drink in the bar and go over the hands. I reminded them I was only seventeen.

  “Get a Coke, then,” said Arnold.

  “C’mon, it’ll be fun to hear how you and Toni beat all the pros,” said Lucy.

  “I need to find Toni,” I said.

  I looked for her out in the hall, then over by the escalators, and finally at the bank of elevators. She wasn’t there. I went back to the ballroom, then returned to the elevators and waited there for at least another ten minutes.

  I felt like a fool. No doubt she was in her room, talking to Cliff.

  He was her boyfriend, okay, I got that. Still, I was angry that she didn’t stick around long enough to say good night before rushing off to call him. I took the elevator to the twenty-seventh floor.

  There were no more messages on my cell phone, or on my room phone. That was good. At least my parents hadn’t been trying to call me. Still, I would have liked to know more about what had happened between my mom and Cliff.

  I didn’t use the hotel pillow, just the pillowcase, which I stuffed with my dirty clothes. It was soft enough, but lumpy.

  70

  Canned Peas

  Toni called after her morning swim, but I was already awake this time, having slept a good two and a half hours. My neck hurt worse than ever.

  “Trapp and Annabel are in nineteenth!” she said, all excited.

  I took a shower and tried letting the hot water pound on my neck, but the water pressure in the hotel was so weak I could just barely feel it. I was glad that Trapp and Annabel were up so high, but it was also worrisome. The higher they were on the list, the likelier other people would notice their names.

  Toni and I met at the elevator and walked to the sandwich shop. She was energized after her swim, and talked excitedly about the upcoming two sessions, but I just grunted a few times. I was tired, my neck hurt, and I was still mad at her for rushing off the night before.

  I remembered to check my cell phone when we got to the restaurant. There was a new text message.

  cannedpeas was his password

  “Yes?” said the girl by the cash register.

  “Canned peas,” I said aloud, still staring at my cell phone.

  “What?”

  “Granola and a lemon poppy-seed muffin,” said Toni.

  “The same,” I muttered.

  It was a good thing they didn’t serve peas at that place, or I might have just ordered a bowlful.

  At the table I told Toni about Leslie’s latest text message and the one I’d gotten previously.

  “So that’s why you asked me if Cliff said anything about your mother,” she said.

  I nodded, or tried to. My neck hurt too much.

  “He didn’t tell me he saw her,” she said. “I wonder what she means by a password?”

  I didn’t know. “The only passwords I ever use are on the Internet.”

  “His e-mail!” exclaimed Toni. “The hotel and airline reservations had been e-mailed to him. B
ut why would we need his password? We had hard copies. Unless …” Her face lit up.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Unless he didn’t know that Mrs. Mahoney had printed the e-mails!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “He thought you’d have to go online for them. And that’s why he told you his password was cannedpeas!”

  She banged her fist on the table, proud to have solved the cannedpeas question.

  But that left another question: How did Leslie learn that cannedpeas was Trapp’s password? Only one answer came to mind, and I didn’t like it.

  “My parents know where I am,” I said.

  “What? How?”

  “Mrs. Mahoney was the only person who knew Trapp’s password,” I said. “My mother must have spoken to her after running into Cliff at the pool. Mrs. Mahoney gave her the password so she could go online and check Trapp’s old e-mail to find out where I was.”

  “You think they’re coming here?” Toni asked.

  I didn’t know. It would explain why they hadn’t tried to call me. They could be planning a sneak attack.

  “Not again,” Toni whispered fearfully.

  “Again?” I asked.

  “The last time they played,” said Toni, “Annabel was dragged away.”

  “They won’t come here,” I said, sounding more certain than I felt. “They’d have to pay full fare for a last-minute plane ticket. No way they would do that.”

  We were walking back to the hotel when Toni suddenly asked, “Where’d you disappear to last night?”

  I was shocked. “Where did I disappear to?”

  “You were supposed to tell me the results, but I saw you talking to Lucy and Arnold. I didn’t want to have to deal with them, so I went to check the results myself, and then when I got back, you were gone.”

  “I was looking for you,” I said. “I figured you went up to your room.”

  “I wouldn’t leave you like that!” Toni said, offended. “Besides, I was hoping for some, you know, you-and-me time, without Trapp and Annabel.”

  “That would have been good,” I agreed.

  “Your neck’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  “Sit down on that bench,” she said. “I’m really good at giving massages.”

  We had been walking beside a small city park, just a patch of grass, four trees, and a park bench. I sat on the bench and Toni came around behind me. She placed her hands on my shoulders and pressed my neck with her thumbs.

  A lightning bolt of pain went screaming into the center of my brain.

  “How’s that feel?” she asked sweetly.

  “Great,” I said, fighting back tears.

  71

  Transportation

  In the previous chapter, I mentioned that my parents wouldn’t pay full fare for airline tickets. At least, I hoped not. When a bridge player talks about transportation, however, he’s not talking about how he’s getting to and from a bridge tournament. He’s talking about getting from his hand to the dummy, or vice versa.

  The declarer sometimes needs to be able to lead from the dummy, rather than from his hand. Expert declarers plan ahead in order to save entries to the dummy, so that they can win a trick in the right place at the right time. Similarly, expert defenders will do what they can to disrupt the declarer’s transportation. It’s often the game within the game.

  Trapp was involved in such a contest. This was the situation with four cards left to play. The contract was three no-trump, and Trapp had taken six tricks. He needed three more.

  If the lead could come from the dummy, it would be easy to take three tricks. The queen of hearts, the jack of hearts, and the nine of diamonds were all winners.

  Unfortunately, he was stuck in his hand. The defenders had cut off his transportation.

  I saw no way he could take three tricks. He could lead the ♠9. That would win, and it would get rid of East’s ♠7. So then he could lead the ♠4 and that would also win. But after that, he’d have to lead a club, and no matter which club he led, West was sure to win the last two tricks.

  The best he could do was settle for down one. That was what I thought.

  “Four of spades,” said Trapp.

  Now, I didn’t know exactly what cards were left in the East and West hands, but I was pretty certain that the ♠4 would lose. Even if I was wrong, why not play the nine first, just to be safe? For the first time ever, I wanted to ask, “Are you sure?”

  Half expecting to be called a donkey again, I set the ♠4 on the table, and then, at his direction, discarded the 3 from dummy.

  Sure enough, East won the trick with the ♠7. Now he was on-lead. He shook his head and said, “You got me!”

  Whatever card he led would allow the dummy to win the last three tricks.

  Trapp didn’t have the transportation to get to the dummy by himself, so he purposely lost the trick in order to hitch a ride with a defender.

  Trapp purposely lost a trick he could have won, which allowed him to win the last three tricks.

  “I never would have thought of that play,” East said.

  “Me neither,” I agreed.

  He looked at me oddly.

  “I mean, I never would have thought of it until right then, when I did think of it.”

  Finnick and Trapp had a 61 percent game, and earned two platinum points. Lucy and Arnold met us afterward. They’d had a 57 percent game.

  They knew they didn’t stand much of a chance of winning the event, but even finishing in the top twenty could earn them 15 platinum points.

  “What does the winner get?” I asked.

  Lucy guessed it was around 125 platinum points.

  Arnold asked how Toni and I had done.

  “The best we could,” I said, trying to sound like I was trying not to sound too dejected.

  “That’s a good attitude,” said Arnold.

  “What’s wrong with your neck?” asked Lucy.

  “He slept on it funny,” said Toni, who then suddenly turned bright red and stammered, “That—that’s what he told me. I wouldn’t know!”

  “Turn around,” said Lucy. “I give great massages.”

  I’d heard that before.

  Lucy placed her hands on me, and my relief was almost instantaneous. With each squeeze of her fingers I could feel the knot in my neck gently unravel.

  “He doesn’t like massages,” said Toni. “He says it just makes it worse.”

  “Really?” asked Lucy.

  That’s what I had told her back at the park. I knew it had hurt her feelings, but I could only take so much pain. I wouldn’t make a good spy. I’d crack after thirty seconds of torture.

  I now had to weigh Toni’s hurt feelings against the bliss of Lucy’s massage.

  “Yeah, you better stop,” I said. “It only makes it worse.”

  My feeling of bliss abruptly ended.

  Arnold invited us to join them for dinner. “Our treat,” he said.

  Toni and I glanced sideways at each other. It might be good to get a real meal for a change. I gave a half-nod.

  “Okay,” she agreed. “Thanks.”

  “Great,” said Arnold. “Deborah heard about a sandwich shop not too far away that’s supposed to have amazing food.”

  72

  The Final Session

  As we headed to the restaurant, I already regretted that we had agreed to go with them. Partly, I was afraid they might become suspicious if they started asking us questions about bridge hands. But even more than that, I realized that this was my and Toni’s last night at the hotel. We’d be flying home the next morning. I would have liked some alone time with her.

  Before entering the shop, I stepped away from the group and checked my cell phone. I had another text message from Leslie.

  ur in BIG truble

  Tell me something I don’t know, I thought. I was getting annoyed with my sister’s love for text messaging.

  This time I tried calling the return number. Marissa answ
ered. She said that Leslie had left a while ago, and asked if she could help me. For a second I considered that maybe Marissa knew what was going on, but then decided I really didn’t want Leslie’s eleven-year-old friend involved in my problems.

  Dinner was actually kind of fun. For one thing, Arnold had a strict rule: no bridge talk between sessions. He said it was important to give your mind a break.

  I found out that Carl, Lucy’s husband, was a retired judge. He had Toni and me laughing at all the stupid things that defendants, and lawyers, had done and said in his courtroom.

  I held my head in such a way that I didn’t look at Deborah. It had nothing to do with my stiff neck. It was just that every time I saw her, I couldn’t help but imagine her coming out of that closet “in all my glory.” Worse, even though the closet story had occurred when she was in her twenties, it was the present-day version of Deborah that I kept imagining.

  When we returned to the playing area, Arnold checked the top hundred, starting at the bottom and working his way up. He and Lucy were sixty-ninth.

  I started at the top and worked my way down. Finnick and Trapp were in ninth place. I wondered how big a game they would need to move to the head of the pack.

  I noticed Lucy noticing me. “Syd Fox is in second place,” I said, glad to be able to use him as my excuse. “Toni and I went to his lecture.”

  Our table assignment for the final session was A-5, East-West. I sat West. Arnold and Lucy were in our section, also sitting East-West, at A-12. At least we wouldn’t have to play against them, but I knew they were sure to see the names of Annabel Finnick and Lester Trapp when the results were posted. I also noticed that Syd Fox was in our section, sitting North at table nine.

  When the game got under way, I could actually feel a change in the level of intensity. Even Trapp’s voice seemed to have an edge to it as he told me what cards to play. I doubted there would be any more winks from Annabel.