Stargazer: Playing Dirty Part 11

"I'm sorry," she said. "I just hate it when you hold out on me."

"I understand," he said, still holding out.

"Why aren't you recording my alb.u.m?" she asked.

"That's where I'm headed."

"Really? Then where have you been this early in the morning?"

"Fis.h.i.+ng."

She sighed. He was so friendly and open, mostly, but when he chose to close down, it was like talking to a wall. "Quentin," she said, "I don't want to cancel our date tonight-"

"You'd better not," he warned her.

Suddenly she was aware that she was standing naked in front of the bathroom mirror. She slid her thumb slowly across her nipple. Shuddered. Reached for her bathrobe.

"I don't want to," she repeated huskily, "but something's come up. I have to play bridge. You can still go with me so Erin thinks we have a date, but you'll just be sitting there while I play bridge. Is this too uncool for you? Would it ruin you if a photo ran in the Cheatin' Hearts Death Watch that showed you with me while I played bridge?"

"Unless I'm at one of my usual bars, or in the town where I grew up, I don't get recognized. We're careful to keep our hats on when we're performing." Slow on the uptake, he asked, "Bridge, the card game?"

If she didn't tell him the whole story, he'd keep asking. She lay on the bed and hugged herself into a ball. "About four years ago, my dad retired, and he and my mom set off on a bridge tour of the United States. I never understood it myself. I guess some retired couples have their RVs, or their gardens, or their grandchildren, and my parents had bridge. Then, about two years ago, my dad died of a heart attack."

Quentin was saying he was sorry, but Sarah didn't want to hear it, only wanted to get this story out and over with. She interrupted him, "And then my mother started her solo bridge tour of the United States. I know what she's doing. She's looking for my dad. You'll hear her. She has a different partner every time, and every one drops tricks or pa.s.ses her forcing bid. She wore her poker face at the funeral, didn't shed a tear. I know this is it. This is the tears. This is her sick style of mourning. She left so fast that I had to clean up her house after the wake."

Sarah was spilling this story maniacally. She forced herself to take a deep breath before finis.h.i.+ng slowly, "My mother never comes to see me. She hardly ever goes home. We usually see each other at Christmas, but not last year. I was in Rio."

"So, you're her bridge partner for a few hours," Quentin said, accepting casually, which Sarah appreciated.

"It doesn't even make that much sense," she admitted. "Beulah has been her partner for the whole tournament, even though the very first morning, Beulah put Mom in slam missing two aces. I'm sure you'll hear all about this, too. But Mom's made a commitment to Beulah until the end of tonight's session, and she won't break it. Besides, she and I had a little altercation when I was thirteen, which I won't get into, and I swore I'd never be her partner again.

"No, I have to go to the partners.h.i.+p table and get paired with someone. There are a few normal people. And some people who eat paste. And some hardcore people like my mother. Luck of the draw."

Quentin said, "I play bridge."

"You do not."

"I play all the games."

You sure do, Sarah thought. She arranged to pick up Quentin for the bridge tournament that night. Then she called her mother back. "Now, listen, Ethel. This band is worth millions of dollars to Manhattan Music, and therefore, it's worth my job to me. Please remember that when you foil me."

"You could always get a job at the Fairhope Country Club," her mother drawled elegantly. "They need a public relations expert. Their Cobb salad is an absolute shame."

Sarah tapped one fingernail on her phone in irritation. Yesterday she'd handled the New York Times and Vanity Fair, but she couldn't handle her own mother.

"I'm just jos.h.i.+ng, sweetie," her mother finally said. "Stop tapping."

"Do not josh me about this. If you want me to play bridge, you have to help me keep up the image to Quentin that I'm a tough New Yorker."

"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 gla.s.s 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 s.e.x. She just wanted to be held by him. "I hate bridge."

They took their a.s.signed 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 cra.s.sness 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 pa.s.sing waiter to bring Quentin a gla.s.s 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 a.s.sured 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, flas.h.i.+ng 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. .h.i.t the big time, I was working at the hospital."

She murmured, "That explains your cavalier att.i.tude 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 G.o.d, 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 b.u.t.ts off these extremely uncomfortable chairs and go for a jog."

"Sarah," her mother scolded scathingly.

Sarah realized what she'd said. "b.u.t.t 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 alb.u.m," Sarah said.

"I did that, too. I was multi-" He ran out of words.

"Mult.i.tasking?" Sarah suggested.