The Cardturner (17 page)

I counted my points using the method Toni had taught me.

I had twenty points just counting my high cards, and then three more points for my singleton diamond and doubleton club. Twenty-three points! My hand was shaking. I tried to keep a blank expression.

Toni's rules had a bid for a hand like this. I was supposed to open "Two clubs." A two-club opener doesn't really say anything about the club suit. It just says, "Partner, I've got a really huge hand."

I steadied myself, and was just about to make that bid, but caught myself in time. West was the designated dealer for board twenty-eight. Toni was first to bid.

She reached into her bidding box and set the 1
bid on the table.

She had an opening hand too. Her bid promised at least five spades. That meant we had nine spades between us, maybe more.

North passed, no surprise there, and it was up to me.

I could still bid 2
, but I didn't think that was right. None of Toni's bidding rules said what to do if your partner opens the bidding and you have a twenty-three-point hand.

I took a deep breath, reached into my bidding box, and set the 7
card on the table.

"Wow, you don't fool around, do you?" North said with a laugh.

I shrugged.

Since Toni was the first to bid spades, she would be declarer and I'd get to be dummy. That was a relief.

North made her opening lead; then I set my hand on my table for all to see.

Toni surveyed my hand. "Thank you, partner," she said, then proceeded to take all thirteen tricks, scoring a grand slam on our very first hand.

39
Two Idiots at Table Seven

I wish I could report that all the hands went like that. It had seemed so easy when I was practicing with Leslie. This person would bid this, then this person would bid that, then he'd play this card and she'd play that card.

It's a lot harder when you can't see all four hands. There are billions of different possible hands, and there was no way Toni's eleven pages of bidding rules could cover every one of them.

When I turned cards for Trapp, I'd been able to guess which card he'd play about half the time. The problem was the other half. Once I played a wrong card, there was no recovering. I went down in every one of my contracts except one, and on that one I didn't bid high enough, so we still got a bad board.

I got worse, not better, as the game progressed. I now knew what Trapp meant when he said he was worn out after a session of bridge. By the time we reached the last round, my brain had turned to mush.

Yet despite all my screwups, whenever I glanced across the table, I never saw anything but trust in Toni's eyes. She looked at me with absolute confidence, certain that
this time
I would get it right.

Because we were sitting East-West, Toni and I got up and moved to another table after each round. I always sat in the East seat.

Our opponents had all been very nice, maybe too nice. They said how delighted they were to see us playing on our own, without Trapp. I think they meant it, and not just because they were getting good boards off us.

Until we got to table seven.

"Hi," Toni greeted our opponents as we sat down for the final round.

They ignored her. "If you returned a spade we could have beaten it another trick," said the man in the South seat. He had bushy hair and wore steel-rimmed glasses.

"If you wanted me to return a spade you shouldn't have returned a low club," said North, a man with blond hair and skin so pale it was almost transparent. He also wore glasses.

They were maybe forty or forty-five years old, which made them the second-youngest pair in the room.

"Hi," Toni said again.

The bushy-haired man glanced at her, then turned back to his partner and muttered, "I hate playing against beginners."

We began with board ten, and, as usual, I screwed up both the bidding and the play. Only this time it got us a top board!

My final contract was two diamonds, and I was the declarer. I managed to take my eight tricks, but I should have made an overtrick. Every other East-West had bid four spades and had only taken nine tricks, because of an unlucky lie of the cards. I took fewer tricks than everyone else, but I was the only one with a positive score.

The blond man glared at me. "How can you only bid two diamonds?" he demanded. "Your partner opened the bidding, and you had fifteen points!"

"I didn't think she'd pass," I said in my defense.

He sneered at me, then said, "What an idiot!"

"And then he played it as badly as he bid it," his partner added. "That's why I hate playing against beginners. They give everyone else tops, and then they fix us."

"You were a beginner once too," Toni pointed out.

He looked down his nose at her and said, "Believe me, if I played as badly as your partner, I would have quit the game a long time ago."

Toni was the "idiot" on board eleven. I'm not sure what she did exactly, but this time our opponents were happy about it.

"I knew you were stupid," the bushy-haired man said, laughing at her. "I just didn't know you were
that
stupid!"

Toni turned red. "Well, now you know," she said quietly. Her cheek was quivering. I was afraid she might cry.

The men were still laughing as I removed my hand from board twelve, which thankfully was the last hand of the day. I sorted my cards. It was a lousy hand. My only high cards were a king and two jacks.

Toni set the 1
card on the table. I probably should have passed, but I raised to 2
. The bushy-haired guy bid 3
; then Toni surprised me by bidding 4
.

North doubled, snapping the red card on the table with a flourish.

I knew I should have passed the first time!

I passed, South passed, and it was Toni's turn again. She was thinking.

"You can't go back to three spades," said the blond guy, and he and his partner chortled over that one.

Toni didn't seem to notice their laughter. She reached into her bidding box, then gently set her bid on the table. It was the blue card with two
X
s.

The men stopped laughing.

It was the first time I had ever seen anyone use the redouble card.