Beginners

  He saw them both at the same time, Jerry standing to the other side of the girl, holding the rock.

  Bill felt himself shrinking, becoming thin and weightless. At the same time he had the sensation of standing against a heavy wind that was cuffing his ears. He wanted to break loose and run, run, but something was moving towards him. The shadows of the rocks as the shape came across them seemed to move with the shape and under it. The ground seemed to have shifted in the odd-angled light. He thought unreasonably of the two bicycles waiting at the bottom of the hill near the car, as though taking one away would change all this, make the girl stop happening to him in that moment he had topped the hill. But Jerry was standing now in front of him, slung loosely in his clothes as though the bones had gone out of him. Bill felt the awful closeness of their two bodies, less than an arm’s length between. Then the head came down on Bill’s shoulder. He raised his hand, and as if the distance now separating them deserved at least this, he began to pat, to stroke the other, while his own tears broke.

  If It Please You

  EDITH PACKER had the tape cassette cord plugged into her ear and was smoking one of his cigarettes. The TV played without any volume as she sat on the sofa with her legs tucked under her and turned the pages of a news magazine. James Packer came out of the guest room which he’d fixed up as an office. He was wearing his nylon windbreaker and looked surprised when he saw her, and then disappointed. She saw him and took the cord from her ear. She put the cigarette in the ashtray and wiggled the toes of one stockinged foot at him.

  “Bingo,” he said. “Are we going to play bingo tonight or not? We’re going to be late, Edith.”

  “I’m going,” she said. “Sure. I guess I got carried away.” She liked classical music, and he didn’t. He was a retired accountant, but he did tax returns for some old clients and he’d been working tonight. She hadn’t wanted to play her music so that he’d hear it and be distracted.

  “If we’re going, let’s go,” he said. He looked at the TV, and then went to the set and turned it off.

  “I’m going,” she said. “Just let me go to the bathroom.” She closed the magazine and got up. “Hold your old horses, dear,” she said and smiled. She left the room.

  He went to make sure the back door was locked and the porch lamp on, then came back to stand in the living room. It was a ten-minute drive to the community center, and he could see they were going to be late for the first game. He liked to be on time, which meant a few minutes early, so he’d have a chance to say hello to people he hadn’t seen since last Friday night. He liked to joke with Frieda Parsons as he stirred sugar into his Styrofoam cup of coffee. She was one of the club women who ran the bingo game on Friday nights and during the week worked behind the counter of the town’s only drugstore. He liked getting there with a little time to spare so he and Edith could get their coffee from Frieda and take their places at the last table along the wall. He liked that table. They’d occupied the same places at the same table every Friday night for months now. The first Friday night that he’d played bingo there, he’d won a forty-dollar jackpot. He’d told Edith afterwards that now he was hooked forever. “I’ve been looking for another vice,” he’d said and grinned. Dozens of bingo cards were piled on each table, and you were supposed to pick through and find the cards you wanted, the cards that might be winning cards. Then you sat down, scooped a handful of white beans from the bowl on the table, and waited for the game to get under way, for the head of the women’s club, stately white-haired Eleanor Bender, to commence turning her basket of numbered poker chips and begin calling numbers. That’s the real reason you had to get there early, to get your place and pick out your particular cards. You had cards you favored and even felt you could recognize from week to week, cards whose arrangements of numbers seemed more inviting than those of other cards. Lucky cards, maybe. All of the cards had code numbers printed in the upper right-hand corner, and if you’d won a bingo on a certain card in the past, or even come close, or if you just had a feeling about certain cards, you got there early and went through the piles of cards for your cards. You started referring to them as your cards, and you’d look for them from week to week.

  Edith finally came out of the bathroom. She had a puzzled expression on her face. There was no way they were going to be on time.

  “What’s the matter?” he said. “Edith?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing. Well, how do I look, Jimmy?”

  “You look fine. Lord, we’re just going to a bingo game,” he said. “You know about everybody there anyway.”

  “That’s the point,” she said. “I want to look nice.”

  “You look nice,” he said. “You always look nice. Can we go now?”

  —

  There seemed to be more cars than usual parked on the streets around the center. In the place where he normally parked, there was an old van with psychedelic markings on it. He had to keep going to the end of the block and turn.

  “Lots of cars tonight,” Edith said.

  “There wouldn’t be so many if we’d gotten here earlier,” he said.

  “There’d still be as many, we just wouldn’t have seen them,” she corrected, teasing. She pinched his sleeve.

  “Edith, if we’re going to play bingo we ought to try to get there on time,” he said. “First rule of life is get where you’re going on time.”

  “Hush,” she said. “I feel like something’s going to happen tonight. You watch and see. We’re going to hit jackpots all night long. We’re going to break the bank,” she said.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “I call that confidence.” He finally found a parking space near the end of the block and turned into it. He switched off the engine and cut the lights. “I don’t know if I feel lucky tonight or not. I think I felt lucky earlier this evening for about five minutes when I was doing Howard’s taxes, but I don’t feel very lucky right now. It’s not lucky if we have to start out walking half a mile just to play bingo.”

  “You stick close to me,” she said. “We’ll do fine.”

  “I don’t feel lucky,” he said. “Lock your door.”

  They began walking. There was a cold breeze and he zipped the windbreaker to his neck. She pulled her coat closer. He could hear the surf breaking on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff down behind the community center.

  She said, “I’ll take one of your cigarettes, Jimmy, before we get inside.”

  They stopped under the streetlamp at the corner. The wires supporting the old streetlamp swayed in the wind, and the light threw their shadows back and forth over the pavement. He could see the lights of the center at the end of the block. He cupped his hands and held the lighter for her. Then he lit his own cigarette. “When are you going to stop?” he said.

  “When you stop,” she said. “When I’m ready to stop. Maybe just like when you were ready to stop drinking. I’ll just wake up some morning and stop. Like that. Like you. Then I’ll find a hobby.”

  “I can teach you to knit,” he said.

  “I guess I don’t think I have the patience for that,” she said. “Besides, one knitter in the house is enough.”

  He smiled. He took her arm and they kept walking.

  When they reached the steps in front of the center, she threw down her cigarette and stepped on it. They went up the steps and into the foyer. There was a sofa in the room, along with a scarred wooden table and several folding chairs. On the walls of the room hung old photographs of fishing boats and a naval vessel, a frigate from before the First World War, that had capsized off the point and been driven ashore onto the sandy beaches below the town. One photograph that always intrigued him showed a boat turned upside down on the rocks at low tide, a man standing on the keel and waving at the camera. There was a sea chart in an oak frame, and several paintings of pastoral scenes done by club members: rugged mountains behind a pond and a grove of trees, and paintings of the sun going down over the ocean. They passed through the room, and he took he
r arm again as they entered the hall. Several of the club women sat to the right of the entrance behind a long table. There were thirty or so other tables set up on the floor, along with folding chairs. Most of the chairs were filled. At the far end of the hall was a stage where Christmas programs were put on, and sometimes amateur theatrical productions. The bingo game was in progress. Eleanor Bender, holding a microphone, was calling numbers.

  They didn’t stop for coffee but walked quickly along the wall toward the back, toward their table. Heads bent over the tables. No one looked up at them. People watched their cards and waited for the next number to be called. He headed them toward their table, but tonight starting out the way it had already, he knew someone would have their places, and he was right.

  It was a couple of hippies, he realized with a start, a man and a young woman, a girl really. The girl had on an old faded jeans outfit, pants and jacket, and a man’s denim shirt, and was wearing rings and bracelets and long dangling earrings that moved when she moved. She moved now, turned to the longhaired fellow in the buckskin jacket beside her and pointed at a number on his card, then pinched his arm. The fellow had his hair pulled back and tied behind his head, and a scruffy bunch of hair on his face. He wore little steel-frame spectacles and had a tiny gold ring in his ear.

  “Jesus,” James said and stopped. He guided them to another table. “Here’s two chairs. We’ll have to take these places and take our chances. There’s hippies in our place.” He glared over in their direction. He took off his windbreaker and helped Edith with her coat. Then he sat down and looked again at the pair sitting in their place. The girl scanned her cards as the numbers were called. Then she leaned over next to the bushy fellow and looked his cards over, as if, James thought, she were afraid he might not have sense enough to mark his own numbers. James picked up a stack of bingo cards from the table and gave half to Edith. “Pick some winners for yourself,” he said. “I’m just going to take these first three on top. I don’t think it matters tonight which cards I choose. I don’t feel very lucky tonight, and there’s nothing I can do to change the feeling. What the hell’s that pair doing here? They’re kind of off their beaten path, if you ask me.”

  “Don’t pay them any attention, Jimmy,” she said. “They’re not hurting anybody. They’re just young, that’s all.”

  “This is regular Friday night bingo for the people of this community,” he said. “I don’t know what they want here.”

  “They want to play bingo,” she said, “or they wouldn’t be here. Jimmy, dear, it’s a free country. I thought you wanted to play bingo. Let’s play, shall we? Here, I’ve found the cards I want.” She gave him the stack of cards, and he put them with the other cards they wouldn’t use in the center of the table. He noticed a pile of discards in front of the hippie. Well, he’d come here to play bingo and by God he was going to play. He fished a handful of beans from the bowl.

  The cards were twenty-five cents each, or three cards for fifty cents. Edith had her three. James peeled a dollar bill from a roll of bills he kept for this occasion. He put the dollar next to his cards. In a few minutes one of the club women, a thin woman with bluish hair and a spot on her neck—he knew her only as Alice—would come around with a coffee can picking up quarters, dollar bills, dimes, and nickels, making change from the can when necessary. It was this woman, or another woman named Betty, who collected the money and paid off jackpots.

  Eleanor Bender called “I-25,” and a woman at a table in the middle of the room yelled, “Bingo!”

  Alice made her way between the tables. She bent over the woman’s card as Eleanor Bender read out the winning numbers. “It’s a bingo,” Alice said.

  “That bingo, ladies and gentlemen, is worth twelve dollars,” Eleanor Bender said. “Congratulations to you!” Alice counted out some bills for the woman, smiled vaguely, and moved away.

  “Get ready now,” Eleanor Bender said. “Next game in two minutes. I’ll set the lucky numbers in motion right now.” She began turning the basket of poker chips.

  They played four or five games to no purpose. Once James was close on one of his cards, one number away from a bingo. But Eleanor Bender called five numbers in succession, none of them his, and even before someone else in the hall had found the right number and called out, he knew she wouldn’t be calling the number he needed. Not for anything, he was convinced, would she have called his number.

  “You were close that time, Jimmy,” Edith said. “I was watching your card.”

  “Close doesn’t count,” he said. “It may as well have been a mile. She was teasing me, that’s all.” He turned the card up and let the beans slide into his hand. He closed his hand and made a fist. He shook the beans in his fist. Something came to him about a kid who’d thrown some beans out of a window. It had something to do with a carnival, or a fair. A cow was in there too, he thought. The memory reached to him from a long way and was somehow disturbing.

  “Keep playing,” Edith said. “Something’s going to happen. Change cards, maybe.”

  “These cards are as good as any others,” he said. “It just isn’t my night, Edith, that’s all.”

  He looked over at the hippies again. They were laughing at something the fellow had said. He could see the girl rubbing his leg under the table. They didn’t seem to be paying attention to anyone else in the room. Alice came around collecting money for the next game. But just after Eleanor Bender had called the first number, James happened to glance in the direction of the hippies again. He saw the fellow put a bean down on a card he hadn’t paid for, a card that was supposed to be with the discard pile. But the card lay so that the fellow could see it and play it along with his other cards. Eleanor Bender called another number, and the fellow placed another bean on the same card. Then he pulled the card over to him with the intention of playing it. James was amazed at the act. Then he got mad. He couldn’t concentrate on his own cards. He kept looking up to see what the hippie was doing. No one else seemed to have noticed.

  “James, look at your cards,” Edith said. “Watch your cards, dear. You missed number thirty-four. Here.” She placed one of her beans on his number. “Pay attention, dear.”

  “That hippie over there who has our place is cheating. Doesn’t that beat all?” James said. “I can’t believe my eyes.”

  “Cheating? What’s he doing?” she said. “How’s he cheating at bingo, Jimmy?” She looked around, a little distracted, as if she’d forgotten where the hippie was sitting.

  “He’s playing a card that he hasn’t paid for,” he said. “I can see him doing it. My God, there’s nothing they won’t stop at. A bingo game! Somebody ought to report him.”

  “Not you, dear. He’s not hurting us,” Edith said. “One card more or less in such a roomful of cards and people. Let him play as many cards as he wants. There’re some people here playing six cards.” She spoke slowly and tried to keep her eyes on her cards. She marked a number.

  “But they’ve paid for them,” he said. “I don’t mind that. That’s different. This damned fellow is cheating, Edith.”

  “Jimmy, forget it, dear,” she said. She extracted a bean from her palm and placed it on a number. “Leave him alone. Dear, play your cards. You have me confused now, and I’ve missed a number. Please play your cards.”

  “I have to say it’s a hell of a bingo game when they can get away with murder,” he said. “I resent that. I do.”

  He looked back at his cards, but he knew he might as well write this game off. The remaining games as well, for that matter. Only a few numbers on his cards had beans. There was no way of telling how many numbers he’d missed, how far behind he’d fallen. He clenched the beans in his fist. Without hope, he squeezed a bean out onto the number just called, G-60. Someone yelled, “Bingo!”

  “Christ,” he said.

  Eleanor Bender said they would take a ten-minute break for people to get up and move around. The game after the break would be a blackout, one dollar a card, winner take all. This
week’s pot, Eleanor announced, was ninety-eight dollars. There was whistling and clapping. He looked over at the hippies. The fellow was touching the ring in his ear and looking around the room. The girl had her hand on his leg again.

  —

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Edith said. “Give me your cigarettes. Maybe you’d get us one of those nice raisin cookies we saw, and a cup of coffee.”

  “I’ll do that,” he said. “And, by God, I am going to change cards. These cards I’m playing are born losers.”

  “I’ll go to the bathroom,” she said. She put his cigarettes into her purse and stood up from the table.

  He waited in line for cookies and coffee. He nodded at Frieda Parsons when she made some light remark, paid, then walked back to where the hippies were sitting. They already had their coffee and cookies. They were eating and drinking and conversing like normal people. He stopped behind the fellow’s chair.

  “I see what you’re doing,” James said to him.

  The man turned around. His eyes widened behind his spectacles. “Pardon me?” he said and stared at James. “What am I doing?”

  “You know,” James said. The girl seemed frightened. She held her cookie and fixed her eyes on James. “I don’t have to spell it out for you,” James said to the man. “A word to the wise, that’s all. I can see what you’re doing.”

  He walked back to his table. He was trembling. Damn all the hippies in this world, he thought. It was enough of an encounter so that it made him feel he’d like to have a drink. Imagine wanting to drink over something happening at a bingo game. He put the coffee and cookies down on the table. Then he raised his eyes to the hippie, who was watching him. The girl was watching him too. The hippie grinned. The girl took a bite of her cookie.

  Edith came back. She handed him the cigarettes and sat down. She was quiet. Very quiet. In a minute James recovered himself and said, “Is there anything the matter with you, Edith? Are you all right?” He looked at her closely. “Edith, has something happened?”