“Wow,” Paul said. He was sitting in a beanbag chair on the floor, and he tipped his head all the way back onto the carpet and looked up at the ceiling. “When you think about it, death is, like, the worst thing out there.”
“Maybe I should call her,” Danny said at last. Calling Cindy at Hannah’s house was discouraged — it risked intruding on the family’s grief. But he found the number in his wallet, then picked up the phone — he had his own line — and dialed. Paul and I heard the tiny ringing sound from the receiver’s earpiece.
“Um, hi,” he said. “Is Cindy Gerney there?” He sounded embarrassed. I had expected him to say something to acknowledge the situation, some kind of condolence, but I wasn’t sure how you’d do that with people you didn’t know.
When Cindy came on, Danny spoke gently, as though it was she who was sick. “Do you guys want, like, cheering up or whatever?” he said. “I thought we could come over, bring a movie or some KFC or something. To take her mind off it.”
After a minute more he put down the phone and said, “So we’re going over there,” like a platoon commander announcing a dangerous sortie.
Paul had a driver’s license and a Honda Civic that seemed too small for his long frame. The back seat was shallow and cramped, but I didn’t mind. There are few ways to feel more fully included than getting into a car at night, bound for an unfamiliar destination, charged with purpose.
On the way we talked about how to respond if Hannah’s mother answered the door. “Don’t mention it,” Danny advised. “Be serious and everything, don’t be all joking around, but don’t be like, Oh, I’m sorry your husband is about to die. Nobody wants to hear that.”
“Fuck,” said Paul with a thrilled shudder.
But it was Cindy and Hannah who let us in. Danny embraced Cindy, then adjusted his features into a somber expression and said, “Hi, Hannah,” in a doleful voice.
“We’ve got to be quiet up here!” she said in a whisper. She was short and had buggy eyes and a ponytail.
The front hall was huge and unlit, although it wasn’t even ten. The girls led us through the dark kitchen and down into the basement, which was bright and carpeted and which gave the impression of having once been a playroom for an adult male. There was a wet bar and a pool table and a big TV, plus cases on the wall that might have held rifles, but upon this manly foundation there had accumulated a decade’s worth of aerobics videos and Sweet Valley High novels and Strawberry Shortcake paraphernalia, and now the room felt like an archaeological dig, with the stratified remains of multiple civilizations piled on top of one another.
“Sorry,” said Hannah, shifting from foot to foot. She didn’t have shoes on, just white tube socks. “We can’t make too much noise upstairs.”
“This is an awesome basement,” I said.
She smiled nervously. “We’ve got a pinball machine,” she said. She opened a door to reveal the laundry room, where a machine with a Flash Gordon theme stood alongside the washer and dryer.
“Does Danny still have the high score?” Cindy asked.
“I think my cousin beat it,” Hannah said apologetically.
“That’s going to change this evening,” Danny said, making Hannah smile. I admired the way he could use his narcissism to reassure her.
Danny turned on MTV and cranked the volume until Cindy made him turn it down. Then Paul set up the balls on the pool table while Danny took the first turn on the pinball machine. In the fridge by the wet bar there was 7 Up and that Hansen’s fruit soda that no one ever drinks. We wandered around the room picking things up and putting them down again, looking for subjects to distract us from the dying man upstairs.
“So is this where you guys used to play Princess Land?” Danny asked. Cindy laughed.
“What’s this?” I said.
“Oh, it was this game we had when we were little,” Hannah said. “We just — we made up this pretend world. It was really dumb.”
“We were both princesses,” said Cindy, who didn’t seem embarrassed. “I was Princess Gloriana and she was Princess Paladine, and we ruled over the whole kingdom.”
“Wouldn’t the king have ruled over it, if it was a kingdom?” I asked.
Cindy rolled her eyes. “We weren’t going for realisticness,” she said. “We were going for being princesses.”
“I can’t believe you told them about that,” Hannah said.
“The other thing I used to pretend is, I wanted to be a mermaid,” Cindy said. “I’d pray that God would turn me into a mermaid in the night. But I was always worried that he would, and then I wouldn’t be able to breathe outside the water and I’d die.”
Danny shook his head at her tenderly. “You’re such a freak,” he said.
The two of them went to play pinball, and without Danny to steer the conversation there was a lull. Paul suggested a game of pool, and something about the too-casual way he raised the possibility indicated that he was good at pool. “You guys play, I’ll watch,” Hannah said. “I don’t play pool.”
My own billiards skills were untested. I hoped that my first game would reveal a natural aptitude, but whatever advantage my understanding of geometry and physics conferred was outweighed by my clumsiness. When Paul sank something he gave a tight-lipped little grunt of satisfaction and glanced over at Hannah, who perched on the back of the couch, legs dangling.
How should one act when one is losing? As my first shots sped off at errant angles I said “Damn!” and “Eucchh,” as though I was playing below my usual skill level. After ten minutes of consistent failure, though, it was hard to sustain the pretense of disappointment. When the red I was trying to sink caromed off the cushion and tipped Paul’s green stripe into a corner pocket I said, “All right!” as though I’d just done something of great skill. Hannah smiled.
My assist meant Paul was down to the eight ball. He tapped the far pocket with his stick to call it. After he made the shot he said, “And that’s how the game is played.”
I turned to Hannah. “Here’s what he doesn’t realize,” I said, nodding slyly at Paul. “That game was just the first step in an elaborate hustle.”
“So does that mean you want to put down the big money now?” Paul said.
I gave Hannah a dramatic wink, as though this was all part of my plan, and as I did I understood that this was how to wink at a girclass="underline" you make a joke of it; it still counts. “Not money,” I said. “We’re going to play for something more valuable than money — honor!” I wasn’t sure what I was talking about, but I was going to keep driving forward until I went off the road or hit a tree. “I’m going to hustle him out of his honor!” I said, and Hannah laughed, and an unfamiliar kind of power made my knees buckle.
Paul saw what was happening, I think, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He racked up the balls and broke again, and sank two on his first turn. I made an elaborate show of chalking my cue, then sent the cue ball off the blue into a side pocket. Leaning over the table I looked up at Hannah and said, “He has no idea what’s coming.”
Paul cleared the table as efficiently as he could. “So hand over your honor,” he said, and I said, “Oh, foul dishonor!” and did a little tearing-at-my-breast routine.
Danny and Cindy had emerged from the laundry room and were examining the videotapes in the cabinet under the TV. “What’s good in here?” Danny asked. The collection was heavy on westerns and war films, all home-recorded, with handwritten labels identifying the movie by title and year of release. I thought of her father dying and his movies sitting here unwatched.
Hannah made an apologetic face. “We’ve got Splash,” she said.