“We're waiting for someone,” Sandra said, stiffly.
“Anybody I know?”
“We're waiting for Godot.”
“I'll tell you how I know your name,” I said, trying to counter Sandra's coldness. “You made a delivery to Silver Acres last week on Wednesday, and Ophah, the receptionist, told me how handsome you are.” I could feel Sandra cringing beside me.
Mark flashed me a bright smile and said, “That's right. I came in here to pick up my check and I was asked to take an order there since I live near you.”
He left again before I could ask a follow-up question. Sandra said, “Gogi, how could you? Now he thinks we're on the make.”
“At my age, I can say anything I like. But at least we're making progress. And what can it hurt? Why don't you pretend that you are on the make for once in your life?”
“With a bartender?”
She shut up as Mark returned. He said, “Since it's obvious that you're not interested in watching the baseball game, I feel it's my duty to entertain you until your escort arrives.” He spilled some toothpicks out of a container onto the bar-top and started arranging them in rows in front of Sandra.
“What is this, some sort of a con game?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said with a grin, “but it has a mathematical basis to it, which you might appreciate since you're a teacher, although probably an English teacher.”
“How did you know that?”
“By your attitude toward me-treating me as a lower form of life-and the literary allusion you made. Certainly not by your hair. No teacher of mine ever had hair that long. Or that blond.”
And probably not a face as red as Sandra's had become.
“So, what do you teach?”
She practically whispered the word: “English.”
“All right! I'm working on a Ph. D. in physics at UNC.”
“Oh.” Sandra looked as if she wished she were in Antarctica studying penguins.
“But I've got to eat too, so I work here.”
My ears had perked up at the word “mathematical.” I had written a book about mathematical games. Mark arranged four rows of toothpicks, 7, 5, 3 and 1, respectively.
“The object of the game is not to remove the last toothpick,” Mark said. “On your turn you may remove any number from any one row, but you have to remove at least one. Go ahead and start,” he said to Sandra.
Sandra sat immobile for about five seconds and I wondered whether she was going to refuse to play and would embarrass herself again. Then she tentatively removed one toothpick. Mark quickly removed one from another row. As they played I observed the patterns that Mark left on his turns. It jogged my memory. I may not remember what I did yesterday, but there's nothing wrong with my long-term memory.
I flashed back to the early sixties, to a strange foreign movie I had seen, called Last Year at Marienbad, one in which I hadn't known what was happening. However, one man in it had played this game over and over, with anyone who would play with him. He had used a deck of cards. And he always won. I analyzed the game afterward.
Of course Mark won. “So what does that prove?” Sandra asked, although the ice was gone from her voice.
“Would you like to play a game for a round of drinks?” I asked Mark. “Including one for you?”
He looked at me, surprised. “I don't drink on duty.”
“Okay, five dollars to you if you win. If I win I get to ask you a question.”
“Look, I don't want to take advantage of you.”
“I wouldn't worry about that,” Sandra said.
He looked at her. “All right,” he said with a little smile, setting up the toothpicks.
“One condition,” I said. “You go first.”
If that condition bothered him he didn't show it. He took three off the five-row, leaving 7, 2, 3, 1. It had been a long time since I had thought about this game. What was the key? The gears ground slowly in my head. Convert the number in each row to binary: Seven became 111; two became 10; three became 11; and one became 1. List them vertically as though I was going to add them together. I had taken a pen from my purse and did this on my napkin, hiding what I wrote. 111 + 10 + 11 + 1.
Remove toothpicks so as to leave an even number of ones in each binary column. The beer must have affected me because I drew a blank. Sandra looked anxious; she wanted to help me but didn't know how.
After a full sweaty minute I figured out the only way to do it. It was simple now that I saw it, but then most math is. With a grand gesture I swept all the toothpicks in the seven row to the floor at Mark's feet. He looked startled, but immediately removed one from the row of two, leaving 1, 3, 1.
Now my formula didn't work anymore. Had I blown it? Then I remembered. The formula allowed me to remove the last toothpick, not force my opponent to do it. There was a twist at the end. I had to use pure logic now. I removed two from the three row, leaving 1, 1, 1. I had Mark beaten and he knew it. He looked crestfallen.
“I forgot to tell you that my grandmother used to be a mathematics professor,” Sandra said, not unkindly.
“That explains it,” Mark said, perking up. “I owe you a round.”
“And an answer to my question,” I said, quickly.
“Okay, shoot.”
“Actually, two questions. What did you take to Silver Acres and who did you deliver it to?”
I was surprising him all over the place. He started to say something, stopped, then said, “It was an order of Maine lobster-we have it flown in. And…I don't know the name of the woman I delivered it to. I had an extension to call…”
“Do you remember it?”
Mark shrugged. “No.”
“Would there be a record of it here?”
He shook his head. “Our phone order-taking system is pretty haphazard.”
“Where did you deliver it?”
“In the front parking lot. The woman came out from one of the side doors, not the main entrance. She wore dark glasses and a sun hat. She gave me a nice tip.”
“Would you know her if you saw her again?”
“I'm afraid not.”
“What if I showed you pictures?”
“I'm sorry. All of you…” he chuckled, “look alike to me.”
“Thanks a lot.” I was discouraged, but tried one more time. “No distinguishing characteristics: height, weight?”
Mark shook his head repeatedly. “What is this all about?”
“There is a clause in the Silver Acres contract that restricts residency to people who don't eat Maine lobster. My job is to ferret out the violators.”
Before Mark could react to that, Sandra said, “How about that other round of beer you owe us?”
CHAPTER 9
Saturday morning I got a call from a woman named Hazel. She was a member of the bridge club, but she didn't come all the time. I had a vague association of a face with that name. My memory wasn't good enough to connect names with the faces of all the people I saw occasionally.
Hazel said she had some information for me and that she couldn't tell me about it over the phone. She sounded very mysterious. She didn't want to meet at her apartment or my apartment, either, so I agreed to meet her outdoors beside the duck pond. Didn't Howard Hughes used to meet people at midnight in cemeteries? At least this meeting wasn't that clandestine. The duck pond had one permanent resident, named Louie, who couldn't fly. The other ducks summered somewhere north of us, but in the fall and spring flocks would stop here for a few hours or a few days on their way to wherever it is that ducks migrate.
Wooden benches with metal frames faced the duck pond, where residents could sit and wait for the ducks to come. I recognized Hazel when I saw her; she was already seated on one of the benches. I sat down on the same bench, but not too close to her, as she had instructed me over the phone. She looked small and furtive.
She looked around before she spoke, apparently checking for spies. The only potential spy I saw, other than Louie, was a squirrel who might be wired for sound, but I didn't voice this thought, fearing that Hazel might take it seriously.