is in an attentive mood tonight,’ I said.
‘Tony is keeping an eye on you,’ said Bessie. ‘Tony is remembering that time when you two came here with those drunken musicians from the Village and turned Tony’s party into a riot.’
‘I still say it was Tony Nowak’s rat-fink cousin Stefan who put the spaghetti in the piano,’ said Mann.
Bessie smiled and pointed at me. ‘The last time we talked about it, you were the guilty party,’ she confided.
Mann pulled a vampire face, and tried to bite his wife’s throat. ‘Promises, promises,’ said Bessie and turned to watch Tony Nowak moving among his guests. Mann walked into the dining-room and we followed him. It was all chinoiserie and high camp, with lanterns and gold-plated Buddhas, and miniature paintings of oriental pairs in acrobatic sexual couplings.
‘It’s Red Bancroft,’ said Mann, still looking at the redhead. ‘She’s international standard – you watch this.’
I followed him as he elbowed his way to a view of the backgammon game. We watched in silence. If this girl was playing a delaying game, it was far, far beyond my sort of backgammon, where you hit any blot within range and race for home. This girl was even leaving the single men exposed. It could be a way of drawing her opponent out of her home board but she wasn’t yet building up there. She was playing red, and her single pieces seemed scattered and vulnerable, and two of her men were out, waiting to come in. But for Mann’s remark, I would have seen this as the muddled play of a beginner.
The redhead smiled as her middle-aged opponent reached for the bidding cube. He turned it in his fingers as if trying to find the odds he wanted and then set it down again. I heard a couple of surprised grunts behind me as the audience saw the bid. If the girl was surprised too she didn’t show it. But when she smiled again, it was too broad a smile; and it lasted too long. Backgammon is as much a game of bluff as of skill and luck, and the redhead yawned and raised a hand to cover her mouth. It was a gesture that showed her figure to good advantage. She gave a nod of assent. The man rattled the dice longer than he’d done before, and I saw his lips move as if in prayer. He held his breath while they rolled. If it was a prayer, it was answered quickly and fully – double six! He looked up at the redhead. She smiled as if this was all part of her plan. The man took a long time looking at the board before he moved his men.
She picked up her dice, and threw them carelessly, but from this moment the game changed drastically. The man’s home board was completely open, so she had no trouble in bringing in her two men. With her next throw she began to build up her home board, which had been littered with blots. A four and a three. It was all she needed to cover all six points. That locked her opponent. Now he could only use a high throw, and for this his prayers were unanswered. She had the game to herself for throw after throw. The man lit a cigar with studied care as he watched the game going against him, and could do nothing about it. Only after she began bearing-off did he get moving again.
Now the bidding cube was in her hands – and that too was a part of the strategy – she raised it. The man looked at the cube, and then up to the faces of his friends. There had been side wagers on his success. He smiled, and nodded his agreement to the new stakes, although he must have known that only a couple of high doubles could save him now. He picked up the dice and shook them as if they might explode. When they rolled to a standstill there was a five and a one on the upper side. He still hadn’t got all his men into the home board. The girl threw a double five – with five men already beared-off, it ended the game.
He conceded. The redhead smiled as she tucked a thousand dollars in C notes into a crocodile-skin wallet with gold edges. The bystanders drifted away. The redhead looked up at Bessie and smiled, and then she smiled at Major Mann too.
But for that Irish colouring she might have been Oriental. Her cheekbones were high and flat and her mouth a little too wide. Her eyes were a little too far apart, and narrow – narrower still when she smiled. It was the smile that I was to remember long after everything else about her had faded in my memory. It was a strange, uncertain smile that sometimes mocked and sometimes chided but was nonetheless beguiling for that, as I was to find to my cost.
She wore an expensive knitted dress of striped autumnal colours and in her ears there were small jade earrings that exactly matched her eyes. Bessie brought her over to where I was standing, near the champagne, and the food.
When Bessie moved away, the girl said, ‘Pizza is very fattening.’
‘So is everything I like,’ I said.
‘Everything?’ said the girl.
‘Well … damn nearly everything,’ I said. ‘Congratulations on your win.’
She got out a packet of mentholated cigarettes and put one in her mouth. I lit it for her.
‘Thank you kindly, sir. There was a moment when he had me worried though, I’ll tell you that.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘When you yawned.’
‘It’s nerves – I try everything not to yawn.’
‘Think yourself lucky,’ I said. ‘Some people laugh when they are nervous.’
‘Do you mean you laugh when you are nervous?’
‘I’m advised to reserve my defence,’ I told her.
‘Ah, how British of you! You want to know my weaknesses but you’ll not confide any of your own.’
‘Does that make me a male chauvinist pig?’
‘It shortens the odds,’ she said. Then she found herself stifling a yawn again. I laughed.
‘How long have you known the Manns?’ I asked.
‘I met Bessie at a Yoga class, about four years back. She was trying to lose weight, I was trying to lose those yawns.’
‘Now you’re kidding.’
‘Yes. I went to Yoga after …’ She stopped. It was a painful memory. ‘… I got home early one night and found a couple of kids burglarizing my apartment. They gave me a bad beating and left me unconscious. When I left hospital I went to a Yoga farm to convalesce. That’s how I met Bessie.’
‘And the backgammon?’
‘My father was a fire chief – Illinois semi-finalist in the backgammon championships one year. He was great. I almost paid my way through college on what I earned playing backgammon. Three years ago I went professional – you can travel the world from tournament to tournament, there’s no season. Lots of money – it’s a rich man’s game.’ She sighed. ‘But that was three years ago. I’ve had a lousy year since then. And a lousy year in Seattle is a really lousy year, believe me! And what about you?’
‘Nothing to tell.’
‘Ah, Bessie told me a lot already,’ she said.
‘And I thought she was a friend.’
‘Just the good bits – you’re English …’
‘How long has that been a “good bit” among the backgammon players of Illinois?’
‘You work with Bessie’s husband, in the analysis department of a downtown bank that I’ve never heard of. You –’
I put my fingers to her lips to stop her. ‘That’s enough,’ I said. ‘I can’t stand it.’
‘Are your family here in the city with you?’ She was flirting. I’d almost forgotten how much I liked it.
‘No,’ I said.
‘Are you going to join them for Christmas?’
‘No.’
‘But that’s terrible.’ Spontaneously she reached out to touch my arm.
‘I have no immediate family,’ I confessed.
She