is ready.” The last place I wanted her was in my messy kitchen, finding out I’d purchased the dessert from a bakery. Emily is a lady, Marion is gracious, I am a slob.
I brought the tray of coffee and brownies, and we moved to easy chairs to nibble and rehash the three rubbers we’d played.
As usual, Laurene took centre stage. She swallowed a delicate bite of her brownie, wiped her mouth carefully so as not to smudge the rose pink lipstick that matched her pant suit and said, “Ladies, I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. To play bridge properly, you must keep your minds fit, just as you should exercise and diet to keep your bodies fit.” She glanced at me. “Barbara, have you started that diet I gave you?”
“No chance. We’ve had company all week.” To tell the truth, I’d ripped it up and tossed it in the fire as soon as I came home from our last bridge session.
“You’ll never reach your ideal weight if you allow yourself to be distracted, Barbara. It’s like playing bridge. You must concentrate on your goal.”
“I’ve always thought of bridge as a game,” Emily said. “A challenging game, to be sure, but fun to play. I’m afraid I don’t wish to regard it with the same seriousness as conducting a war.”
Laurene reached for another brownie. “Barbara, these are quite good, but they do need a little something. Perhaps each one topped with a maraschino cherry?”
I have always hated maraschino cherries, but not as much as I hated Laurene at that moment. “I’ll try that next time.”
Laurene demolished the rest of the brownie without dropping so much as a crumb. “The goal in bridge is to win the most points. If you don’t play to win, why bother playing?”
“I do play to win,” I said, “but I make mistakes, like everyone else.”
“You wouldn’t if you dismissed every thought from your mind except the hand being played.” Laurene returned her serviette to its original folds and put it on her plate. “Barbara, when I have time, I’ll show you how to fold serviettes into marvellous shapes. Such touches add so much elegance to formal dinners.”
“Thank you,” I said, gritting my teeth. Elegance in my house consists of using serviettes rather than paper towels. In Marion’s house it means sitting at the table to eat rather than in front of the television. In Emily’s, a three-course meal rather than a sandwich.
“You played that grand slam very well,” Emily said. Conversation about anything other than bridge, books or bird-watching usually bores her, but I was surprised at her giving Laurene another chance to show off.
“Thank you. By focusing on the hand, I realized I could make it by doing a squeeze play, thus avoiding the need to finesse for the diamond queen. All three of you would play so much better if you focussed properly.”
“Well, of course, we’re not perfect,” Marion said with a straight face, kicking her shoes off and curling her jeans-clad legs under her in the corner armchair.
“But you could be,” Laurene went on. “You could learn to bid and play as well as I do. Why don’t you come to my bridge classes at the church hall on Tuesday evenings?”
“My book club meets on Tuesdays.” Emily crumpled her serviette. “I couldn’t possibly miss that.”
“You could get the day changed if you learned to use psychology,” Laurene said. “That’s what is needed for bridge, too. With practice, you can train yourself to interpret facial expression, tone of voice and even hesitations in bidding and play.”
Laurene rose and paced the room as though she were lecturing her class. “Now, Emily, try to get your book club to change its meeting night. Next week I’ll be teaching strategy. Playing the right card at the right time is essential to winning.”
I was itching to toss my cold coffee in her face and wreck her flawless makeup, but Emily and Marion were being such exemplars of politeness and forbearance that I felt ashamed of my impulse.
Laurene glanced at her watch and gave a tidy little shriek. “Oh, dear, I must be going. I’m teaching a class on cake decorating at four.” She buttoned and belted her rain coat and added, “I just love living in little towns like this. There’s so much one can do to improve life in them.”
After the front door closed behind her, the three of us looked at each other. “I’ll go get the coffee pot,” Marion said. “We’ve all been out of school a long time and I, for one, don’t feel like going back. We have to do something about that woman.”
“But what can we do that won’t jeopardize our husbands’ jobs?” I trotted into the kitchen after her to fetch the pan of brownies.
“The unfortunate part of living in a company town in a remote logging area,” Emily said, when we were settled with fresh coffee, “is that one’s social life is so limited. I’m lucky my husband is retired. I can offend anyone I please.”
Marion and I couldn’t. Both our husbands were in shaky management positions, reporting directly to the new superintendent, Laurene’s husband. It was well known that Winston Jones intended to make drastic cuts to management. Winston and Laurene had been in town barely three months, and already Laurene haunted our nightmares as much as Winston haunted the men’s.
“Remember how much fun we had playing bridge when Sally was the fourth?” Marion bit into another brownie. Sally was the previous super’s wife, and Laurene had bulldozed her way into Sally’s social life right down the line.
“It was wonderful,” I said. “She never snickered or bragged when she trumped somebody’s ace.”
“Let’s not waste time with regrets,” Emily said, sitting up straighter than ever in her chair. “We must find a way to deal Laurene out of our bridge life so we can find a fourth who enjoys the game and doesn’t have to be right all the time. Is there any chance Winston will be transferred?”
“Harvey overheard Winston say he’d rather be in head office in Vancouver,” Marion said, “but that it probably wouldn’t happen.”
“Well, you know Laurene,” I said. “She wants to be a big toad in a small puddle, and she probably runs Winston’s life, too.”
Emily pursed her lips. “I’d suggest her as chairperson of the library committee and the PTA in order to keep her too busy for bridge, but I’d hate to subject my old friends to such a horrible fate.”
“It wouldn’t work anyway,” Marion said. “She’d never quit our foursome; every week she gets to win points against three imperfect victims. And I don’t mean just bridge points.” She picked up one shoe and hurled it across the room. It landed on a pile of newspapers and knocked them over. “When Laurene’s finished one of her lectures about how I should have played the hand, I want to say to her, ‘Laurene, please break wind again. I love the smell of roses.’”
“I want to do more than that,” I said. “When she leans over and pats me on the shoulder and smirks while she’s telling me what I did wrong, I’d like to kill her.”
Marion and Emily looked at each other, then at me. Marion got up and headed for the liquor cabinet. She pulled out a bottle and turned to hold it up. My best scotch. Emily went to the kitchen and brought back three glasses and a tray of ice cubes.
“All right, let’s focus on psychology.” Marion poured a generous splash of scotch into each glass. “And let’s not forget concentration and perfect strategy and perhaps even a squeeze play or two.”
The following week, Marion and I arrived at Emily’s house fifteen minutes early for our bridge session. We put our trays of brownies beside Emily’s on the kitchen counter. In each of the three pans, one brownie sported a maraschino cherry nestled in thick chocolate icing.
“Did you phone Laurene?” I asked.
“Yesterday.” Emily smiled as she prepared the coffee-maker. “She’s