She crossed 100 on the next hand.
“That’s the game,” she said.
She tore another page off the legal pad. Wrote across the top:
MARGO | BERNARD 1 | 0
She walked it to the fridge. Found a magnet—there were three on the side, one shaped like a slice of pizza, one a generic round black one, one that said KLEIN’S NEWSSTAND in faded letters and an old phone number. She used the round one. Centered the page on the door at eye level.
Bernie was watching her from the table.
“That’s going to be embarrassing for me,” he said.
She put the flamingo cards back in the drawer. “Should be motivating.”
“Whose fridge is this?”
“Yours. With my score on it.”
She came back to the table and finished her tea. The mug was nearly cold. Outside the window the garden had gone dark enough that the lemon tree was just a shape.
“Girls get out there all right?” he asked.
“Stella sent me a photograph last night. And a text—apparently Sam made them Campbell’s for dinner.”
“Campbell’s?”
“From a can, Bernard.”
“At a dinner table.”
“With cornbread from a box. No egg.”
He shook his head slowly. “That’s a choice for an arrival dinner.”
Margo reached into her bag, found her phone and held it across the table. She showed Bernie the rock in the late light the canyon on fire.
Bernie took the phone and looked at it for a long moment. “That girl has an eye.”
“She does.”
He handed the phone back. “Sam was always looking at the next thing. Even when she was small—ten years old, sitting on a cot in the back office, drawing the same rock formation over and over. But she was never drawing what was in front of her. She was drawing what was next.” He picked up a card and set it down. “I used to think it was ambition. Took me a long time to realize it was just the way she was built.”
Margo watched him. “You watched her grow up.”
“I watched all of them grow up. Sam. Rick. Anna. Tyler. Meg.” He rearranged his hand. “Sam was the one I worried about. The others had roots. Sam had wind.”
He didn’t say anything else about it. She gathered the flamingo cards back into their worn cardboard box and set the box on the corner of the table where she could find it next time.
“Same time Wednesday?” she said at the door.
He was looking at her. The room behind him, the table where they had played, the fridge with the page on it, the walker against the wall.
“You still owe me a rematch,” he said.
“Wednesday, Bernard.”
She let herself out and pulled the door closed until she heard it click.
