The Fingertips of Duncan Dorfman by Meg Wolitzer

Author:Meg Wolitzer [Wolitzer, Meg]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-08-18T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

A REUNION

Nate’s father paced the atrium during round three. He was so tense now that he could barely think. Let him win, Larry Saviano thought. Please, please let him win.

Larry tried to imagine what he would say if Nate came out and told him he had lost a game, and if this time he was telling the truth. Larry certainly couldn’t shout, “HOW COULD YOU HAVE LET THAT HAPPEN?” You weren’t supposed to shout at your kid when he lost a game. You were supposed to say, “You gave it your best shot, buddy,” and put your arms around him and take him out for a hot fudge sundae and buy him a golden retriever named Cody. But Larry didn’t really know what he would do if Nate lost.

So it couldn’t happen. Nate had to win.

Larry Saviano kept pacing the atrium, knowing how agitated he probably looked. The stress of the tournament was really getting to him. Inside the ballroom, Nate’s mother and stepfather sat waiting with baby Eloise, among all the other families. Two hundred players hunched over their Scrabble boards in intense, aching silence.

Larry would have kept pacing back and forth for the entire game, but as he walked across the carpeting with the ugly abstract-art swirl design in it for the thirtieth or fortieth time, someone stepped into his path.

It was the bald guy with dark glasses. Larry had seen him around earlier. The two men stood very still now, just looking at each other. There was something familiar about him, Larry thought, but he didn’t know what it was.

“Larry?” said the bald guy.

“Yes?”

“Don’t you recognize me?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” said Nate’s father, but as he spoke, the bald guy reached up and lifted his dark glasses. Behind them his eyes were clear and bright blue. Without the shades on, he didn’t look menacing at all. He looked young.

And in that moment, Larry Saviano felt as if he had stood right here in this atrium before, facing this very same person. But how could that be true?

Because it was true.

No, it’s not possible, he thought.

Nate’s father felt slightly dizzy, and his throat went dry and tight. Finally he understood what was happening. In a cautious voice Larry said, “Wendell? Wendell Bruno? Is it really you?”

The other man smiled slightly and nodded. “Yes, it’s really me. Your old Scrabble partner.”

It had been twenty-six years since these two men had been here together as twelve-year-old boys. Back then, Larry had obviously had no beard, and he hadn’t even begun to shave. Wendell had had a full head of frizzy hair then, and no dark glasses shielding his bright blue eyes. They had been good friends and Scrabble partners, but the loss of the game in the final round had devastated them both.

Their friendship became painful, and whenever they got together after Yakamee, all they thought about was losing. So the two boys drifted apart, and then Wendell’s family moved away from their town in Arizona, and Larry never saw him again.

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