SAY YOU'RE LUCKY (New Fiction)

For board game lovers, baseball cherishers (past or present), people who clutch at friends even as they slip away...

Free to all for a bit, though support warmly welcomed, of course.

The second in my series of stories (the first is “Pretty Good Stick”) centering at least to some extent on ways non-athletes engage with sports and games. The fact that I keep wanting to type “But don’t let that scare you away” is part of what drove me to write them, I think.

Wishing you peace, light, health, sanity wherever you can find it, renewed access to your capacity to love.

(game board and parts are Strat-O-Matic Baseball; world’s best dice-rolling tower created by Kim Miller)

SAY YOU’RE LUCKY

(for John Sullivan, who would have loved and probably stolen the dice tower)

I wait until I see the lights of Jumpin’s convertible before lowering the phone I’m not actually using from my ear. I drop it into my purse, pop my door locks, and make a show of climbing slowly out of my Hyundai so he’ll think I just got here. He pulls in behind and flashes his brights. Closest Jumpin gets to enthusiastic greeting. I glance down at his bumper. Folded over and stuck to it tonight, in just-got-hit position, is the giant Gumby we gave him—precisely because Gumby annoys him, and because we knew he’d do something like that with it—when they finally let us see him after his double-lung transplant.

“Got bored of running over the Donald?” I say, gesturing at Gumby as Jumpin moves toward me. He has had a Velcro Trump doll folded there for the last couple years.

He shrugs. By moonlight, the sores and boils that his anti-rejection drugs trigger all over his face look gentler, and in motion, like sand dunes walking. “Got sick of assholes keying my car. Also, the Donald was molting. Also, I think something laid eggs in him.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer hood ornament.”

Under one spindle arm, Jumpin has some sort of portfolio case. In his other, he has a grocery bag, which he hands me. It’s the kind of thing he does now, on the rare occasions I see him: remember to bring drinks, or snacks. Almost like he’s a real tenure-track professor (which he in fact became incredibly quickly after his operation, having realized or decided he might as well commit to trying). Almost like he’s planning to live long enough to get tenure (which he might, now. Assuming there’s still such a thing as tenure when and if the time comes).

An actual grown-up. The first of us to get there.

How has that happened? And why does grown-up life still seem so hard to imagine, even when it’s here, for boys you knew when you were ten, and played dice-driven, statistics--based tabtletop baseball games with every weekend of high school?

What, you didn’t?

Right on cue, he coughs. Just a regular cough. No Cystic serrated edges. As far as I know, he doesn’t have Cystic coughs anymore. His lungs, apparently, are no longer what will kill him.

“You look great,” I say, and he winces and leans back, as though to hide his face.

He does look great, though. The doctors told him he had to get in shape and stay there to maximize his chances. As far as I can glean, he has done everything but teach—and maybe that, too—from the seat of a rowing machine ever since.

Glancing back at the old Cavalier convertible he bought with no engine in it and has been rebuilding since eleventh grade, Jumpin toes the Gumby with his foot. Despite all his new muscle, he still looks stretched, too tall. Like Gumby, but grumpier. Slightly less green. “Truth is, Nan? The older I actually get, the fewer people I want to run over. Is that weird?” He taps the ridged scars I know are under his shirt across his chest. “Maybe these are the lungs of a much nicer person.”

I purse my lips. “The older I get, the more people I want to run over.”

“I warned you about law school.”

“Says the mathematician.”

“There is absolutely no one to get mad at in math, Nan.”

“They’re too busy going mad.”

“Who were you not talking to on your phone when I drove up?”

“Fuck off,” I say, and laugh. He’s the one who taught me that trick: pretending you’re on your phone while waiting, to give lurking menaces pause before they come for you. I wonder where he learned it, and when. In high school, he’d mostly gone out of his way to attract menaces. Dare them to attack him. Which seemed suicidal, given his condition.

Maybe it was.

Together, we stare through the unlatched, chicken-wire gate into the shadows of Heroin Gardens. The Del Paso Park night hangs still and silent around us in the Indian summer heat, feels weirdly drained of air. Even more so than the rest of Sacramento. It’s like we’re not even outside, but onstage. Or in a casino. Except with the air-conditioning broken. And more menaces around.

In the courtyard, there’s only one guy we can see. He’s on his lanai on the second level. Mostly, we see the orange tip of his cigarette. He drags on it so often that the tip pulses like signals off a radio tower.

The place’s actual name is Fountain Court, or Fountain Villas. Something Fountain. We’ve called it Heroin Gardens since our friend Mango moved here, right after he dropped out of his grad program down in Riverside and came back to town. There really is a circular basin for some kind of water feature in the center of the court. In the center of the basin stands a five-foot-tall sculpture of some bird. Possibly eagle, more likely turkey vulture. Our city spirit animal. We’ve never seen water pour out of it, though. There are always a few pennies scattered on the cracked, mossy tile at its taloned feet. Plus some syringes. We all thought Mango would stay here six months, tops.

“Think we should wait for Ben?” I ask.

“To escort him in, you mean? For safety?”

“Escort each other.”

“Mostly Ben.”

I give him the half-frown smile. Talking-about-Ben smile. From my purse, I withdraw my team cap from the set Jumpin designed and had made for the four of us. For these nights. My team’s logo adorns the visor: three skeleton-faced Furies—Korean-eyed, in my honor—with green hair dangling snake-like down their jaws. Baseball bats in their teeth.

I pull my pony-tail through the fitting slot in the back and yank the cap tight.

“Well, now no one’s going to mess with you,” says Jumpin, and immediately dons his own cap. The orange mushroom cloud logo looks faded against the blue background. Finger mark-streaked. As though he uses that cap for other occasions than our reunion tournaments. Wears it in public.

“So, fewer people you want to run over, but...” I gesture at the hat.

“Read a newspaper lately? Some people always need nuking.”

“You know, someone could interpret your team name and design concept as nihilistic.”

“Only for those not on my team.” One arm rises from his side like a wing flapping. By the time I realize he is offering his elbow, he has given up. Is already walking.

Like a sunburst—a little bomb dropping—heat blooms inside me. An old, specific kind. For these boys, these nights. Already, I have a premonition. Or mini-revelation. Yet another thing law school is teaching me, about just how singular companionable experiences are going to be from now on. Turns out there aren’t that many people who play games properly.

Say you’re lucky, I murmur in my head, and then hurry after Jumpin.

The courtyard looks smaller than I remembered. Also—incredibly— even shabbier. Less dark alley than abandoned lot. At least this time there are no syringes on the cracked paving stones or amid the dead grass or in the fountain basin. No pennies either. A single Tecate can perches on the fountain’s rim, seeming to bob to the rhythm of our steps like a buoy. The curtains facing the courtyard are all drawn, so it’s impossible to tell how many apartments are currently inhabited.

“Yo,” says the smoking guy overhead.

Jumpin just keeps walking, but I glance up. The guy is wearing a yellow t-shirt, green sneakers, white board shorts, as though he outfitted himself at some Charley Finley-era A’s uniform outlet.

“Hey,” I say, and the guy salutes with his cigarette.

It takes Mango a surprisingly long time to open his door—he can’t have had to move more than fifteen feet from anywhere in that apartment to reach it—and when he does, he looks confused. Like he forgot we were coming, or who we are. Abruptly, he vanishes, pushing the door half-closed before Jumpin can enter.

When he reappears, he’s wearing his team cap. Which does not look worn, or used. Except maybe as a seat cushion. Other than Ben’s—obviously—his logo is the most ridiculous, and most appropriate: a mango being macheted. The orange bits flying across the brim are Jumpin’s cleverest artistic touch.

“The Manglers!” he half-growls, in his best dramatic radio promo voice.

Instead of giving the proper answer—continuing the roll call—Jumpin folds his arms. ”Mango-lers.”

Mango laughs, steps back, and waves us in. The smell hits even before I see the traditional stack of take-out potsticker tins and paper plates on his countertop, right next to that familiar, beat-up red Strat-o-Matic box. Same edition of the game that he has had since we were ten or twelve. Whenever we started playing. He even has the condiments ready. Bowl full of soy sauce packets; bottle of vinegar with actual pouring funnel.

Like family Christmas dinner, I find myself thinking. If this were Christmas. Or we were a family. Which it isn’t, and we’re not.

Which is why it’s so much better?

I have to turn sideways to wedge the door closed. It brushes the edge of Mango’s plastic dining table as it shuts. Nights in this apartment have always felt like camping in an elevator. A broken one. Not that my apartment is any bigger. But it’s Sac State grad-school housing, at least. Housing at least theoretically on one’s way to other housing, in a courtyard with lights that work. Presumably, my lawyer fees might one day support my move to such a paradise (assuming there are still lawyers, when the time comes). Whereas this place...

Jumpin sets his portfolio on the folding chair against the wall, claiming the space with the most space. “He here?”

“Bathroom,” says Mango, gesturing at his apartment’s only interior door: an accordion-style fold-in, like on an airplane. Only smaller.

Jumpin stretches his arms, popping his beefed-up shoulders and grinning. “Well, then.”

I don’t know what he means at first—I’m out of Jumpin practice—but Mango does. He drops right back into radio promo voice. “The Mangolers,” he booms.

“The End,” growls Jumpin, tugging at his cap.

“The Furies,” I hiss, right in rhythm, before we all break into falsetto.

“The Bennies!”

Then we’re all laughing, falling into chairs while Mango deals out paper plates and all of us glance toward the bathroom door. There’s disturbingly little sound in there. Almost none. Certainly not laughter.

We wait. Wait some more.

“Ben?” I finally call.

Another few seconds. Then Ben’s voice, preceded, still—always—by that telltale squeak. Like a beginning clarinetist fighting the reed. Ghost of pre-teen Ben, who won’t ever stop haunting him. “Mango? Do you have a plunger?”

“Oh my God,” I murmur, while Jumpin’s grin widens.

“Under the sink,” Mango calls. His smile is kinder than Jumpin’s, or maybe more anxious. “Don’t worry, Ben. It happens. Shitty toilet.”

“Literally,” Jumpin whispers.

“Shut up,” I tell him.

A good minute passes, and we hold our collective breath. For Ben’s sake, not because of any smell or anything. The sounds are awful: wet, sloppy schloops, some splashing. Occasional squeak of Ben’s haunted breath.

Abruptly, Jumpin’s index finger leaps to the side of his nose. It takes Mango a second, and me a split second longer, to jerk our own fingers nose-ward. I know I’ve lost before I touch my face.

“Goddamnit,” I say. “You assholes.”

“Literally,” Jumpin says again.

I stand. “Not literally. How would that even...” I’m moving toward the bathroom door to help Ben. I point at Jumpin. “Biggest asshole.”

“Literally.”

“No. Even more, no. That doesn’t...” I’m just making noise, now. Distracting myself from imagining the next sixty seconds or so of my life. Possibly, he is also just making noise. Distracting, in order to help. Sometimes I’m almost sure Jumpin is capable of wanting to help.

I’ve got my hand on the accordion door, have just started to push when the toilet in there coughs violently like a CPR-patient lurching to life, and flushes. Jerking back my hand, I lunge for my seat and trip over Mango as he tries to get out of my way. Somehow, I’m back in my chair, pretending I never left it, before Ben wrestles the door open.

I’m expecting Blushing Ben, obviously. Or else furious, trembling Ben, with his bulgy praying mantis eyes blinking back tears.

But the Ben who steps out of the bathroom has his arms flung wide like a magician at the end of a trick. His green linen button-down fits him better than I have ever seen a shirt fit him, and it’s either new or ironed; either way, that’s a stunner. His red curls look not just tamed but combed. Shaped. Like...topiary. In the form of a grown-up.

Has this happened to all of us? Do I look this way to them?

I’m laughing—we all are—even before he whips out his cap from behind his back and doffs it.

“The Bennies!” he chants, in squeak-free falsetto.

So many things I notice, then. Had somehow forgotten until this second.

Such as how perfect Jumpin’s logo is for Ben’s cap, for one thing. He didn’t really know what color Benzedrine pills were, couldn’t be bothered to look it up, so he just made them all colors. Like Skittles. Which he haloed around a rubber-banded stack of Benjamins. Thereby turning Ben’s years-long refusal or inability to come up with a team name into the best name of all.

Also how wide Ben’s shoulders are. Always were. Somehow, I continually forget that he was the actual baseball player, who not only tried out for but made the team his junior and senior year of high school. Almost never actually played, but still.

Also that Benny was the one of us with the most friends who weren’t us, from elementary school all the way up. By far.

And yet...

Then the first round of potstickers are out, and we’re all grabbing with our fingers and, shrugging off even the memory of Covid protocol, dipping dumplings in a shared soy sauce bowl. Except Jumpin, who watches with his arms folded, waits until the rest of us have our hands and mouths full, then withdraws a set of chopsticks from his pocket.

“Animals,” he says, lifting a dumpling free of the tin.

“Oh, you’re kidding.” I’m staring at the chopsticks. The tiny gold lettering printed on them. THE END on one. I squint at the other. “What’s that one say?”

He holds it in front of my face.

2022 CHAMPS...AGAIN.

“You’ve got The End eating implements?” Mango asks. Reaching out to touch one, then thinking of better of it.

“I’ve got a full line of End championship gear. And a website I’ve set up where you three can come shop for it after your losses tonight.”

We peruse his website on the phone he passes around while we eat. The highlight of his online shop, of course, is the diapers.

“So you can outfit the whole family, Ben,” he says, one chopstick aloft between us like a conductor’s baton.

“Once again...biggest asshole,” I say.

“Literally,” Benny squeak-snaps, beating Jumpin to it, and I laugh. He grins back.

It’s amazing. Stunning. He suddenly seems so...They all do, in different ways. Well, maybe not Mango, but it’s hard to tell with Mango; he’s just here, where it feels like he has always been. Working in the Sacramento Bee mailroom, last I heard. Which was quite a while ago, I realize. Jobs not being one of the things one talks about with Mango.

What do we talk about?

Right now, though, I’m watching Ben, who has just bumped Jumpin’s 2022 CHAMPS chopstick aside to grab the last dumpling from tin number one. His grin looks almost smug—what smug would look like if it fit on Ben’s face—as he pops it in his mouth.

“Dad-hood,” I tell him. “I think it’s been good for you.”

Suddenly, his eyes are down, and he’s watching the table as he chews.

“Father of three,” Mango says, with that Mango-wonder in his voice. His most endearing and distinctive quality: marveling at the rest of us. As though he’s watching us in a fish tank, or from one.

Ben is still looking down. Shaking his head. As though he has broken a glass. Or backed up a toilet.

Or fathered three fucking kids. Our Ben. Who, last I checked, still gets nervous turning left. Has never stayed in any job or on any job track for more than a year. Already, he’s been a med-tech, a freelance brochure designer, a department store clerk—in men’s underwear, no less—and, most recently, a maker of cocoa-scented soaps.

The moment has gone weird. it’s the silence. The none of us knowing what—or having anything—to say.

Father of three.

Mango saves the day. Seemingly accidentally. As usual.

“Same teams?” He reaches for the shoebox full of Strat-o-Matic player cards. tosses a rubber-banded set to me and another to Jumpin. There’s my Mark the Bird Fidrych card, right on top. I’m always a little disappointed that it’s just columns of numbers and results, same as any other card. Seems like the Bird’s card should talk to itself. Or to the dice. Fold into a crouch and brush crumbs off Mango’s table or something, the way the Bird used to groom pitchers’ mounds.

Guess I’ll have to do it for you, I think, and tap the card right in the soy sauce finger-stains I made during last year’s tournament. Unless those are the ones from five years ago. Or fifteen. The rubber band has leached a little into the card, leaving another little rust-line. Like a tree ring.

Jumpin has picked up his championship team from last year, but only to remove the band, toss the cards into the center of the table.

“Let’s have a draft,” he says.

“Fuck, no,” says Ben. His first exasperation flash of the night. “Why?”

“Because I want to give you a chance?”

“Too much like research,” I tell Jumpin, motioning Mango to get out the charts and the little green field that passes for a game board.

“Why bother with research? Never helped you before.”

I kick him under the table. “I’m giving you a new team name. The Jumpin Asswipes.”

“You really don’t want to see the cap I’d design for that.”

“Oh my God, fucking fine,” says Ben, tossing his cards into the center of the table. “Hurry up.”

So we hurry up. Toss our cards into a giant pile, and Mango lifts some more out of his shoebox. Not sure why, since we almost always draft the same players in different combinations, have their attributes pretty well memorized. As far as I know, none of us have bought a new player set in at least a decade. The cards we use are the ones we’ve always used, dating mostly from the 70s and 80s, because they came with the edition Mango found at a garage sale when we were all maybe twelve.

“Sort first?” I ask, already starting to do it. Pitchers’ pile, catchers’ pile, infield and outfield piles.

“What for?” Ben snaps. “Is anyone really going to research their picks? I got knocked out first last year, so I pick first. Oscar Gamble.”

Jumpin grins. “Same Ben. Same mistake. Every single time.

“Best card.” Ben holds it up in front of Jumpin’s face. As if Jumpin or any of us has forgotten all the HOMERUN results in the second column.

“For the rare occasions when you can use it,” Mango says. Right on cue. It’s like a catechism.

Except for Ben. Who is actually arguing. Unless that’s his role in the play, which it might be.

“Only because of that stupid rule. House rule, by the way, not an actual Strat-o-Matic rule.”

“Rule we all made, in our house, and which you know,” I remind him. Lawyer-like. My role. “Less than 100 real life at-bats, you can only start that player once every three games.”

“Sure,” Ben snaps. “Wouldn’t want our games to feel unrealistic.”

Jumpin actually tuts at him. “Not the point. Point is, you know the rule. And yet you draft Oscar Gamble with the first pick. Every single time.”

“Again. Best card.”

“Jim Nash,” says Jumpin, reaching into the players-we-never-use pile. He comes up with the card. His first pick of the year.

We all gape at him. Even Ben.

“Who?” Mango finally asks.

I know who Jim Nash is. I’m the only actual baseball fan in this bunch, a lifelong A’s devotee. Which means I’m probably the only one of us—other than Jumpin, apparently—who even remembers that card is in there.

It isn’t from one of Jim Nash’s good years. One of his A’s years.

“Gimme that,” I say. Just to check myself.

It is exactly the card you’d expect for a pitcher who went 0 and 8, with an ERA in the 6’s. I study the columns. If there’s a math quirk, something that’s going to make it play better than it looks, it’s some linear algebra thing. Meaning made up.

Jumpin shoots me his smirk. Takes back Jim Nash.

On we go. I grab Eddie Murray; all that power, and his defense, which I always prioritize even though it never matters quite as much as it should in a Strat game. Mango grabs Dave Winfield at least partly so he can say “Winnie-the-Field” every time the guy comes up to the plate. Ben snags John May-I-Have-A-Berry, another underperforming card in our experience, but at least Ben can use that one every game.

Again, Jumpin reaches into the never-used pile and says, “Jesus Vega.”

“Okay, who?” I snap. “What’s a Jesus Vega?”

“Yes,” says Jumpin, and holds his finger to his nose. The tip, this time.

Signifying, correct?

He shows me the card. It’s...better than Jim Nash’s? Utility guy. Not much defense, not much speed, not much power. Batting average in the .260s.

If this were anyone but Jumpin, I’d suspect he was giving Ben—and, let’s face it, the rest of us—a chance. But that would not be Jumpin’s way.

“Alan Trammell,” I say, because I love Alan Trammell, even though that’s another card that never seems to perform like it should. Because what made him (and Eddie) great can’t be captured in the math, I sometimes claim. Which means they weren’t actually that great, Jumpin inevitably answers. Just because that’s his line in our play, I don’t think even he believes that one.

With his third pick, he takes José Cruz, an actual decent player someone always selects, though usually in later rounds. With his fourth, he takes The Car, and I have an inkling. Start to, anyway. But Jumpin always takes The Car—John Shelby, whose nickname was not “The Car” anywhere but on our table, and if you ask Jumpin why that name, he’ll say because Shelbys were cars, and that’s not only all the explanation you’ll get but all there is—so I don’t actually figure it out until round five, when Jumpin reaches again into our regular-use stack and says, “The Anagram.”

It’s a new nickname. We don’t have a The Anagram. Until tonight, obviously, because before I even know who it means, I can hear us saying it. Winnie-the-Field. The Car. May-I-Have-a-Berry. The Anagram. We play Strat-O-Matic the way my grandmother played bingo with her friends at her assisted living facility: fast, loudly, and in code.

Ben and Mango have already made their next selections, but I’m watching Jumpin. He’s watching me. He knows I’m on the verge of understanding. He shows me the card.

Dusty Baker. Fine player. First-five-rounds pick, some years. First ten, always.

Dusty Baker. Study Baker.

“Studebaker?” I murmur, and Jumpin’s finger snaps to his nose again.

Bingo?

Then he can’t control himself anymore, and explodes into his most genuine laugh. The proud-of-himself laugh.

“Cars?” I ask.

Swiveling, Jumpin yanks his portfolio onto his lap, unzips it so that its top drops like a jaw falling open, and reveals his latest creation.

We all take a moment to marvel at the craftsmanship. Or, more, the effort. Attention to detail. He has made new bunting—stadium signage, for the new imaginary stadium that will exist only in our heads and possibly only for tonight—on an actual cut up bedsheet. With fabric marker. Instead of drawing, this time, he has printed out glossy pictures of cars and mounted them in the four corners of the sign. There’s a Studebaker. Plus some other vintage-y looking vehicles. One of them is a Vega, I assume. The other maybe a Cruz?

All framing the centerpiece. His new imaginary stadium’s name: The Dealership at Heroin Gardens.

As always, Mango is the first to laugh. But Ben’s right there with him. Shaking his head. “Jumpin in da house,” he says.

But me, I’m still staring at the signage, then Jumpin’s cards. Thinking about the time investment. From concept development to player name research—did he start out by Wikipedia-ing Pontiacs? Porsches? Or did he notice the car possibility years ago, and file it away for future use?—to image search to bunting creation.

All for this moment. The moment just passed. That single second of unveiling, to us.

“Remember what I said about math?” I ask. “And madness?”

“Nope. Too busy savoring my brilliance--”

“--Thereby confirming my hypothesis.”

“--and also preparing for victory.”

“Not with those cards.”

Jumpin’s finger leaves his nose. Waggles in front of me. “Bet you a dollar.”

That, I know from long experience, would be reckless use of a dollar. I cave, and give him the grin he craves.

The first say-your-lucky request of the night gets aimed my way in the middle of draft round nine—we only do ten these days, after that we deal out cards at random to save time—when I finally grab Mark the Bird. My favorite player. The card we have isn’t even from his lone great season, but the one after. 1977. The year he ruined his shoulder in spring training while goofing around trying to climb a fence. It’s still a pretty good card.

“Say you’re lucky,” Mango sings out as I skim Mark from the pitcher pile and put him next to Mr. Trammell, his fellow Tiger, in my team stack.

“Why, exactly?”

“Because we left him for you. It’s round nine, he’s a better pick than that.”

“But see, really, you’re lucky, because you did leave him for me. Just think of what I would have dedicated the rest of my night to doing to you if you hadn’t.”

Jumpin claps approval. But what he says is, “Oh, pipe down. We know he’s your boy.”

“You’re all my boys,” I say.

“Awww,” they answer, almost in unison. Then they demand I say it. It’s our rule. The foundation, I think, of our long run as a gaming collective: you get asked, you comply.

“I’m lucky,” I say.

Ten minutes and one more emptied dumpling tin later, we’re playing. That is, Ben and I are, and Mango’s got dice in one hand and his lineup stack in the other when Jumpin abruptly sticks out a hand, crossing-guard style, and says, “Where’s my field?”

For a second, I literally have no idea what he’s talking about. None of us do. He glances down at the rectangle of green cardboard Ben and I have in front of us. The gestural, factory-produced baseball mat that came with the set. It has no actual function whatsoever, except as a place to roll dice and keep the Split deck, the orange cards numbered 1 to 20 that resolve the game’s most suspenseful moments.

“Are you joking?” Ben finally asks.

“The Dealership at Heroin Gardens requires a field. How can it have such beautiful signage and no field?”

This is the thing about Jumpin. It’s what makes him funny, and also what got him bullied and occasionally beat up in high school despite everyone knowing how dangerous that was. The predators zeroed in on him because he made even them laugh. Made bullying feel like play.

All of which is just to say, he’s not kidding. And also that he won’t simply allow me to give him our field while Ben and I continue on a placemat.

Wordlessly, I get up, squeeze around back of his chair, and rinse out a dumpling tin in Mango’s tiny, chipped sink. Water circles at the lip of the rusted drain as though daring itself to go down. Six years, I am thinking. My friend Mango has lived here six years, and doesn’t seem to remember that he could leave. Or that he should want to.

“Dish towel?” I ask without quite turning around. Just for that moment, I don’t want to see Mango smiling, the way he always seems to be smiling. Accepting whatever he’s given.

“A what?”

I do turn, then, mouth falling open in spite of myself. Fortunately, it turns out he just didn’t hear me. Not only does he know what a dish towel is, he has one. It’s located on top of the stack of actual, not-paper plates in the cabinet toward which he points me. All two of them. The towel is even sort of folded. Nearly clean.

Wiping the tin dry, I start to bend back the rim, then realize I don’t have to. Glaring at Jumpin, I nudge him aside again with my hip, push his dice out of the way, and arrange the tin in front of him. With a plastic knife, I carve the outline of an infield diamond in the bottom of the foil. Extend the foul lines to the opposite rim.

“Too bad about your architect,” I mutter. “The Dealership turns out to be one of those identical circular 1960s stadium monstrosities.”

“Infield’s kind of bespoke, though,” Jumpin says, arms folded. He’s having way too much fun to consider helping me. Ben glares at him on my behalf.

But Mango’s laughing. Leaning forward, he arrays leftover soy sauce packets as bases, home plate. Puts his plastic salt and pepper shakers at the ends of my lines.

“Foul poles,” he says when I raise an eyebrow at him.

We lean back, survey. Jumpin tilts forward and scratches his chin. “Pitcher’s mound?”

“Pretty sure I know who’s getting impaled on the grille of my car,” I snap.

That does it. He laughs.

I swat him. “Need me to write you out charts? The things actually required to play the game? Or do you think we can share those?”

“Don’t be silly. I’ve got those memorized.”

“Should I cut up a napkin and make you a new Split deck so we don’t have to share?”

“I’ll always share with you, Nan.”

We’re through the first rotation—everyone plays each other twice before we get to the knockout round—in under an hour. The big news is that Jumpin loses to both Ben and me. The bigger is that Ben goes undefeated.

Unless I’ve forgotten somehow, Ben has never won our tournament. Not since it went annual. Not when we were kids and played every Saturday night, either.

Not ever.

A quick dumpling break, and we’re right back at it.

Mango and I finish our second game against each other—our last of this round, and for at least one of us, last of the night— in about eight minutes. Mark the Bird gets bludgeoned and removed by the third inning. I kind of want to stay at the table and watch; another Ben win knocks Jumpin out of the finals, and while that has happened—once or twice—it’s always worth seeing.

Abruptly, though, I feel that claustrophobic twitchiness surfacing in my skin, squirming up my throat like an oncoming hiccough fit. I never used to have this feeling on game nights. Not in our pre-Heroin Gardens days. At least, I don’t remember having it. But every year, it gets stronger, now. That sense that if I wait even one second more, I’m going to open Mango’s door and find that it’s 2062, and I’m 70 years old, and the sea has swept the land, and the world has ended.

“Be right back,” I mumble, tripping on my chair as I stand and push outside.

A few seconds later, Mango joins me. He takes up position to my right, hands on the tilting, splintery wooden bannister neither of us dares lean against. The air is actually moving now, the night sky tinted just a little red, as though the day has left a residue. Mango hasn’t quite closed his door, so we still hear dice rattling. Ben and Jumpin speak low when they speak, chattering in our Strat-nickname patois, steady and familiar as cicada hum.

Tutti Frutti.

Cey what?

Say you’re lucky...

For a while, Mango and I just stare down into that awful courtyard. I still refuse to call it his courtyard, though obviously it is, at this point. From up here, the fountain looks even more decrepit. A giant broken toy left out on a lawn to rot.

Minus lawn.

“What are you doing, Mango?” I ask eventually.

I meant to ask How. But I let the question stand.

To our right, Charley Finely-man reappears, lighting himself a fresh one.  Not a cigarette, I realize, even before the smell hits. I resist an impulse to suck in, maybe reach across and ask for a drag. Feels like I could use one, but I have no idea why.

“Rooting for Ben,” Mango answers. Or maybe that’s just a statement, and he’s ignoring my question completely. He doffs his Mango-lers cap toward Charley Finley, who responds with some kind of W.C. Fields finger salute. As if they know each other. Meet here often.

“So much,” I murmur.

“I think he kind of needs it.”

Turning all the way around, I look at my longtime, childhood friend. His skin isn’t blotchy red anymore, the way it used to get every time we went out in the sun. Hence nickname. Now it’s just pale. Like he never goes outside at all.

“You okay?”

“Huh?” he says. “Sure. Working a lot. Probably not as much as you.”

That is almost certainly true. And probably more of the reason for this year’s onset of Nan-Get-Out-of-This-Room squirreliness than anything Mango is or isn’t doing with his life.

“Don’t change the subject.”

“We have a subject?”

He’s gotten quick, I think. Not Jumpin-quick, but still. I always forget how on it Mango can be. Even when it feels like we’re talking to each other through tin-can telephones from a thousand miles apart. Which is most of the time, with Mango. I don’t know why. I don’t think he does. But I’ve started to suspect it’s that way with everyone, for him.

“What is this work you say you have? Are you still tutoring? Teaching? Anything that’s going to get you out of this place? Anything you love?”

His shrug comes not just fast, but easy. “I’m not good at anything I love.”

My heart is breaking even before Jumpin whoops.

“Shit,” Mango says. Still fucking smiling.

I don’t turn back yet, so he doesn’t either. It takes a current to carry him. I’ve always known this. Which doesn’t mean he’ll do what anyone directs, or be anyone but himself. But he goes where life goes. His words, and Jumpin’s whoop, rattle in my head like dice being shaken. Which is worse? Having things you love but can’t do, or loving nothing? And which is Mango saying is him?

And why is he still smiling?

And what, exactly, do I think I’m so great at? Parrying and provoking Jumpin? Enjoying game nights I rarely win? If year one of law school has taught me anything, it’s that lawyering will not be like game nights.

I head back in, and Mango follows. Ben has already taken my chair, has his cards spread on the table and is hovering over them, red faced. Looking for all the world like a dad—or a manager—who has just finished reading the riot act.

To his cards.

“You and me, Nan,” Jumpin says, hands folded behind his head, chair tilted back on two legs. A foolhardy position in a Mango chair. I’m hoping it breaks under him. “One-game playoff to see who gets into the championship round against the mighty Bennies.” Needless to say, on Bennies, he falsettos. Then adds, “Sorry, Man-go. Eliminated, I’m afraid.”

“No need to be sorry for me.” Mango plops down next to Ben. “I just got hired as the Bennies’ third base coach. I’mma help take you down.”

But Ben sticks out an arm, forcing Mango back. “No.”

“No?”

“Just...” He’s still flushed, and he can’t seem to get his mouth to say the words he’s clearly chewing. He’s still got his arm out, as though we were playing freeze tag and he got caught—again—right in front of the safety base.

Abruptly, I understand, or think I do. With understanding comes a shiver of sadness, or maybe guilt. I don’t call Ben anymore. I don’t think of any of us do, much. Not that he’d have time to talk, anyway; he’s always either hip-deep in kid or on a deadline for some freelance job he has scrounged up, or he’s in the midst of fighting with his wife or waiting for her to call him back from one of her three jobs. Also, he hates talking on the phone. That snazzy shirt he’s got on, the recently cut and freshly combed hair... that’s all for tonight, I realize. For us. As though this were a costume party. Mango may be—is—perpetually adrift. Jumpin has new lungs and a real job, though he still has to down thirty pills a day, work out constantly, and go to who even knows how many blood draws and physical therapy appointments a month. And even those will only save him for so long.

But Ben has been beating against every current he has ever touched for as long as I’ve known him. Wriggling around in his body, marriage, majors he tried and discarded in college. Professional paths he started down, then wandered off. As though he can’t get comfortable. Has never been comfortable.

As though he hates everything he loves.

Or maybe he just gets tired. Was born tired.

Whereas Jumpin was born pissed off. Ready to fight. And fully equipped with the smirk he’s currently flashing.

“Allow me to make the evening more pleasurable for everyone,” I say, because it’s all I can think to offer. Also because it’s what will make the evening more fun for me. And him. Sitting down across Dumpling-Tin Field at the Dealership at Heroin Gardens, I grab my cards and sort my line-up. Then I look up, clucking my tongue in mock regret. “The end of The End. Eliminated in the group stage. A new experience for you.”

“Would be if it actually happened.”

“Oh, it’s happening. This one’s for you, Ben.” I scoop the dice, while Jumpin pops his lips, making a put-putting sound. It takes me a second to get it. Then—goddamn him—I grin again. “Tell me that’s not a car. An engine starting.”

The put-putting intensifies. Smooths. Intensifies some more. Then drops low again. Starts intensifying all over.

“Gears shifting?” I ask.

He’s so proud of himself, he may as well have sprouted a rooster crest. “The sound of my team zooming past, Nan. The Car and his cars. The End, coming for you.”

I laugh, shake the dice, and roll.

And lose, eight-nothing.

For that whole game, Ben stays hunched over his own cards, adjusting his lineup. He never even looks up. Mango has assumed station between Jumpin and me. Watching us play. Enjoying having friends in his apartment.

I think.

In the top of the ninth, while I’m surveying what’s left of my bench for a pointless pinch hitter, Ben gets a phone call. He’s exiting the room even as he fumbles his cell from his pocket. He doesn’t shut the door all the way, so we can sort of see him out there, and we can definitely hear him.

“Do you need me to come now?” he says. He sounds neither angry nor relieved. Not like he wants to go, exactly. But also not like he minds.

I still know him, I think. But I neither know nor can even imagine his life anymore.

“How’s my man Wall-eye?” Jumpin asks when Ben comes back in.

“Walter,” he murmurs. Again, I realize. A recent addition to our banter: Jumpin’s monkeying with Ben’s kids’ names, and Ben correcting him. We see each other maybe twice a year now, but the patois keeps sprouting.

Does Ben enjoy bantering with us? Has he ever?

I shoot a look at Jumpin, will him to stop.

Instead, he tuts. “Okay, Ben-NIE. Come on over and bend the knee.”

I vacate my chair, and as Ben takes it, I touch his arm. “Please kick his ass. For all our sakes.”

“For the world’s sake,” Mango adds.

For most of the championship, I stand near the door and watch my boys. Mango leans by the last tin of dumplings, occasionally lifting one to his mouth, otherwise smiling vaguely. Like a hologram of himself. Or, actually, like a hologram. Translucent. Not quite Mango, or anyone, somehow. Ben keeps checking his phone, occasionally typing a text. To his wife, I assume. We don’t ask, he doesn’t say. Jumpin is all business, even when he checks his phone clock and downs another fistful of pills. He doesn’t even look at the bottle when he does that, and he swallows them dry. He is completely here, in a way very few people in my experience have learned how to be. Every time he gets a runner in scoring position, he makes revving motor sounds.

He is the engine of these nights, of course. The reason we’re still here. Quite possibly the reason we still know each other at all.

I have never wanted anyone to lose so badly.

In the top of the fifth, Jumpin finally scores, breaking the scoreless tie. Only at that point do I realize who he’s had pitching.

“Wait. How did you wind up with Catfish Hunter? Did you get him in the random deal-out?”

“Nope. You could have snagged him. I drafted him right after you took Mark the Bird.”

It’s true, I realize. I remember being surprised that that card was still in the pile, and thinking I should grab it. “A Catfish isn’t a car.” Even as I say that, though, I have a suspicion. No Catfish. But a Hunter? I don’t just suspect; I’m pretty sure I already know.

Jumpin gathers the dice. “Oh, I think you’ll find...”

Googling classic, car, and hunter on my phone gets me mostly knives. Then pocket watch cases. Then people hunting for classic cars. I don’t bother narrowing my search. Even if I wasn’t sure myself, that just isn’t a mistake Jumpin would make. Or a lie he would tell. If he told lies, which he doesn’t.

They’re in the seventh inning, now, with Catfish still pitching a shutout—of course he is, it’s an excellent card, and this is the End against the Bennies with a championship on the line—when I realize the other reason I was surprised to hear that name at this moment. I stare at Jumpin’s head as Ben rolls another groundout.

“Have you even pitched him tonight?”

I hate asking; I already know the answer. All I’m doing is giving Jumpin more opportunity to do what he does. Be who he is. Sometimes, I love that.

He swells so full of pride, he’s practically pushing back the table. “Nope. Pass me a dumpling, Man-Go.”

Mango holds up both hands. All gone.

One thing Jumpin isn’t getting, anyway. “You saved Catfish Hunter for this game.”

“Of course.”

“Even though you almost didn’t even make it to this game. Twice.”

“To you, I’m sure it must have seemed that way.”

“Roll,” Ben snaps, shoving dice at him.

Jumpin takes them. “I understand, Ben. I’ll make it quick.”

This time, when Ben checks his phone, I don’t even think he has gotten a new notification. The movement is a like reflex. Strat-O-Matic equivalent of a nervous pitcher wiping his forehead, pounding his glove, squeezing the resin bag.

Except it’s so very Ben. So familiar. Strat-O-Matic equivalent of Ben facing every single moment of his life.

“Oh, God, come on, Bennies!” I clap my hands.

After that, just for a few moments, I close my eyes, and listen to the patois.

The Car.

Dave Cash-or-Credit.

Gb2bX. Error. Say you-re lucky.

Tito Puentes.

Not Tito Fuentes, the actual baseball player, nor Tito Puente, the percussionist, and right on cue, all four of us rap whatever surface we’re near: one-TWO-THREE-FOUR, five.

Mango taps my wrist, and I open my eyes to see him slipping me the last dumpling, which he apparently hasn’t eaten yet. I wait until Jumpin notices before popping it in my mouth. It’s cold, has lost most of its taste. Me-and-my-Strat-boys equivalent of a Communion wafer.

Abruptly—cruelly, with two outs in the ninth and the End up two-nothing—the Bennies get a double. Then a walk. Jumpin’s still leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head. But I know him. I so know him.

“Would be a shame, Jumpin,” I taunt. “Getting so close, with those cards...” I glance over Ben’s shoulder to see who he’s got coming up to bat. I know my baseball history well enough to burst out laughing. We all do. Except possibly Ben.

“Oh my God, that’s so good,” says Mango. “That’s perfect.”

“Come on, Ben. Send the End to Fisk City.”

As though he himself has only just noticed, Ben glances down at his batter. It’s not a particularly good card. From one of Carlton Fisk’s very few inconsistent years. Not much power.

But still. Carlton Fisk. In my mind’s eye, I can see him so clearly, doing that dance at the end of that legendary Game Six in that World Series we’ve all seen on YouTube. Hopping down the first-base line, waving at the ball he’d just crushed. Directing it to stay straight. Get up over the Green Monster and out.

I am primed to start my own Carlton Fisk dance. Wave and hop. If I start, Mango will join me. And Jumpin will smirk, and have to fight even harder not to show us the fear I am absolutely sure he’s feeling.

Amazing. A proper Strat night. A night I haven’t had—will not have, I am beginning to understand—with anyone else, ever. This rhythm, this level of understanding of each other’s gaming natures, it’s not something you can search out and find. Or likely will find, even if you do search. It takes time no one’s life offers. Not to adults, even if they somehow happen across each other’s paths.

We’d have to notice each other more.

I’ve got my knees bending into a hop before I remember that the Red Sox lost that Carlton Fisk series in the end. Not that game, but...

Then I realize that my hopping is premature. Possibly moot. Because for some reason, Ben is poring through the rest of his cards. His back-up players.

“Ben?” I say.

Even Jumpin looks confused. Of course, all he says is, “You already used your Oscar Gamble. What you’re looking for isn’t there, my long-suffering friend. It’s right here.” He scoops the dice from the dumpling tin stadium I made him and extends them. “Quick and easy. Little shake of the wrist, and it’s over. You won’t feel a thing.”

From out of his stack, Ben grabs a player card and drops it on the tabletop. He does not take the dice.

“Wow,” says Jumpin. With a little more actual wow than his usual when playing games. Beating us at games. “That, my friend, is one low-percentage endeavor. An all-in move. Respect!”

Ben grabs for the dice, but Jumpin retracts his hand, snatches up the card. Studies it, shows it to us.

Charlie Spikes. A name I barely remember, no one we have a nickname for. He almost never gets put in our line-ups. Some years, he doesn’t even get drafted.

His card is terrible. Mostly strikeouts.

Except for those HOMERUN rolls. All of them highly unlikely. Two of them aren’t even guaranteed. Ben would still have to draw a Split card to see what happens.

“Give me the dice,” he says. Low and fierce.

But Jumpin hesitates a little longer. Calculating.

“This is fun,” I murmur. Because it is.

Jumpin does not respond. Is actually nervous.

Has Ben noticed? I want him to realize what he has accomplished. If nothing else—and even with my math, I know probability suggests there will be nothing else—he has caused that look on Jumpin’s face. Which should make Ben proud. It’s making me proud of him.

Also really, really happy.

“Sssh,” says Jumpin, even though no one’s speaking. He’s still studying the card.

“All in,” says Ben, in a way that makes me think he has noticed. That he’s enjoying this as much as the rest of us. Or at least as much as he ever has.

Eventually, Jumpin lays the card back on the table. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll call.” He hands over the dice.

Ben doesn’t blow on them, or whisper to them, Mark-the-Bird style. He just flings them.

Even before they tumble to a stop—as though he really had gotten inspiration from on high, a message from the Gaming Gods that they’re as sick of Jumpin winning as we are—Ben leaps to his feet. We’re practically bumping heads as we lean in to look. One di bounces out of the tin, but it stays on the table, which means it counts.

Which means...

“Son of a fucking...” Jumpin murmurs.

Ben has turned a red I’ve never even seen on sunburned-Mango. He’s not trembling, exactly; the movement is more of a wiggle, and it’s at least half voluntary. Worthy of the great Fisk himself.

“Homerun, one to nineteen,” he reads out quietly. Completely unnecessarily. “Flyout twenty.”

His hand shoots out for the Split deck, and in the instant before he flips over the top card, I feel my breath catch, have to resist grabbing his wrist and telling him, Slow down! Too fast.

As if going slow would have made any difference.

Together—all of us together, in a way we haven’t been for so long, probably almost never were, because how many moments like this are there, really?—we stare at the card. For all kinds of reasons, none of us wants to break the silence.

Me, I want to freeze it. Stay in it.

Then Mango starts laughing. Shakes his head.

“Goddamnit.” I say, shaking my head as Jumpin falls back in his seat, smirk already resettling on his face.

Ben is still hunched over the table, staring at that little orange card. The black 20 printed on it.

“Say you’re lucky,” he whispers.

I miss the actual moment. We all do. Mango has already turned to dry the dishes in his chipped, awful sink. Jumpin is preening. And I’m reaching for my sweater on the back of the chair. Monday exams and the exams after that suddenly looming, filling my head the way they do every other second of my life now. My actual life, which my Strat boys aren’t in.

I hear Jumpin speak. But only in the way I hear my cat meow, or the ding of my get-out-of-my-chair-and-move timer. Predictable, ignorable. Background noise. I don’t even process what he said, at first.

The fact that he said, “No.”

The table slams into my legs as Ben flips it. The impact drives me into the wall as the whole thing crashes down on its side. Dumpling-tin Stadium goes flying, and dice smack into everything like buckshot. Split cards whirl and flutter like terrified birds. I’m pressed against the concrete, grabbing my bruised thigh, mesmerized by one Split card spinning right in front of my face like a helicopter seed before slowly, slowly drifting to the floor. For a single crazed second, I want to see what number it is. Almost certainly one of the nineteen that would have meant HOMERUN. And Ben winning.

“Say you’re lucky,” Ben hisses again.

“Hey,” I snap. “Ben.”

Those twitches in his back, and all down his arms and legs, might have been wiggle before. But they’re tremors now.

“Say it,” he hisses.

From Mango’s tiny bedroom—actually from the adjacent apartment on the other side of the wasp-paper wall in there—comes a series of bangs. Then another voice, so clear it might as well be in this room with us.

“Hey! Shut the fuck up!”

“SAY YOU’RE LUCKY!” Ben roars. If not for the upended table in the way, I’m pretty sure he’d have grabbed Jumpin’s shirt front by now.

But Jumpin just leans back in the chair he has not left. Arms folded. He’s not smirking; he’s full-on grinning.

“J,” I say, straightening, wincing, lifting a warning hand. Too late.

“Thing is, Ben-Knee. I would say it. You know I would. If I were.”

“One to nineteen. One to fucking nineteen. A 95% chance. SAY YOU’RE LUCKY.”

“Don’t make me come over there!” shouts the voice through the wall, and Mango glances that way. He looks afraid.

“Hey, guys?” he says. “Don’t make him come over here. Really.”

But Jumpin is still somehow oblivious. Or else he isn’t, is just being Jumpin. Determined to stay ruthlessly rational. Cheerfully correct, even if that’s cruel. Or you’re about to beat him up. It’s how he makes sense of—maintains peace with— the world, in all its irrational, brutal senselessness. It’s not that he can’t stop himself. But there’s a principle involved. So he literally doesn’t see why he should. More than any of us—no, sooner than any of us—Jumpin has learned which principles are inescapable.

“Really,” he tells Ben now, not cruelly. No longer taunting, just explaining. But still enjoying. “In truth, Ben, I should make you say it.”

That elicits an actual gurgle. Which is better than Ben screaming, if only because it’s less likely to draw Mango’s neighbor down on us.

I’m not liking those tremors, though. I put out my other hand. “Jumpin, come on. Congrats, again. Time to—”

But Jumpin holds up Charlie Spikes in one hand, Carlton Fisk in the other. “Think about it. First you have to make the insane move you just made. Which—I’d have to do the math, and I’m happy to if you give me a sec—probably isn’t even more likely to give you a homerun, let alone not give you a game-ending out. So, first you have to make that decision. Then you have to come up with that roll. See, statistically, that’s a whole lot less likely than the one-in-twenty chance you had of not getting a homerun once you miraculously did roll it. So really, you’re the one who should say—”

Ben’s lunge might have driven Jumpin into Mango’s bathroom if not for the tipped-over table. Instead, he slams his own knee, then his ribs into various legs as he trips, stumbles, and falls. His shout is rage, not pain, even as he lies there clutching his sides while tears burst out on his face. Mango and I drop down on either side of him. Jumpin doesn’t join us, but at least he finally stops talking. Right as the apartment door flies open, I glance up and see his face.

Mouth tight. Shoulders hunched. Still clutching the Charlie Spikes card, pointing at it as though it’s evidence. Proof of something.

And I finally see. Think I do. This is him helping, the best and only way he knows. He’s distracting. Enraging Ben by explaining to him why he shouldn’t be upset, as a way of making him not upset, because what good has being upset ever done? He’s also explaining to the rest of us, why he—Jumpin—deserves any win he actually gets.

The guy in the door isn’t Charlie Finley-man. He’s huge, Korean, wearing white pajama shorts that have some kind of boxing glove design on them, beach thongs, a silver choker as thick as a rattlesnake.

“Don’t make me call the cops,” he says. Which should be funny. Is funny, if you only knew us. That’s what I want to say to this guy. Mango’s neighbor in Heroin Gardens. Which only we call it.

There’s nothing intentional about Ben elbowing me in the throat as he struggles free of us and to his feet; it’s just what happens. He also hip-checks the man in the door as he hurtles from the room. His footsteps hammer so hard on the cracked paving out there, I worry he’s going to break through it. A few seconds later, we hear his car starting in the parking lot. His tires squeal as he flees.

For a long second, the rest of us stay frozen: the man at the door, finger at that choker as though soothing a snake; Mango and I on our knees amid upside-down table and scattered Strat cards; Jumpin in his chair, tipped back on two legs against the wall. Inches from flipping all the way over.

The man in the door points at Mango. “Whatever you’re doing,” he says, sounding less like he’s threatening than offering brotherly advice. “Do less of it.”

And there I was thinking we should do more. Meet up every weekend. Forget careers and families and Cystic fibrosis and looming recession and collapsing sea ice and white Christian nationalists, and spend our days sharing dumplings and vanquishing each other.

“Do we go after Ben?” Mango asks after his neighbor leaves.

“Little late,” I murmur.

With a thud, Jumpin drops his chair back to the floor. “Pretty sure I shouldn’t, anyway”

I glare at him. “Me fucking too.”

He holds my glare. “What?” he finally says.

Over the next half hour, as we help Mango gather flung bits of game and plasticware, we take turns calling Ben’s phone. Mostly, Mango and I make the calls, not Jumpin, though he hovers nearby every time we do it.

On my fifth or six try, maybe half an hour after he stormed out, Ben answers.

“Yep?” he says. There’s a baby crying in the background. Possibly two.

“We just...wanted to make sure you got home all right.”

“I’m home. I’ve got to go.”

“See you soon?” I don’t mean to phrase it as a question. Obviously, it is, now. Probably—from now on, for all of us—it always will be.

Has been for years?

When the cleaning is done, Jumpin and I linger in the apartment. Mango offers us beer, iced tea. Jumpin takes the tea, mostly just for something to hold, I suspect. Like a novice actor unsure what to do his hands. I used to think we made each other so much less small in the face of the world. But maybe we just teased and badgered and distracted each other into forgetting how small we are.

What else are friends for?

When we finally leave, Mango stands in his doorway and watches. From down in the courtyard, by the broken fountain, I glance back one more time. He looks as comfortable in and familiar with this space as Charley Finley-man. A bona fide denizen. At home in Heroin Gardens.

I want to cry.

And then come back here tomorrow. Hold another player draft, start from scratch. Play a whole new tournament. That Ben wins. Or I do.

In the lot, Jumpin pops open the door of his convertible, then stands by it a second. It’s a ridiculous car for him. Also the perfect car for him.

“See you soon,” I murmur.

He nods. Looks at his steering wheel. Eventually, he says, “Congratulations on my victory.”

I make myself laugh. It isn’t hard. “Yes, sir. Well done, you, all around.”

Possibly, Jumpin is immune to irony. Or deaf to it. Possibly, I didn’t intend any. I don’t even know.

When he’s gone, I stand a little longer in that lot. Outside Heroin Gardens, but also nowhere else. Not at school, which isn’t school anymore anyway except in the utilitarian, learn-something sense. Not headed toward or away from anyone. Not on my way home, because I don’t live in one of those right now.

Unlike Mango, I realize with a jolt. Or Ben.

So be it. For at least one more night, until it went wrong—even though it went wrong—I got to play games with my friends.

I loved it. Everything about it. Even the ending. Not that I would have wished it, certainly not for Ben. But we were so ourselves at various moments in there. Meaning creatures born with some terrible sense that there is infinitely more time than we actually get. And also with longings we can’t even pinpoint. Some of mine apparently include nights holding cards full of symbols and numbers that we pretend are people, who play on teams we imagine as ours, that are themselves representations of actual teams everyone imagines as theirs. We’ve even given our teams names: Manglers; Bennies; friends.

“More, please,” I say to the air. To nothing at all.

Even I have no idea what I mean. But it involves more of these nights. With Jumpin alive, Benny sane, Mango somewhere other than here, or maybe here but more okay here. I’ll keep my friends close, and my gaming friends closer. I will never not eat dumplings when they’re offered. I will never not offer them when I have them. I will play to win, but not to conquer. I will win as often as I possibly can.

And I will say I’m lucky when I’m asked to.

.