Chapter 8: Fool Me Ten Times

The Anchor Light on trivia night smelled of fryer oil and wet wool.

The Board hung behind the pool table where it had hung for six years.

It was a slab of black slate, three feet by four, framed in rope.

Across the top, in Gordie's blocky white chalk, it said THE BOARD.

Under that were ten rows of tally marks, each with a label, and a column on the right headed ODDS.

I tried not to look at it, and everyone in the bar watched me not looking.

"Team name?" said the quizmaster.

He was a retired science teacher in a bow tie, with a clipboard and a wireless microphone clipped to his collar.

"Fool Me Ten Times," said Paulie, from the next table, and half the bar laughed.

"That's us?" Eben said.

"Paulie wrote it," I said. "On the sheet."

"Of course she did."

We sat at the corner table with a basket of onion rings between us, a pencil, a stack of answer cards, and four inches of empty air.

We had not talked since the lake.

That wasn't strictly true.

He had come by the apartment twice, on Sunday and on Tuesday, and neither time had we talked, and I had not slept either time.

I had my phone face down on the table.

In my other tab, under the lock screen, was a half-filled application for a program in Portland.

I had told no one on earth about it but my own reflection.

The questions began.

It was a good bar for it, loud and warm, with the friends spread out among the tables and Gordie working the taps.

Eben and I were good at trivia, with an irritating ease.

He knew the maritime questions, and I knew the human body.

We got Mount Katahdin and the heart's four chambers and the year of the Great Fire of Rockland.

Our shoulders touched as we leaned over the card.

Neither of us moved away.

By the last round we were tied with a table of firemen, and the quizmaster stood up in his bow tie.

"Tiebreaker," he said. "Write your answer on the card. I'll read the cards aloud. It's a tradition."

"It's not a tradition," said Gordie, from the bar.

"It's a tradition as of this evening. What year was the Rockland Breakwater Light first lit?"

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