slap, slap, slap, four times. This was the endgame and he was going to win. But then he exploded.
“Not again! I refuse to play with you!”
“Why?” the Algerian asked.
“I will never, never, never play with you again.”
“Did I cheat?”
“Did I say you cheated?”
“Then what are you objecting to, what are you saying?”
“I am saying that you cannot keep rolling threes and ones every single time.”
“Why?”
“Parce que c’est mathématiquement impossible.”
Kalaj insisted on having him throw the dice again, because he was persuaded there was something fishy in his manner of holding the dice that kept rolling a three and a one. The Algerian was glad to oblige but said that the three and one he originally played still counted. He threw a five and a six.
“No,” objected Kalaj, “hold the dice the way you did before, in that underhanded way you have of slamming the dice against the corner of the box. Everything about you is underhanded. Like your people.”
“Like this you mean?” asked the Algerian, holding the dice in the way Kalaj had described.
“Exactly.”
“But that’s how I always throw my dice.”
“Just play!”
The man threw his dice and rolled a three and one.
“What did I tell you? Every time you throw the dice that way it’s a three and one.”
“But you’re absolutely mad, no wonder you have the brains of a tapir.”
“I am not mad.”
“You try then.”
Kalaj grabbed the dice and rolled a four and a two.
“Well, it’s because I don’t know how to do it your way. I’m never playing with you again. Bonne journée.”
He stood up, looked around, saw me, and walked over to my table. I knew I’d have to give up reading my book. He pulled up a chair and sat at my table, gave me a big handshake, tousled my hair, scanned the place from where he was now sitting in case he’d missed something during backgammon, and ordered coffee. “It’s way too hot,” he said. After ten or so minutes, he stood up, gulped down the remaining coffee, and said he knew of a place where it might be cooler—“Let’s go!”
Together we walked out to a small French patisserie on Holyoke Street. This was where the younger members of the faculty sometimes had coffee with graduate students when they wished to seem less formal. This was where you griped and groused and poured your heart out to teachers who meant well but couldn’t really change the system or do anything to help. This is also where they met you when they didn’t get tenure and grumbled on and on only to remind you that you were no less ineffectual as a friend than they were when you yourself were in the doghouse. Yet this, I told Kalaj, was where I had tutored French to Heather twice a week during the previous spring term.
“Hezer, who?” he asked. Heather an undergraduate rower. I could just imagine the jokes he’d make at the expense of a woman whose voice was far lower than mine. I told him how at one point Heather had looked up at me during one of our tutorials and, on a whim it seemed, asked if I was interested in becoming a tutor at Lowell House. Of course I was interested. But how would she be able to help? Her answer couldn’t have been more lapidary. “No problem, then!” I didn’t understand what no problem meant. “No problem, as in pas de problème,” she joked in the French she knew she’d never learn to speak. Gruff, husky, a touch butch. Seeing I wasn’t persuaded, she added, “I mean gladly!” “You’re sure?” “Sure I’m sure.” But noticing I continued to nurse lingering doubts about her offer, she finally blurted, “Look, I have pull.” Abrupt, no-nonsense, to the point. This, it took me a long while to realize, was how Park Avenue WASPs spoke their candor and how they went out of their way to make things happen when they wished to make them happen. I didn’t believe she had pull, or anything like it. But a month later I was asked to apply to become a non-resident house tutor.
She liked rowing every morning, she liked George Eliot, and she worshipped Parsifal. Go figure.
Kalaj was not surprised. He asked if I had to sleep with her after that. “No,” I said. “This was not about sex.”
“Of course it’s about sex,” he shot back. “You’re the type who never sees that it’s always about sex. Always, always.” Maybe he was right, I said, thinking back to Heather