Page 119 of The Newcomer
“And it looks like everyone is really into the aloha theme,” Letty said, marveling at the array of loud flowered shirts, plastic leis, and muumuus flowing through the door.
“There aren’t any costume prizes, but still, it’s a real cutthroat competition,” Ava said. She nudged Letty. “Even the Feldmans want to play.
“Ruth! Billie!” Ava called, as the couple approached the table. “Where on earth?”
The two women wore matching traditional Hawaiian women’s long muumuus, with wide puffed sleeves and gathered, ruffled necks, along with flower crowns woven with bits of palm fronds, vines, and yellow frangipani blossoms. They wore necklaces of cowrie shells and puka beads.
“Billie designed and made our dresses herself,” Ruth said proudly. “I only made the necklaces.”
“Those are works of art,” Letty said. Before she could say anything else, Billie handed her two twenty-dollar bills. “How many cards?” Letty asked.
“Forty,” Billie replied, hefting a large straw bag onto her shoulder. “We came to win.”
More players crowded into the room. Trudi and Merwin Maples arrived, he dressed as a beachcomber with tattered shorts and straw hat, she in a blouse with a pattern of golden pineapples. The guests swarmed the food table, and Ava was kept busy, ferrying more platters of meatballs and fruit trays from the kitchen.
Joe stood at the front of the room on a makeshift plywood platform with a bar-top table and a large lit-up screen where the bingo numbers would be displayed. He tapped the microphone, resulting in an eardrum-piercing static squawk. “Five minutes, everybody!” he boomed. “Get your cards and take your seats.”
People rushed her table, holding out money, and Letty dealt out the bingo cards as fast as she could.
“One-minute warning,” Joe called. “Letty, go ahead and close the doors. Anybody not in the house sits out the first game.”
She was in the process of closing the door when a slight figure in a grass skirt came barreling down the breezeway in her direction.
“Wait! Don’t lock me out,” Oscar Jensen yelled.
She looked at Joe for approval. He shrugged. She held the door ajar.
Had there been a costume prize, Oscar Jensen, Letty thought, should have won it. HisSouth Pacific–inspired costume consisted of a crudely made bra constructed of coconut halves strung together with duct tape and bungee cords, the grass skirt, and a sailor hat worn at a rakish ankle. He’d smeared his pasty-white chest, face, and torso with a cheap orange bronzer, and was barefoot. He thrust a handful of bills at Letty, still out of breath from his dash to the door. “Gimme twelve cards.”
Ava edged Joe away from the microphone. “Aloha everyone, and welcome to our twenty-eighth annual evening of Aloha Bingo at the Murmuring Surf. I’m Ava DeCurtis, sole owner and proprietor of the Surf, and my handsome son Joe here is your caller tonight. That beautiful young lady at the back of the room, my assistant managerLetty, will be circulating the room and checking numbers and solving any issues. I assume y’all know the rules, but let me repeat—the first person I recognize as calling out bingo will be the winner of that game. Prizes will not be awarded until the numbers of each card are verified and approved by me. Also, and please remember this point, don’t piss me off. Play nice, or go home.”
Joe reclaimed his place. “Okay, we’re gonna start off the evening with a straight bingo. First to cover five numbers horizontally, vertically, or diagonally wins.”
Ava spun the wire cage holding the numbers, and the game was off.
“O-72,” Joe called.
Letty circled the room, greeting the regulars and smiling at newcomers.
“Hey Letty.” Merwin Maples summoned her to the table where he and Trudi were seated. He and his wife had four cards assembled on the tabletop.
Ruth and Billie Feldman sat across from the Mapleses. They had twelve cards neatly lined up in rows. Billie Feldman presided over a colorful village of rubber troll dolls. She had an array of fat plastic felt-tip bingo markers and was glaring at Merwin, whose plastic cup of Hawaiian punch was bumped up against the troll village.
“N-43,” Joe called.
“Got two, Billie,” Ruth said, pointing to the card with those numbers.
“What’s up, Merwin?”
He gestured at the dolls. “Can you tell her to move those creepy damn dolls? She’s taking up the whole tabletop. I can’t even concentrate on my cards with all those things.”
Billie Feldman didn’t look up. She was using a marker to slash N-43 on her cards. “Shove it, Merwin,” she said. “You don’t like it, move to another table.”
“G-54,” Joe intoned.
“Bahahahaha,” Ruth chuckled, pointing at the corresponding number on one of the cards Billie had just colored.
“There are no other tables,” Merwin complained. He gestured around the room. “It’s a full house.”
