Page 40 of Pete and His Precious

“I’m pretty good at it,” I say, trying to be modest, but I’m pretty sure I failed. Still, my words are true. I am somewhat of an expert at ping-pong. I played it at the police academy, and in the military too. I can never sit still very long, and sometimes you can’t get up and just go wherever you want to. But almost every place had a ping-pong table and pool table. I never really did get good at pool. It was too much standing around and studying stuff. But ping-pong, yeah. I am good.

“Really? You want to play?”

“You guys have a ping-pong table?” I ask, thinking that her mother would flip her brisket if I took the kid to a pool hall, where they have a ping-pong table along the side. Nobody ever uses it, although every once in a while I get my buddies to play. Leo is good for a game, and sometimes Cal will even do one or two. Cal is a little better, but I beat their butts, and nobody likes to lose all the time.

I decide that I’m not going to rub it into Baxley, or trash talk anything. She might change her mind.

“We do. Down in the basement. We have a pool table too, but I don’t really like that.”

“I play pool, but I don’t really like it either,” I say, thinking maybe I have more in common with Baxley than I thought.

“Then, we can play ping pong when we get home?”

“Okay,” I say, knowing that my job doesn’t mean I have to play with her, but I’m down for wading in the creek and playing ping pong. But if she wants to break out fingernail polish, this dudes out. Or, I can’t exactly leave, but you know what I mean.

We get home, and she talks to Mrs. Fowler for a couple of minutes while the housekeeper offers us little sandwiches, and I think they have cucumbers in them. I preferred the crepes from this morning, but she offers me coffee to go along with it, and I take that eagerly.

I usually don’t drink coffee too much after six o’clock, unless I’m on duty.

I like to be able to go to sleep pretty easily at night, and coffee makes my brain not want to shut off.

I read somewhere that people who have ADHD actually get calmed down by stimulants. I decided that at that point that I didn’t have it, because caffeine makes me feel wired.

Anyway, Baxley and I make our way down to the basement, and not only is there a ping-pong table and pool table, but there’s foosball, and a couple arcade games. The old-fashioned kind that you might have seen in a bar fifty years ago.

There’s a big screen TV, and a couple of chairs that look like theater chairs in front of it. Maybe six of them.

It’s like the rich person’s rec room. I don’t know why I am surprised. I should have expected it.

Baxley walks over to a pocket hooked to the wall, where she reaches in and pulls out two ping-pong paddles and a ball.

“Would you like to choose your side?” she asks, and I get an inkling that perhaps she’s better than I thought she is. Perhaps I’m coming into this a little overconfident. Perhaps... Perhaps she is better than I am.

I’m not sure where I get that premonition, but it is pretty accurate. I don’t know that I would say she is better exactly,but as a player, she’s definitely better than my buddies. She’s probably the best person I’ve ever played with.

After the first game, which I beat her by one point, I held the ball and said, “How did you get to be so good?”

She shrugs her shoulders. “I guess I always had a knack for it, but when no one’s around and I want to play, I turn the table so that one end is against the wall, and I play that way.”

“By yourself?” I say, impressed. I guess I have done that a few times, but there was almost always someone who would do a few games with me, and then I would end up hitting it against the wall until I got tired of that, which didn’t take very long.

“Another game?” I ask.

Her eyes brighten. “Yes!” And I think she feels about the same way I do. That it is fun to finally have a worthy opponent. Although, if she’s this good at ten years old, she’s gonna do circles around me by the time she’s my age. But I don’t say that. Maybe playing against her will help me get better. But she has youth on her side. Multiple times over the past few years I’ve felt my age catching up with me. Not that I’m that old. Mid thirties isn’t old at all, but... I have lost a few steps. I’ll say that. And, I’m going to need to double my efforts at the gym, or I’m going to gain weight too.

But, Bexley is a much better ping-pong player than I ever was. That’s my take away after three games. She beat me by one point in the second game, then I beat her by three in the third game.

We’re getting ready to start the fourth when the housekeeper calls down the steps and tells us that supper is ready.

I am pretty happy about that, because that cucumber sandwich thing hadn’t done anything toward alleviating my hunger. It just made me a little bit sick in the stomach, but I am not going to complain. I don’t recall anyone saying that theywere going to feed me, but they seem like they are expecting that, and I certainly am not going to argue.

Chapter 13

Zoey

Today has been the longest day of my life.

Okay. Maybe I’m taking a page out of Kylie’s book, and I’m a little bit more dramatic than I need to be.

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