Expensive People (2006)
Expensive People
“I got to know him through Gustave Hofstadter, who had become my best, indeed, my only, friend. Gustave and I were fond of playing chess, which we played seriously and silently, like two little old men in a terminal ward of a hospital. If we played at his house (a baronial estate with a house that was gabled, ornamented, towered, as cute as a gingerbread house in a Mother Goose story), Bebe ran in and out of the room, looking for things she could never find, and shot at us muttered remarks: “Still playing that game! Still at it! I don't understand children … Such a sunny day…” If we played at my house we had the sweet, serene quiet of the library, bathed with winter sunlight, the feel of a house empty and silent everywhere except for Ginger's vacuum cleaner roaring away upstairs, while Ginger probably rifled through Nada's bureau drawers (I had caught her at it once). We loved and respected the game of chess, both of us. Gustave was going into math and I had no idea where I was going—i...ndeed I couldn't have predicted exactly where I would end up!—but I joined him in his admiration for this precise and beautiful game, which leaves nothing to chance, unlike that hideous game, Bridge, which Nada pretended to like, or that still more hideous game of life.MoreLess
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