The Sewing Machine Bet

I'm twenty-three years old and I've got a good life, thank you very much. I run a small catering outfit out of a shared kitchen on Delmore Street, I captain a trivia team called the Fork Lifters every Wednesday at the Rusty Lantern, and I answer to nobody. My mother thinks this is a phase. My grandmother thinks it's wonderful. My grandmother is the only one I trust on these matters.

The sewing machine has been sitting in the back room of the Lantern for going on four months now. It's a 1952 Singer, black with gold filigree, and it sits on a velvet cloth like it knows it's the prettiest thing in the building. Damian the owner wants eighty bucks for it. I've offered sixty three separate times and he's laughed at me three separate times, so we've reached an understanding where I come in every Sunday during the flea market and touch it and then leave.

"You know it's not going to get cheaper," Damian said last week, wiping down the bar.

"It's going to get more expensive?"

"Everything does."

He had me there. So when they announced the anniversary trivia tournament, winner takes the Singer home, I signed my team up before the flyer was even laminated. Grandmom taught me to sew on her old machine when I was grown enough to hold a needle straight, which took embarrassingly long, and she can't work her own anymore because of her hands. She's seventy-nine. She'd never say it out loud but she misses it. I decided months ago I was going to get that machine for her and I told her so and she called me a soft-headed girl and then she cried a little, which is how I knew it mattered.

So that was Wednesday. Wednesday before the tournament, which was Saturday, which was also the Lantern's eleventh anniversary and the reason there was a velvet cloth and a trophy case energy in the air. My team was already there. Janine from my kitchen crew, Glen who does my books, and Erin who has an alarming memory for flags of the world. We were two pints deep and arguing about whether George Washington was a good president or just a tall one when the door opened and the whole room sort of tilted sideways for me.

Geoffrey walked in like he owned the building. He didn't, Damian does, but Geoffrey has that walk. Tall, thirty years old, jacket that costs more than my car, and behind him four people from his office I recognized from a campaign launch I catered two years ago. Two years ago I catered his boss's party, he complimented my mushroom puffs, we argued about whether the Civil War was inevitable, and then we went home together and it was very good and then we never called each other again, which was also fine, and I am not going to rehash it here except to say I have thought about it more than is reasonable.

His eyes found me across the room. I felt my pulse do something unprofessional.

"No," Janine said, following my line of sight. "No. That's the guy. That's mushroom puff guy."

"He has a team," I said.

"He has a very smug team."

"Of course he has a smug team. Look at the jackets."

They had matching jackets. Nobody at a neighborhood pub quiz needs matching jackets. Geoffrey came over with his whole crew trailing him like ducks and stopped at our table and put both hands flat on the wood, which I remembered him doing at the launch party when he wanted a room's attention, and I hated that I remembered it.

"Lindy," he said.

"Geoffrey."

"You look well."

"I look better than your jacket."

His team made a noise like a crowd at a boxing match. Janine cackled. Geoffrey grinned at me, that slow grin, and pulled up a chair without asking and sat down like he'd been invited, which he had not been, and which I did not correct.

"You're signed up for the tournament," I said.

"Eight teams. Single elimination. Winner takes the Singer." He nodded toward the back room. "That's the prize, right? The sewing machine everyone's been drooling over for four months?"

"It's spoken for."

"For your grandmother, I heard." He tapped the table. "Damian talks. A lot. Mostly about the machine."

"Then you know it's mine and you should save yourself the embarrassment."

"It's a trivia tournament, Lindy. There's no embarrassment. There's only glory." He said glory the way other men say I love you. His teammate, a woman named Suzanne with a clipboard, cleared her throat and he stood up and gathered his ducks. "Saturday, then. Try not to cater anything that week, wouldn't want you distracted."

"You're so smug it's actually impressive," I told him. "It's like watching a professional."

He saluted with two fingers and left and I watched the door for probably four seconds too long and Janine made a noise at me and I told her to order more fries.

* * *

Saturday came and the Lantern was packed. Eleven years Damian had been open, and he'd pulled out all the stops, which at the Rusty Lantern means he put a tablecloth over the dartboard and bought name tags. Eight teams, four rounds, twenty questions a round, buzzer rules. The Singer sat on its velvet cloth near the dartboard like a queen at a coronation, and every few minutes somebody walked over to look at it the way you look at a painting.

My team took our seats. I'd done actual prep, which nobody else had, which is why I'm the captain. I made flashcards. I made Janine drill me on capital rivers on Tuesday while we prepped a wedding buffet for ninety and she got balsamic glaze on two of them. I was ready.

Geoffrey's team, the Red Tapes, sat at the table beside ours, which felt personal. He winked at me when he sat down. I knocked my water over. Janine mopped it up without comment, because she's a professional.

First round was general knowledge. We went back and forth with the Red Tapes all round, trading correct answers like it was a tennis match, and when we both got the question about the Mariana Trench right and the table next to us groaned in unison, Geoffrey leaned over.

"Give it up, Lindy. We're up one."

"You're up one because you got the bonus about rivers and Erin was robbed on the flag question."

"She said it was Slovenia."

"It WAS Slovenia," Erin said loudly, from our side.

"Slovenia has a white mountain with three peaks," Geoffrey said. "That was Slovakia. Look, I don't make the rules."

"You MADE that rule."

"Captain's discretion," Suzanne said, tapping her clipboard, and Damian, who was scoring, shrugged like yeah, that's the rule, sorry, and Erin folded her arms and refused to speak to anyone for two questions.

Round two was history and I came alive. I grew up on my grandmother's stories about the mill town and I've read more than my share, and we took fourteen of twenty while the Red Tapes took eleven, and the gap flipped. By the end of round two we were up two and Geoffrey had stopped winking.

"Your team is annoyingly good," he said during the break, drifting over with two drinks, handing me one, which was exactly what I'd been nursing all night so he'd apparently been watching, which was a thing to think about later.

"Annoyingly?"

"I meant to say impressively."

"No you didn't!"

"No I didn't," he admitted, and grinned, and I grinned back, and Janine kicked me under the table so hard I nearly wore the drink.

Round three was science and medicine and it was a bloodbath. They took fifteen, we took thirteen, and their biochemist, a quiet man named Ansel, answered a question about the Krebs cycle with such speed that I wanted to hire him on the spot. Round four was the lightning round, five questions a team, sixty seconds, and we went into it dead even, which the whole bar seemed to know, because when we sat back down after the break there was an actual murmur.

"Dead even," Damian announced, chalk squeaking on the little board he used. "Winner takes the Singer. Coin flip for who goes first."

The coin came up and I called it in the air and lost, so the Red Tapes went first. They got four of five, missing one on a Beatles question, which felt like a gift from the universe. Then it was us. Five questions, sixty seconds, Erin with the timer on her phone, Janine gripping my arm hard enough to bruise.

First question, easy, we got it. Second, we got it. Third was geography, Erin's wheelhouse, we got it. Fourth was harder, something about a treaty, and I got it on the buzzer with eleven seconds left and the room went up like a match. Four of five. Sudden death, one question, whoever buzzed first and got it right.

Damian read it slow, the way he does. "This river flows through or along the borders of ten countries, more than any other river in the world. Name it."

My hand was on the bell and so was Geoffrey's, because he'd come to stand at our tables for the final, of course he had, and we hit it at the same instant, or near enough that Damian put up both hands and said hold on, hold on.

"Danube," we said together.

Damian looked at us. We looked at Damian. The bar held its breath, and then Damian did the worst thing he could have done, which was smile and say, "Well. This is a problem."

Damian flipped the chalkboard over and wrote WINNER: ? on it, which got a laugh from the bar, and then he did the second worst thing he could do, which was say, "Tell you what. One question, head to head, the captains only. Tomorrow night. If it's still tied, we arm wrestle and I don't want to see that."

So that was Saturday night. The tie-breaker was Sunday night, and I'm telling it in order because otherwise it all runs together.

The tie-breaker question was about opera. Opera. Geoffrey's face when Damian read it was the face of a man watching his own house burn down in slow motion, because everyone at that bar knew I'd done three years of community theater and he'd once admitted, at two in the morning two years ago, that he'd slept through every opera he'd ever attended.

"Name the composer of the opera Turandot," Damian said.

"Puccini," I said, before Geoffrey's mouth even opened.

"Buzz first," Geoffrey said.

"Damian heard me first."

"I did," Damian said, and chalked my name on the board, and the Fork Lifters lost their minds, and Janine hugged me so hard my ribs creaked, and Erin did a little flag-waving dance that I will