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How To Succeed At Solitaire
A man once said every solitaire hand ever dealt is solvable.
That man’s an idiot.
I play solitaire every day. I’ve played since my grandfather taught me the game when I was five-years old and he, seventy-five. For me, the game equals perfection, a singular player, a singular deck of cards, endless possibilities. Being born before the “digital age,” I played with good old-fashioned cards, frayed edges and all. I cannot tell you how many decks literally disintegrated in my hands. But as technology infects us more and more each day, I’ve converted to the binary of 1s and 0s that exist on my phone.
I am, in a word, addicted.
And will most likely be until I die.
But, that’s okay—of all the things to be addictive to, a “simple” card came isn’t one of them.
Ainsley Todd stopped typing. A thought that actually made him chuckle moments earlier evaporated into the darkened room. He looked up, as if the fleeting thought may somehow miraculously appear above his head, but no such luck.
“Damn,” he said to a room occupied by only himself and his cat, Mr. Meowskerton, the cat currently asleep on the desk next to his MacBook Air. Ainsley re-read the words newly created hoping his clever thought might return.
A rumbling in his gut reminded him he forgot to eat dinner yet again. Maybe food would help.
It wouldn’t hurt. He mentally scanned the kitchen, the small pantry…nothing much, five-day old pizza, some Chinese of an undetermined age. Better go out, again.
“Mr. Meowskerton, I’ll be back.” Ainsley grabbed his leather jacket from the back of his chair, threw it on and dug into the inside pocket for the keys to his aging Jeep Wrangler. One quick look at the cat before he closed the door to his 1400 square foot bungalow—the feline hadn’t moved a whisker.
“Ah, to live a cat’s life…” Ainsley said and the door closed behind him.
Fall in Logan Utah can be unpredictable. It snows as early as September and can be in the mid-70s into November. It’s a crap-shoot. To quote Mr. Gump, “You never know what you’re going to get.” Tonight—cold, maybe snow, and it was only mid-October. That’s okay, Ainsley thought. He chose to live in this little valley only a half hour from the Idaho border. He told anyone who cared that his “official” job was that of a columnist, but being a handyman paid the bills. And living in a college town meant there was never a time when those kids weren’t breaking something, malfunctioning doorknobs, shattered windows, clogged toilets—you name it. He had verbal contacts for handyman services with several apartment complexes—he never wanted for work. No, he chose to live in Cache Valley, but he could live anywhere.
But, he’d tried anywhere and it suited him poorly. Having grown up in a smaller yet similar valley to the south, the mountains and ever-shrinking solitude of Logan suited him. If the valley kept growing, however, he’d consider moving. Maybe Wyoming. He’d be farther away from his kids and ex, but closer to his only brother, Matt, the good-for-nothing deadbeat who still owed him a couple of grand from gambling debts.
Tough choice.
Ainsley climbed inside his 1994 Jeep and silently prayed. After a few cranks, his prayer was answered as the engine roared to life. He sat and revved the engine a few times—failure to do so resulted in the engine dying.
Ainsley exhaled—his breath visible. Saturday night, deadline for his column due in a few hours. He survived another week, a particularly tough week. He thought back on the past seven days and tried to remember if he’d heard from his kids, Mark and Trisha—twins—one living an hour away, one living two states over.
His ex-wife…her he’d heard from.
It’s not that he hated Vivian, at least, not anymore. He’d spent a decade hating her until finally, he stopped. It took too much work, and when he realized the end result never changed regardless of whether he hated her or not, he just gave up. He’d been happier ever since.
But, not completely happy. This was Vivian after all. The woman who convinced herself that she needed more in her life, and by more she meant more money. Ainsley tried to give it to her, nearly killed himself working two jobs and even going back to school to finish that degree. Still, something in her changed and no matter what he did, the woman could not be satisfied.
After years of pretending, they both agreed to part ways. The kids were teenagers and they would understand. All their friends’s parents (it seemed) were divorced, and they seemed to be surviving. Vivian kept the house in Salt Lake. Ainsley moved north. After a few years, he moved north again finally ending up in Logan. The kids grew, graduated, chose different colleges, and started lives of their own.
Not hearing from the twins hurt, but Ainsley understood. He knew they loved him, deep down, and when Vivian tried pitting them against their father, he backed down and let her.
Was it manly?
He didn’t care. He felt it was the right thing to do. Eventually, the kids would one day understand why he did what he did. If not, well…can’t change some things, no matter how hard you want to.
Vivian’s e-mail resurfaced in his mind. She wanted him to come down and fix her new boyfriend’s truck…timing belt. One thing he hated more than helping her out was helping out her new fella. The e-mail came hours earlier. He hadn’t responded, hoping to give her the impression that he hadn’t checked his e-mail, even though they both knew he had, that he had received the request and was avoiding her.
As the inside of the Jeep warmed, he glanced out at a couple of college co-eds walking past. He made eye contact and he noticed the familiar, “you’re killing the planet by driving that hunk of junk” look he received from so many students. Mostly, he agreed, but the realities of a non-steady paycheck and alimony prevented him from buying anything “green” or even a pale mint.
If he could just remember that thought for his column. At the moment this proved his most immediate problem. It was really good, too. It was the perfect thing to complete the column, a side-gig he’d had for the past five years. He still remembered getting the call asking if he’d want to write a weekly column on playing Solitaire of all things.
“Is that really a thing?” He asked Stephen, the geeky-sounding man on the other end of the phone. The silence that followed told Ainsley he’d offended the man. He quickly said, “Just kidding—I would love to help out any way I can.”
And five years later, fifty-two times a year, another column became part of all that mankind had created, a column on the secrets of the ever-illusive and never-fully mastered Solitaire.
Ainsley engaged first gear, popped the clutch, and turned onto 5th North toward downtown.
So, it's a start, a start that was actually started. Hope you liked it.
