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THE SUNDAY PAPER
<word nerds> by Richard Harris
Part 2

Read Part 1 of this story here.

Julie ended up winning the second and third games. She maintained her strict vow of silence in both games. Henry, it appeared, seemed content to play both games without chatting. After losing the third game, he politely thanked Julie for the games and went offline almost at once.

For the next three days they did not see each other online. Both of them played many games over that period but at different times of day or in different rooms on the site. On the fourth day however, their paths crossed once again. At first Julie had not registered the fact that she was playing Henry. It was only when he sent a note saying <fancy seeing u again> that she looked at the name beside the avatar.

<Hi there,> she replied, mindful of the need to capitalize and punctuate. <Good luck.>

<gl 2u2.>

It took her a moment, but she quickly saw the word “bootee” among the melee of tiles in her rack. A few seconds passed and after Henry played his word (“lewd”) under the first three letters of Julie’s word, he sent another message to Julie: <that’s what i’m talking about!>

<It’s a shoe.>

<uh huh.>

Cheeky bastard, she thought.

Julie laid down a 50-point bingo (“chutzpah”) and just seconds later Henry countered with his own 40-point bingo (“misfits”). Spurred on by his last comment, Julie wrote <Very apropos, no?>

<misfit? i’d call u more of a renegade.>

Julie’s eyes widened at the bravado of this nameless, faceless hunkyhenry pirate character. Henry took his time to put down his next word (“czar”). Julie collected her thoughts: <Shame about the loss of your C. It could have worked better with a word like “CHUNKY.”>

Julie smiled beatifically at her witticism. Though not the funniest person in the world, she prided herself on her dexterity with the English language. When no reply came — and instead she and Henry started putting down words at breakneck speed — she began to question what she had written. She wondered if he really was overweight or if, heaven forbid, he was obese to the point of being confined to his home. Perhaps this was his only solace, she considered. Julie began panicking. She could not stand the thought of hurting someone’s feelings to the point that she obsessed over it; she had been the victim of too many racial slurs as a child to ever want to inflict that kind of verbal pain on others.

Julie put down her last tiles (building “dog” off “hang” to make “hangdog”). She had won the game but had never felt worse. She stared in wonder at her computer screen, her breath becoming ever shorter. She was consumed with guilt and convinced she had assaulted Henry’s fragile ego. She had to rectify this debacle at once, she told herself.

<Henry,> she started tentatively, hoping that by using his first name it might amplify her plea to the same degree that it relieved his pain. <I’m sorry about the “chunky” comment. It was…>

Before she had time to finish her mea culpa, Henry chimed in with <what? no worries…sorry, was really focused on keeping up with you…you’re way better at this game than me.>

And just like that, Julie’s guilt was assuaged and her pride restored.

<Come on! What are you talking about? Your ranking is almost 100 points higher than mine.>

<you’re honestly the best person i’ve played on this site.>

Julie was tongue-tied. Her usually nimble fingers felt like dangling slabs of meat. She had never liked being complimented. It made her feel awkward, anxious and disoriented. She felt the way some people get when they are asked to give a speech or dance in front of others.

<I bet you say that to all the girls you play.> Julie’s skin crawled even as she wrote the sentence. She leaned on the BACKSPACE button before starting again: <Well, you’re not so bad yourself.> Then there was a pause. Her fingers readied on the keys. <One more??>

The fact that she had placed two question marks at the end of her sentence was more telling than any of the words she had written. A stickler for grammar (she was the only person she knew of who had actually enjoyed The Chicago Manual of Style and listened to every Grammar Girl podcast), she had now committed what was in her mind an abhorrently offensive act of punctuation in an effort to make herself look younger and friendlier.

When <sure…i’ve got all night…> was sent back, Julie experienced something she had not felt in almost two decades: a coronary spark.

Wooden Rocket Press’ Sunday Paper posts new serialized fiction each Sunday.
For the conclusion of Richard Harris’ <word nerds>, click here.
To submit your story for consideration for the Sunday Paper, e-mail us at submissions@woodenrocketpress.com

THE SUNDAY PAPER
<word nerds> by Richard Harris
Part 1

In the beginning was the word, and the word was “zemstvos.” Henry had built off Julie’s V and made an eleventh-hour bingo. Julie was irritated, both because it had ruined her five-game winning streak and because she had never heard of the czarist-era word before.

Henry and Julie met on an Internet site that offered users a game almost identical to Scrabble. The difference with this online game, whose lexical choice for the site name had been the subject of numerous court cases, was that you had eight tiles instead of seven and a bigger board than the original Scrabble version. Henry’s screen name was “hunkyhenry.” His avatar was a gritty pirate, complete with stubble and an eye patch. Julie’s screen name, “seabreeze77,” reflected her wish to protect her identity online, and combined her favorite drink with her lucky number twice over. Her avatar (a young, attractive blonde woman) belied her age, her hair colour, and her ethnicity.

The first time they happened to stumble into each other’s virtual worlds Henry had done the very thing Julie disliked most, introducing himself with reference to his city when he wrote <greetings from vancouver!>

Julie rarely talked with anyone in the game’s tiny chat window while playing, though she was never rude. She would always start by abbreviating greetings and good luck salutations with a routine <Hi & gl,> or <Good luck again,> if she re-matched someone. She ignored people who tried to strike up a conversation and was particularly irked by those who wanted to exchange personal information, especially the location of where they were playing from.

Julie responded to Henry’s cheerful greeting with her characteristic opening. <Hi & gl,> she wrote.

<and gl 2u2,> he wrote back.

It was not very often that her opponent was also from Vancouver. Most of the people who bothered to introduce their hometown were from the United States, with the occasional player chiming in from some remote place like Bilbao or Mendoza. Early on in the game things were going swimmingly for Julie. She bingoed off her first word (“neonate”) and had a sizeable lead for much of the game. After a few more failed attempts to incite conversation, Henry began focusing his attention on making clever words in strategic places.

With no tiles left in the game’s “bag,” and with all hope for a victory practically eliminated, Henry put down the word that would draw Julie out of her shell. She had just put down “ovum,” leaving her with four tiles (S L E O). She planned on building “loves” off of the V in “ovum.” Much to her chagrin, however, Henry built off her V to make “zemstvos.” The word itself had given him 83 points, but when you factored in the bingo bonus (50 points) and the points from Julie’s remaining tiles (he went up 4, she went down 4), Henry won the game.

Julie was mortified. She felt Henry had played a subpar game up until then. He had failed to impress her with a single word he put down, save his last one. She was convinced he had used a cheat program to come up with the crazy-sounding word that she could not even pronounce. Henry immediately sent Julie an offer for a rematch. Ordinarily, Julie always liked to play a best of three series with opponents. Yet in cases where she felt the other person was cheating, she would block the person from ever matching her again in the future.

Julie was tempted to refuse Henry’s offer to play again and simply put the disaster behind her (a loss of two points to her ranking!). It was only after considering Henry’s ranking (he was an impressive 2189, a full 100 points ahead of her, which meant a victory would more than make up for the points she had lost in defeat), and the fact that he was gracious in his victory (he wrote <ty for the game…u deserved that win…got lucky there at the end> on the chatboard afterwards), that she decided to grant him the opportunity to play her again.

<You, too,> she wrote before clicking to accept his challenge. She offered her usual <Good luck again,> before glibly writing <Zemstvos, huh?>

He quickly replied with <u2!> and then explained <wild word, eh? picked it up in a book…russian lit. is awesome for those big, convoluted words.>

So, Julie thought as she arranged her tiles and waited for Henry to put down his opening word, he reads Russian literature. An avid reader herself, especially of fiction, Julie had spent many a night curled up on her living room couch in university reading the likes of Bulgakov, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn and Sholokhov. While she was intrigued that he seemed to like the same canon of literature as her, she was more peeved by the fact that she had not known the word — and he had.

 

Wooden Rocket Press’ Sunday Paper posts new serialized fiction each Sunday.
For part 2 of Richard Harris’ <word nerds>, click here.
To submit your story for consideration for the Sunday Paper, e-mail us at submissions@woodenrocketpress.com

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