“Did I ever have a set of red and black chessman, for instance? Or, in any school I went to, did they have intramural basketball or baseball between red teams and black teams, or—or anything like that?”
Charlie thought for a long moment before he shook his head. “No,” he said, “nothing like that. Of course there’s red and black in roulette—rouge et noir. And it’s the two colors in a deck of playing cards.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t tie in with cards or roulette. It’s not—not like that. It’s a game between the red and the black. They’re the players, somehow. Think hard, Charlie; not about where you might have run into that idea, but where I might have.”
He watched Charlie struggle and after a while he said, “Okay, don’t sprain your brain, Charlie. Try this one. The brightly shining.”
“The brightly shining what?”
“Just that phrase, the brightly shining. Does it mean anything to you, at all?”
“No.”
“Okay,” he said. “Forget it.”
IV
He was early and he walked past Clare’s house, as far as the corner and stood under the big elm there, smoking the rest of his cigarette, thinking bleakly.