Check & Mate

Part 2 – Middle Game

8:55 am— Arrive at Zugzwang! There’s coffee & bagels in the lounge room— help yourself! (Do not eat the rainbow bagel: it’s Delroy’s, one of our resident GMs. He gets cranky when his food has less than five colors.)

9– 10 am— Memorize assigned list of opening variations

10– 11 am— Memorize assigned list of end- game positions

11 am– noon— Go over assigned list of old games/tactics

noon– 1 pm— Break. I’ve included a list of nearby food places you might like. (Gambit, the club’s cat, will meow at you like he hasn’t been fed since the Weichselian glaciation; it is but a well- practiced, devious act. Do not feel obliged to share your meat lunches with him.)

1– 2 pm— Analyze assigned opponents’ games

2– 3 pm— Logical thinking and positional chess review

3– 4 pm— Training with software/databases

4– 5 pm— W– F Meet with GM trainer to go over weaknesses

Make sure to take a short break as needed to keep your focus. Workout schedule: 4, 5 days/w, ~30 mins. Keep hydrated and wear sunscreen, at least 30 SPF (even if it’s cloudy— that’s not how sunrays work).

I glance over the schedule Defne just handed me to make sure that I really read what I just read. Then I look up and say,

“Um.”

She smiles wide. Today her lipstick is pink, her shirt Spice Girls themed, and her pixie haircut has me wanting to grab the closest utility knife and hack my own hair off. She looks cool in a vintage, effortless way. “Um?”

“Just, this is an awful lot of . . .” I clear my throat. Bite my lip. Scratch my nose. “Chess?”

“I know.” Her smile widens. “Great, right?”

My stomach knots. Why don’t you just fake it? Easton said, and this morning on the New Jersey Transit, during my brandnew one- and-a-half- hour commute, I repeated it to myself like a mantra: This is a job. Just a job. I won’t think about chess one second past 5:00 p.m. Chess and I broke up years ago, and I’m not some simpering girl who’ll take back her cheating ex after being dumped during the slow dance at prom. I’m only going to do the necessary amount of it.

I just didn’t expect the necessary amount of it to equal a bajillion craploads.

“Yeah.” I force out a smile. I may not be thrilled to be here, but Defne is saving me and my family from the underpass. And I’m not an ungrateful little shit— I hope. “There’s a . . . workout schedule?”

“You don’t work out?”

I haven’t voluntarily broken a sweat since my last PE requirement— junior high, I believe. But she looks surprised to find out that I’m a sloth, so I massage the truth. “Not quite that often.”

“You’ll want to up that. Most chess players work out every day to build stamina. Believe me, you’ll need it when you’re in the middle of a seven- hour game.”

“A seven- hour game?” I’ve never done anything for seven hours straight. Not even sleeping.

“Players burn, like, six thousand calories a day while playing a tournament. It’s ridiculous.” She gestures for me to follow her. “I’ll show you your office. You don’t mind sharing, do you?”

“No.” This morning my roommate repeatedly farted on my pillow because I dared to ask her not to practice her xylophone at 5:30 a.m. “I’m used to it.”

The Paterson Chess Club is a room in the rec center, made up of painfully fluorescent light bulbs, vinyl planks sticking out of the floor, and enough asbestos to fry the brains of three generations. I expected Zugzwang to be more of the same, but every corner is sun-dappled hardwood floors, expensive furniture, and sleek, state-of-the- art monitors. Tradition and technology, new and old. Either I underestimated the kind of money one can make from chess, or the place is just a mob front.

I nearly gasp when Defne shows me the library, something straight out of Oxford— if on a smaller scale. There are rows and rows of high shelves, fancy ladders, something that, from watching Selling Sunset with Mom exactly twice, I believe is called a mezzanine, and—

Books.

So. Many. Books.

So many books that I recognize from the living room shelves stocked by Dad, then hastily packed away in old Amazon boxes once the silent decision to erase his presence was made.

“You’re welcome to use the library whenever you want,” Defne says. “Several volumes in here are on your reading list. And it’s right by your office.”

That’s correct: my office is across the hall, and this time I do gasp, shamelessly. It has three windows, the largest desk I’ve ever seen, various chess sets that probably cost more than a gallbladder on the black market, and—

“Quiet, please.”

I turn around. On the desk opposite to mine sits a scowling man. He must be in his twenties, but his blond hairline is already receding into deep hills. There’s a developed chess game in front of him, and three open books.

“Hey, Oz.” Either Defne doesn’t notice his frown or she doesn’t care. “This is Mallory. She’ll take the empty desk.”

For a few seconds, Oz stares like he’s fantasizing about disemboweling me and using my large intestine to crochet himself a scarf. Then he sighs, rolls his eyes, and says, “Your phone is on mute at all times— no buzzer. Computer on mute, too. Use a silent mouse. If you see me thinking and you interrupt me, I will stuff my chess pieces into your nostrils. Yes, all of them. No pacing around while you’re thinking through games. No perfume, hot foods, or wrappers. No sniffling, sneezing, heavy breathing, humming, burping, flatulating, or fidgeting. No talking to me unless you’re having a stroke and need me to call 911.” A thoughtful pause. “Even then, if you can manage to alert me, you can probably dial on your own. Understood?”

I open my mouth to say yes. Then remember the no-talking rule and nod, slowly.

“Excellent.” He grimaces at me. Oh God, is that a smile? “Welcome to Zugzwang. We’ll get on great, I’m sure.”

“Oz is one of our resident GMs,” Defne whispers in my ear, like it explains his behavior. “Have a good first day!” Her handwave is a little too chipper, considering that she’s leaving me alone with someone who’ll flog me if I get the hiccups, but when I glance at Oz, he’s back to staring at his game. Phew?

I grab the many lists Defne has given me, retrieve books from the library, boot up the computer, sit in the nice ergonomic chair as quietly as possible (the semi- leather creaks, which I’m sure has Oz on the verge of freeing me from the mortal coil), find the chapter I need to memorize from the fifteenth edition of Modern Chess Openings, and then . . .

Well. I read.

It’s not a new book to me. Dad would recite passages about initial gambits and positional play in his soothing, low baritone, ignoring Darcy and Sabrina screaming in the background, Mom puttering around the kitchen and warning about dinner getting cold. But that was centuries ago. That Mallory didn’t know anything about anything, and she had nothing in common with today Mallory. And anyway, do I really need to study all this stuff? Am I not supposed to reason my way through a game?

It seems like a ridiculous amount of work, and over the day it doesn’t get any better. At ten, I switch to reading Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual. At eleven it’s The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal. Interesting stuff, but just reading about it seems like studying a manual on how to knit without ever touching needles. Utterly pointless. Every once in a while, I remember that Oz exists and look up to find him immobile, reading the same stuff I am— except he doesn’t seem to be wondering about the meaning of it all. His hands are a visor on his forehead, and he looks so deep in concentration, I’m almost tempted to say, “Rooks, amirite?”

But he’s clearly not here to make friends. When I leave for lunch (PB&J; yes, Defne’s list of nearby eateries looks amazing; no, I don’t have the money to eat out), he’s at his desk. Just like when I return— same exact position. Should I poke him? Check whether rigor mortis has set in?

The afternoon is more of the same. Reading. Setting up chess engines on the computer. Taking occasional long breaks to rake the Zen garden my desk’s previous inhabitant left behind.

On the train back home, I think about Easton’s fake your way advice. It won’t be hard. I’m not going to fall in love with chess again— not if I’m not playing and just reading about distant, abstract scenarios.

“How did the new job go, honey?” Mom asks when I let myself into the house. It’s past six and the family’s having dinner.

“Great.” I steal a pea from Sabrina’s plate, and she tries to stab me with her fork.

“I don’t get why you needed to change jobs,” Darcy says sullenly. “Who would rather organize bocce tournaments for old people than tinker with cars?”

There is a specific reason I’m lying to my family about my new job, and that reason is:

I don’t know.

Obviously, chess is tied to painful memories of Dad. But I’m not sure that justifies making up an entire new workplace— a senior rec center in NYC I’ve been hired to manage because a former hookup recommended me. And yet, when I told Mom I’d left the garage, the lie just rolled off my tongue.

I figure it won’t make a difference. A job’s a job. And this one’s temporary, to be left at the door when I come home.

“Old people are nice,” I tell Darcy. Unlike Sabrina, who’s currently ignoring me and texting thumb- sprainingly hard, she’s thrilled to let me steal her peas.

“Old people smell weird.”

“Define old.”

“I dunno. Twenty- three?”

Mom and I exchange a glance. “Soon you’ll be old, too, Darcy,” she says.

“Yes, but I’ll be living with the monkeys like Jane Goodall. And I won’t be hiring young people to come to the park to help me feed the pigeons.” She perks up. “Did you see any cute squirrels?”

I slip out silently around nine, when the entire house is asleep. Hasan’s car is parked at the end of my driveway, the internal light soft on his handsome features. We’ve been doing this all summer, and when he leans in for a casual peck, as though we have a routine, as though this is a date, I think that maybe it’s good he’s leaving soon.

I don’t really have room for that. Not with everything else going on.

“How are you?”

“Good. You?”

“Great. Taking some really cool courses this semester. I’m thinking of declaring my major— medical anthropology.” I listen and nod and laugh in the right places as he tells me about a professor who once said prostituted instead of prosecuted, but the second the car is parked, I hand him a condom, and then it’s hushed words, hurried movements, muscles clenching and releasing.

Easton, who’s surprisingly romantic and painfully monogamous, once asked: Do you feel close to them?

To whom?

The people you hook up with. Do you feel close to them?

Not particularly. I shrugged. I like them as people. We’re friendly. I wish them the best.

Why, then? Wouldn’t you rather be in a relationship?

Truth is, it seems safer not to. In my experience, commitment leads to expectations, and expectations lead to lies, and hurt, and disappointment— stuff I’d rather not experience, or force others to experience. But I still like sex as a recreational activity, and I’m grateful that I was raised by a very open- minded family. No your- body-is-a-temple, it’s-time-to-have- the- talk crap in the Greenleaf household. Mom and Dad discussed sex in almost embarrassingly honest terms, like they would opening a credit card: You’ll probably want to try it, there’ll be pros and cons, do it responsibly. Here’s birth control. We’re here if you have any questions. Need a diagram? You sure?

Dad had been gone for almost two years when Alesha Conner smiled at me shyly from across the homeroom, then brushed her hand against mine during a lacrosse game, then giggled while pulling me inside the second stall from the left in the restroom next to the chem lab. It was clumsy, and new, and good. Because it felt good, and because for a moment I was just . . . me. Not Mallory the daughter, the sister, the maker of mistakes, but Mallory the breathless, pulling up her panties and sucking one last bruise into Alesha’s skin.

I don’t have room to care about anything that’s not family. I don’t have room to care about myself— not that I deserve it. But it’s nice to steal brief, harmless, contained moments of fun. To wave Hasan goodbye less than thirty minutes after he’s picked me up, slide into bed relaxed and with no intention of thinking about him for months.

After last week’s scare, everything’s fine. The mortgage is paid (well, the most overdue month, anyway), so are the roller derby fees, and everything is fine. At night I dream of Mikhail Tal telling me with a heavy Russian accent that I should go into the hallway to dial 911, and everything is fine.

DAY TWO IS MORE OF THE SAME. LONG COMMUTE, READING, memorizing. Pondering the hows and whys of this weird schedule Defne put me on. I consider texting Easton and asking her opinion, but we haven’t talked since she left last week, and I’m afraid to disturb her while she’s . . . I don’t know. Beer- ponging, or discovering Leninist Marxism, or having a foursome with her dorm RA who happens to be a sapiosexual furry. She knows what she left behind, but I have no clue what she’s doing, what I’m competing with, whether she’s already forgotten about me. Is this FOMO? Yikes. Either way, I’d rather not reach out and avoid being sad because she didn’t answer. Plus, the sound of me texting might give Oz a seizure.

I replay Bobby Fischer’s games, trudge through a dissertation on the pros and cons of Alekhine’s Defense, learn about the Lucena position in the rook and pawn versus rook end game. It feels like a diluted version of chess, with everything exciting sucked out of it. Like taking the tapioca balls out of bubble tea: what’s left is okay, but just tea.

I don’t care, though, because this is just a job. And it’s still just a job on Wednesday morning, when I step into my office and Oz is already there, in the same position as yesterday. I want to ask if he went home to sleep, but I won’t, because I also want to have my eyes not gouged out of my skull, so I just spend four hours reading about king safety. At lunch I go to the park and read my commute book (Love in the Time of Cholera— kinda sad). When I come back, I’m supposed to learn about pawn structure, but instead I glance furtively up at Oz— still in the same position; does he need to be watered daily?— and hide my book inside a larger one to keep on reading about Fermina’s questionable romantic choices. At four I almost pick up my bag and head to Penn Station, then remember:

W– F: Meet with GM trainer to go over weaknesses

The schedule doesn’t say where. “Oz? If you had to meet with a GM, where would you go?”

He looks up for the first time in three days— eyes blazing, nostrils flaring. He’s going to unhinge his jaw, eat me, and then dissolve me in his gastric acids. “Library,” he barks. I hurry across the hallway before I become a statistic, expecting to find the rainbow- loving Delroy. The only person inside the room is Defne, sitting at a massive wooden table.

“Hi. Maybe I’m in the wrong place. Oz said— ”

“Oz spoke?”

“Under duress.”

She nods knowingly.

“I’m supposed to meet with one of the GMs, and— ”

“That’s me.”

“Oh.” I flush. “I— I’m so sorry. I didn’t think you were— ” A GM. I flush some more. Why did I not think that? Because she looks cool? Plenty of cool people play chess— I’m not a jock from a nineties teen comedy. Because she runs the place? You need a chess player to run a chess club. Because I’d never heard about her? It’s not like we keep a copy of Chess Monthly Digest in the bathroom at home. Because she’s a woman? There are tons of women GMs.

God, is this what Easton means when she talks about internalized misogyny?

“Are you okay?” Defne asks.

“Ah. Yes.”

“You look like you’re having a pretty intense internal monologue over there. Wouldn’t want to interrupt.”

“I . . .” I scratch my forehead and take a seat across from her. “I’m always having intense internal monologues. I’ve learned to tune myself out.”

“Good! How were your first few days?”

“Great.”

She studies me for a few moments. Today she’s wearing cateye eyeliner and an upper- arm bracelet shaped like a scorpion. “Let’s try again. How were your first days?”

“Great!” She keeps staring. “No, really. Great, I swear.”

“You have a bad poker face. We’ll have to work on it before tournaments.”

I frown. “Why would you think that— ”

“If something isn’t working about your training program, you should let me know.”

“Everything’s fine. I’ve been reading a lot— going through the list you gave me, searching the chess engines. It’s fun.”

“But?”

I huff out a laugh. “There’s no but.”

“But?”

I shake my head. “Nothing, I promise.” But Defne is still staring, like I’m unsuccessfully hiding a shady murderous past from her, and I hear myself add, “Just . . .”

“Just?”

“It’s . . .” Something screams at me not to tell her. If you tell her, it means that you care. Which you don’t. You can half-ass this, Mal. You can do it. “It’s just . . . If reading all this stuff is supposed to help me improve my game, I’m not sure that’s the case.” Defne’s expression is not quite as open as usual, and I don’t know whether it’s because I want her approval or just her money, but I find myself backtracking, panicky. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing! Studying’s important— reading old games, going through openings. But if one never actually plays chess . . .”

I wring my hands under the table. Defne gives me a long, level look before smiling and shrugging. “Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”

“Let’s play!”

She drags a set between us, white on my side, and adjusts the pieces. Then gestures at me to start. “No clock today, okay?”

“Ah . . . okay.”

At the start, I’m almost pumped. Reading about chess without playing has been some serious edging, a little like having a carrot dangled in front of me. Now I get to eat, and it’s going to be so damn good. Right?

Wrong. Because I realize soon enough that this is nothing like my game against Sawyer. I can’t immediately tell the difference, but after thirty minutes or so, when the pieces are developed and the play’s underway, I know what’s missing.

There was specific tension with Sawyer. A tight, heart- stopping dance made of aggressive attacks, slithering ambushes, obsessive outthinking. This . . . It’s nothing like that. I try to make things more exciting by showing initiative, making threats Defne cannot ignore, but . . . well. She does ignore me. Defends her pieces, guards her king, makes some silent filler moves, and that’s about it.

We’ve been playing for forty-five minutes when I try for a breakthrough. I want to penetrate her defenses so bad, I get a little reckless and lose my bishop. My stomach knots in a mix of boredom and dread, and I go back to playing it safe for a while, but— no. Something needs to happen. Her knight, for instance. It’s overloaded. It has to defend too many other pieces. If I take it with my rook—

Crap. Defne takes my pawn. Now I’m down two pieces and—

“Draw?”

I look up. She’s offering me a draw? No way. I frown, don’t bother replying, and try for another attack. It’s getting late. If I don’t make the next train, I’ll be home later than usual and Darcy and Mom will be disappointed. Sabrina won’t care much, but—

“Check.”

Defne’s queen comes for my king. Shit. I was so busy mounting an attack that I missed it. But I can still—

“I think we can stop now,” she says, smiling at me like she usually does— genuinely kind, amused, without a trace of smugness, even though we both know that she has the upper hand. “You got the idea.”

I blink, confused. “The idea?”

“What just happened, Mallory?”

“I— I don’t know. We were playing. But you . . . well, no offense, but you weren’t really doing much. You were playing . . .”

“Conservatively.”

“What?”

“I was playing safe. Cautious. Even when I was in the position to push for an advantage, I didn’t. I was defensive. Which confused you, then frustrated you, then had you making basic mistakes because you were bored.” She points at the positions. “This is easy for me, because I grew up with a formal chess education. Now, you’re a much better player than I am— ”

I scoff. “Clearly I’m not. ”

“Let me rephrase, then: you have more talent. I’ve seen videos of your plays— your instinct when it comes to attack is fantastic. It reminds me so much of . . . well.” She shakes her head with a wistful smile. “An old friend. But there are some basics that all top players know. And if you don’t know them, any opponent with a solid technical foundation will easily exploit them against you. And you won’t even get to use your talent.”

I digest what she said. Then nod, slowly. Suddenly, I feel as though I’m running behind. As though I’ve wasted the past four years. Which . . .

No. It was a decision I made. The best decision. Running behind on my way to where, anyway?

“It doesn’t help that you’re ancient,” Defne adds.

I frown. “I’m eighteen and six months.”

“Most pros start much younger.”

“I’ve been playing since I was eight.”

“Yeah, but the break you took? Not good. I mean, this”— she gestures to the board— “was embarrassingly easy for me.”

My cheeks redden. I swallow something bitter and rusty, suddenly remembering how much I hate losing.

So. Much.

“What do I do, then?”

“I thought you’d never ask. You do . . .” She grins, pulling a piece of paper out of her back pocket and holding it out to me. I tear it open. “This.”

“This is the schedule you handed me on Monday.”

“Yeah. I printed two by mistake. So glad it came in handy— I hate wasting paper. Anyway, we’ll have you in shape in no time. That is, if you do every single thing on this list. And we’ll review everything you learn during our meetings to make sure you’re on track.”

Fantastic. I’m going to be tested.

I look at the list again— all the things I’m supposed to do every single day for the entire year. I think about my plan to phone it in. About Fermina’s questionable romantic choices. About Defne’s expectant, encouraging smile.

I want to head- desk. But I just sigh, and nod at her.