Chapter 44: ch.44 [Guest of Honor]

The slip came off the coat before he had his scarf on.

Astrid did it at the hook by the door, in front of him, with two fingers.

She drew the carbon out of the inside pocket and held it a moment, the way you hold a card you have not decided to play.

"I am moving this," she said.

"Okay."

"I am telling you I am moving it. I am not telling you where."

"Okay."

It disappeared into her sleeve.

She did not square anything afterward.

He wound the beige scarf twice and tucked the brass clock under his arm in its dish towel. She watched her hands not know where to go.

"It returns Monday," said Astrid.

"I know."

"I did not ask you to say it."

"I know that too."

She looked at the towel, and then at the floor.

"I will not come," she said. "A park with a microphone in it is not a place for me today."

"I know."

"Text me when you arrive."

"Here."

"I will answer Noted."

It had become a small, dry liturgy.

She had stopped sounding like she was granting permission somewhere around the fourth Saturday.

Today it sounded like she was holding something.

He stopped with his hand on the door.

"You could still..."

"No."

Fast. Too fast.

She heard it.

"I would very much like to," she said, quieter.

He nodded.

It was the first time she had said a want out loud before a no, and he took it with him down nine flights of stairs. The elevator was fine. He did not want to ride it.

? ? ?

The park had been scrubbed white by frost.

Bare maples. A pretzel cart with the shutter half down.

The stone tables stood in their row with their carved boards, and every board wore a skin of ice like glass laid over a drawing.

He texted. Here.

Noted.

The old man was at the far table, thermos lid steaming, cardigan buttoned one hole off.

He did not look up.

"You’re hovering."

"I’m deciding which Seth to be today."

"The one with a clock."

"It’s lent. Back Monday."

"Hm."

Seth sat. His ears took the news, and he let them.

A pawn lifted off the board and dropped back.

Nothing was said about the nine Saturdays, or the knee, or the bench.

He had settled that.

He was learning that most things, once settled, could be left on a table like a cup.

"Somebody’s coming," said the old man, to the newspaper.

"Who?"

"Loud. Soda."

Seth turned.

Across the gravel, a sixteen-year-old in a puffy jacket came at a half jog with a can in one hand and a manila envelope in the other.

Behind him walked a man in a windbreaker, with the look of someone who had already lost three of the games.

"Pawn!"

"Hi, Dmitri."

"I’ve been looking for you for forty minutes. Do you know how hard you are to find? You don’t have an address."

"I have an address."

"The Federation doesn’t. Apparently you live at nowhere."

Dmitri dropped onto the bench opposite and thumped the envelope on the stone, in front of the old man’s thermos.

The old man moved the thermos.

Without looking up, in a voice you could have set a table on:

"Mind the lid."

"Sorry, sir."

The grin had stayed, but it had learned something about sir.

? ? ?

"That’s yours," said Dmitri.

Cream paper. Heavy. A seal in blue wax, the Federation crest pressed into it like a thumbprint.

Mr. S. Pawn. By hand.

"They gave it to you?"

"To my coach. To give to me. To give to you."

The coach in the windbreaker studied the maples with the face of a man being paid to be somewhere else.

"They didn’t want to send it to your building," said Dmitri. "Someone said the office would open it first."

Seth looked at the seal.

Ingrid would open it first.

It was not that she would be wrong to.

It was that someone had gone around her, to the boy who played for the club, and left the rest unsaid.

He did not open it.

He set it on his knee.

"Okay. Thank you."

"That’s it? You’re not going to read it?"

"I’ll read it."

"Now."

"After."

"After what?"

Seth looked at the board between them, at the pawns standing in their rows under frost.

"After you play me," said Seth.

Dmitri stared.

The grin did something complicated and ended up wider.

"Yeah?"

"Ten minutes. No increment. You want to?"

"I love no increment."

"Everyone loves it until they’re out of time."

"That’s a threat."

"It’s weather."

At the next table, the old man turned a page.

He had not turned one since Seth sat down.

? ? ?

The old man wound the brass clock himself.

Two clicks.

Tock.

Dmitri played the way he had always played, like a boy sprinting for a bus.

He did not hurry now.

He was only fast.

Seth walked the first twelve moves in under a minute, the old road, the wall with the small door in it.

On the fourteenth, a pawn lifted.

It can’t come back.

He took four minutes.

Dmitri’s soda hissed once in the quiet. He did not drink it.

He was watching Seth’s hands.

Seth put the pawn down.

On the twentieth, a rook wanted to leave its square.

He looked at it.

One square sideways.

He could undo that. He played it in six seconds.

He had begun to feel the difference in his body, the way you feel a step in the dark.

On twenty-six the board did something it had not done in the engine games.

A rook for a knight and a pawn.

Not loud. Not screaming.

A small dull exchange that left him a piece worse on paper and a file better in every way that mattered.

Four moves.

He counted it from his side.

He counted it from Dmitri’s.

He had five minutes left, and he spent one.

"That’s hope chess," said Dmitri.

It was not an insult. He was reading it off a page in his head.

"Is it?"

"You gave up a rook."

"I gave a rook for things."

"For what?"

"The file. The bishop. His king." Seth did not look up. "I checked every branch. He doesn’t have to take it."

"What if he doesn’t?"

"Then I’m a pawn down in a position I like."

"That’s not a scam. That’s..."

Dmitri stopped.

He looked at the board for a long time.

"That’s annoying," he said.

He took the rook.

It was the only reply, and Seth had known it was the only reply, and he did not feel clever.

He felt like a man laying a table for someone he expected.

He played the bishop.

Check.

By the thirty-first move, Dmitri had ninety seconds and Seth had three minutes fifty.

On thirty-four, Dmitri’s king stepped out of a net it had not seen.

On thirty-five, it stepped into another.

He put his hand out across the stone.

The grin was nearly all there.

"You’ve got a brake."

"I got it from a man in a cardigan."

At the next table, the newspaper did not move.

"Again," said Dmitri.

"Again?"

"Black. Right now."

Seth hesitated.

His phone buzzed against his chest.

Twice. Short. Short.

Flat. Dry. A knuckle on a table.

He did not take it out.

It’s the episode, he thought. It’s noon.

He turned his hand over on the stone. He did not look down at his jacket.

"Again."

? ? ?

The second game was a different animal.

It began the same way.

He walked the opening fast.

On the thirteenth move, a pawn lifted.

Slow.

He took two minutes.

On the nineteenth, a rook sat on a square it did not need to leave.

He could have played it in six seconds.

His phone buzzed again.

He thought: Ingrid. Amber. Something’s on air.

He did not take it out.

He spent three minutes and eleven seconds looking at a rook.

It did nothing.

It never had anything to do.

The board went quiet in front of him, and he understood, a little late, what he had done.

I only use it when I’m scared.

It had been the right finding. It was also a thing he had known and walked past.

On the twenty-fourth, Dmitri’s knight arrived somewhere that mattered.

Seth had forty seconds and no move that was not forced.

He saw the pin.

He saw the diagonal.

He saw it, and had no time left to use what he saw.

Tock.

His flag fell.

Neither of them said anything.

At the next table, a thermos lid was set down with great care.

"One each," said Dmitri.

"One each."

"You looked at that rook for three minutes."

"I know."

"What was in it?"

"Nothing."

"So why?"

Seth flexed his fingers on the cold stone.

"Because it buzzed," he said. "When it buzzes, I spend the time on the wrong move."

It was not a thing he had meant to say to a sixteen-year-old with a soda.

Dmitri did not grin.

"Dude," he said, very quietly. "That’s the whole thing. That’s the whole job."

He cracked his can.

"My coach says it every day. I never listen."

The coach in the windbreaker, three paces off, closed his eyes with a patience that looked rehearsed.

? ? ?

Seth broke the seal with his thumbnail.

It made a small dry crack, like a knuckle.

Inside, three pages. A letter on blue letterhead. A form. A card with a gold edge.

He read the letter first.

Dear Mr. Pawn. The Federation is delighted to extend a special invitation to the Open as a guest of honor.

He read guest of honor three times.

Your participation in the Main Section is requested in the context of the Federation’s broadcast programming.

Provisional board assignment is enclosed.

He turned to the form.

Name. Rating. A box marked Rating (as on file). A box marked Date of birth (as on file).

It had been typed.

Somebody at the Federation had typed the date in careful, official numerals, from a source Seth had never given anyone.

He looked at it.

He looked at the card with the gold edge.

Round 1. Feature Board 1. Broadcast.

S. PAWN (Guest) – K. VOLKOV.

Under it, in the same careful numerals, the date of Round 1.

He read it twice.

He read the date on the form again.

They were the same date.

The frost was very bright.

Beside him, Dmitri had stopped talking.

"It’s not a draw," said Dmitri, slowly. "They don’t pair a guest on the draw. They pick."

"I know."

"They picked Volkov."

"I know."

"Dude, that’s the grey guy. He called you a..."

"I know what he called me."

A silence.

Seth looked at the form.

At the typed date.

At the gold edge of the card.

Spoken for.

You will not enter.

Because those days are...

She had stopped on an m.

He had thought it was mine.

He had been wrong, or right, or both.

He had a rule.

He had made it himself, in a kitchen. He would not say yes to the Open until a certain date, and he would not press her for what was behind it, and he would not say no. It was his own clock.

It had never occurred to him that the world would set its own beside it.

At the next table, an old man in a flat cap folded his newspaper in half.

He stood.

He took his thermos.

He did not look at Seth.

"Whatever it says," he said, to the air over the board, "write your own name on it."

He walked toward the gate.

He did not turn around.

Seth held the paper in both hands and watched the cardigan go.

His phone buzzed once more against his chest.

He took it out.

An amber bar, in Ingrid’s plain black type.

The episode is live. I have not listened. Neither has she. Come home when you are ready.

He did not open the link.

He looked at the date on the card.

Then at the date on the form.

Then at the little blue seal, broken in two on the stone.

I’ll tell her before.

I’ll tell her tonight.

He had promised himself he would not ask her what was behind the date.

He was almost certain he was about to.