The man leaned toward her. “How old are you, Harmon?”
“Thirteen.”
“You’re the youngest person in the room. You can wait for a rating.”
Beth was furious. “I want to play Beltik.”
The other man at the table spoke up. “If you win your next three games, honey. And if Beltik does the same.”
“I’ll win them,” Beth said.
“No, you won’t, Harmon,” the first young man said. “You’ll have to play Sizemore and Goldmann first, and you can’t beat both of them.”
“Sizemore and Goldmann shit,” the other man said. “The guy you’re playing now is underrated. He plays first board for the university team and last month he came in fifth in Las Vegas. Don’t let the rating fool you.”
“What’s in Las Vegas?” Beth asked.
“The U.S. Open.”
Beth went to Board Four. The man seated behind the white pieces was smiling as she came up. It was the tall, handsome one. Beth felt a bit rattled to see him. He looked like some kind of movie star.
“Hi, Harmon,” he said, holding out his hand. “It looks like we’ve been stalking each other.”
She shook his big hand awkwardly and seated herself. There was a pause for a long minute before he said, “Do you want to start my clock?”
“Sorry,” she said. She reached out to start it, almost knocked it over but caught it in time. “Sorry,” she said again, almost inaudibly. She pressed the button and his clock started ticking. She looked down at the board, her cheeks burning.
He played pawn to king four, and she replied with the Sicilian. He continued with book moves and she followed with the Dragon variation. They traded pawns in the center. Gradually she got her composure back, playing these mechanical moves, and she looked across the board at him. He was attentive to the pieces, scowling. But even with a scowl on his face and his hair slightly mussed he was handsome. Something in Beth’s stomach felt strange as she looked at him, with his broad shoulders and clear complexion and his brow wrinkled in concentration.
He surprised her by bringing his queen out. It was a bold move, and she studied it for a while and saw that there wasn’t any weakness to it. She brought out her own queen. He moved a knight to the fifth rank, and Beth moved a knight to the fifth rank. He checked with a bishop, and she defended with a pawn. He retreated the bishop. She was feeling light now, and her fingers with the pieces were nimble. Both players began moving fast but easily. She gave a non-threatening check to his king, and he pulled away delicately and began advancing pawns. She stopped that handily with a pin and then feinted on the queenside with a rook. He was undeceived by the feint and, smiling, removed her pin, and on his next move continued the pawn advances. She retreated, hiding her king in a queenside castle. She felt somehow spacious and amused, yet her face remained serious. They continued their dance.
It made her sad in a way when she eventually saw how to beat him. It was after the nineteenth move, and she felt herself resisting it as it opened up in her mind, hating to let go of the pleasant ballet they had danced together. But there it was: four moves and he would have to lose a rook or worse. She hesitated and made the first move of the sequence.
He didn’t see what was happening until two moves later, when he frowned suddenly and said, “Jesus Christ, Harmon, I’m going to drop a rook!” She loved his voice; she loved the way he said it. He shook his head in mock bafflement; she loved that.
Some players who had finished their game early had gathered around the board, and a couple were whispering about the maneuver Beth had brought off.
Townes went on playing for five more moves, and Beth felt genuinely sorry for him when he resigned, tipping his king over and saying “Damn!” But he stood up, stretched and smiled down at her. “You’re one hell of a chess player, Harmon,” he said. “How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
He whistled. “Where do you go to school?”
“Fairfield Junior.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know where that is.”
He was even better-looking than a movie star.
An hour later she drew Goldmann and Board Three. She walked into the tournament room at exactly eleven, and the people standing stopped talking when she came in. Everyone looked at her. She heard someone whisper, “Thirteen fucking years old,” and immediately the thought came into her mind, along with the exultant feeling the whispered voice had given her: I could have done this at eight.
Goldmann was tough and silent and slow. He was a short, heavy man, and he played the black pieces like a gruff general trained in defense. For the first hour everything that Beth tried he got out of. Every piece he had was protected; it seemed as though there were double the usual complement of pawns to protect them.
Beth got fidgety during the long waits for him to move; once after she had advanced a bishop she got up, and went to the bathroom. Something was hurting in her abdomen, and she felt a bit faint. She washed her face with cold water and dried it on a paper towel. As she was leaving, the girl she’d played her first game with came in. Packer. Packer looked glad to see her. “You’re moving right on up, aren’t you?” she said.
“So far,” Beth said, feeling another twinge in her belly.
“I heard you’re playing Goldmann.”
“Yes,” Beth said. “I have to get back.”
“Sure,” Packer said, “sure. Beat his ass, will you? Just beat his ass.”
Suddenly Beth grinned. “Okay,” she said.
When she got back she saw that Goldmann had moved, and her clock was ticking. He sat there in his dark suit looking bored. She felt refreshed and ready. She seated herself and put everything out of her mind except the sixty-four squares in front of her. After a minute she saw that if she attacked on both flanks simultaneously, as Morphy did sometimes, Goldmann would have difficulty playing it safe. She played pawn to queen rook four.
It worked. After five moves she had opened his king up a little, and after three more she was at his throat. She paid no attention to Goldmann himself or to the crowd or to the feeling in her lower abdomen or the sweat that had broken out on her brow. She played against the board only, with lines of force etched for her into its surface: the small stubborn fields for the pawns, the enormous one for the queen, the gradations in between. Just before his clock was about to run out she checkmated him.
When she circled her name on the score sheet she looked again at the number of Goldmann’s rating. It was 1997. People were applauding.
She went directly to the girls’ room and discovered that she had begun to menstruate. For a moment she felt, looking at the redness in the water below her, as though something catastrophic had happened. Had she bled on the chair at Board Three? Were the people there staring at the stains of her blood? But she saw with relief that her cotton panties were barely spotted. She thought abruptly of Jolene. If it hadn’t been for Jolene, she would have had no idea what was happening. No one else had said a word about this—certainly not Mrs. Wheatley. She felt a sudden warmth for Jolene, remembering that Jolene had also told her what to do “in an emergency.” Beth began pulling a long sheet from the roll of toilet paper and folding it into a tightly packed rectangle. The pain in her abdomen had eased. She was menstruating, and she had just beaten Goldmann: 1997. She put the folded paper into her panties, pulled them up tight, straightened her skirt and walked confidently back into the playing area.
Beth had seen Sizemore before; he was a small, ugly, thin-faced man who smoked cigarettes continuously. Someone had told her he was State Champion before Beltik. Beth would play him on Board Two in the room with the sign reading “Top Boards.”