Then Benny did something surprising. He had been sitting with his back straight. Suddenly he leaned against the wall, pushing his legs out on the floor, relaxing. “Well, kid,” he said, “I think you’ve got it.” And everybody laughed. Beth looked at Jenny, who was sitting on the floor next to Wexler. Jenny, who was beautiful and intelligent, was looking at her with admiration.
Beth and Benny spent the next few days studying Shakhmatni Byulletens, going back to the nineteen-fifties. Every now and then they would play a game, and Beth always won it. She could feel herself moving past Benny in a way that was almost physical. It was astounding to them both. In one game she uncovered an attack on his queen on the thirteenth move and had him laying down his king on the sixteenth. “Well,” he said softly, “nobody’s done that to me in fifteen years.”
“Not even Borgov?”
“Not even Borgov.”
Sometimes chess would keep her awake at night for hours. It was like Methuen, except that she was more relaxed and not afraid of sleeplessness. She would lie on her mattress on the living-room floor after midnight with New York street noises coming in through the open bay window and study positions in her mind. They were as clear as they had ever been. She did not take tranquilizers, and that helped the clarity. It was not whole games now but particular situations—positions called “theoretically important” and “warranting close study.” She lay there hearing the shouts of drunks in the street outside and mastered the intricacies of chess positions that were classic in their difficulty. Once during a lovers’ quarrel where the woman kept shouting, “I’m at my fucking wit’s end. At my wit’s fucking end!” and the man kept saying, “Like your fucking sister,” Beth lay on her cot and came to see a way of queening a pawn that she had never seen before. It was beautiful. It would work. She could use it. “Up your ass,” the woman shouted, and Beth lay back exulting and then fell pleasantly asleep.
They spent their third week repeating the Borgov games and finished the last of them after midnight on Thursday. When Beth had done her analysis of the resignation, pointing out how Borgov could avoid a draw, she looked up to see Benny yawning. It was a hot night and the windows were open.
“Shapkin went wrong in midgame,” Beth said. “He should have protected his queenside.”
Benny looked at her sleepily. “Even I get tired of chess sometimes.”
She stood up from the board. “It’s time for bed.”
“Not so fast,” Benny said. He looked at her for a moment and smiled. “Do you still like my hair?”
“I’ve been trying to learn how to beat Vasily Borgov,” Beth said. “Your hair doesn’t enter into it.”
“I’d like you to come to bed with me.”
They had been together three weeks and she had almost forgotten sex. “I’m tired,” she said, exasperated.
“So am I. But I’d like you to sleep with me.”
He looked very relaxed and pleasant. Suddenly she felt warm toward him. “All right,” she said.
She was startled to wake up in the morning with someone beside her in bed. Benny had rolled over to his side and all she could see of him was his pale, bare back and some of his hair. She felt self-conscious at first and afraid of waking him; she sat up carefully, leaning her back against the wall. Being in bed with a man was really all right. Making love had been all right too, although not as exciting as she had hoped. Benny hadn’t said much. He was gentle and easy with her, but there was still that distance of his. She remembered a phrase from the first man she had made love with: “Too cerebral.” She turned toward Benny. His skin did look good in the light; it seemed almost luminous. For a moment she felt like putting her arms around him and hugging him with her naked body, but she restrained herself.
Eventually Benny woke, rolled over on his back and blinked at her. She had the sheet up, covering her breasts. After a moment she said, “Good morning.”
He blinked again. “You shouldn’t try the Sicilian against Borgov,” he said. “He’s just too good at it.”
They spent the morning with two Luchenko games; Benny put the emphasis on strategy rather than tactics. He was in a cheerful mood, but Beth felt somehow resentful. She wanted something more in the way of lovemaking, or at least in intimacy, and Benny was lecturing her. “You’re a born tactician,” he said, “but your planning is jerry-built.” She said nothing and dealt with her annoyance as well as she could. What he was saying was true enough, but the pleasure he took in pointing it out was irritating.
At noon he said, “I’ve got to get to a poker game.”
She looked up from the position she had just analyzed. “A poker game?”
“I have to pay the rent.”
That was astonishing. She had not thought of him as a gambler. When she asked about it, he said he made more money from poker and backgammon than from chess. “You ought to learn,” he said, smiling. “You’re good at games.”
“Then take me with you.”
“This one’s all men.”
She frowned. “I’ve heard that said about chess.”
“I bet you have. You can come along and watch if you want to. But you’ll have to keep quiet.”
“How long will it last?”
“All night, maybe.”
She started to ask him how long he had known about this game, but didn’t. Clearly he had known it before last night. She rode the Fifth Avenue bus with him down to Forty-fourth Street and walked with him over to the Algonquin Hotel. Benny seemed to have his mind on something he wasn’t interested in talking about, and they walked in silence. She was beginning to feel angry again; she hadn’t come to New York for this, and she was annoyed at Benny’s way of offering no explanations and no advance notice. His behavior was like his chess game: smooth and easy on the surface but tricky and infuriating beneath. She did not like tagging along, but she did not want to go back to the apartment and study alone.
The game was in a small suite on the sixth floor and it was, as he had said, all male. Four men were seated around a table with coffee cups and chips and cards. An air conditioner whirred noisily. There were two other men who seemed merely to be hanging around. The players looked up when Benny came in and greeted him jokingly. Benny was cool and pleasant. “Beth Harmon,” he said, and the men nodded without recognition. He had gotten out his billfold, and now he slipped a pile of bills from it, set them in front of an empty place at the table and sat down, ignoring Beth. Not knowing what her role in all this was, Beth went into the bedroom, where she had seen a coffee pitcher and cups. She got a cup of coffee and went back into the other room. Benny had a stack of chips in front of him and was holding cards in his hand. The man on his left said, “I’ll bump that,” flatly, and threw a blue chip into the center of the table. The others followed suit, with Benny last.
She stood at a distance from the table watching. She remembered standing in the basement watching Mr. Shaibel, and the intensity of her interest in what he was doing, but she felt nothing like that now. She did not care how poker was played, even though she knew she would be good at it. She was furious with Benny. He went on playing without looking at her. He handled the cards with dexterity and tossed chips into the center of the table with quiet aplomb, sometimes saying things like “I’ll stay” or “Back to you.” Finally, while one of the men was dealing, she tapped Benny on the shoulder and said softly, “I’m leaving.” He nodded and said, “Okay” and turned his attention back to his cards. Going down in the elevator, she felt she could have beaten him over the head with a two-by-four. The cool son of a bitch. It was quick sex with her, and then off to the boys. He had probably planned it that way for a week. Tactics and strategy. She could have killed him.