by Rich Wallace
Leung puts Buddy in check with her rook, and Buddy makes the only move that he can, bringing his king to the first rank. Leung shifts her rook forward one space, resulting in check yet again. And Buddy responds with his only possible move, putting his king back where it was.
Leung lets out a sigh and says, “Perpetual check,” which sounds like it might be a good thing, but all of the players know better. It means Malone has forced a draw. Leung can put him in check with every move, but Buddy can safely get out of it with the next one. And Buddy can't bring his bishop into play because he has to respond to every check.
With the right placement of material, such a frustrating scenario could go on forever.
So Malone has survived. They shake hands and agree to take the permissible five-minute break before starting over.
Randy notices that there are three and a half doughnuts still sitting on a tray near the windows. None of them look particularly appetizing—the ones with sprinkles or fillings are long gone—but he picks up an all-chocolate one with a gooey white glaze and takes a large bite while heading for the exit door.
It's fairly warm for a January day in Scranton, around thirty-six degrees and sunny. Pramod is standing on the walk in front of the hotel, talking on his cell phone. Serena Leung is sitting on a low cement wall about forty feet away, eyeing Pramod. Buddy is standing in the lobby, looking blankly out the window.
Randy nods to Buddy as he walks past, his mouth too full of doughnut to say anything.
“You win?” Malone asks.
Randy wipes his mouth with his sleeve and swallows. “Yeah. Barely.”
“We gotta play all over again,” he says, jutting his chin toward Serena.
“I saw.”
“I never even heard of her.”
“Me either.”
“Your brother still in there?”
“Yeah.”
They stand quietly for a minute, watching traffic on Jefferson veer off toward the Central Scranton Expressway. Pramod steps into the lobby and grins at Malone. He points to his watch and says, “What's the holdup?”
Buddy shakes his head. “She's good.”
“The Shark Lady? You must be losing your touch. She's not even seeded.”
“So what? She can play.”
“Maybe I'll find out.” Pramod smirks. “If you can't handle her, that is.”
Randy steps toward the doors. “I'm gonna get some air.”
“Can't believe that little kid's still in it,” Pramod says, loud enough for Randy to hear.
Randy sits on the wall next to Serena, who's leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. She turns her head slightly toward him and squints.
“You seem to be surprising people,” Randy says.
She gives him a defiant look. “How so?”
“Nobody expected any unseeded players to get this far.”
She shrugs. “They were wrong.”
“What grade are you in?”
“Eleven. What are you, like fifth?”
“Fifth seed?”
“Fifth grade.“
“I'm in ninth,” Randy says evenly. “And I am the fifth seed.”
“Big deal.”
“I didn't say it was.”
She finally breaks into a reluctant smile. “That's right, you didn't… Sorry. I can be a bitch.”
“No problem.”
“I mean, you do look very young.”
“I know.”
Malone taps on the window and gestures for Serena to come in.
“Back to the grind,” she says.
“Do it up.”
“I try.”
Randy sits outside for another minute, until his ears get cold. Pramod is slumped on that leather couch in the lobby. “Sit down a second,” he says.
Randy doesn't sit, but he stops next to the couch and looks at Pramod expectantly.
Pramod is staring at his fingernails again. “When you play Jenna, she'll definitely favor her queenside,” he says.
“So?”
“So you need to know that. And you need to control the center.”
“We always need to control the center. What do you care how I play her?”
“Because I want to win the tournament,” Pramod says. “If you beat her in the semis, they might as well start putting my name on the trophy right then.”
“I'll be sure to notify the engraver.”
Serena catches Randy's eye as he tries to slip unnoticed into the conference room. Her rematch with Malone is several moves old, but neither player has taken any pieces.
Most eyes in the room are on Zeke's game against Jenna. Both players have the same material left: two pawns, a rook, and the king. It's Jenna's move, and she can take one of Zeke's pawns with a pawn of her own (hers are side by side near the center of the board) or capture his other pawn with her rook (which is just one space forward of its original position in the corner).
Capturing with the rook would be suicidal, because she would immediately lose it to Zeke's rook, which is shielded by the pawn but is in the same rank as Jenna's. But not taking that pawn would be equally fatal, because Zeke needs just one move to promote the pawn in question to a queen. And that would leave Jenna in checkmate. Either way, she's in deep trouble.
Randy quietly takes a seat next to his father. Jenna finds the best alternative and moves her rook to the opposite corner, putting Zeke in check. He can easily get out of it, but a cat-and-mouse game ensues, with Zeke moving his king up the board one space at a time and Jenna keeping him in check with her rook. This is not the perpetual check that Buddy Malone forced, since the position of the pieces changes with every move and he can eventually get out of check.
But the advantage clearly belongs to Zeke. He carefully circles the pawns with his king. If Jenna captures Zeke's lone pawn near the center, his next move would be to promote his remaining pawn to queen, assuring the victory.
Jenna is taking a long time to think, and Randy's already gone over every possible remaining move in his head. Unless Zeke makes a gigantic blunder, the game will be his within three or four moves.
Randy turns to his dad and mouths, “He's got it.”
“How?” Mr. Mansfield mouths back.
“Just watch.” Randy's whispering now. “She can't get out of it.”
Jenna has a deep frown and seems to see the inevitable. Zeke captures both pawns with his king on consecutive moves. Jenna's last-ditch effort brings her rook all the way back, next to her king in the first rank. But two moves later she's in checkmate.
She looks bewildered, and so does Zeke, frankly. With the Malone-Leung match still progressing, there's no possibility of applause from the fifteen or so remaining spectators.
Mr. Mansfield points toward the door, and Randy and Zeke follow him out. No need to look at the brackets; it'll be Mansfield versus Mansfield in the semifinals.
“Yes!” Zeke says, pumping his fist when they're out of immediate earshot. “I took her down.”
Mr. Mansfield holds out both palms and Zeke slaps them, then flips his palms over for his dad.
“She used that Sicilian Dragon bit, huh?” Randy says.
“Huh?” Zeke looks at him like he's crazy. “I don't know. Something like that. I'm starving.”
“Yeah,” Mr. Mansfield says. “You guys need to get refueled.”
“I could see what she was doing after about three moves,” Zeke says, ignoring Randy. “She thought she had this really elaborate opening, but it's the same game I play all the time. I saw it coming a mile away.”
“See?” Mr. Mansfield says to Randy. “Always know your opponent.”
“I figured it out in about two seconds,” Zeke says. “As soon as she made her third move, I'm like, That's the Sicilian thing. She never had a chance after that.”
“You got in her head,” Mr. Mansfield says.
“I lived there.”
SEVEN
Pushing Carts
The McDonald's on Washington Avenue is one of t
hose urban storefront spots, not freestanding like most of its billion franchises, including the one back in Sturbridge. This one is long and narrow and wedged between a CVS drugstore and a jewelry shop across from the Lackawanna County Courthouse.
Mr. Mansfield gave Zeke a twenty to buy lunch and went over to the Steamtown Mall for something. So Randy and Zeke walked the four blocks to McDonald's, not saying anything till they got there.
Scranton is not a thriving city, and midday on a Saturday it seems particularly empty.
“I'm getting two fish sandwiches,” Randy says as they wait behind three college-age guys and a woman with no front teeth in a NASCAR jacket.
“Don't tell me,“ Zeke replies. “You think I'm ordering for you?”
“No. I'm just saying.”
“Fish sucks.”
“You don't have to eat it.”
“I don't plan to.”
Lunch was available at the hotel for all of the quarterfinalists, but few players took up the offer. Jenna McNulty seemed too stunned to eat, and Buddy Malone went straight to his room after losing his rematch. Serena Leung told Zeke she didn't want any possibility of having to eat with Pramod, who she'll meet in the semis. Silvio Vega was already on his way back to Wilkes-Barre.
When Zeke and Randy left, only Pramod and Lucy Ahada were dining at the hotel, sitting uncomfortably with the tournament officials as they munched on salads and turkey sandwiches.
Zeke orders a hamburger and Chicken McNuggets. The girl at the counter asks, “Will that be all?”
Zeke frowns and tilts his head toward Randy. “Whatever he wants, too.”
They take a booth near the entrance, across the aisle from an apparently homeless guy who's staring blankly while nursing a cup of coffee. He has a scruffy white beard and black shoes with no laces in them.
Zeke watches as Randy unwraps one of his sandwiches and takes off the top of the bun. He grabs a couple of napkins and wipes a large glob of tartar sauce from it. “They always put way too much,” Randy says.
“You could ask them to go light, you know.”
“That never works. You ask for a special order and they mess it up some other way. Extra-cheeselate it or something.”
Zeke pulls a limp pickle slice off his hamburger and sets it on the tray. “Like you could do better.”
“Like I'd want to.”
“You do have to get a job this summer, you know. Practice saying this: ‘Hi, may I take your order?’ Who else is gonna hire you?” Zeke has worked as a parking-lot shopping-cart collector the past three summers at Kmart. Muscle work, he thinks. Great training.
“I'll find a job,” Randy says. “What do you care?”
“They made me work as soon as I turned fifteen,” Zeke says. “No way you're sitting on your fat ass for another summer.”
“I said I'd get a job.”
“Men work,” Zeke says, imitating their father's stern, no-nonsense cadence.
Randy gives a snorty laugh. Then his face becomes expressionless and he squints, slowly raising his hand and pointing toward his eye. “Game face,” he says.
Zeke laughs. “He gave you that shit, too?”
“It's our best weapon.”
Zeke looks down and shakes his head slowly. “There's something to all that, you know.”
“Yeah. Something. But you can't just will yourself to overpower somebody who's smarter than you are.”
“You can cut down the odds a little,” Zeke says. “I just beat the hell out of the top seed. Part of that was because I intimidated her.”
“Maybe you outsmarted her.”
Zeke blows some air out the side of his mouth in a puffy sound. “I think she choked.”
“It happens.”
“She's probably crying her eyes out. Can't believe she lost to some peasant from Sturbridge.”
“Bet Malone isn't feeling too good either.”
“Anyway,” Zeke says, “you can't overpower everybody. Dad thinks you have to be ruthless about everything. He doesn't even see what it costs him.”
“Like what?”
Zeke's eyes get wider. “Respect. I mean, nobody really says anything, but you can tell people think he's an asshole. Like back when he was coaching us when we were little? He'd always rather win than have fun. The other parents saw right through that. Except the few who were even bigger jerks than he is.”
Zeke picks up a McNugget and turns it around, frowning at it. “Nobody cares if a six-year-old wins a T-ball game.”
Randy just nods.
“Then when it matters—like in high school sports or this tournament—it's the same thing as far as he's concerned. Always about adding some notch in the belt.”
Randy looks stunned. “You're actually admitting that?”
Zeke thinks for a second. He's never been open with Randy about their father. He's figured that since he's been the beneficiary of the man's lack of objectivity, why worry about how he treats Randy?
“So what else does it cost him?” Randy asks.
Zeke turns away. The homeless guy is looking at them. “You want these?” Zeke asks him, pointing to the three Mc-Nuggets he hasn't eaten.
“All right,” the guy says.
Zeke wraps them in a napkin and walks over.
“Thank you,” the man says.
“No problem.”
Zeke sits back down and lets out his breath. “Mom's pretty much had it with him,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“You think he drives us crazy? You listen to him lately? He says she's wearing out the tires because she brakes too much going down hills. And he got diarrhea last week because she didn't wash the lettuce good enough. And you only got a B plus in Spanish last semester because she lets you watch too much TV.”
“He blamed that on her?”
“It's such bullshit,” Zeke says. “He constantly tells us we have to take total responsibility for our actions, but he never does. It's always somebody else's fault.”
“You do that, too, you know.”
“Like when?”
“All the time.”
“Everybody does.” Zeke tries not to smile but doesn't completely succeed. “Dad thinks he never gets to be vice president because his boss is a dick. So he keeps whining in the same shit job instead of working at some other bank.”
“When does he tell you these things?”
“He doesn't. But I hear him bitching to Mom all the time.”
“I guess I need to pay more attention.”
“Yeah,” Zeke says. “Start acting like a man.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“He's right about that one.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
The door opens and Jenna walks in, carrying her briefcase.
“Well, well,” she says, smiling broadly and stopping next to the booth. “Didn't think I'd find you two together.”
“Why not?” Zeke says.
“Big showdown this afternoon.”
“We gotta eat,” Randy says. “No way we were eating with Pramod.”
“Right. Shove over.”
Randy slides toward the wall, and Jenna sits across from Zeke. “Pramod will have his hands full with Serena,” she says. “She's the real thing.”
“You've played her?” Zeke asks.
“I taught her. They had this clinic at the library last summer. Three afternoons. Serena comes in dressed like a”—Jenna turns her head and looks across the aisle, where the homeless guy has finished the McNuggets and has returned his blank stare to the window; she lowers her voice—”like a street person. But she turns out to be brilliant. And her family's regular; she just has this freakish attitude. Anyway, she's a prodigy. She just has no idea that she is. This is her first tournament ever, and she might just win it.”
Zeke is staring openmouthed at Jenna. Randy lifts his foot and nudges Zeke's shin. Zeke sits up a bit straighter and closes his mouth.
“You think she'll beat Pramod?” Randy asks.
>
“She might.” Jenna steps out of the booth and raps her fingers on the table. “Then one of you would have to take her on.”
“Either way,” Zeke says. “It doesn't matter who we play.”
“Yeah,” she says, “but which one of you will it be?”
Randy and Zeke stare at each other for a second. Randy points to his eye again. “Whichever one is tougher, I guess.”
Jenna nods toward the counter. “Time to indulge,” she says. “I only eat french fries after I lose.”
“Been a while, huh?” Randy asks.
“Yeah,” she says, “but a couple of times a year won't kill me.”
Zeke turns and watches her go. When he turns back, Randy says, “Nice, huh?”
Zeke blushes a bit. “She's okay.” He balls up his hamburger wrapper and sets it down on the tray. “You want anything else?”
“I'd drink a milk shake.”
“Vanilla?”
“Yeah. Why? You getting it?”
“Sure,” Zeke says, staring at Jenna. He gets up and stands next to her on line.
That's the only reason Randy can figure why Zeke would offer to get him anything.
It occurs to Randy for the first time that he might actually win this tournament. The odds are strong that he'll beat Zeke as usual, and who knows what would happen in the final? He'd like nothing more than to silence Pramod. And if Serena knocks Pramod out first, then Randy would have to be considered the favorite. Even against a prodigy.
But Zeke won't be beaten easily. There's too much at stake for him not to play his best game. He'll be focused and intense, and he'll do his best to intimidate Randy. And Zeke is one of the few people who can actually pull it off. He gets that from all those sports that he plays. Randy envies that a little. He dropped out of sports early.
There was that last season of organized basketball back in sixth grade. It wasn't the school team but another recreational program at the Y. Still, the competition was intense, and most of the better players who were on the school team played in this league, too.