by Rich Wallace
So when Randy's dad assigned him to cover Peter Adams in the fourth game—five-ten, 168-pound Peter Adams— Randy could see the beginning of the end. By the first timeout, Peter had six points and three rebounds, and Mr. Mansfield clapped his fists over Randy's ears and said, “Box him out! Be a man and get in his face!”
The opposing coach had the decency to switch to a zone and played Peter for only half the game, but his team still won by twenty points.
Fortunately for Randy, there were only four games left. He low-keyed it in the two games he played and was too “sick” with a cold to participate in the other two. His father was totally disgusted with him about it.
Zeke and Jenna come back with supersize containers of fries and set them on the tray. “Have some,” Jenna says, sitting next to Randy again.
“Brain food?”
“Solace,” she says. “Some comfort after that butt kicking your brother gave me.”
Randy takes two fries and asks, “Where's my shake?”
Zeke looks at Jenna. “Damn.”
“I'll go,” Randy says. “Gimme some money.”
Zeke hands him a five, and Jenna slides out of the booth to let Randy by.
The counter is busy, and only one register is open. The girl is frantically bagging orders. “We need fries!” she yells to someone in the back.
When Randy orders, she says, “The shake machine isn't working too well. The chocolate's okay, but the vanilla is kind of syrupy … and gray.”
“Chocolate will be fine.”
Jenna is laughing when Randy returns. Could Zeke have actually said something witty? Most of the fries are gone, too.
“Maybe I'll Kmartulate this summer after all,” Randy says.
“It's hard as hell pushing those carts around,” Zeke says. “Especially in July when it's ninety.”
“Yeah, well, I figure maybe it'd be good for me.”
Zeke turns to Jenna. “Suddenly he's got ambition.”
“No,” Randy says. “Suddenly I'd rather do anything than work at a McDonald's.”
“Where do you work?” Zeke asks Jenna.
“I tutor. Last summer I waitressed, but this year we're going to Spain.”
“We?”
“My parents. It's a graduation present.”
“Oh,” Zeke says. “I'll be lucky if I get a card.”
Jenna takes a Wet-Nap from her pocket and wipes the grease and salt off her fingers. “You guys must play each other every day, huh?”
Randy wipes his fingers on his pants. “No. Just once in a while.”
“So who's gonna win today?”
“How would we know?” Randy says.
“That's why they play the games,” Zeke says. “To find out.”
“Who usually wins?”
Zeke shoots a cold look at his brother. “Depends,” he says. “If I give a shit and pay attention, I win.”
Randy rolls his eyes slightly but says nothing. There's some truth in that, and he knows it. Zeke probably cares enough only about 5 percent of the time, but this afternoon will certainly be one of those games.
EIGHT
Two Nights’ Sleep
With another half hour to kill before the semifinals, Randy starts toward the hotel elevator. Zeke is actually carrying on a conversation with Jenna in the lobby, and the boys’ father has not reappeared.
Randy sees his mother—a heavyset woman with striking eyebrows and bronze-tinted hair—rapidly approaching the hotel's main entrance. Trailing behind her is Randy's girlfriend, Dina, walking somewhat awkwardly due to her platform heels. He feels a bit of warmth spreading across his cheeks—these two people actually get his sense of humor; they actually have senses of humor. And they're kind to him, in direct contrast to the men in his life.
He gives a wave, slicing the air sideways with his hand. “Hey, Mom.”
“Are you still playing?” she asks, somewhat teasingly. “Or did we drive over here for nothing?”
“Not nothing. We're both still in it.” He steps over to Dina and kisses her. “How you doing?” he asks her.
“My mom … didn't really know why I was coming over here,” she says somewhat slowly. “She's like, ‘How do you watch chess?’ And I'm trying to explain to her that I'm not really watching chess so much as watching how you're doing at chess?”
Randy pats her head and she giggles. “Well put,” he says.
Dina's mother was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in New York City. Her father is an auto mechanic, and he's lived his entire life in Sturbridge. They met in Shorty's Bar on Main Street and never married, but they've lived together for fifteen years.
“I said it's so very much more interesting when your boyfriend is playing than when other people play,” Dina says.
“So very much more interesting,” Randy repeats. “That's like two adverbs and three adjectives.”
“So?” She blushes with a shy smile. “I'm very descriptive. I brought my camera.”
“To record this for posterity?”
“And for the school paper. My English teacher wants me to write for it.”
“About this tournament?”
“Mostly about the new computers in the library.”
“I guess that would be so very much more interesting than chess.”
“But a picture of you playing would be interesting.”
“Especially since I'm playing against Zeke.”
“Against Zeke?” Mrs. Mansfield says. “They're making you play against each other?”
“There's only four of us left. Sooner or later we had to face each other if we kept winning.”
“That'll go over big with your father,” Mrs. Mansfield says with a dose of sarcasm. “He won't have an opponent to hate.”
“You never know,” Randy says. “He might end up despising both of us.”
“How does Zeke feel about this?”
“Same as he feels about everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“That his great superiority will shine through and he'll clobber me.”
Dina grabs Randy's arm lightly. “He says I have good ideas but I don't present them coherently.”
“Zeke does?”
“No! Mr. Chandless.” Her English teacher. “He says writing for the newspaper will help me to straighten out my thoughts.”
“That could be dangerous.”
“You think?”
“Who is Zeke talking to?” Mrs. Mansfield asks, looking across the lobby.
“She was supposed to win the tournament.”
“She's very pretty.”
“He beat her this morning.”
Mrs. Mansfield lifts her painted eyebrows. “I should go over and say hello.”
Randy considers this, then says, “How about seeing my room first?” He knows that Zeke is possibly on the verge of his second breakthrough of the day, and something within Randy wants to cut his brother a break and steer his mother away. “It'll just take a minute.”
“All right,” she says, and she follows Randy toward the elevator. Dina follows Mrs. Mansfield.
“It's on the third floor,” Randy says.
“This place is nice,” Dina says, running her hand along the bright steel wall of the elevator.
“Never been in an elevator before?” Randy asks with a grin.
“I mean the hotel. It's a lot nicer than the rest of the neighborhood.”
“They've entirely de-Scrantonized it.”
“Is that good?”
“I don't know. We passed a bunch of beautiful old buildings when we walked to McDonald's. A lot of the storefronts are empty, though.”
“They're supposedly very high-tech,” Dina says as the elevator stops at the third floor.
“The storefronts?”
“The computers.”
“What computers?”
“At school. The ones I'm writing about for the paper.”
“Oh yeah.” Randy laughs. “Those.”
“I already took a picture
of one of them. Except Bobby Colaneri was sitting at it, and I think he was giving the finger.”
“You think?”
“His hand was on the mouse, and I'm thinking that I'm pretty sure he had his middle finger sticking up. But I haven't looked real closely at it yet, so I don't know for sure.”
“That'd be great.”
“Not for me it wouldn't. My first published photograph?”
“It'd be a classic.”
Randy opens the hotel room door and says, “This is it.”
“Were you … able to sleep all right?” Mrs. Mansfield asks.
“Yeah, I wasn't scared.” He says it with a “Don't baby me, Mom” tone.
“Did you sleep in both beds?” she asks, noticing that both sets of blankets and sheets are mussed.
“At the same time. Actually, I went back and forth, five minutes in one bed, five minutes in the other. It was like getting two nights’ sleep at once.”
Dina sits on the bed closer to the door and bounces a bit.
Mrs. Mansfield goes into the bathroom and closes the door. Randy sits next to Dina and starts bouncing, too.
“So, how was it last night?” Dina asks.
“Lonely,” Randy says, but his tone is teasing. He puts his arms around Dina, and they fall back, kissing. “Would have been great if you'd been along,” he whispers.
“Like we could have pulled that off,” Dina says with a smile.
The bathroom door opens, and they sit up with a start. Mrs. Mansfield raises her eyebrows but doesn't say anything.
“Zeke—” Randy catches himself starting to explain why the second bed was used and decides to cut his brother yet another break. “Zeke played really well this morning.”
“I'm not surprised,” Mrs. Mansfield says. “Your father made such a big deal about it all week that Zeke was probably petrified of losing.”
“That wouldn't have helped.”
“No, but it's your father's way. Make everybody so tense that they either overachieve or crack.”
“That's me,” Randy says. “Overachieving in everything.”
Mrs. Mansfield smiles. “Name one thing.”
Dina laughs. “Ever achieving in overything.”
“Never achieving in anerything,” Randy says. “Until today, that is.” He flexes his bicep. “Mr. Chess, they'll call me. King of the Scranton frontier.”
Zeke is astonishing himself today, not because he's advanced so far in the tournament but because he's managed to hold a conversation with Jenna McNulty for nearly half an hour.
She's done most of the talking—about politics and women's professional tennis and her rigid educator parents (he's the principal of a junior high school, and she teaches American literature at Wilkes)—but he's thrown in a few self-deprecating lines about himself and a couple of jabs at Pramod.
“I can't wait to see him go down in the final,” Zeke says. “He's such an egotist.”
“So you expect to be watching?” Jenna asks.
“I didn't mean that.”
“He's good, huh?”
“Pramod?”
“Randy.”
Zeke gives a slight scowl, but then he adds a half nod. “I can beat him.”
“You beat me.”
“Your game is sort of similar to his, so …” Zeke shrugs. “That helped, I guess.”
“Well, believe me, everybody in the tournament is hoping one of you will kick Pramod's ass.”
Zeke discovers that he and Jenna do have a few things in common. She says she sometimes wonders if her drive to excel in school and chess and other pursuits is more her parents’ need than her own.
So Zeke's feeling more confident than ever when his mother and brother and Dina walk over. “This is my mom,” he says, pointing to her, even though she's inches away.
Jenna sticks out her hand and gives her name. She smiles at Dina.
“And this is my brother's girlfriend, Dina,” Zeke says, putting his hand up and almost touching Dina's shoulder. It's the first time he's ever said her name aloud; first time he's ever smiled at her.
“I heard you're a very good chess player,” Dina says to Jenna.
“Not as good as Zeke was this morning.”
“They're both amazing at it,” Dina says. She giggles. “I watch them play against each other sometimes, and it's so intense. Like all of their manhood is on the line.”
“Do you play?”
“I know how to play, but Randy gets frustrated at me because he knows it so well that he doesn't want to wait for me to figure things out for myself.”
“I'll help you,” Zeke says, making a supreme effort to be charming while Jenna's standing there. “Randy's not detached enough to be objective.”
“Oh, I'm detached,” Randy says with mock huffiness. “She just needs gumption and intimidation. That's what it's all about, right?”
As if on cue, Mr. Mansfield enters the lobby. “What are you two doing?” he asks, shifting his eyes from Randy to Zeke and ignoring everyone else.
“Hanging out,” Randy says.
“Socializing,” says Zeke.
Mr. Mansfield checks his watch. “Don't you think you're being a bit too nonchalant here?”
“We're very chalant, Dad,” Randy says.
“Ought to be getting ready, don't you think?”
“We are ready,” Zeke says.
“Come over here, you two.” He gestures toward the conference room, then turns to his wife. “Where did you park?”
“In the parking lot, Ernie.”
“Did you lock the doors?”
“Yes,” she says coldly.
“Might want to go out and double-check.” He walks away, and the boys follow him past the conference room, into a narrow hallway.
“Do you think the Knicks stand around with a bunch of girls a few minutes before a play-off game?” he asks. “You think the Giants hang out with the cheerleaders at halftime?”
Zeke leans against the wall and scowls. Randy looks down at his shoes.
“It's ten minutes to one,” Mr. Mansfield says. “The party's over. I suggest you get in there and prepare yourselves for battle.”
NINE
Pinned to the Bishop
Randy swallows hard as he enters the conference room. The folding chairs for spectators have been rearranged in a semicircle facing the two tables, so he'll definitely be in the spotlight now.
The Regional Director is in the seat farthest from the entrance, shuffling through some papers. He nods to the boys as they enter the room. “Did you get some lunch?” he asks. “Why don't you two take this table”—the one on the left—”and we'll get started in a few minutes.”
Randy sits. He feels small and young suddenly, about to be a victim of the intimidation factor he's been joking about all morning. He looks at his brother, who's staring out the window. Zeke's been decent to him over the past hour or so, but that can't last, and Randy knows it.
There's too much on the line for that.
Serena is the next one to enter the room. She takes the seat on the same side of her board as Randy is on his. “Nervous?” she asks.
“Some.”
“You look it.”
“How so?”
“I don't know,” Serena says. “Pale. How do you describe when a person looks scared? Maybe you just feel it.”
“You don't look scared.”
She shrugs. “Maybe I learned how to hide it.”
Randy takes off his corduroy shirt and hangs it over the back of his chair. He notices that a bruise is starting to develop on his bicep, where his father jabbed him with his thumb earlier.
“This guy I'm playing against is a prick,” Serena says.
Randy would usually say the same thing about his brother. Something between them seems to have shifted since yesterday, though. Not much, but a little. “One of us is going to knock him out,” Randy says.
“Literally, if I had the chance,” Serena says, smiling wickedly. “But if I can just bump
his sorry ass out of the tournament, I'll be happy.”
The audience now consists of the Mansfield parents, Dina, the Regional Director and his assistant, Lucy Ahada, Jenna McNulty, and Jenna's parents, who arrived minutes before, expecting to watch their daughter in the semifinals and the final.
Randy, playing white, opens by moving the pawn in front of his king two spaces forward to e4. Zeke brings the pawn in front of his queenside bishop forward just one space and stares across the board until Randy finally meets his eyes.
Randy knows that Zeke will often make a seemingly careless move early in the game. The strategy is to leave the opponent with a He must know something I don't know bewilderment.
Randy continues on a traditional course and moves a second pawn to the center, one space to the left of his first. Zeke then moves a pawn two spaces forward, setting up a situation where Randy can take that pawn and Zeke would follow by taking Randy's.
Randy decides that the exchange of pawns won't hurt him, so he takes the bait.
The brothers move quickly, exchanging a fair amount of material and working the edges of the board more than most experts would recommend. Ten minutes into the game, Randy snares a pawn with one of his knights, then grimaces and fights back a feeling of dread when he realizes that he's about to lose his queen.
As a defensive ploy, Randy looks casually at another of his pawns, which has been left under attack by the shifting of the knight. Zeke can safely take the pawn with a rook. Randy winces slightly, hoping Zeke will follow his gaze and fail to notice that the bishop can take the white queen.
But Zeke puts a finger atop the bishop. A familiar, distinct whisper breaks the silence. “That's the one.”
All eyes turn to Mr. Mansfield, who keeps his gaze firmly focused on the board. Pramod smiles and shakes his head slowly while Serena glares over.
Zeke frowns as he moves the bishop and takes Randy's queen. The Regional Director tips his head toward his assistant, and they exchange a few barely audible words. Zeke smacks the button on the clock and faces Randy with a sour look.
Mr. Mansfield's coaching would have had no effect. Zeke had already touched the bishop, so he had to move it anyway. And both boys are far better players than their father, so neither would pay him any attention.
Randy spends longer than usual pondering his move, since Zeke now has a clear advantage. Randy's been in stickier situations against Zeke and worked his way out, but never with so much on the line.