All the Wrong Moves

by Sasha Chapin

  It was a long drive south, down towards Los Angeles proper and its horizon-touching multitude of lights. The spread of squared-away incandescence made me feel so small—it seemed to me like a graph of human possibility, each point representing a different end. My brief dalliance with the tournament chess scene was such a big deal when I was in it, but right then, as I saw the approach of so much electricity, I couldn’t honestly claim that it was anything other than infinitesimal.

  Natasha was chatty, but I didn’t want to talk to anybody, so I responded in monosyllables to a few of her kind questions, until she realized that both of us would be better served by silence. I just wanted to feel the dumb feelings I was feeling: momentary hiccups of happiness, replaced quickly by dull pains, a combination that I understood to be nostalgia for the present—I was already longing for the current moment, as I felt it flaking away. However, despite my sullenness, I knew Finegold and Katherine probably wanted to hear from me, so I sent them some messages.

  “Nice,” Finegold wrote, in response. We talked about this and that—he had seen a Facebook post about my trip to India, and he shared some anecdotes about the intestinal troubles he had also suffered there. “I’m so proud of you,” Katherine wrote, probably happy that all of this was over. I guess I was happy, too. I guess it was mostly fine. This was, most likely, as good at chess as I’d ever be—this was all the satisfaction I’d get. It wasn’t clear whether it was enough. “Enough,” as applied to something you love, is a poorly defined concept.

  The bright moon didn’t seem to mind very much that I began crying a little, quietly, in the back seat. I thought it would be surprised, like I was—I’m not much of a crier. “Have a good night, baby,” Natasha said, as she parked and I got out. It’s so amazing, the way some American women can say “baby” in a harmless, nonsexual way, as if you are a literal baby that they’re going to take care of. Maybe I could achieve a similar effect, if I practiced. There was a lot of time for hobbies, now—many hours that would be howling for some kind of substance. I walked down to the beach.

  10

  THE BEACH

  My firm belief is that it’s important to discover your own tremendous lack of potential. Life often contains the discovery that your place in humanity isn’t quite what you thought it was. You find out that you weren’t meant to be the lover of the thing you first loved. But it’s not so bad. If you’re lucky, you end up loving something else. When failure removes you from the wrong path, as wrenching as that feels, you ought to be grateful. You’re a little closer to where you should be, even if you don’t know where that is yet. Given the choice of any profession whatsoever, I would choose chess genius. I wasn’t given that choice.

  Now that we’ve established that, I guess I should reveal the secret of chess. But you should know that I’m a little nervous about telling it to you. It means so much to me, and it’s always nerve-wracking when you tell a friend a secret you find precious. You want it to illuminate their minds with ineffable light, but sometimes it doesn’t, and they just look at you as if they’re still waiting for the quintessential information you had promised.

  But here we are, under a few exhausted stars, on the wide, flat beach, a half-mile south of the Venice pier. The sand is dark gray in the faint, nearly midnight light, and the water that embraces it is blue-black, and it’s cold out, and I didn’t think to pack a sweater. I should really get this over with, so I can go inside and text Katherine.

  At the end of my first lesson with Finegold, he nonchalantly asked me whether I’d like to know the secret of chess.

  “Um, sure,” I said.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you. But you’re not going to believe me,” he said. “And maybe you never will.”

  I nodded.

  “You have to play like you never want the game to end,” he said.

  And he was right. I didn’t believe him. But I asked him to tell me more.

  “In life, and in chess, people make terrible decisions just because they’re impatient. They want things to end, right now, on their terms. They just want a reckoning, whether or not it’s actually good. So they play f4, or they play bishop takes h7, and they just tear everything apart. But you don’t have to play that way. You can play for hundreds of moves, if you want to. You could play for a thousand. And if you’re happy with that, your opponent will be like, I want a sandwich, I want a beer, I want to get out of here. But meanwhile, you’re content. You don’t have to go anywhere. You just like moving the pieces around. You just like playing chess.”

  I don’t recall what my face did in response, but it did something.

  “Okay, see you next week,” he said.

  And as I bought some coconut water afterwards, his words swelled up inside me, monolithic and strange. Although I didn’t know what to make of them, I knew they were significant somehow, and they stuck in my memory, and came back to me at odd hours of the day, all throughout that summer. Gradually, I realized that Finegold’s words contained not only a philosophy of chess, but also an idea of heaven. How beautiful it would be, I realized, to be playing a game without ever wanting it to be over.

  I had never felt that before. I certainly never achieved that peace on the chessboard. I never felt secure. I was always playing f4, or bishop takes h7, or trying to land a brilliant tactical blow against Oliver Chiang. Even in the most exquisite moments of my life, I had always wanted to leave for somewhere else, or be something different. Even in the middle of ecstasy, there was always something else calling me: some algae-covered cove, or the Chigorin Defense. It might not be right to live this way. After all, everything I care for was born dying, and I can’t be everything I want. In fact, I can barely be anything at all. I would have to stay somewhere at some point.

  This could be all right, honestly, in this rented bedroom overlooking the ocean. A little dog is barking in the hallway, and it’s just become Monday. Katherine could fly down here tomorrow, and we could live some kind of life together. Outside, people on the street are making confessions, which are half-erased by the wind by the time they reach me. The glow of all the city’s neon falls on everything I’m not thinking about right now.

  The only purpose here is amusement, I suppose, and the rules are completely unclear. Love is nice. You can kiss someone, and have a little cake right before oblivion. It’s a dream that ends before you know what it all added up to. It’s scary if you worry about it. But if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll like it, eventually. You just like moving the pieces around, thinking, this is okay. I enjoy this game. It’s different, even if it’s a lot like all the others. It’s almost over, but I’m in no hurry. I could happily play a little while longer. Please don’t make me go.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have been aided by a many-tendrilled human network that is too large for my small mind to grasp at any one time. So, if I’ve forgotten you in this list but owe you gratitude, please assume that the omission is a product of stupidity rather than any ill feeling.

  My current life would have been categorically impossible without the personal support provided by my family (Avivah Wargon, Elliott Chapin, Sam Chapin), as well as Anna Gallagher-Ross, D’Arcy Henderson, Stephen Thomas, Naomi Skwarna, Jackie Grandy, Darrah Teitel, Courtney Rafuse, and Katherine Laidlaw.

  In terms of professional stuff: Haley Cullingham singlehandedly started my career and also contributed greatly to this book. Without her, none of this. Also instrumental: Jen Agg blessed me with her immense power. My genius agent Martha Webb was my constant advocate and guide and was necessary. Jenny Bradshaw was ruthlessly intelligent and was always the exact right mix of velvet glove and iron fist in the editorial process. Jared Bland pulled the strings beautifully, as he always does. Kristin Cochrane pointed an imperious finger and this book sprang into being. Andrew Roberts made it look so, so pretty. Tara Tovell executed the unglamorous and difficult task of legitimizing my comma use. And Yaniv Soha gave this strange thing another home.

  Along the way, housing arrangements
were provided by, in chronological order, Elena Gartner, Sally Mairs, Hermes Huang, Puja Singh, Praveen Kumar Yadav, Patrick Ward, Tenzin Seldon, Connor Moran, Michele Moses, Luca Piccin, Caroline Daren, Sofie Belkin-Sessler, Charity Chan, Fawn Parker, Oliver Cheng, Amirah El-Safty, Amelia Roblin, Emma van Ryn, Sebastian Riopel Murray, Jade Blair, Kate Browning, Dave Frank-Savoie, Matthew Sharp, Andrew Parks, Puja Singh, and especially Amy and Tom Klein. Thanks for letting me sleep in your places, guys.

  Readers! Thanks for the savagery and compliments when both were needed. Uri Bram, Karen Dawson, Tedde Albertson, Aella, Ben Deeb.

  Ben Finegold was incredibly cooperative, except on the chessboard, and for that I will be eternally indebted.

  Alex Manley, Arun Kirupanathan, Danny Viola, and Nitsuh Abebe: thank you for the employment. It was good to be able to feed myself.

  Victoria Lynn Hogan: you came in late in the process, but your contribution was incalculably vital.

  Last, but maybe not least, thank you to Vassily Ivanchuk for all of your innovations in chess and fashion, and thank you to Imo’s Pizza for being so committed to your bizarre culinary ideals.