The Queen's Gambit (31 page)

Jolene drove her home in her silver VW. When they got to Jan-well, Beth said, “I’d like you to come in for a while, Jolene. I want you to see my house.”

“Sure,” Jolene said. Beth showed her where to pull over, and when they got out of the car Jolene said, “That whole house belong to you?” and Beth said, “Yes.”

Jolene laughed. “You’re no orphan,” she said. “Not anymore.”

But when they came into the little entryway inside the front door, the stale, fruity smell was a shock. Beth had not noticed it before. There was an embarrassed silence while she turned on the lamps in the living room and looked around. She had not seen the dust on the TV screen or the stains on the cobbler’s bench. At the corner of the living room ceiling near the staircase was a dense cobweb. The whole place was dark and musty.

Jolene walked around the room, looking. “You been doing more than pills, honey,” she said.

“I’ve been drinking wine.”

“I believe it.”

Beth made them coffee in the kitchen. At least the floor in there was clean. She opened the window out into the garden to let fresh air in.

Her chessboard was still set up on the table and Jolene picked up the white queen and held it for a moment. “I get tired of games,” she said. “Never did learn this one.”

“Want me to teach you?”

Jolene laughed. “It’d be something to tell about.” She set the queen back on the board. “They’ve instructed me in handball, racquetball and paddleball. I play tennis, golf, dodgeball, and I wrestle. Don’t need chess. What I want to hear about is all this wine.”

Beth handed her a mug of coffee.

Jolene set it down and got out a cigarette. Sitting in the drab kitchen with her bright-navy suit and her Afro, she was like a new center in the room.

“It start with the pills?” Jolene asked.

“I used to love them,” Beth said. “Really love them.”

Jolene shook her head twice, from side to side.

“I haven’t had anything to drink today,” Beth said abruptly. “I’m supposed to play in Russia next year.”

“Luchenko,” Jolene said. “Borgov.”

Beth was surprised that she knew the names. “I’m scared of it.”

“Then don’t go.”

“If I don’t, there’s nothing else for me to do. I’ll just drink.”

“Looks like you do that, anyway.”

“I just need to quit drinking and quit those pills and fix this place up. Look at the grease on that stove.” She pointed to it. “I’ve got to study chess eight hours a day, and I’ve got to do some tournaments. They want me to play in San Francisco, and they want me on the
Tonight Show
. I should do all that.”

Jolene studied her.

“What I want is a drink,” Beth said. “If you weren’t here, I’d have a bottle of wine.”

Jolene frowned. “You sound like Susan Hayward in those movies,” she said.

“It’s no movie,” Beth said.

“Then quit talking like one. Let me tell you what to do. You come over to the Alumni Gymnasium on Euclid Avenue tomorrow morning at ten. That’s when I work out. Bring your gym shoes and a pair of shorts. You need to get that puffy look out of you before you make any more plans.”

Beth stared at her. “I always hated gym…”

“I remember,” Jolene said.

Beth thought about it. There were bottles of red wine and white in the cabinet behind her, and for a moment she became impatient for Jolene to leave so that she could get one out and twist the cork off and pour herself a full glass. She could feel the sensation of it at the back of her throat.

“It’s not that bad,” Jolene said. “I’ll get you a couple of fresh towels and you can use my hair dryer.”

“I don’t know how to get there.”

“Take a cab. Hell,
walk
.”

Beth looked at her, dismayed.

“You’ve got to get your ass moving, girl,” Jolene said. “You got to quit sitting in your own funk.”

“Okay,” Beth said. “I’ll be there.”

When Jolene left, Beth had one glass of wine but not a second. She opened up all the windows in the house and drank the wine out in the backyard, with the moon, nearly full, directly above the little shed at the back. There was a cool breeze. She took a long time over the drink, letting the breeze blow into the kitchen window, fluttering the curtains, blowing through the kitchen and living room, clearing out the air inside.

***

The gym was a high-ceilinged room with white walls. Light came in from enormous windows along the side where a row of strange-looking machines sat. Jolene was wearing yellow tights and gym shoes. The morning was warm, and Beth had worn her white shorts in the taxi. At the far end of the exercise room a doleful-looking young man in gray trunks lay on his back on a bench, pushing up weights and groaning. Otherwise they were alone.

They started with a pair of stationary bicycles. Jolene set the drag on Beth’s at ten, and sixty for her own. By the time they had pedaled ten minutes Beth was covered with sweat and her calves were aching.

“It gets worse,” Jolene said.

Beth gritted her teeth and kept pedaling.

She could not get the rhythm right on the hip-and-back machine, and her ass slid on the imitation-leather bench she had to lie on while she pushed the weights down with her legs. Jolene had set it for forty pounds, but even that seemed too much. Then there was the machine where she raised the weights with her ankles, making the tendons in her upper legs stand out and hurt. After that she had to sit upright in what reminded her of an electric chair and pull in weights with her elbows. “Firm up your pectorals,” Jolene said.

“I thought that was a kind of fish,” Beth said.

Jolene laughed. “Trust me, honey. This is what you need.”

Beth did them all—furious and terribly out of breath. It made her fury worse to see that Jolene used far heavier weights than she did. But then, Jolene’s figure was perfect.

The shower afterward was exquisite. There were strong water jets, and Beth sprayed herself hard, getting the sweat off. She soaped herself thoroughly and watched the foam swirl on the white tiles at her feet as she rinsed it off with a stinging hot spray.

The woman at the cafeteria was handing Beth a plate with salisbury steak on it when Jolene pushed her tray up next to Beth’s. “None of that,” Jolene said. She took the plate and handed it back. “No gravy,” she said, “and no potatoes.”

“I’m not overweight,” Beth said. “It won’t hurt me to eat potatoes.

Jolene said nothing. When they pushed their trays past the Jell-O and Bavarian cream pie, Jolene shook her head. “You ate chocolate mousse last night,” Beth said.

“Last night was special,” Jolene said. “This is today.”

They had lunch at eleven-thirty because Jolene had a twelve o’clock class. When Beth asked her what it was, Jolene said, “Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century.”

“Is that part of Phys. Ed.?” Beth asked.

“I didn’t tell all of it yesterday. I’m getting an M.S. in political science.” Beth stared at her. “
Honi soit qui mal y pense
,” Jolene said.

When Beth got up the next morning, her back and calves were sore, and she decided not to go to the gym. But when she opened the refrigerator to find something for breakfast, she saw stacks of TV dinners and suddenly thought of the way Mrs. Wheatley’s pale legs had looked when she rolled down her stockings. She shook her head in revulsion and started prying the boxes loose. The thought of frozen fried chicken and roast beef and turkey made her ill; she dumped them all in a plastic shopping bag. When she opened the cabinet to look over the canned foods, there were three bottles of Almadén Mountain Rhine sitting in front of the cans. She hesitated and closed the door. She would think about that later. She had toast and black coffee for breakfast. On her way to the gym, she dropped the sack of frozen dinners into the garbage.

At lunch Jolene told her about a bulletin board in the Student Union that listed students who would do unskilled work at two dollars an hour. Jolene walked her over on the way to class, and Beth took down two numbers. By three o’clock that afternoon she had a Business Administration major beating the carpets in the backyard and an Art History major scrubbing the refrigerator and kitchen cabinets; Beth did not supervise them; she spent the time working out variations on the Nimzo-Indian Defense.

By the next Monday, she was using all seven of the Nautilus machines and doing sit-ups afterward. On Wednesday, Jolene added ten pounds to each of them for her and had her hold a five-pound weight on her chest when she did the sit-ups. The week after that, they started playing handball. Beth was awkward at it and got out of breath quickly. Jolene beat her badly. Beth kept at it doggedly, panting and sweating and sometimes bruising the palm of her hand on the little black ball. It took her ten days and a few lucky bounces before she won her first game.

“I knew you’d start winning soon enough,” Jolene said. They stood in the center of the court, sweating.

“I hate losing,” Beth said.

That day there was a letter waiting for her from something called Christian Crusade. The stationery had about twenty names down the side, under an embossed cross. The letter read:

She almost threw the letter away until she remembered Benny’s saying that he had been given money for his Russian trip by a church group. She had Benny’s phone number on a folded piece of paper in her chess clock box; she got it out and dialed. Benny answered after the third ring.

“Hi,” she said. “It’s Beth.”

Benny was a bit cool, but when she told him about the letter, he said at once, “Take it. They’re loaded.”

“Would they pay for my ticket to Russia?”

“More than that. If you ask them, they’ll send me over with you. Separate rooms, considering their views.”

“Why would they pay so much money?”

“They want us to beat the Communists for Jesus. They’re the ones who paid part of my way two years ago.” He paused. “Are you coming back to New York?” His voice was carefully neutral.

“I need to stay in Kentucky a while longer. I’m working out in a gym, and I’ve entered a tournament in California.”

“Sure,” Benny said. “It sounds all right to me.”

She wrote Christian Crusade that afternoon to say that she was very much interested in their offer and would like to take Benjamin Watts with her as a second. She used the pale-blue stationery, crossing out “Mrs. Allston Wheatley” at the top and writing in “Elizabeth Harmon.” When she walked to the corner to mail the letter, she decided to go on downtown and buy new sheets and pillowcases for the bed and a new tablecloth for the kitchen.

***

The winter light in San Francisco was remarkable; she had never seen anything quite like it before. It gave the buildings a preternatural clarity of line, and when she climbed to the top of Telegraph Hill and looked back, she caught her breath at the sharp focus of the houses and hotels that lined the long steep street and below them the perfect blue of the bay. There was a flower stand at the corner, and she bought a bunch of marigolds. Looking back at the bay, she saw a young couple a block away climbing toward her. They were clearly out of breath and stopped to rest. Beth realized with surprise that the climb had been easy for her. She decided to take long walks during her week there. Maybe she could find a gym somewhere.

When she walked up the hill to the tournament in the morning, the air was still splendid and the colors bright, but she was tense. The elevator in the big hotel was crowded. Several people in it stared at her, and she looked away nervously. The man at the desk stopped what he was doing the minute she walked up.

“Do I register here?” she asked.

“No need, Miss Harmon. Just go on in.”

“Which board?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Board One.”

Board One was in a room by itself. The table was on a three-foot-high platform, and a display board as big as a home-movie screen stood behind it. On each side of the table was a big swivel chair of brown leather and chrome. It was five minutes before starting time, and the room was jammed with people; she had to push her way through them to the playing space. As she did so, the buzz of talk died down. Everyone looked at her. When she climbed the steps to the platform, they began to applaud. She tried not to let her face show anything, but she was frightened. The last game of chess she had played was five months before, and she had lost it.

She didn’t even know who her opponent was; she hadn’t thought to ask. She sat there for a moment with her mind nearly empty, and then an arrogant-looking young man came briskly through the crowd and up the steps. He had long black hair and a broad, drooping mustache. She recognized him from somewhere, and when he introduced himself as Andy Levitt, she remembered the name from
Chess Review
. He seated himself stiffly. A tournament director came up to the table and spoke quietly to Levitt. “You can start her clock now.” Levitt reached out, looking unconcerned, and pressed the button on Beth’s clock. She held herself steady and played her queen’s pawn, keeping her eyes on the board.

By the time they had got into the middle game, there were people jammed in the doorway and someone was shushing the crowd and trying to maintain order. She had never seen so many spectators at a match. She turned her attention back to the board and carefully brought a rook to an open file. If Levitt didn’t find a way to prevent it, she could try attacking in three moves. If she wasn’t missing something in the position. She started moving in on him cautiously, prying the pawns loose from his castled king. Then she took a deep breath and brought a rook to the seventh rank. She could hear at the back of her mind the voice of the chess bum in Cincinnati years before: “Bone in the throat, a rook on the seventh rank.” She looked across the board at Levitt. He looked as if it were indeed a chicken bone and deeply imbedded. Something in her exulted, seeing him try to hide his confusion. And when she followed the rook with her queen, looking brutal on the seventh rank, he resigned immediately. The applause in the room was loud and enthusiastic. When she came down from the platform she was smiling. There were people waiting with old copies of
Chess Review
, wanting her to autograph her picture on the cover. Others wanted her to sign their programs or just sheets of paper.