Manila Gambit. John Zeugner

see on the old Danube.”

      “I’m sorry, but I only wanted to talk with David a bit for some human interest stuff for the column.”

      “You only wanted to talk to David for a little human interest stuff for your little column in, in, what is it, on the West Coast of Florida?”

      “Hane Tribune,” Pam offers, working her fingers together on the Formica top of the little table.

      “Well, wherever. You know the New Yorker wanted to do a profile, but no money up front, no interview. I told ‘em that, and that was the end of it. They never came round again.”

      I look at her for a moment and then decide, since all was lost anyway, simply to be blunt about the situation. “That was a stupid decision.”

      “For them, or for me?” she asks, suddenly disengaging from our colloquy. She repeats “For them, or for me?” It seems the phrase interests her, as if the sound of uttering it was soothing.

      “For you,” I continue, worried that she might not be listening. “You should have paid them to do the profile. Not the other way round. Then you could have billed the hell out of everybody else, since the kid had already been profiled in the New Yorker. It would have been worth a small fortune. Why throw away that kind of publicity for a few lousy bucks?”

      “Lousy bucks,” she says slowly. “You mean tick-filled deer? You could mean that.”

      “I mean it was a stupid, silly decision. Cutting your own throat or David’s—-“

      “Mikey,” she interrupts me. “Mikey.”

      “Okay, Mikey’s throat. Right now you need publicity. The more, the better. Otherwise he’s just another talented kid who spent too much time at a chessboard . Believe me there are a million of them.”

      She straightens up, seems jerked out of whatever sphere she had slipped into. “Yeah, that’s why you’re here, begging for an interview. Because there are a million of them.”

      “I’m here ‘cause I don’t know shit about chess and I got this crappy assignment to write a chess column three times a week for the rest of my lousy life, or until I can think of some better way to make a living. That’s why I’m here. Since I can’t write about the actual chess, I thought, what the hell, I could write about the people who play the stupid game. That way I could disguise my ignorance until I learned something about the game. But I’ll tell you something. I don’t give a good goddam about learning the moves, the combinations, the openings, the endgames—all that crap. I just want to turn in a few more columns till I can think of something better. Now, if you can help me, I can give your boy, your Mikey, if that is his name, a lot publicity in a remote area of Florida. But if that’s not good enough, I can always find some squirrel somewhere in some seedy chess club that’s willing to talk about his toilet training and his middle game.”

      Pam began pressing her head down toward the tabletop. Was she embarrassed by this little tirade? Did she sense something had been left out or was she simply leaving, in another vacancy response to apparent tension? Actually I was feeling better and better, thrashing through my litanies of mild woe. Feeling very good indeed.

      Mrs. Spendip was smiling, “Call me Vera. You and I can talk. Why don’t you put her on ice for a while,” she nods toward Pam.

      “She stays, if she wants. Do you want to stay, Pam?”

      “I’d like to sit in the other room,” Pam says, slowing standing up.

      “That’s Mikey’s room.”

      “Mikey’s?” Pam replies.

      “That’s his name. He never uses David. And he don’t like to be disturbed in his room.”

      “She won’t disturb him, believe me. She doesn’t disturb people. She’s very quiet.”

      “Oh yeah,” Vera says, “of course she’s very quiet. So go ahead, disturb him.”

      Pam lingers at the turn into the hallway and then waves to me as if departing on a cruise ship.

      “Okay, what kind of publicity can Mr. Publicity deliver?”

      “You tell me what to say, just tell me and I’ll spread it all around south Florida.”

      “For one thing,” she says going to the kitchenette and pouring herself a coffee, “for one thing, I don’t mind letting a few of your readers know how hard I’ve worked getting Mikey ready. And he is ready!”

      “Maybe I could run a separate column on you and the mothers of champions.”

      “Forget that. I’d just like a few people up in Baltimore to know that it ain’t the rosiest life trying to get a genius ready for his destiny. I suppose somebody in south Florida knows somebody in Baltimore. That’s more than likely, ain’t it?”

      “His destiny?”

      “What else? In six months nobody will beat him. Nobody. Even Fischer couldn’t come out of retirement to beat him. And it’s not retirement, you know. You read Chess Review, right? And about every other month there’s a letter from him talking about this or that annotation is full of errors. Mikey spots the errors long before Fischer writes about them. Know what I mean, do ya?”

      “Yes.”

      “The hell you do. I got the distinct impression you don’t know squat about chess.”

      “I told you I didn’t.”

      “That has nothin’ to do with it. I’m talking about the Dutch Defense. What Mikey does with the Dutch will make everybody come back to it.”

      “Sure.”

      “You know, you’re a wise guy. But that’s okay. We still haven’t reached our agreement, have we? You’re right. Two hundred, three hundred thousand readers on the west coast of Florida don’t exactly fill my needs. See what I’m saying? So tell me how you’re gonna sweeten the deal.”

      “How about a deep freeze for your cellar?”

      “Ah, you’re so funny. Why don’t you laugh in the elevator on your way out?”

      “Okay. Okay. A deal. A very sweet, very easy deal: two tickets to Florida in return for a simultaneous exhibition some place in Hane. Maybe the auditorium or the Y or someplace. Maybe even the big new culture center Van Shuten is building in the bay. And —this is crucial—an exclusive—features and interviews for the Hane Tribune.”

      “Two tickets?”

      “You want four? You have friends? I don’t think so.”

      “I can’t live on a ticket.”

      “Ah, a place to stay then?”

      “And meals.”

      “Like here? A kind of Ramada Inn in Hane, is that it?”

      “Something like that.”

      I think about an offer, and to cover I ask, “You mind me asking a question about this arrangement?” I point to the kitchen dining area.

      “What arrangement?”

      “The one here. Do you have a thing for Ramada Inns? I imagine you could rent a pretty nice apartment for what this costs.”

      Vera laughs, sets her coffee down. “Sidney owns a judge in Baltimore,” she laughs again, watching me try to make a connection. “And, get this, the judge tells my lawyer ‘This is child support.’ Got it? Child support! So instead of the cash we get to live here, in this dump, with its lousy thirty percent vacancy rate, in the worst rooms in the place, so nobody will ever want them. But once, can you believe it? The schmuck management actually moved Mikey out for four days from his room into mine. Into here! They carried his chess books in here, for chrissake, so they could move in two Japanese businessmen and soak ‘em for that little hole next door. This,” she motions to the bed, the