Manila Gambit. John Zeugner

long does this assignment last?”

      Phil shrugs. Arnold shrugs. They put their coffee cups down. “Most people like bylines ‘till they retire.”

      “Or die,” Arnold adds.

      “I see.”

      “I wonder if you do see,” Arnold says. “I wonder if a smart fella like you really does see.” He starts down the corridor, replaceable gleaming on his back.

      Phil says, “You should check the columns elsewhere. It’s fairly routine, once you learn the moves, heh, heh.” And still laughing he wanders off after Arnold.

      On the stairway up I resolve to speak with Waldo, who merely sits Buddha-like, watching a spot to the immediate right of my head.

      “This is your idea of a column?”

      “A deal is a deal. I delivered a column, didn’t I?”

      “I don’t give a shit about chess. For chrissakes, Waldo, why not let me cover city insurance. It’s got to be more interesting.”

      “I thought about that, when I heard that’s what the Bobsie twins had in mind. But I make it a practice to take a few deep breaths and apply a number of telescopes to the picture before I blow something out of the water. There are a few good points.”

      “Name two.”

      “One, the task can be routinized, and two, it doesn’t require much prose. You can fill the space with those little drawings of the board and the formal game notations.”

      “Those are supposed to make it attractive to me?”

      “Initially I should think it would make it very attractive. Your work while you’re learning the silly game can be more or less done for you.”

      “No deal.”

      “What does that mean, no deal?”

      “It means I tell Pam, it’s been fun but no cigar. And I go back to something real.”

      “You mean the beaches? You’re out of shape for that.”

      “Very funny.”

      “I contracted for a column with a byline and I delivered.”

      “No dice.”

      “And Pam’s the only loser then. You get a new career for not seeing her, is that it?”

      “Sure. Why not?”

      “For one thing there is at least one more attraction to the chess column.”

      “And that is?”

      “Travel. Little out-of-the-way places like Berlin, Paris, Montevideo, Manila, Rome.”

      There is a soft silence as we savor the names. After a mutual smile, I say softly, “I’ve always liked Pam.”

      “She certainly likes you. Needs you. With her, you’re, you’re—“

      “Irreplaceable.”

      “Precisely,” Waldo says looking me right in the eyes. “Now I’ve got a lunch, and you’ve got some research.” Waldo gets up and puts on his crisp blue blazer. “Try 794.8,” Waldo says.

      “What?”

      “At the library, 794.8, the chess books.”

      “Most libraries use the Library of Congress system,” I add, “but if you haven’t been in one since, say, 1957, I suppose the Dewey Decimal system would stick in your mind.”

      “Why don’t you try 794.8?” Waldo says with that supreme assurance that comes tasseled and shining from a clear future of endless decades at the club bar.

      Chapter 4

      Pam spreads the little metal pieces on the metal tray in front of her. “Of course I know how to play,” she says, suddenly interested. “My father taught me when I was four or five. He says I could name the pieces when I was two and could correctly play the pawns at four, but then I could never get the knight moves right. So he kept trying and trying to get me to move the knight correctly, but I wouldn’t learn that. I could tell it was very important to him, so I didn’t try to do it. I think I could have done it.”

      “And now you know how to do it.”

      “Now? Why yes, of course, now. I know all about it. Don’t I?” Her voice trails off as if the question weren’t quite a question but rather a short-term meditation on the apostrophe in the phrase.

      “Yes. Well,” I answer, “perhaps we could go through the moves and you demonstrate to me what Daddy taught you so long, long ago.”

      “I’m not that old.”

      “Of course not. What is this?”

      “Bishop. It moves on the diagonals only. You have two—one for the black diagonals and one for the white diagonals. I bishop pair is very powerful, do you know why?”

      But I have begun a quiet, seething meditation. So this is the perfect revenge from A & P How perfect indeed! Spending my time learning little moves on little diagonals on little black and white boards.

      “Do you know why? You can figure it out, can’t you?” Her voice sounds like some echoing incantation toward self-improvement, some weird conscience spin-off flailing through the thick, heavy, dusty, hot air in Ward Five of the Tampa Memorial Hospital. To become irreplaceable for her would mean answering such questions forever. Chalking off the weeks, years, decades of answered questions. Yes, the bishop pair is powerful for the obvious reason, the obvious reason—what was it?

      Pam was saying, “For the obvious reason that all the squares are covered—sort of, at least—the black and white diagonals are covered.”

      “What’s the point of the game?”

      “To capture the king, to checkmate the king, so he has to surrender.”

      “I know that. I mean what is the point of the game? Why do people play it?”

      “My father said it was wonderful to kill a whole afternoon and evening. It made time pass so quickly that almost any rainy day went by lickety split,” Pam answers.

      “That’s why people play it—to kill time?”

      “That’s why Daddy plays it, I think. But it is a good question. We should ask him. I will ask him when he comes.”

      “He comes often?”

      “Oh, oh yes,” Pam says, not convinced of it herself, “whenever Dr. Coffee says he can come, he comes. Unless he’s staying out at the ranch.”

      “Can we go through the moves some more?”

      Pam pushes the rooks and the king and queen through their paces. She avoids the knights.

      “My book says the knight moves one up and two over or two up and one over,” I offer as a lead to a sensitive area.

      “Your book?” she asks evidently hurt that I have outside references.

      “Learn Chess Fast,” I answer. “Waldo got it for me at the library, 794.81R.”

      “They write books about chess?” she says slowly, evidently impressed.

      “Do they ever. Some fellow named Reinfield must have written fifty.”

      “Reinfield,” Pam repeats, ever softer. “Reinfield.” The sound intrigues her and I realize the chess lesson is over for the day. She sits back on the bed, begins to fool with the peculiar yellow nubbins of the spread. It’s not the hospital spread, I decide. A little redecoration possible for, or by, long-term patients, little markers that the room is more than a way station, a kind of home away from home, is that it? She begins to clap her hands together, eyes lifting over her fingers toward the windows, partially cranked open. Steel