“How dare you throw my dog into your closet!” Lily said.
“Dogs are only permitted in this building if they’re confined to a box,” I explained. “I haven’t any boxes. Now tell me what good tidings brought you here? I haven’t seen you in months.” Mercifully, I thought.
“Harry’s throwing you a farewell dinner,” she said, sitting on the piano bench and tossing down the rest of her wine. “He says you can name the date. He’s preparing the entire meal himself.”
Carioca’s little claws were tearing at the inside of my closet door, but I ignored it.
“I’d love to come to dinner,” I said. “Why don’t we make it this Wednesday? I’ll probably be leaving by next weekend.”
“Fine,” said Lily. Now thuds could be heard from the closet as Carioca hurled his minuscule body against the door. Lily moved slightly from her seat on the piano bench.
“May I take my dog out of the closet, please?”
“Are you leaving?” I said hopefully.
I plucked my pile of brushes from the oil can and went over to the sink to rinse them off, as if she’d already departed. Lily was silent for a moment. Then she said, “I was just wondering, have you planned anything for this afternoon?”
“My plans don’t seem to be working out today,” I said from the pantry as I poured liquid soap into the hot water and it formed lathery bubbles.
“I was wondering whether you’d ever seen Solarin play,” she said, smiling weakly and looking over at me with large gray eyes.
I put the brushes into the water and stared at her. This sounded suspiciously like an invitation to a chess match. Lily took great pride in never attending chess matches unless she herself was a contender.
“Who’s Solarin?” I asked.
Lily looked at me in total amazement, as if I’d just asked who was the queen of England. “I had forgotten that you don’t read the papers,” she said. “Everyone is talking about it. This is the political event of the decade! He’s supposed to be the finest chess player since Capablanca, a ‘natural.’ But he’s just been let out of Soviet Russia for the first time in three years.…”
“I thought Bobby Fischer was supposed to be the world’s best player,” I said as I twirled my brushes in the hot lather. “What was all the shooting about in Reykjavik last summer?”
“Well, at least you’ve heard of Iceland,” said Lily, standing up and coming over to lean against the pantry door. “The fact is, Fischer hasn’t played since. There are rumors that he won’t defend his title, that he’ll never play in public again. The Russians are agog. Chess is their national sport, and they’re all clawing each other trying to scramble to the top. If Fischer fails to defend, there are simply no contenders for the title outside Russia.”
“So whichever Russian comes out best has a clear shot at the title,” I said. “And you think this guy …”
“Solarin.”
“You think Solarin will be it?”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Lily said, waxing to her theme. “That’s the amazing thing about it. Everyone believes he’s the best, but he doesn’t have the backing of the Russian Politburo. An absolute must for any Russian player. In fact, for the last few years the Russians haven’t let him play!”
“Why not?” I put the brushes into the drying rack and wiped my hands on a towel. “If they’re so hot on winning that it’s a matter of life and death …”
“He’s not of the Soviet mold, apparently,” said Lily as she pulled the wine bottle out of the fridge and poured herself another glass. “There was some brouhaha at a tournament in Spain three years ago. Solarin was whisked off in the dead of night, recalled to Mother Russia. At first they said he’d been taken ill, then they said he’d had a nervous breakdown. All sorts of stories and then—silence. Nothing’s been heard of him since. Until this week.”
“What happened this week?”
“This week, out of a clear blue sky, Solarin arrives in New York, simply embedded in a cadre of KGB men. He marches into the Manhattan Chess Club and says he wants to enter the Hermanold Invitational. Now this is outrageous on several counts. An invitational means you must be invited to attend. Solarin wasn’t invited. Second, it’s a zone five invitational, zone five being the USA. As opposed to zone four, which is the USSR. You can imagine the consternation when they saw who he was.”
“Why couldn’t they just refuse his entry?”
“Bloody hell!” said Lily with glee. “John Hermanold, the sponsor of the tournament, used to be a theatrical producer. Since the Fischer sensation in Iceland there’s been an upsurge in the chess market. There’s money in it now. Hermanold would commit murder to get a name like Solarin’s on the ticket.”
“I don’t understand how Solarin got out of Russia for this tournament if the Soviets don’t want him to play.”
“My darling, that is the question,” Lily said. “And the KGB bodyguard certainly suggests that he comes with government blessings, doesn’t it? Oh, it’s a fascinating mystery. That’s why I thought you’d like to go today.…” Lily paused.
“Go where?” I said sweetly, though I knew perfectly well what she was leading up to. I enjoyed watching her squirm. Lily had made such press out of her total indifference to the competition. “I don’t play the man,” she’d been quoted as saying, “I play the board.”
“Solarin is playing this afternoon,” she said hesitantly. “It’s his first public play since that thing in Spain. The game today is sold out, the tickets are being scalped for a fortune. It starts in an hour, but I think I could get us in—”
“Gee, thanks,” I cut in. “But I’ll pass. I really find chess pretty boring to watch. Why don’t you go by yourself?”
Lily gripped her wineglass and sat stiffly on the piano bench. When she spoke it was with some strain.
“You know I can’t do that,” she said quietly.
I felt certain this was the first time Lily had ever had to ask a favor of anyone. If I accompanied her to the game, she could pretend she was merely doing a favor for a friend. If she showed up alone asking for a ticket, the chess columns would have a heyday. Solarin might be news, but in New York chess circles Lily Rad’s appearance at a game might be bigger news. She was one of the top-ranked women players in the United States, and surely the most flamboyant.
“Next week,” she said between tight lips, “I play the winner of today’s game.”
“Ah. Now I see,” I told her. “Solarin might be the winner. And since you’ve never played him, and undoubtedly never read up on his style of play …”
I walked over to the closet and opened the door. Carioca slunk out furtively. Then he ran over to my foot and started wrestling with a loose thread on my canvas espadrilles. I looked down at him for a moment, then scooped him up with my toe and drop-kicked him into a pile of pillows. He wriggled with pleasure and ripped out a few feathers with his sharp little teeth.
“I can’t imagine why he’s so attached to you,” said Lily.
“Simply a question of who’s to be master,” I said. Lily was silent.
We watched Carioca screw around in the pillows as if it were something of interest. Though I knew very little of chess, I recognized when I held center board. I didn’t feel that the next move should be mine.
“You have to go with me,” Lily said at last.
“I think you’ve phrased that wrong,” I pointed out.
Lily stood up again and came over to me. She looked me right in the eye. “You’ve no idea how important this tournament is to me,” she said. “Hermanold has swung the chess commissioners to permit this tournament to be ranked, by inviting every GM and IM in zone five. Had I placed well and picked up points, I could have gone into the big leagues. I might have even won it. If Solarin hadn’t shown up.”
The complexities of seeding chess players were mysterious, as I knew. The award of titles such as grand master (GM) and international master (IM) was even more so. You’d think with a game as mathematical as chess, the gu
idelines for supremacy would be a little clearer, but it operated like a good old boys’ club. I could understand Lily’s exasperation, but something puzzled me.
“What difference would it make if you came in second?” I said. “You’re still one of the top-ranked women in the United States—”
“Top-ranked women! Women?” Lily looked as if she were about to spit on the floor. I remembered that she made a big point of never playing against women. Chess was a man’s game, and to win at it you had to beat men. Lily had been waiting over a year for the IM title she felt she’d already earned. This tournament was important, I now realized, because they could no longer withhold the title if she came in first over people who outranked her.
“You understand nothing,” Lily said. “This is a ‘knockout’ tournament. I’m paired against Solarin in his second game, assuming we both win our first, which we will. If I play him and lose, I’m out of the tournament altogether.”
“You don’t think you can beat him?” I said. Though Solarin was such a big deal, I was still surprised Lily would admit the possibility of defeat.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “My chess coach thinks not. He thinks Solarin could cream me all over the board. He could pull my pants down. You don’t understand what it feels like to lose at chess. I hate to lose. I hate it.” Her teeth were gritted and her hands folded into tight little balls.
“Don’t they have to pair you against people with the same rank as yours at the onset?” I asked. It seemed I had read something about that.
“There are only a few dozen players in the United States who are seeded at over twenty-four hundred points,” Lily replied gloomily. “And they’re obviously not all in this tournament. Though Solarin’s last seeding was over twenty-five hundred, there are only five people between my rank and his who are here. But playing him so early on, I won’t have a chance to warm up in other games.”
Now I understood. The theatrical producer who was running this tournament had invited Lily because of her publicity value. He wanted to sell tickets, and Lily was the Josephine Baker of chess. She had everything but the ocelot and the bananas. Now that he had a bigger drawing card in the form of Solarin, Lily could be sacrificed as a dispensable commodity. He’d pair her off against Solarin early and wipe her out. It meant nothing that this tournament could serve as a vehicle for her title. Suddenly it occurred to me that the chess world wasn’t much different from the world of certified public accounting.
“Okay, you’ve explained it,” I said. I headed off down the hallway.
“Where are you going?” Lily said, raising her voice.
“I’d like to take a shower,” I called back over my shoulder.
“A shower?” She sounded a little hysterical. “What on earth for?”
“I’ll have to bathe and change,” I said, pausing at the bathroom door to turn and look at her, “if we’re going to make that chess game in an hour.”
Lily looked at me in silence. She had the grace to smile.
I felt absurd riding in an open car in mid-March when snow clouds were closing in and the temperature had dropped to thirty. Lily was swathed in her fur cape. Carioca was busily tearing off the tassels and scattering them on the floorboards. I was wearing only a black wool coat, and I was freezing.
“Is there a lid to this thing?” I asked against the wind.
“Why don’t you let Harry make up a fur for you? After all, it’s his business, and he adores you.”
“It won’t help me much right now,” I told her. “Now explain why this game is a closed session at the Metropolitan Club. I’d think the sponsor would want to get as much publicity as possible from Solarin’s first game in years on Western soil.”
“You certainly understand sponsors,” Lily agreed. “But Solarin’s playing Fiske today. Having a public match instead of a quiet, private one might backfire. Fiske is more than a little crazy.”
“Who’s Fiske?”
“Antony Fiske,” she said, drawing up her fur. “A very big player. He’s a British GM, but he’s registered in zone five because he used to live in Boston when he was playing actively. I’m surprised he accepted, since he hasn’t played in years. At his last tournament he had the audience cleared from the room. He thought the room was bugged and there were mysterious vibrations in the air that interfered with his brain waves. All chess players are tottering on the brink. They say Paul Morphy, the first U.S. champion, died sitting up fully clothed in a bathtub floating with women’s shoes. Madness is the occupational hazard of chess, but you won’t find me going nuts. It only happens to men.”
“Why to men?”
“Because chess, my dear, is such an Oedipal game. Kill the King and fuck the Queen, that’s what it’s all about. Psychologists love to follow chess players about to see if they wash their hands too much, sniff at old sneakers, or masturbate between sessions. Then they write it all up in the Journal of the AMA.”
The powder-blue Rolls Corniche pulled up in front of the Metropolitan Club at Sixtieth Street, just off Fifth Avenue. Saul let us out. Lily handed Carioca to him and bounded ahead of me up the canopied ramp that ran along the edge of a cobbled courtyard and led to the entrance. Saul had not spoken during our trip, but now he winked at me. I shrugged my shoulders and followed Lily.
The Metropolitan Club is a weary remnant of old New York. A private men’s residential club, it seemed nothing had changed within its walls since the last century. The faded red carpeting in the foyer could have used some shampooing, and the dark beveled wood of the reception desk needed a little wax. But the main lounge made up in charm for what the entrance lacked in polish.
Opening off the lobby, it was an enormous room with thirty-foot ceilings carved in palladio and encrusted with gold leaf. A single chandelier dropped on a long cord from the center. Two walls were composed of tiered balconies whose ornately sculptured railings overlooked the center like a Venetian courtyard. The third wall contained gold-veined mirrors to the ceiling, reflecting the other two. The fourth side was separated from the lobby by high louvered screens in red velvet. Scattered across the marble floor, checkered black and white like a chessboard, were dozens of small tables surrounded by leather chairs. At the far corner was an ebony piano beside a Chinese lacquered screen.
As I was studying the decor, Lily called to me from the balcony just above. Her fur cape was dangling over the side. She waved me toward the wide expanse of marble steps that swept up in a curve from the foyer to the first balcony where she stood.
Upstairs, Lily motioned me into a small card room and followed me inside. The room was moss-green with large French windows overlooking Fifth Avenue and the park. There were several workmen bustling about removing leather-topped card tables and green baize gaming tables. They gave us abrupt glances as they stacked the tables against a wall near the door.
“This is where the game will take place,” Lily told me. “But I’m not sure whether anyone has arrived. We have half an hour yet.” Turning to a passing workman, she said, “Do you know where John Hermanold is?”
“Maybe in the dining room.” The man shrugged. “You could call upstairs and have him paged.” He looked her up and down unflatteringly. Lily was dangling out of her dress, and I was glad I’d come in conservative gray flannels. I started to remove my coat, but the workman stopped me.
“Ladies ain’t allowed in the gaming room,” he told me. To Lily he added, “Nor in the dining room, neither. You’d best go downstairs and phone up there.”
“I’m going to murder that bastard Hermanold,” Lily whispered between clenched teeth. “A private men’s club, for God’s sake?” She went off down the corridor in search of her prey, and I turned back into the room and plopped down on a chair amid the hostile glances of the laborers. I didn’t envy Hermanold when Lily found him.
I sat there in the gaming room gazing through the dirty windows that overlooked Central Park. There were a few limp flags hanging outside, and the flat winter light diluted t
heir already faded colors.
“Excuse me,” said a haughty voice behind me. I turned to see a tall, attractive man in his fifties with dark hair and silvery temples. He was wearing a navy blazer with an elaborate crest, gray trousers, and a white turtleneck sweater. He reeked of Andover and Yale.
“No one is permitted into this room until the tournament begins,” he said firmly. “If you have a ticket, I can seat you downstairs until then. Otherwise I’m afraid you’ll have to leave the club.” His initial attractiveness had begun to wane. Pretty is as pretty does, I thought. But aloud I said, “I prefer to remain here. I’m waiting for someone to bring my ticket—”
“I’m afraid not,” he said abruptly. He actually put his hand beneath my elbow. “I’ve made commitments to the club that we’d observe the rules. Furthermore, there are security considerations.…”
I seemed to be remaining in my seat, though he was tugging at me with all the dignity he could muster. Hooking my ankles around the legs of my chair, I smiled up at him. “I promised my friend Lily Rad that I would wait,” I told him. “She’s looking for—”
“Lily Rad!” he said, releasing my arm as if it were a hot poker. I settled back with a sweet expression. “Lily Rad is here?” I continued smiling and nodded.
“Permit me to introduce myself, Miss, er …”
“Velis,” I said, “Catherine Velis.”
“Miss Velis, I am John Hermanold,” he told me. “I am the tournament sponsor.” He grabbed my hand and shook it heartily. “You’ve no idea what an honor it is, having Lily come to this game. Do you know where I might find her?”
“She went off looking for you,” I said. “The workmen told us you were in the dining room. She’s probably gone up there.”
“To the dining room,” Hermanold repeated, clearly envisioning the worst. “I’ll just go off and find her, shall I? Then we’ll round you up, and I’ll buy you both a drink downstairs.” And he popped out the door.
Now that Hermanold was such an old chum, the workmen skirted around me with grudging respect. I watched as they removed the stacked gaming tables from the room and started setting up rows of chairs facing the windows, leaving an aisle down the center. Then, oddly, they got down on the floor with tape measures and began adjusting the furniture so it was squared to some invisible standard they seemed to be tracing.