Chapter 16: ch.16 [Unbelievable.]

The card lay face down on the table all through Sunday.

Neither of them touched it.

"I played the engine this morning." said Astrid, to her tea.

"How did it go?"

"I won."

"Is that good?"

"It is quiet." She set the cup square on the saucer.

"It knows what I will do before I do. So I do the same thing. Every day. At full strength."

Her thumb pressed once into the table.

"I need someone who might do something stupid."

"I’m right here."

"You are making a face."

He fixed it.

"Strangers," she went on. "Public tables. No ratings. No one who knows the name."

"Ingrid’s going to say no."

"Ingrid will not be told until it is arranged."

From the doorway: "I heard."

Ingrid did not look up from her tablet.

"No. Somebody is watching this building. A man was on the roof across the street yesterday."

"That is why." Astrid folded her hands.

"Whoever is watching expects me indoors."

Ingrid closed her eyes for a very long time.

? ? ?

The disguise arrived in a plain brown box.

A wig.

Bright copper, somewhere between a traffic cone and a fox.

"It was the only one in stock."

"It’s orange," said Astrid.

"It is auburn."

Astrid put it on.

It sat on her head like a small, determined animal.

Her eyebrows beneath it were white as frost.

Seth bit the inside of his cheek until it hurt.

"Say it."

"It’s bold."

"Seth."

"It’s very bold."

She turned and took his gray university hoodie off the hook.

He had not offered it.

She had simply noticed it there, three days running.

She pulled it over her head.

The sleeves stopped halfway down her forearms. The hem sat at her waist like a crop top that had lost its nerve.

Six foot three of copper-haired champion stood in the middle of the room, looking like a lighthouse trying to be a mailbox.

"It smells like me..." Seth said.

It was not what he had meant to say at all.

Astrid went still inside the hood.

Then she drew the drawstring tight.

"Good." she said.

"It is a more convincing disguise."

"Not the fishing one." said Ingrid, from the doorway.

"Not the fishing one." said Seth.

"Ninety minutes," said Ingrid.

"I will be on the path. In sunglasses. I will hate every second."

Seth reached for his coat.

"I’d like to play too."

Astrid turned.

"You will sit on the bench. In my line of..."

"I’d like to play."

"I will be unable to see your board."

"You’ve seen my boards."

A pause. A long one.

"A different table." said Astrid.

"Different table."

"No names."

"No names."

She pulled the hood a little lower.

Her neck had gone pink under the copper.

? ? ?

The park was loud with Sunday.

Scooters.

A man selling pretzels.

The chess tables in a row under old maples, scarred and sun-bleached, each with a worn board and a handful of regulars.

Astrid sat at the first empty one.

A man two tables over lowered his coffee and became fascinated by something in the middle distance.

A woman with a stroller slowed. "Lovely wig."

"Thank you..." said Astrid.

"The color suits you."

"It does not."

"No," the woman agreed, already walking.

"But it’s great."

Seth took the table beside hers.

His opponent was a cabdriver on his break, wedding ring on a chain at his neck.

"Eleven hundred on a good day," he said.

"Name’s Benny. Nobody beats Benny’s horse."

"His horse?"

"The knight."

Seth laid the card by the board.

He did not look at it.

He did not need to.

He played.

On move eight, Benny’s horse jumped, and Seth saw it a whole move early.

Two big pieces side by side.

He had seen that before.

He had seen it in pigeons.

He moved the queen.

Benny stared at the board.

"Huh."

At table one, Astrid’s first opponent sat down.

A man with a mustache like a push broom.

"Walter," he said, and did not look up past her shoulder.

Seth’s game went on.

On move twenty-two, a rook sat on a square that made his whole body hum.

A sacrifice. A real one.

The kind that blond man on a throne would have screamed about.

It wanted it so badly his hand twitched.

He looked at it for a long time.

Then he pushed a pawn.

A small, dull pawn, one square forward.

Benny grinned. "Boring!"

"Yeah," said Seth.

He traded the queens.

He built a passed pawn on the far side and walked it home like someone walking a dog.

Forty-one moves.

He checked the card once, at the end, and nothing on the board had been loose.

"You got me," said Benny, and clapped him on the shoulder. Twice. Warm and rough. "Pretzel?"

At table one, a piece clicked down much harder than it needed to.

Seth looked up.

Astrid was not looking at Walter.

Her eyes were on Benny’s hand, still on Seth’s shoulder.

Then, as if the hand had always been a puzzle she had solved on the first move, they went back to the board.

"Draw?" said Walter, in a small voice.

She looked at the position for the first time in four minutes.

She had lost a pawn.

It was not a large pawn.

It was the first one she had lost in the park.

"Draw." said Astrid.

Walter shook her hand as if she had given him a kidney.

"I’ll tell my grandchildren I drew a woman named Astra."

Seth took the pretzel because it was easier than the alternative.

A boy, maybe eleven, had been watching his board all game.

"That was kind of boring..." the boy said, not unkindly.

Seth looked at the table beside his.

Three deep. Nobody at his.

He had won.

He was invisible again, and it fit like an old coat.

It did not fit anymore.

? ? ?

After that, they came in a line.

A student with a laptop bag.

A bearded man who said, "I’ve been waiting for this all my life," and then lost in nine moves with a look of sacred peace.

The sound changed first.

Scooters stopped.

A dog stopped barking.

The pretzel man stood with the tongs in his hand and did not use them.

Only the wood.

Click.

Under the hood, her mouth was doing something it did not know how to do in front of cameras.

She was humming.

A few notes, off-key, under her breath.

She tapped one finger in time on the table.

Seth’s hand rose to his chest without his permission.

He had once whispered a promise to a television.

He had been wrong about what it would look like.

He was not counting.

That was the new thing.

He noticed it the way you notice a clock has stopped.

The woman in the green coat sat down as the light began to turn.

She played well. For twenty moves, the position looked equal.

Then Astrid took the smallest possible advantage.

One pawn.

A single step on a square that had always been hers.

The woman laid her king on its side.

The hood slipped an inch.

A copper curl showed.

One white eyebrow caught the sun.

The woman smiled, very softly.

"Thank you. That was an honor."

She left, and did not say why.

The last was a boy of ten, backpack on both shoulders, sneakers that did not reach the ground.

"Are you good?"

"I am adequate."

"My dad says adequate means okay."

"Your father is correct."

He lost in nine moves.

He looked at the board a very long time.

He laid down his king.

"Can we play again? I wasn’t ready."

"You were ready. You were simply wrong."

"Then I want to be wrong again. But better."

Somebody in the crowd laughed, one short breath.

Astrid reset the board slowly, so he could watch every piece go home.

"Look at your bishop," she said.

"Before you move it. Ask what it wants."

"It’s a bishop."

"Ask anyway."

Seth went very still at his empty table.

A yellow kitchen he had never seen.

A woman with a math teacher’s hands.

He did not know about the kitchen.

He only knew he had heard that question go out, and had never heard it come back the other way.

"I think," said the boy, with great care,

"it wants to be out of the corner."

"Then let it out."

? ? ?

The sun had begun to go.

She lifted two fingers from the table.

Come here.

Seth crossed the grass.

The hood had fallen back.

The wig sat crooked.

Her cheeks were pink from the afternoon.

"I lost a pawn to Walter..." said Astrid.

"You drew."

"I was watching your board."

"It was boring."

"It was not." She squared the king on its square.

"I counted. Forty-one moves. Not one hanging piece."

His ears went red.

She had been counting him.

That was all.

She did not say anything else.

She looked at the board as if it were a room after a good party.

Behind her, past the maples, a teenager at the edge of the crowd held his phone low and sideways, the way people hold a phone when

they would like you to think it is not recording.

The lens caught the sun once.

Seth’s stomach dropped.

He looked for Ingrid.

She was already looking at the teenager.

She did not move.

She stood very straight in her camel coat, paper cup halfway to her mouth.

Around them, the crowd was talking. Low, awed voices.

"Did you see how fast that was?"

"She doesn’t even look like she’s trying."

A man near the pretzel cart said it quietly,

almost to himself.

"She plays like the strongest player in the world."

"Like the woman who never loses." someone added.

"Yeah," said the first man. "Exactly like her."

Nobody said a name.

The strongest player in the world sat at a worn stone table in a borrowed hoodie and a copper wig, and not one person in the park pointed at her.

They kept the secret for her.

All of them.

Seth stood in the last of the gold with his heart going very fast.

Then Ingrid’s phone buzzed.

Once.

Then again.

She did not look up from it.