Chapter 8: ch.8 [Resting Pulse]

Seth sat on the edge of the bed with the folded paper in his hand and did not open it.

The room was small and clean.

Someone had put a lamp on the nightstand.

Someone had put a glass of water beside it, and a coaster under the glass.

He had never owned a coaster.

He turned the paper over.

Four creases. Soft at the corners.

Still warm from a pocket, though it had been out of that pocket for an hour.

He slid a thumbnail under the first fold.

Through the wall, something rattled.

He stopped.

It rattled again.

Then came a long, rising whistle, the kind of sound a kettle makes when it has been ignored on purpose.

Eleven-forty at night.

He sat with his thumbnail under the fold and listened to the World Champion of chess lose a fight with a stove.

Then he tucked the paper into his pocket, beside the blue cap, and went out.

Astrid stood in the kitchen in the gray hoodie, back straight, spooning loose Earl Grey into a teapot as if every leaf had been assigned a rank.

The whole room smelled of bergamot and scorched enamel.

She did not turn around.

"I am not cooking."

"I didn’t say anything."

"You were about to."

"The kettle’s on the wrong burner."

A pause.

She looked at the stove.

She slid the kettle three inches to the left with enormous dignity.

"You were not asleep," she said.

"No."

"Did you read it?"

Too fast. Too flat. She said it to the teapot.

"No."

"Good."

She lifted the kettle.

The water missed the pot by a hand’s width and ran in a bright sheet across the counter.

Neither of them mentioned it.

Seth reached past her and caught the handle.

His sleeve passed an inch from her shoulder.

She went rigid, like someone standing very still in a room where a bird has just flown in.

He took a dish towel and wiped the counter.

She watched his hands.

"I would prefer," she said slowly.

"to be in another room when you read it."

"Okay."

"A different building would be better."

"Okay."

"Possibly a different country."

"Astrid."

"Yes."

"I’ll wait."

Something in her shoulders let go.

It was a tiny movement.

If he hadn’t spent eleven years studying her on a screen, he would have missed it.

He made the tea.

It came out strong enough to strip paint.

She drank every drop.

At midnight, her door closed.

The light under it stayed on.

He lay in bed with the paper under his pillow, where he could feel it through the cotton, like a coin at the bottom of a well.

He did not open it.

It took more effort than anything he had done all week.

? ? ?

At 4:55 a.m., the basement smelled of rubber and cold iron.

It was bigger than he’d pictured.

Four treadmills in a row.

A black Concept2 rower.

A rack of plates stacked by weight like a library of very heavy books. A bowl of chalk on a shelf, and a pull-up bar bolted to a steel frame.

The fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead, one of them flickering at the edge of hearing.

The floor was spotless.

It looked like a room where someone had spent a great many hours alone.

Astrid stood in the middle of it in black training clothes, her hair braided down her back, arms crossed.

Seth stood in the doorway in a borrowed T-shirt two sizes too large.

NORWEGIAN CHESS FEDERATION. SPRING OPEN, 2014.

"That is mine.." said Astrid.

"I know."

"I was eighteen."

"It’s enormous."

"I was growing."

He stepped inside.

The mirrors gave him everything.

A thin boy.

Sharp collarbones.

Wrists like pencils.

Glasses already sliding down his nose, hair already standing up at the back.

He looked like a question mark wearing a shirt.

"Do not look at yourself like that." said Astrid.

"Like what?"

"As though you are reading a bad review."

"I’m observing."

"You are filing a complaint."

He looked away.

She walked to the rack and lifted down a bar.

An empty one. No plates.

Just a long, bare length of steel, the knurling catching the light like the grip of a very old knife.

She laid it on the bench.

"We begin here."

"That’s it?"

"It weighs twenty kilograms."

"Twenty?"

"Pick it up."

He gripped it.

The knurling bit into his palms like a cat’s tongue.

He lifted.

It rose about six centimeters, and his entire body began to shake.

"Breathe." said Astrid.

"I am."

"Out. Through the mouth."

"I’m dying."

"You are not. Elbows."

She was beside him before he saw her move.

One hand settled flat between his shoulder blades.

The other tapped his elbow, once, lightly.

"Here. Down. Like this."

Her palm was warm through the cotton.

He forgot how to count.

The bar went up.

It was not graceful. His knees knocked. His glasses slid to the very tip of his nose.

But it went up.

"One," said Astrid.

It came down.

"Two."

He pushed. Shook. Pushed.

"Three."

"Move four.."

she said, so quietly that it took him a moment to realize she was using the voice she used for a game clock.

"Is every rep a move?"

"Every rep is a decision. The fifth is where most people stop making them."

He got to six.

He sat on the bench with his head between his knees, listening to his heartbeat hammer at the back of his skull like someone knocking to be let out.

Astrid stood over him.

She did not look at the clock.

She looked at his wrist, resting loose on his knee.

Then, as if she had made up her mind, she knelt and took it.

Two fingers, inside the joint.

Seth stopped breathing.

"Be still."

"I’m still."

"You are vibrating."

"A little."

She lowered her head, counting.

Her braid slid over her shoulder.

A strand had come loose beside her ear.

He could see her lashes, white as frost, and the faint flush along her cheekbone from the cold.

He knew what it wasn’t.

It wasn’t the cold.

"Ninety-four."

"Is that bad?"

"It is high for a man sitting down."

"Oh."

"It is also," said Astrid, in a very odd voice.

"what mine was at five a.m. yesterday."

She let go of his wrist.

She stood.

She turned to the rack and became extremely interested in a set of dumbbells.

Seth stared at the back of her neck.

It had gone slightly pink.

"What’s yours usually?"

"Fifty-two."

"That’s low."

"The federation physician called it unsettling."

"Is that good?"

"It was." She set a dumbbell down. Picked it up again.

"It has been some time since I checked."

He looked at his own wrist.

The place where her fingers had been was still warm.

? ? ?

The sun had not come up.

The narrow windows high along the basement wall were still black. The mirrors held the room in a cold yellow light, and the chalk on the shelf gave off a dry mineral smell, like a classroom in August.

He finished his sets with his arms trembling like boiled noodles.

Astrid worked beside him at the bar.

She made no sound.

She hung, rose, lowered, rose, a long pale line against the steel, braid swinging, breathing so evenly that he lost count at twenty.

At thirty, he forgot he was holding a dumbbell.

At forty, she dropped lightly to the floor and caught him staring.

"What?"

"You’re really strong."

"Yes."

"Like. Really."

"It is maintenance." She wiped her palms on a towel.

"A body is a long game. Neglect it for ten years and it will tell you in a single afternoon, in the middle of a match, at the worst possible moment."

"Is that why you do this?"

"I do it because it is quiet."

She said it so plainly that he almost missed it.

"No one speaks to me down here. No one wants a photograph."

She folded the towel in thirds.

"The weights do not ask how I am feeling."

He didn’t answer.

He found he couldn’t.

He sat on the bench, panting, looking at the mirror, and for a long moment he couldn’t tell what was wrong with it.

Then he saw.

There were two of them.

A tall woman with a white braid. A thin boy in an oversized shirt.

Side by side on a bench, in a long cold sheet of glass.

For most of his life, he had looked at his reflection beside an empty chair.

This one had someone in it.

He looked at it a little too long.

"In a year," said Astrid, still watching the glass.

"you will not recognize the boy on that bench."

"Is that a promise?"

"It is a forecast."

"What’s the difference?"

"A promise is made. A forecast is observed."

She met his eyes in the mirror.

"I intend to observe."

He smiled.

It was small. Crooked. An idiot’s smile.

She looked away first.

Again.

His hand drifted to his pocket.

The paper was there.

Folded.

Soft.

Waiting.

He took it out.

Across the room, Astrid went absolutely still.

She did not turn.

She did not speak.

She stood with her back to him, fingers wrapped around a towel, like a woman listening for a footstep in an empty house.

Seth looked at the paper.

Four creases.

He slid his thumbnail under the first.

The basement door banged open.

"Astrid."

Ingrid stood in the doorway in a charcoal coat, tablet pressed to her chest, her hair a little less perfect than usual.

She looked at the weights.

She looked at the mirrors.

She looked at Astrid, flushed, braided, in black training clothes.

Then at Seth, in the Spring Open shirt, holding a folded paper.

Then at Astrid again.

"Is that the hoodie?" Ingrid said, very quietly.

"It is upstairs."

"Is that the hoodie."

"It is on the hook by the door."

"Because I would like it noted," said Ingrid, closing her eyes.

"that I walked into a basement at five-thirty in the morning and my first thought was whether there was a photographer in the vent."

"There is not."

"I’m going to stand in the corridor and count to ten."

"There is a crisis."

"There is always a crisis. It’s why I own a coat."

Ingrid opened her eyes and held up the tablet.

"Four cameras in the lobby. The federation wants a statement by nine. And someone has found the store."

Seth’s stomach dropped.

"Gus’s store?"

"A reporter has been inside for an hour. She is being very kind to the man at the register. She is asking him very careful questions."

Seth said nothing.

He looked at the paper in his hand.

Then at Astrid.

She had finally turned.

Her face was calm. Smooth. Perfect ice.

But her eyes had gone to his fingers, to the folded square, and stayed there one second too long.

She wanted him to open it.

She was terrified he would.

She said neither.

"Later..." said Astrid.

He closed his hand.

"Later."

He slid the paper back into his pocket.

It settled against the blue cap, unread, like a door he could feel on the other side of a wall.

Ingrid’s heels rang up the stairs. The World Champion followed.

Seth stayed on the bench a moment longer, looking at the mirror.

There was only one of him in it again.

He stood, and went after them.