Author's note: This story has gone and sprouted itself a Chapter 12. That's definitely it though. I'll do my best to keep it coming now we're so close to the end.
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Somehow this isn't what she thought having a coach would be like. She thought there would be more talking.
Demyan continues to contemplate the board in front of him, in fixed, watchful silence, with his hands tented under his chin.
Beth leans back in her chair and stretches both arms above her head. This elicits no response. She yawns, exaggeratedly. His eyes flick to her, but his posture otherwise doesn't change.
"It's been nearly five minutes," Beth says eventually, in an undertone.
Demyan makes his move, and she swears he is a touch more glacial than usual just to make the point. "Mastery is patience."
"There's patience, and then there's falling asleep. I can't play this slowly in competition."
"We are not in competition, ditya. Shut up and play."
Her hand is already moving to the queen at queen's bishop three, but it wasn't what she expected - he's changed the pawn dynamics - and her hand hesitates.
Demyan, as ever, hasn't moved, but his eyes are intent on her hand, and she knows without looking at him that he is as alert as a fox.
Slowly, she shifts her hand away from the queen and to her king's bishop, and Demyan emits a silent wave of satisfaction.
"You could have been U.S. Champion at least," she finds herself saying. "When you were younger." And faster, she manages not to add. "Why didn't you - ?"
His eyes darken, and she realises she's forgotten, again, that his silence is that of a banked volcano.
"Why would you think I want to play for this country?" he says finally, and his voice is sharp and clear.
Beth drops her eyes back to the board, but her voice, a mutinousl mumble, will be heard. "Why wouldn't you want to play for your - "
"Because I would not," he says sharply. He moves his own queen, with an unfamiliar jaggedness, and snaps it into place against her knight.
Beth trades a pawn for his, but her mind is already ten steps ahead, working through the dimensions, the manifestations, of the way he's changed the board. Sometimes, watching him contemplate it, she can almost see the shimmer, the lines of force and radiation, the magnetic field of power, as it expands and contracts -
One day he sat down and started to play, silent as ever, and they were ten moves in before she began to realise that there was something different, something familiarly different, about the way he was moving, setting himself up in opposition to her.
At fifteen moves, she was sure enough to risk it.
"Vasily?"
The hint of a grin passed across his face, and then it was dour and unreadable as ever. "Miss kHarmon."
She'd won, of course, but he'd made her work for it.
He wins, sometimes, if he can wait her into frustration, or do something she doesn't expect, but it's never easy.
It's two to her today. One to him. She got sloppy, underestimated the potential of his queen's bishop. But her mind is alive with move and countermove as she folds the board and he absentmindedly folds the pieces into their red drawstring bag.
"We should go over our plan for each day," she says absently, already picturing the hotel suite again, the furred and gilded rooms, the polished table where she'll lay out her pieces. "How we'll review the games. Before we go…"
He doesn't look at her. "Go?"
"To Moscow. On the tenth. When we go for the championship."
Demyan's hands lie limp on the tabletop after he has muffled the king. "I cannot go with you."
Beth stares at him. "What?"
His face is tinged with the suggestion of a flush; he's turned his face to the side. "I cannot go with you."
Beth flushes. "You'll - You don't have to worry. I'll pay."
"It is not the money." He is definitely reddening, but he doesn't move. "I cannot go with you."
"You mean you won't," Beth says, with a painful spike of bitterness.
He flares up. "Do not tell me what I mean, ditya! I am not making difficult just for fun! I cannot go."
Beth takes a step back. Her chest is heaving. "But how can you - how can I - you can't!"
"I will call you every day," he says, and there is a desperate note in his voice. "We will go over the games. All of them. But I - "
"How could you?" Beth says, and her heart is cold and glittering. "You went to all this trouble - you made me - and now you're just going to - "
"Some of us did not make our own troubles!" he explodes, and his face is dark red. His fists are clenched. "Some of us did not find our troubles in a bottle!"
Beth feels his words reverberate through her, hollow, as a physical blow that leaves her back pressed almost to the wall. They stare at each other, again, across what was once a chess table.
"You think I did not know that smell?" he says bitterly. "You think I have not seen that look in the eye? I am Russian, ditya. You have never fooled me."
Beth had looked up ditya, after the first time they played, and, despite herself, had liked it. Enough that she had never protested. But now, in his mouth, it is foul-tasting, something to be spat.
"Is that why you won't come?" she says, feeling her throat ready to close, everything cold and hard and clear. "Because of my drinking? Because you don't think - "
"I am not coming because I cannot come," he says, and he has turned his face to the wall again, his stocky capable fighter's body limp with defeat. "Because I cannot go back."
The first seeds of comprehension, and shame, begin to germinate in her stomach as she looks at his face.
"So when you left - "
"I cannot go back." Demyan's face has begun to twist painfully. "Because of - what I am - what I was born. I could not be a geroy, you understand? I was not - of the right blood - to be a bogatyr. So when they knew - what I was - I could not play any more - and I could not stay. They would not - allow it. I cannot go back."
In everything she's come to know of this man, everything she's resented and fought and covertly struggled against, she has somehow never doubted that when she sat down to face Borgov again, it would be with his eyes fixed on her. What passes through her, what she feeling as she looks at his shamed, broken face, is something she would never be able to give a name to.
"I'm sorry," she says, and the words are hollow even as she shapes them.
Demyan's face turns back; his eyes are a slow fire. "You keep your pity for yourself, ditya. You make much more use of it there."
"So I have to do this alone," she says slowly. "That's what you're telling me. I have to go alone again." It spirals away in front of her - the nights with nothing to do but move the pieces, and sleeping and waking empty of purpose in the same old bitter self, and the strengthening herself once again -
"No," he says shortly. "Not alone."
"Not alone, how? Alone in every way that matters."
"I will watch. You have - you have learned. It is not the same. I will call you."
They have nothing to say to each other for a few minutes, and Demyan drains his tea in his habitual gesture, with an ironic set to his mouth.
"Monday?" she says, spiritlessly.
"Monday. The place by the station. I will bring the board." He gives her a resigned look as he sets the cup down and turns for the door.
"Wait," she says, before he reaches it.
He puts his hands in his pockets and waits, as though her living room is a train station.
Beth goes to the bureau and pulls out her checkbook. She hesitates for a long moment, and then with a steady hand writes below his name One thousand dollars and 0/100.
"You've finished my strawberry jelly," she says when she passes it to him, folded.
Demyan puts it straight into his pocket, as usual, and gives her a single sharp nod. "I will buy you another jar."
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It's days now, just days, and she has been half packed for a week without ever getting further.
Four weeks in Moscow. Twenty-four games. Four weeks. Facing Borgov, over and over, every day. She'd always pictured, from that moment in the Wheel Cafe when he humbled her, that Demyan would be there. That he and she would hole up in that room, every night, and rehash Borgov's moves. "Here, ditya," he would say. "Bastard Borgov leaves a weakness. He does not see the power of the queen pawn." And she would nod seriously at him, and take him apart.
Everything now, beyond that moment where she lands at Sheremetyevo and climbs into another battered cab, is a yawning gulf. An endless stretch of time, of herself. And Borgov.
Finally on Tuesday evening she can take no more of it.
Long ringing. Click. "Hello?"
"I want you to come to Moscow," she says, with no preamble.
Benny laughs. "Jesus Christ, Beth. I have never - in my whole life - known someone with balls as big as yours. Male or female."
"Is that yes?" she says directly.
"Fuck no. Why would I?"
"Because I'm asking. Because I want you to. Please, Benny, come to Moscow."
There is a rumble low in Benny's throat. "As what?"
"Pardon?"
"What am I to you, exactly? A dog? A faithful hound, who sleeps in my kennel until you decide to take me walkies?"
"I don't even know what you mean," she says, with grim determination.
"Like hell you don't. Connecticut was it. We're done. No more faithful hound, Harmon. You'll have to try someone else."
"Try is a loser's word," she says, with spiteful pleasure.
"Well, I guess you're going there to figure that out for yourself," he snaps back.
Beth feels dizzied. "You mean - you think that?"
"I think you burned out your right to ask me that long ago." She hears a rustling, shifting noise while she reels, and then Benny's voice, a little contrite, admits, "I might not have meant that."
Beth pushes it aside. "It doesn't matter. I'm asking you to come to Moscow. For me. For everything."
There is a silence.
"For America."
Benny makes an explosive noise. "Are you kidding me?"
"Please."
"I think there's something you forgot to say first."
"Stop it, Benny."
"And if you insult me by saying anything about money, I'm hanging up this phone right now."
"I haven't said a word about money."
"I'm not going anywhere. Not until you say it."
"Say what."
"What I deserve to hear. And as what."
"I'm sorry?"
"You want me to come to Moscow." He clears his throat. "As what? And don't you dare say as your friend. If we were ever friends, this isn't it."
"I don't understand what you mean," she says, a desperate conscious lie.
"Last chance, Beth. You want me there, you say it."
The silence rings on, and on.
"...Okay," he says, and the resignation and pain are so twined together in his voice that she can't separate them. "That tells me everything. Okay."
"Please, Benny…"
"I can't, Beth," he says, muffled. "I can't."
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Townes has taken to calling and suggesting they have coffee once or twice a week, if she doesn't call him first; it's not hard to detect, in his attentiveness, an anxious concern. Truth be told, it makes her feel a little… stifled.
He never asks her directly if she's had a drink.
"So how's the preparation going?" he says when they're seated in the cafe near the Leader offices.
"I'm packed, I guess." She remembers her chess books, her boards, in disorder on the counter from her sudden frantic need to dive into the Polish Opening. "I just don't feel… ready. Maybe there isn't a ready. I don't know."
"Is it working out with Demyan?" Townes gives a flash of his boyish smile to the waitress as she puts the cups down.
"I never thought it would. But… I think it is. In a weird way. He's different from anyone I've ever played with, but… I think it helps."
"That's good."
She'd forgotten, truthfully, that Townes had been the one, what feels like so long ago, to tell her she needed someone. That there was value in someone, even if they couldn't beat you. "You were right about a coach. I don't know if I ever told you that, but you were. Thank you."
She feels, more than sees, him smile; his hair is falling into one eye again, but her fingers no longer itch to push it back. "Anytime. But don't blow my head up too much. I feel too smug about myself already when I've had contact with genius."
Beth has been trying, really trying, to remember to ask him questions too. "How are things at the Leader?"
"Okay." He sips his black coffee and makes a face. "Trouble in the newsroom, some of the reporters want to form a union… and the owner is dead against it. I get dragged into the disputes because the news editor is a coward."
"Sounds like fun." She twirls a strand of hair around her finger.
"It'll all work out one of these days. I get some good tickets to shows, because there's only so much writing you can do about chess, and the arts desk lead doesn't have time to go to everything."
Beth allows herself a smile. "Now that sounds better. Can I come sometime?"
"Sure. You're not back for a month, though, right?"
"Right."
"And speaking of writing about chess - I have another profile of you on the hook. For when you win."
"Please," she protests half-heartedly, a little glow in her stomach. "Don't tempt fate."
"Who should believe it if not me? I'm pinning my career on yours, Harmon. Exclusive access to the hometown heroine, the new Queen of international chess." He lines her up through the frame of his hands jokingly. "And your portrait too. It'll be in every paper in the country. With my byline and photo credit."
Beth tries to smile, but it falls flat almost immediately. Townes has never been slow; his hands drop to his sides quickly. "Beth, what is it?"
"It just…" she says, fighting to dredge it out, to put it into words he can understand, "it's such a long trip. And it was hard the last time, until you came. The State Department, they were all over me. It was like a dream - parts of it, a wonderful dream - but I just don't see how I can keep it up for so long…"
Townes is studying her face seriously. "I think you can do it. You're in a different place this time. You've prepared differently. And you won, remember. You beat them all."
Sometimes," she says, getting the words out with difficulty, "I just - don't believe - that I'm real. People see this thing, this person - this - player, and I'm just not sure that - that she really exists. Or that I can be her. I don't think I am her, when nobody's watching…"
His hand finds hers on the tabletop, familiar now and strong, fingertip calluses and ink stains. "You are Beth. You've earned everything you have. You are real."
"And that thing - you said. I don't think I want to be in every paper. I never wanted that. I'll do it for you, but…"
"You don't have to," he says seriously, and when she gains the courage to raise her eyes from the tabletop, he hasn't let go, and his dark eyes are soft and real. "You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. But they will write about you, and the only thing you can do about that is get out there first. Make a story of your own, and give it to them."
"Maybe you should come work for me," she says, with a painful little hitch of breath. "And handle all my press."
He smiles his boyish, playful, heartbreaking smile, the one that wrapped itself around her when she was sixteen years old and didn't let go. "Maybe."
"I'd pay and everything. You'll be there, won't you?" she asks, despite the pit in her stomach that warns her not to. "For the end?"
Townes's smile fades; he lets go of her hand. "I don't know, Beth. It's an expensive trip, and it's not easy. I have responsibilities here, at the paper… and elsewhere. I have other stories I have to write. It's not a good time for the Leader."
"Please," she says, through a growing feeling of dread, a dissolving of the will. "I really need you to come."
He looks at her steadily. "I'll come if I can. But that's all I can say right now. I'm sorry."
Beth drops her gaze and toys with her coffee spoon. "I know."
"It's going to be okay, Beth."
"How did you get so brave?" she says, summoning up her newspaper smile. "How did you - find the courage - to do everything? To - live your life, the way you wanted to?"
He exhales hard, and leans back in the stiff chair. "I'm not sure it was really a matter of courage. I hid for a long time. From myself as much as anyone. I never had some moment of epiphany, some road to Damascus moment… although I sure sat in Sunday school a lot. I just… couldn't not do it, one day. But I'm not some fearless champion. You know that. I'm as afraid as anyone."
"You're brave to me," she says, low.
They stand looking at each other on the street when they are finished. Townes places his hands on her shoulders and kisses her gently on the forehead. Then he turns back to the Leader offices, and she goes to find a cab.
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She's never been to this neighborhood before. Jolene's address was on the check that she first wrote Beth, for the invitational, and she wrote it down before she deposited it. It's in Shelbyville, between Louisville and the Capitol and State Supreme Court. "Got to be near all that cracker money and power," she said cheerfully when Beth asked her, and Beth stored it away in an inner pocket, a talisman.
She flinches from the eyes when she gets out of her cab on Jolene's street, and draws her white cotton coat more tightly around herself.
Jolene's apartment is on the second floor, and she can hear music drifting out by the time she knocks, music and the smell of cooking.
There's a startled expression on Jolene's face when she opens the door, and Beth hates it immediately.
"Beth." Jolene opens the door wider unhesitatingly, and the pit in Beth's stomach is instantly a little shallower. "The hell?"
Beth ducks her way in, and finds herself standing in Jolene. The furniture, the rock and roll drifting from the wireless, the pictures on the walls, the sharp spiced smell from the stove. She breathes in deeply. "I'm sorry, I know you didn't say I could…"
"I didn't say you couldn't either." Jolene is holding a wooden spoon. She shuts the door behind Beth, and she is everywhere, sound and taste and smell and most of all body. "You don't have to ask pardon when you come 'round. But I thought you might call, or something."
Beth smiles a shy smile. "I should have, I guess. But I leave in two days, and I just… I really wanted to see you."
"Is this some more guilt shit, about the money from last time? You paid me back." Jolene crosses back to the stove. "And surely you got stuff to do. Pack all your best frillies and dresses from the camera. Stay up all night playing, or whatever it is you do to get ready." She dips the spoon in whatever is cooking there - chicken, maybe? - and lifts it to her lips.
That one hits her just right, and Beth can't repress a childish giggle. "Pretty much, yeah. I'm packed, but… I'm going to be gone a long time. And I wanted to say…"
"So say it. We got plenty of time. You can stay for dinner." Jolene shakes her head, her earrings swinging joyfully, and sprinkles in more salt.
Beth takes a deep breath. "Would you come?"
It takes a second for the words to register; then Jolene drops the spoon in the pot and swings to face Beth again, her eyes narrowed. "Say that again."
"I want you to come. To Moscow. With me." Beth swallows.
Jolene doesn't say anything for a second; then she shakes her head again, the hollow, resonant sound of her earrings hitting. "Are you out of your mind?"
"I know it's crazy."
"It's more than crazy. I got a job. I got shit to do. I got people to take care of. You think I'm going to blow everything I've saved, everything I've built for myself, to follow you? What world do you live in?"
"I know it's crazy. And I know I have no right to ask." Beth can't look away from Jolene's eyes, their anger, their fear, their hope. "But the fact is… I need you."
Jolene's eyes flash; it's all anger now. "Bitch, how many times do I have to tell you. I'm not your goddamn savior! I'm not your personal mammy! I swear to god, it's like you think other people are just walk-on parts in your drama. I've had enough of this shit."
"I wish I was you."
Jolene stills. "Cracker, shut the fuck up."
"I mean it." Beth feels an unearthly calm stealing through her body; it's Jolene, now, who is lost, unmoored, gaping helplessly. "You're better than me. You always have been. Stronger, and more kind, and… better. So I don't deserve it. But I want you to come anyway."
Jolene's still for a long moment; then she notices the thickening of smoke from the pot, and rapidly lifts it off the flames. She stays facing the stove, her hands spread bodily to either side of it, before she turns back. "And why would I say yes. In this crazy dream of yours, Cracker. Why do I say yes to you?"
"You say yes because you want to." Beth meets her eyes squarely, brown on brown, and feels the relief of total honesty, a slipping away of grief. "That's the only reason to say yes. Because you want to come, and be there with me."
Jolene's voice is quiet. "And after that?"
"After that, we come home. And we work it out." Beth drops her eyes to Jolene's hands; fine, and strong, and soft-skinned, and able to span mountains.
"So, what then? We live together? Radical black lawyer and genius crazy white girl, kumbaya and peace on earth?" The quiet of Jolene's voice has developed a dangerous edge.
"I don't know. I just know I want you with me. In Moscow, and afterwards." There has never been a moment quite like this for Beth, not even the tranquilisers; when everything, around and within her, was peace.
"You ask a lot, cracker," Jolene says, still in that dangerously quiet voice. "You always have. I fought for what I got, every step of the way. I fought to be me. To have something worth building on. To fit in this cracker world. I been getting on some stiff time, here. I got something going. And just like Methuen… you got to come in, all helpless and big-eyed and such, and blow what I got to shit."
"Please," Beth's own voice says, from the depths of her serenity. "I want you to come with me."
Jolene levels her with a glance; her tone is rising again. "And I want you to listen. To listen good, for once. It's not all about what you want. It's not all about what I want, either. I gotta live. I gotta live in this world. And I can't live that way."
Beth stands quietly for a few minutes. "I had to ask you," she says, almost wondering at herself. "I had to ask."
"Well, you asked." Jolene abandons the stove, and tracks back across the room to open the door, moving hollow and slow. "But you never stopped to think about the price, cracker. And you always had expensive taste."
Russian Glossary
ditya - infant, child
geroy - hero
bogatyr - Russian folk hero. In modern Russian, a courageous hero, an athlete or a physically strong man.