House Haunted (3 page)

Again she held him, and only the tiniest flicker of fear passed through him from the whispering trees.

Harold was worried that Gary would not show for their chess game. Whenever he worried, which was seldom since his retirement from the garment business and since his wife had passed away (“God bless her!
But
...”), the acid in his stomach burned and he grew uncomfortable.

He ran his fingers over the outside of the pocket of his topcoat to make sure his antacid tablets were there, feeling the slightly shaped bump that told him they were.

He had come to rely on the games with Gary. Most days he spent in Washington Square Park, watching the regulars play chess with the amateurs they called potzers. Potzers all looked the same, hunched desperately over one of the concrete chess tables lining the park side of MacDougal and West Fourth, while the regulars on the other side of the board waited for them to concede and give up their money. When he was younger, Harold used to play, and sometimes beat, the regulars, but now he was content to watch, sitting comfortably on a bench, legs crossed, leaning slightly forward to observe the nearest game, eyelids half closed, the eyes behind alive, calculating strengths and weaknesses, estimating how long it would be before the potzer threw up his hands and asked for another game.

But on Thursday afternoons he moved away from the other players, setting up his folding board over the concrete one farthest from the others, putting each hand-carved piece in place, and waiting patiently until exactly three o'clock, when Gary invariably arrived to play.

He fingered the antacid tablets through his coat pocket again, beginning to feel that this would be the first Thursday in two months that he would have to go back to watching the potzers play. Worry was already turning to the disappointment that soured his stomach.

A pigeon strutted too close, its dull black-bead eyes regarding him stupidly, looking for popcorn or bread. In seventy years of life in New York, he had never fed a pigeon; his mother had screamed that they were dirty, his wife had screamed that they carried disease, and these thoughts had never left him. He bent down slightly to shoo it away, thinking to use the momentum to bring himself to a standing position from which he would repack his board and return to the other regulars, when he saw Gary walking toward him, gently swinging his gym bag.

A smile nearly crossed Harold's face, but he held it in check. From the first, his games with Gary had been real tests, serious business. In effect, they were two opponents meeting on a battlefield. Their conversations had been little more than pleasantries; it was as if they lived their isolated, separate lives, only to meet purified over the chessboard. At least that was the way Harold had come to justify in his mind the fact that in all their previous meetings, he had not gotten one bit of gossip or information out of Gary about his life, his hobbies, his girlfriends (or boyfriends; this was New York City in the 1980s, after all), or anything else. The young man was always pleasant enough, but he seemed interested only in playing one extremely good game of chess and then going away, returning a week later at exactly three o'clock.

It was three-thirty now, and Harold thought this, at least, worthy of comment.

“You're late?” Harold said, making it an inquiry.

Gary said nothing, only smiled slightly, giving a shrug. He wore his customary turtleneck shirt under a patched leather jacket. He looked as though he had gotten a haircut lately; his thinning blond hair was shaved short in the back, brushed back away from his face. His round, wire-rimmed glasses always made his eyes look dimmer than they were: when he took them off to clean them, his eyes nearly jumped out of his face, they were such a clear, clean blue. Powerful eyes to go with a weak body: he was long and skinny, with long, thin-fingered hands and a pale complexion. Only the eyes were strong and, when he smiled, which was not often, his mouth.

“Chilly for September,” Harold offered as they both looked over the board, the polished black and white squares of hardwood expertly set and bordered in polished briar, the root usually reserved for making pipes. As far as Harold knew, it was the only set like it in the world. At least that's what he liked to think. The pieces, brown and white, were carved from briar and meerschaum, small but extremely hard and strong, witty representations of pipe smokers.

Gary made no answer to Harold's comment about the weather, but nodded slightly when Harold said, “You do like this set, don't you?”

Harold had found the set one day in a shop that sold almost exclusively junk. It was half hidden under a pile of old Playboy magazines. The cashier, a Pakistani, hadn't even been able to find a price on it and had given it to him for an extremely low amount—a financial conquest that Harold had kept in his heart ever since. It had been the bargain of his life, one of the prizes of his collection.

Harold hid the two queens, holding his enclosing hands out for Gary to choose. As always, the young man picked the one holding the white queen.

“I'd like to know how you do that,” Harold said.

Gary gave his enigmatic smile, holding the white queen up for inspection before placing it neatly in its square. “Shall we play?”

They played, and the gray sky, the pigeons, all of New York and the world, went away from Harold as he concentrated on the game. Gary was as uncanny with his play as he was with his choice of queen, constantly making unorthodox moves that had Harold playing out a hearty, if vain, defense. The young man seemed invincible, and after an hour that passed as a few minutes, Harold once again found himself hopelessly trapped. He capitulated, foregoing the last few, useless moves.

“You know,” he said to Gary, dusting each chess piece with his fingers before carefully placing it in its felt inset inside the folding board, “I used to get angry when I lost chess matches. But not anymore. I'll tell you why. I tried one of those computer chess games, thinking that if I lost I wouldn't get mad because it was only a machine. The board had little red lights on it, and when you beat the computer, they flashed on and off in salute. They stayed on when the machine won.” He looked up at the sky for a moment, feeling what he thought was a drop of rain. “I found myself gloating when the lights flashed on and off, and getting very angry when they stayed on. After a while I put the machine away and started playing people again. I found that I couldn't be angry at them when I lost anymore. After you get mad at a machine for beating you, it seemed kind of silly to get mad at a human being, someone with a real name and face who gloats if he wants to, but doesn't have to. Those little red lights on the machine went on whether the machine wanted them to or not. The machine had no choice.” He waved his hand, holding the last pawn. “If I ever want to get angry over chess again, I can always take out my machine.”

To his surprise, Gary was listening to him. Usually, when he talked one of his harangues at the end of a game, the young man sat politely, obviously wanting to go and only waiting for the opportunity. But today he was looking at Harold with concentration and actually listening.

“I tried one of those chess computers myself, once,” Gary said. His mouth formed one of his tiny, mysterious, thoughtful smiles.

“Did you like it?” Harold asked.

“No.” The young man reverted to his customary with-drawn silence, then turned to Harold once more, his smile widening. “The computer was plugged into the wall, and I was about to make checkmate when there was a power outage. The game was erased from the computer's memory. I became quite annoyed.”

He kept smiling, and Harold broke into a grin and began to laugh. “Oh, ho! I bet you did!”

He put the last of the pieces into the folding board and closed it. Normally, this would be the end of their weekly meetings. Today, the young man lingered.

“Harold,” the young man said abruptly, shyness tainting his voice, “do you remember, the first time we met, telling me about your collection?”

Harold blinked in surprise. He had told the young man, all right, about his chess pieces and boards, and at length; but he could have sworn at the time that he was talking to a wall for all the response he had gotten. He looked at Gary expectantly. “I remember.”

“Does your offer to show them to me still stand?”

“Of course!” Harold replied, his face brightening. He had been dying to show the young man. He clutched the box of his traveling set under his arm. “Would you like to come now?”

“I'd love to.”

Harold rose and motioned the young man to follow. Gary fell into step beside him.

As they passed a concrete table by the edge of the park, Harold took Gary lightly by the arm. “I once played Stanley Kubrick, the famous director, at that table. He played there all the time when he was a young man. Nobody knew what he would become. Around here, he was just another regular. Not a potzer at all. He made enough money to feed himself. And he was good.”

They left Washington Square Park and turned uptown. By the time they reached Harold's apartment building, he realized that he had been indulging in a monologue for nearly a half hour, that Gary had not uttered a word.

“You sure you want to see my sets?” he asked.

“Yes.”

The elevator jammed a floor below Harold's apartment. He hit the button with his elbow to get it started again. “Every machine in New York stinks, Gary,” he said. “Not just the chess machines. They should do away with all of the machines, let people do the work. And they should let people play all the chess.”

Gary nodded absently, the blue eyes behind his spectacles holding a quiet, thoughtful look.

As he moved his key toward the lock on his door, it occurred to Harold that he really didn't know this young man all that well. After all, he had only played chess with him. Maybe he was making a mistake. What if this young man was a thief and had only ingratiated himself with him to steal his collection? Wasn't it possible? He had stopped reading the New York Post a long time ago, had tried not to be paranoid, but it was not easy. What he had found was that the more paranoid you were, the more lonely you were, too. It was good to be careful, but there was only so far you could go without becoming all but dead. He stole a tiny glance at Gary. Could this boy really have befriended him, played chess with him every Thursday afternoon for the past two months, only to steal from him? It was possible, wasn't it? Yes, it was. He could call the whole thing off, even now, couldn't he? Yes, all he had to do was say that he was terribly sorry, that he had completely forgotten an appointment and must hurry off to meet it. Anything would do. The dentist.

But the point was, did he want to do that? Did he want to surrender a chance to share his beloved treasures by being a paranoid old man?

Behind his belt, he felt the beginnings of acid in his stomach. He might as well start buying the Post again. Even better—if he didn't show this boy his collection, he might as well start playing chess with the computer again.

His key slipped into the lock, and he heard the comfortable click as he turned it and opened the door.

“Gary,” he said, taking the young man by the arm as they entered the doorway, “I hope you enjoy what you see.”

The apartment was clean, thank God. The woman had come on Wednesday, dusting, straightening up. The only untidiness was the dish and teacup in the sink from this morning's breakfast.

He took Gary's jacket, laying it over the arm of a chair by the doorway. Gary put his gym bag down next to the chair. Harold then led him through the living room, down a short hallway. Two doors at the end were ajar; one on the right showing a bedroom done in blue and white, illuminated by light from two windows facing the street; the other led into darkness.

Harold turned to Gary, unsuccessfully trying to cover the pride in his voice. “My museum,” he said, touching a light switch on the wall and pushing the door open.

Gary followed the old man in.

The room was suffused with sharp fluorescent light that fell on stands and racks of glass cabinets. They were the kind used in department and jewelry stores, some of them floor to ceiling. The shelves were clear glass, showing off the chess sets and individual pieces from all angles. There were collections of carved ivory, one from northern China with figures sitting on grotesque animals. There were ironwood and stone pieces, some of historical interest: one assemblage, in red and deep gray bisque, represented the Battle of Hastings. There was a set of painted porcelain figures from Alice in Wonderland in the style of Tenniel, another from Through the Looking Glass, the figures of pure clear crystal. At one shelf, higher than the others, Gary stopped. Harold hurried to stand beside him, whispering in rapture, “Eighteenth-century Spanish. I felt very guilty about acquiring this.” He smiled, not at all guiltily. “But I got over it. I was told, and later had it authenticated, that each of these pieces was carved from human bone.” The pieces stood, a rank of skeletons for pawns, towering spectral figures for the remaining pieces. Each queen's face was covered by a shroud held by a skeletal hand; the kings wore pointed crowns fashioned from the caved-in domes of their-own skulls.

Gary smiled and moved on to a set of Napoleonic painted figurines; Napoleon faced by Wellington as opposing kings. There was another comprised entirely of Harlequins. Harold brought the young man to one case, opening it to remove a rook and put it in his hand.