The Game Player (12 page)

Horowitz glanced at his clock, ticking, I knew from the raised button, ticking without mercy.

Horowitz had used more time than Brian. I knew that because Brian had paused to consider a move only once (the poisoned Pawn problem) while I had noticed Horowitz thinking hard several times. And now he had his biggest decision; I could feel his mind rush, made desperate by the clock, through the skein of permutations that confronted him.

I saw the shrimp enter with the sophomore and go over to the director's desk in a repetition of the sequence of motions the sophomore had made, except that the shrimp's thumb pointed skyward. I saw Brian smile, as he always does, with his lips together.

The shrimp immediately joined in the analysis of Stoppard versus Horowitz and I was eager to hear his opinion since Brian had told me that for sheer calculation the kid was unsurpassed. When he seemed to have finished examining the situation, I asked, and he said, “Well, it depends on this move, I think. There are two major variations, unless he blunders immediately. There's Pawn takes Pawn, Knight to Knight-five; and there's Pawn takes Knight, Pawn takes Pawn, King takes Pawn. The first is better for Horowitz.”

“You're crazy,” began one of the other group, who was chorused by several others, and the shrimp, his tone clipped and diffidently contemptuous, rapidly moved pieces to prove his point, but his proof wasn't instantly convincing and I realized again that only Brian—silent—knew the real point.

Twelve minutes went by, while Horowitz, still puzzled, glanced more and more frequently at the wooden box, and our audience swelled. The two players' isolation was more pronounced with the games nearby having finished and the competitors turning spectators. The players must have felt this intensifying of observation, because they began to take brief looks at the mass facing them: dozens of hands stabbing the air with the motions of speculation, followed by whispered judgments.

Fifteen minutes after the surprising Stoppard move, Horowitz sat up to look at Brian and then with a kind of shrug he moved a piece and removed one from the board. The audience, silenced, focused on the boy: he got up from his chair, bent over to see the position, and then turned to the demonstration board. He removed Brian's Knight. “It's Pawn takes Knight. I knew it. I knew that's the right move.”

“It's Brian's game,” said the shrimp, not in a contentious voice to the other analyst, just stating a fact.

Brian answered immediately and so did Horowitz. The boy had barely begun to translate the moves to the board when Brian moved again and Horowitz, by tilting his head and nervously rubbing his chin, showed his confusion. But he must have decided he couldn't afford to check the position thoroughly and he moved.

Now Brian went into a long study and allowed our projectionist to catch us up to their situation. A whole new series of arguments were started by the recent moves but I was no longer interested. Indeed, it was irritating to think I had bothered to consult anyone. The atmosphere was Brian's: he had surprised his opponent again and again, using less time, looking calmer, moving his pieces surely, his body relaxed, his minions reporting their progress. I was sure of his victory.

But the circumstances, according to the analysts around me, couldn't be more volatile. Brian's reply was considered bad, but Horowitz's answer was equally disapproved of; and now, a whole series of moves were made, both players sure of themselves. The Kingside of the board had been blasted. It reminded me of a wide sandcastle, half of which is dissolved by the tide. The Queenside was still in place, both Kings trying desperately to hobble behind it.

The game was three hours old, the smashing checkmates never having materialized, but the captures being unequal, when Jeff walked up the aisle to the director's desk and signaled Brian that he had won. When Jeff joined us the analysts were no longer busy with their sets. They had given up to enjoy the quick changes of fortune on the big board.

They seemed to consider it fairly even a half-hour later, Brian having perhaps a slight edge because of a Pawn advantage. But, of course, one thing was not even—time. Horowitz had less of it and no skill could increase it. He watched the clocks fearfully during the few seconds Brian allowed him of free time, that is, while Brian contemplated his own move. But never more than a half-minute and then Horowitz's clock was started again, the raised knob penetrating his concentration, draining his energy. Though the Kings were no longer in danger, Pawns and pieces were in a mad state of disorganization, and threat after threat was set by Brian, some so obvious that it seemed like a beginner's game. But care was required to wriggle out of them and Horowitz had little time for it. I knew this had been the point all along, that Brian had realized this would occur, and that was why, to the shock of the analysts, he hadn't checked his moves to try and find better lines of attack. The shrimp had said several times that Brian had missed his chance, but of course he had missed nothing, his objective was this chance, a chance that depended on a certainty: Time's finality and the pressure of its end.

All Horowitz had to do was make his forty moves within the two hours allotted him and then he would be awarded another hour, but Brian had set threat and hidden threat for Horowitz's last ten moves. And Horowitz couldn't have more than ten minutes to make them while Brian had twice that.

Brian pinned a Knight against a Rook and Horowitz, with a quick glance at the clock, routinely moved the Rook, and I heard the shrimp's exclamation a second before Brian jumped in his chair to move a piece. Horowitz had missed the fact that the Pawn defending his Knight was also pinned, and he lost the horseman.

It hit Horowitz like a fist, his body sagging. He stared at the board while Brian pressed the button to start his tormentor.

Brian let his arms hang loosely while he watched Horowitz. He seemed sorry and turned away to look at us with his closed smile. Horowitz continued to stare, his head now in his hands, his chest caved in, and the clock running.

It was a long minute. Brian was on the edge of his chair and he was out of it at the same moment that Horowitz tipped over his King to resign. He and the shrimp had won the tournament with perfect scores and Hills High had finished a half-point ahead of Jefferson.

My mother had told me to invite Brian to our house for dinner, but I expected him to refuse in order to celebrate with the other players or perhaps spend the evening with his parents. I waited until we had a private moment on the train to Westchester before asking and he accepted immediately. “But I can't ask the others,” I said.

“Them?” he laughed. “Why should you?”

“So,” I said quickly, in order not to hear his teammates insulted. “You're the best high school player in New York State.”

He smiled, even showed some teeth, and rubbed his hands on his thighs. “Why limit it to high school? Why not the world?”

“You're going to play Fischer next?”

“He's not champion of the world. Petrosian is. No, as a matter of fact, I think I've played in my last tournament.”

“Oh, sure. How dramatic of you.”

“No, not drama. There's a good reason for it.” He looked at me, his eyes quickly searching mine. “I'm not the best player and if I keep pushing my luck, I'll lose.”

“Who'll beat you? The shrimp?”

“In a year or two, he could. I've peaked. But I didn't mean age would get me. I meant that not only Horowitz but the player before him should have beaten me and they would have if—Horowitz could have nailed me at least three times in that game. He was too uncertain, too fooled by my quickness when I moved. He thought I saw something that I didn't. They beat themselves, they saw dangers only they were clever enough to spot. And, in both games, when I had clear winning advantages, I couldn't figure out how to win.” He was quiet for a moment. “That's the worst feeling,” he said in a puzzled tone. “I kept trying to find the move. I knew it was there, but I would be stuck. And when I thought I had found it and made it, it would turn out to help them.”

He was genuinely disturbed and I felt it was my job to handle these reactions, reactions that had become a pattern, to his victories. He had won as Student Councilman and then became horrified, dropping it as an activity. He had starred as a basketball and football player, but withdrew from them when his success was greatest. “You get scared of losing, don't you?” I said.

“Yeah, of course.” His face, maddeningly clear of the acne that tortured the rest of us, was a mask of amusement. A controlling amusement that suggested both contempt and affection. “Now, Howard, don't theorize about me. Everybody is scared of losing. I'm not talking about that. I've reached the limit of my skill at chess and I've been able to master a few better players because I
feel
less pressure than they do. They're more frightened of losing than I am. I don't like winning that way. I like to be
better.”
He said the last word harshly and looked serious.

“But, Brian!” Though I spoke loudly, my disagreement was noisy and meek. “How the hell can you know you're not better? You can't be sure, don't tell me you can!”

“You're a good friend, Howard,” he said quickly, in a low voice. “But for all your reasonableness about winning, you're pretty irrational.” He had his eyes wide open to look inoffensive. I didn't want to react and he waited until realizing that before continuing. “Forget it, but it's very easy to know in chess, even if you beat someone, that he's better than you are.”

“All right.” I was pulling a Stoppard on him, pretending to agree in a tone of hidden knowledge. We rode the rest of the way, through the suburbs' lights, in silence, while I reflected that he and I had become equals. I could disagree with him now without an uneasy sense that I was not only wrong, but dangerously naïve; and he had stopped his long lectures and harangues when I hesitated to accept his position.

But his coolness, his paternal dominance of the rest of our class had never diminished, not even during those awkward two years—sophomore and junior—when the girls seemed to have attended, one an evening, the meeting of a cabal designed to baffle and disorganize the male ego. His hair, his dermatology, his clothes, his body, his intellect, his manners, were never giggled about or analyzed by the girls in that detail which makes it hard to look people straight in the face afterwards.

And the locker room discussions that invariably ended in taunts that one boy was lying about his sexual experience, or another would live a life of miserable celibacy, were aborted in Brian's presence. Not just because he viewed them with a disenchanted eye, but because his talk was full of the seriousness of an adult's experience. Once, I was in a group with him, Frankie, and Bill, who had succeeded Brian as quarterback on the Hills High football team, shortly after my stumbling onto Frankie with a girl in the music room. Bill was an intelligent jock, the only one I knew of who smoked grass and hated the War, but he had never recovered from that first move Mary made on him about the locker, and his terror of a constantly impending denouement, made him one of the most vicious teasers about sex. I was friendly with all the girls, but I mean friendly, and that qualified as the tragic element in my life. I forget what was being discussed but out of base motives I said to Frankie, “I hope you didn't injure that girl.”

Frankie, who no doubt had dreaded this moment for a week, lowered his eyes and said nothing.

“What girl?” Bill asked in his enthusiastic manner.

I kept my eyes on Frankie. “I wandered into the music room last week and was shocked and horrified to find this youngster rubbing a girl's breast.”

“No shit!” said Bill.

“Good for you, Frankie,” Brian said quietly and seriously.

“What girl?” Bill repeated.

“I don't know,” I said. “But I have been concerned about her health ever since.”

Bill, I'm afraid, guffawed while Frank said, “Fuck off!”

“What girl?” Bill had grabbed Frank by the arm and had begun shaking him. “What girl? I gotta know!”

Frank tried to get loose. “Leave me alone.”

Brian, with the back of his hand, hit Bill on the shoulder. It made a loud noise that, for a second, paralyzed us. “Jesus Christ!” Bill yelled. “What have you got on those knuckles? Brass?”

Brian smiled and looked mildly reproving. “Just remember how big you are, huh?” He pulled Bill aside so that he could be between him and Frank. “You could kill people with your voice.” This broke us up, especially Bill, who loved to have his size acknowledged. “You stick to your rights, Frankie,” Brian said.

“You don't believe in kiss and tell?” I asked.

“You and Bill,” Frankie said in an unpleasant tone. “Mary won't give him the time of day and you're just a joke to the girls.”

Bill, who was used to being made fun of for his devotion to Mary, took this lightly, exclaiming, “Oh, ho!” But I was hit bad. My greatest horror was ridicule, especially from girls.

“You know, you guys are really sick,” Brian said. “Except maybe Bill.” Bill said, thank you, but Brian went on: “I know, Frankie, who it was and it shouldn't be something you're ashamed of. And you're acting like a schmuck, Howard.”

“Aw, come on, Brian.” Bill threw his hands out, one of them hitting my books and spilling them to the ground. “Stop it with the superior tone. You act like you get laid every night.”

Brian's smile, from the perspective of my bent-over position, looked very harsh. “Bill, you know you're fond of implying that you
do
get laid, though I admit you never pretend it's every night.”

“Well, who are you screwing, Brian?” Bill had lost his blustering tone of good cheer. “Your mother? Or are you so fucking cold that you don't ever get horny?”

“I'm a fag, Bill, that's the answer. I stay calm by imagining I'm fucking your lily-white ass every night.”