Check & Mate

“Your next three days are wide open, so we’ll just be running your games through engines and looking for weaknesses. The day before the match is when things start filling up. You’ll have the morning for yourself, but there’s a press conference in the afternoon. And the opening gala at night, but just an appearance is fine.” Defne smiles from across the breakfast table. This morning she appeared out of a room that she may or may not be sharing with Oz. Sabrina mouthed “Schrödinger,” and I nearly choked on my spit.

“Defne, why is this hotel so deserted?” Mom asks.

It’s just us in the ocean- view dining room, and a small mountain of flaky, warm, gooey Nutella croissants. Darcy ate so many, she had to go back up for a nap before leaving for a glass factory sightseeing tour. We’ll never be able to talk her back into oatmeal.

“Hotel Cipriani doesn’t open till mid- March, so FIDE rented it out of season. They hold the championship here every few years— I’ve always wanted to come, but never got a chance before. I assume people will start trickling in, though. Organizers, commentators, FIDE higher- ups. The current champion and his team.”

She doesn’t meet my eyes. My heart tugs.

“Then there are the chess superfans who always show up, mostly Silicon Valley and tech people. Some press will be staying here, though most journalists will have cheaper accommodation and ferry in for the games.” She shakes her head. “I still can’t believe NBC is broadcasting the event this year. What are we, the NFL? The curling league?”

I wistfully wave at my family as they board the shuttle to Murano, and then turn to Defne, ready to be scolded for my inability to equalize tough positions in time trouble.

“Should we do it in my room or yours?” I ask. I’m wondering if I can use the situation to solve the Ozne mystery once and for all, but one of the concierges nose- blocks me.

“There are training spaces set aside for players,” he says, Italian accent heavy through perfect English. “Shall I show you?”

He leads us through a set of gardens that are surprisingly beautiful and green. “Not at their best in this season, I’m sorry to say. We call them the Giardini Casanova.”

“Like the manwhore?” Defne whispers at me.

I shrug just as the concierge nods. “Like the legendary lover, precisely. And that’s where the match will take place next week.” He points at a construction in the center of the gardens that looks a little like a hothouse. It’s a simple square, but all four walls and the ceiling are made of glass. The inside is empty, with the exception of a wooden table, two chairs, and a simple chess set.

My heart kicks in my throat.

“It’s fully heated, of course. And soundproof.” His smile is reassuring. “This is the fifth championship we’ve hosted.”

“That’s a lot of camera tripods and lights all around.” Defne pats me on the shoulder and grins. “No worries. I can help you with that cowlick.”

Our training room is under a cloister, behind a wooden door. Inside there are chess sets, laptops we can use to connect to the engines, rows of opening and middle game books.

“This is incredible.” Defne runs her fingers over a glass set. “I’m seriously jealous.”

“Yeah. I’m not surprised they host lots of championships. They are prepared. I bet they . . .”

I notice the picture on the wall and forget what I was about to say. It’s of two men, standing in the same glass house I just passed outside. One is nearly bald, the other has a full head of dark hair and a small smile. They’re shaking hands on top of a developed board, and Black— the bald one— must have resigned, two moves from being checkmated, all his pieces disastrously pinned or mercilessly tied up. The other player’s eyes are hooded and stern, familiar in an almost disorienting way, and for a second I feel an inexplicable, leaden weight in my chest.

Then I read the tag below: Sawyer vs. Gurin, 1978. World Chess Championship.

“He is . . .”

“Yup.” Defne steps to my side.

“You knew him?”

“I trained with him.”

Right. Yeah. “How was he?”

“Very positional. As Black he almost always played the Najdorf Sicilian— ”

“I mean, what kind of person?”

“Oh. Let’s see.” She purses her lips, eyes on the photo. “Quiet. Kind. Dry, sharp sense of humor. Honest, almost to a fault. Stubborn. Troubled, sometimes.” She takes a deep breath. “He’s the reason I have Zugzwang.”

“What do you mean?”

“He gave me the money to buy it. A loan, I thought, but once I could pay him back, he wouldn’t take it.”

Sounds like someone I know: generous, sarcastic, bad at lying.

Somber eyed.

I bet he didn’t know how to take a no. I bet he was singleminded and mercurial and inscrutable. I bet he was charismatic but also arrogant and obstinate. Mulish, and difficult to understand, stupid, irritating, necessary, annoying, so, so addictive in that frightening, out-of-control way, so warm and gentle and genuinely funny, right, ruthless, impossible to get over—

“Mal?”

I startle away from the picture. “Yeah.”

“Your training . . . What we have been doing, studying your play, it’s good. Focusing on your weaknesses is good. But we should really take a look at some of his— ”

“No,” I interrupt her. We’re not talking about Marcus Sawyer anymore, but it doesn’t need to be spelled out.

“I don’t understand why you refuse to— ”

“No.”

She huffs. “It’s only fair. And expected. This is not a tournament, Mal, it’s the World Championship— the match between the two best players alive. You should be honing your skills with your opponent in mind, not training on old games and overanalyzing your own style. He’s probably studying your games, and I doubt that he’d expect you not to— ”

“No,” I say for the last time, and she knows it’s final just as well as I do. “Let’s continue as planned.”

Defne frowns. But she nods nonetheless.

I’M BAD AT CONSOLIDATING.

I attack too early. Or too late.

I’m not decisive enough, except when I’m so decisive, I blow my advantage.

I cannot comfortably trade into end games.

I rely too much on my favorite openings— a cardinal sin, since players with preferences are players with weaknesses.

I should focus on the sides to take the center.

And:

“This game against Chuang,” Oz is saying. “Your queen was completely open. Not saying go all ministry of defense, but— ”

“Okay. Okay, I . . .” I rub my eyes. “You’re right. Let’s go back to the engines. I feel like I’m— ”

“It’s past midnight, Mal.” Defne is shaking her head. “You should go to bed.”

Shit. “Okay. Tomorrow morning— ”

“We’ve been locked in here for two days, Mal.”

We have. With brief food interruptions and sporadic visitors— Mom stopping by to kiss my forehead; Sabrina barging in on an analysis to show me an article from The Cut in which a journalist begged me to “step on her”; Darcy coming by to ask if her blue top was in my suitcase (it was) and to show me her pretty new pendant.

A murrina, it’s called!

So beautiful. I stared at the colorful circles of flowers. Where did you get it?

N— Mom bought it for me!

“I think you should take a break,” Defne says.

“What do you mean?”

“Tomorrow, take the morning off. Sleep in. Maybe go somewhere with your sisters? You have one day left before the match, and half of it is going to be full of press.”

I frown between her and Oz. “You guys keep saying that my centers are so close, they look like checkers.”

“Yes, but there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

“Okay. Yeah. You’re probably right.” I try not to pout as I amble to the door. My thighs ache from too much sitting.

“Hey.”

I turn around. Oz is putting the sets back together and turning off the computers. I take in Marcus Sawyer’s photo in the background, the sharp contrast to Defne’s pixie hair. “Yeah?”

“I told you once before. But in case you forgot . . . I think you can win the World Championship. I think you can do whatever you put your mind to.”

I smile faintly and walk away.

I’m not sure I believe her. I’m almost sure I don’t.

The hotel has been filling up, to the point that it’s become difficult to walk around avoiding impromptu interviews and pic requests and people wearing T-shirts with my damn face on them. It’s probably why I’ve stopped emerging from the training room: this close to the start of the championship, and I’m feeling more and more like a fraud, like a kid at the adults’ table, like I’m not worth the ink my name is printed with. I’m not good enough. I don’t deserve this. I’m shit with the Night Attack against the Caro- Kann. I heard the words First woman at the World Chess Championship once, and have been trying to expel them from my head ever since. Does it mean that if I lose, it’ll be a failure for all women? Does it mean that I’m suddenly more than just myself? I have no idea, and I can’t deal with any of this. So I don’t, and focus on the way I didn’t know about the Raphael Variation until this very morning.

Sounds healthy, huh?

This late at night, at least, the place is as blessedly quiet as when we first got here. I walk past the reception counter, and one of the concierges waves at me.

“Your roommate is arrived,” she informs me. “From United States.”

I halt. “Excuse me?”

“Your friend arrived.” She points at the elevator. There might be a bit of a language barrier here.

“I . . . What? Where?”

She smiles. “Your room.”

My heart pounds as I sprint up the stairs. Is there really someone else in my room? Only one person could have arrived tonight from the United States.

But he’s not

He wouldn’t

We haven’t even talked in

I said some things that I really regret, and he probably

I look down at my trembling hand, feeling like my DNA helices are unwinding. I grab the handle and open the door, just to get it over with before an aneurysm annihilates my brain.

There is someone sprawled on my freshly made bed.

My heart stops.

Then restarts, a mix of relief and something else.

Then derails again.

“Mal, this room is a vibe,” a voice tells me from the bed. “You’re really coming up in life, bitch. And all because I pushed you to embrace the important cause of gluten sensitivity.”

I close my eyes. Take a deep breath. Open them again.

And whimper, more than ask:

“Easton?”