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“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 areprepared. 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 thetwo best players alive. You should be honing your skills with your opponent in mind, not training on old games andoveranalyzing your own style. He’s probably studyingyourgames, 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.
