AllFreeNovel
Share Us
noon– 1 pm— Break. I’ve included a list of nearby food places you might like. (Gambit, the club’s cat, will meow at you like he hasn’t been fed since the Weichselian glaciation; it is but a well- practiced, devious act. Do not feel obliged to share your meat lunches with him.)
1– 2 pm— Analyze assigned opponents’ games
2– 3 pm— Logical thinking and positional chess review
3– 4 pm— Training with software/databases
4– 5 pm— W– F Meet with GM trainer to go over weaknesses
Make sure to take a short break as needed to keep your focus. Workout schedule: 4, 5 days/w, ~30 mins. Keep hydrated and wear sunscreen, at least 30 SPF (even if it’s cloudy— that’s not how sunrays work).
I glance over the schedule Defne just handed me to make sure that I really read what I just read. Then I look up and say,
“Um.”
She smiles wide. Today her lipstick is pink, her shirt Spice Girls themed, and her pixie haircut has me wanting to grab the closest utility knife and hack my own hair off. She looks cool in a vintage, effortless way. “Um?”
“Just, this is an awful lot of . . .” I clear my throat. Bite my lip. Scratch my nose. “Chess?”
“I know.” Her smile widens. “Great, right?”
My stomach knots.Why don’t you just fake it?Easton said, and this morning on the New Jersey Transit, during my brandnew one- and-a-half- hour commute, I repeated it to myself like a mantra: This is a job. Just a job. I won’t think about chess one second past 5:00 p.m. Chess and I broke up years ago, and I’m not some simpering girl who’ll take back her cheating ex after being dumped during the slow dance at prom. I’m only going to do the necessary amount of it.
I just didn’t expect the necessary amount of it to equal a bajillion craploads.
“Yeah.” I force out a smile. I may not be thrilled to be here, but Defne is saving me and my family from the underpass. And I’m not an ungrateful little shit— I hope. “There’s a . . . workout schedule?”
“You don’t work out?”
I haven’t voluntarily broken a sweat since my last PE requirement— junior high, I believe. But she looks surprised to find out that I’m a sloth, so I massage the truth. “Not quitethatoften.”
“You’ll want to up that. Most chess players work out everyday to build stamina. Believe me, you’ll need it when you’re in the middle of a seven- hour game.”
“A seven- hour game?” I’ve never done anything for seven hours straight. Not even sleeping.
“Players burn, like, six thousand calories a day while playing a tournament. It’s ridiculous.” She gestures for me to follow her. “I’ll show you your office. You don’t mind sharing, do you?”
“No.” This morning my roommate repeatedly farted on my pillow because I dared to ask her not to practice her xylophone at 5:30 a.m. “I’m used to it.”
The Paterson Chess Club is a room in the rec center, made up of painfully fluorescent light bulbs, vinyl planks sticking out of the floor, and enough asbestos to fry the brains of three generations. I expected Zugzwang to be more of the same, but every corner is sun-dappled hardwood floors, expensive furniture, and sleek, state-of-the- art monitors. Tradition and technology, new and old. Either I underestimated the kind of money one can make from chess, or the place is just a mob front.
I nearly gasp when Defne shows me the library, something straight out of Oxford— if on a smaller scale. There are rows and rows of high shelves, fancy ladders, something that, from watchingSelling Sunsetwith Mom exactly twice, I believe is called a mezzanine, and—
Books.
So. Many. Books.
So many books that I recognize from the living room shelves stocked by Dad, then hastily packed away in old Amazon boxes once the silent decision to erase his presence was made.
“You’re welcome to use the library whenever you want,”Defne says. “Several volumes in here are on your reading list.Andit’s right by your office.”
That’s correct: my office is across the hall, and this time I do gasp, shamelessly. It has three windows, the largest desk I’ve ever seen, various chess sets that probably cost more than a gallbladder on the black market, and—
“Quiet, please.”
I turn around. On the desk opposite to mine sits a scowling man. He must be in his twenties, but his blond hairline is already receding into deep hills. There’s a developed chess game in front of him, and three open books.
“Hey, Oz.” Either Defne doesn’t notice his frown or she doesn’t care. “This is Mallory. She’ll take the empty desk.”
