Work Text:
There's an ache in you put there by the ache in me
But if it's all the same to you
It's the same to me
Beth lands in New York with a suitcase with enough pretty dresses for a weekend, a winter coat, and an itinerary from a publishing house.
When the plane starts to prepare for landing, and she sees the skyline, the tops of the skyscrapers, she gets a funny feeling in her chest, one that whispers of “what ifs” and “could have beens” and the saddest kind of wonder. She can only describe it as aching. It’s an ache she has become all too familiar with, that she has learned to live with.
The feeling builds as she picks up her suitcase from luggage pick-up and walks through the airport terminal, bypassing security easily, and walking out into the smoggy air of the airport pick-up lot.
Beth’s not sure if the ache releases or simply intensifies so much that it obliterates itself when she sees a blue Beetle, idling, with a cowboy pirate behind the wheel. To anyone else, it would look like he’s talking to himself, muttering crazy things. But Beth knows he’s going through a game, playing it all the way through.
She walks up to it. “Hi,” she says.
The man in the car turns his head and smiles, “Why, hello.”
She puts her suitcase in the trunk, and when she slides into the passenger seat, the worn leather creaking just a little, she feels like she’s coming back to herself.
-
Beth had once said to Cleo, “There’s nothing keeping me in Kentucky.” When she’d said it, back then, in Paris in 1967, she’d really believed it too. She had thought there was nothing tying her to Kentucky, to a small suburban neighborhood in Lexington.
After Beth had gotten back from Moscow in 1968, there’d been a run through New York toward a dingy basement apartment and a breathless confession at a pirate’s doorstep, and a round of even more breathless kissing had ensued. And for a few weeks, wrapped up in a cocoon of chess and bliss, Beth had continued to believe it, thought that maybe Kentucky didn’t have a claim on her, that maybe New York could become her home.
But she’d quickly realized she was wrong.
Because in Kentucky, there was the house that had become her home, with a piano that belonged to a mother who had made the best out of a stuck situation. There was a house she’d bought from a man who didn’t care and that she’d made her own. And in Kentucky, there’s Jolene and Harry and Matt and Mike and Townes. Her friends. Her cobbled-together family of sorts.
For better or worse, she had a life there, one she couldn’t just pick up and move wherever (even if New York had a pirate cowboy with a massive ego and a way of kissing her that really should be outlawed). Life, just like chess, had rules and you can’t just pick up the pieces and put them wherever you like.
And so at the end of another five weeks, she’d packed up and gone back to Lexington, back home, to be a queen on her color.
-
Traffic is heavy. Benny fiddles with the gear shift, eyes ahead on the stagnant traffic. Beth looks out at the skyline and thinks how different it looks, in this gray, rainy light, from when she first came to New York, in this very same car. How different she is.
She is no longer the wide-eyed girl who came to New York intent on learning to beat Borgov. She is no longer running from the past. She is no longer the girl who has to drink and take pills in order to cope with the shit life throws.
But she is still the same, in some ways. She is still a genius at chess. Better even, than ever. She is still stubborn. She still enjoys the finer things in life. She still likes Benny Watts’ stupid hair.
“How was your flight?” the man with the stupidly good-looking hair asks her.
“Good. Fine. As always,” she says. She looks over at Benny.
His moustache has grown out ever so slightly. His hair is still the same length, the perfect mix of kempt and unkempt. His hat is tossed in the backseat, along with his duster. His shirt sleeves are rolled up and the top three buttons are unbuttoned.
“How are you?” she asks him. “What have you been up to?”
“I’m alright,” he says, tightly. “Same as usual. Same as six months ago,” he laughs.
It’s always like this, between them, at first. They have never been good at small talk, have always communicated on a deeper level. It’s like the first few minutes playing after an adjournment, trying to get your bearing back, trying to dive back into the game. Of course, returning after adjournments, returning to a world contained within those 64 squares has always been easy for people like them, Beth thinks. It’s the returning to the real world that has always been hard for them.
Still, she tries. “It’s really good to see you,” she says.
He looks over her, averting his eyes from traffic momentarily. “It’s always good to see you,” his voice thick.
The line of cars starts to move again.
-
They get back to his apartment, which is, as always, a damp, dark cavern with too little light and too little furniture. But when Beth walks in now, she doesn’t feel any revulsion or shock, only sharp pangs of nostalgia.
Sometimes, when they first get to his apartment, it’s a flurry of clothes and buttons on the floor, battling kisses, and bruising grips.
Sometimes, when they first get to his apartment, it’s dark eyes and a trailing invitation into Benny’s room, with lingering, drawn-out touches and soft kisses.
This time, it’s neither. This time, it’s Benny preparing tea while Beth uses the corner shower to wash the travel grime off of her.
Benny changes into a floral robe, foregoing his shirt but leaving his necklaces on. Beth sits opposite him at his table in a loose shift dress with wet hair. They play a game of chess that takes them both longer than it should, their hands lingering over the clock.
After, they retreat to Benny’s room, the board and timer discarded to the side, Beth’s watch laid delicately on the nightstand.
-
They don’t only fuck. After all, it’s not like Beth needs to come all the way to fucking New York for a good fuck.
Lexington is her home but whenever she flies away from New York, she can’t help but feeling she’s left something of herself here, like her travel chess set isn’t quite complete.
She doesn’t come to New York to get laid, or even to play chess. Kentucky gives her the safety, the comfort of a home and a family within reach, the promise that she isn’t alone, that she has people on her side. It’s a warm sweater on a cold day. New York is like trying on a new dress at a designer boutique and glimpsing a new girl in the mirror, who she might be. Or might have been.
She doesn’t regret it, her choice to stay in Lexington. It feels right, but she knows it is only one of the options on the board that could have led to a win. But it was the safest, and after the life she’s had, she reaches for security like she reaches to capture the first piece in a game: greedy, clutching, the sign of something gone right.
Still, this game with Benny, or whatever it is, (but she still looks at life as a game because that’s the only way anything has ever really made sense to her), it too often feels like she’s playing against herself. Maybe because being with Being has always been a bit too much like being with herself.
And she can still only stand being with herself so much.
-
Benny drives Beth to her meeting. The real reason she’s here, he reminds himself. Not for him.
Publishers have offered her a book deal and she’s finally considering taking them up on it. At least that’s what she told him, in their brief phone conversation where she’d told him her travel plans and he’d asked what time her flight got in, confirming that she’d be staying at his place, in an unspoken opening as familiar as the Sicilian to both of them.
So she’s here for the main game: to hammer out the details for a book. He is a convenient side show, he thinks.
No, she’d never come to New York just for him. But he can’t really blame her. It’s not like he’s willing go to Kentucky either, move to the middle-of-nowhere town. They’re both stubborn and set in their ways like that, he supposes.
Benny taps the steering wheel as he parks on the street near the publishing offices. Beth has been quiet the whole way here. “Their first move is going to be a lowball,” he says. “You’ve got to keep up your gambit that you’re still only thinking about accepting it.”
Beth looks at him, her mouth arranged into a smirk. “Thanks,” she says, rolling her eyes at his unsolicited advice. “Anything else?”
He knows she asks it rhetorically, but he can’t help himself. “Yeah, don’t let them trick you into a ghostwriter, they’ll mess up all the important details and make you look like you just played the Scholar’s Mate.”
“You know this is a contract negotiation, not a chess game?” she says. “Besides, I’ll have Jolene on the phone with me the whole time.”
Benny shrugs. “You can look at everything like a game, Harmon.” It’s true. That’s how he sees things and he knows Beth looks at it the same way.
She shakes her head and goes to get out of the car, having to kick it just a little to get the door to open.
Just as she gets out, he grabs her hand. She looks down where his hand lays over hers, just covering her Bulova watch. “Yes?” she says, and maybe it’s the cold air coming in from the open door, but her voice is just a little hitched and breathless.
He swallows. “Good luck.”
She nods and steps out of the car, adjourning their endless middlegame.
-
After her stop in New York post-Moscow, after Beth had packed her suitcase up again and flown home to Kentucky, they’d tried to make it work, they really did.
There’d been long calls, full of games and catching up. There’d been a few visits back and forth here and there. There’d been road trips to tournaments and invitationals together.
It’d almost worked. Almost.
It’d been three months since Beth went back to Kentucky, two invitationals later, and one week since Benny had left back to New York from Lexington after driving down.
“I miss you,” Benny said over the phone..
Beth had recognized it for what it is, her analytical brain breaking it down into an offering, an opening line to his king. But there was still a pawn in place, for whatever measly protection it could provide.
She had moved her queen carefully, gently. “…I miss you too.” She thought she heard a sign of relief on the other end, but maybe it was just her imagination.
He didn’t ask, had kept the pawn in place, but she heard it through the silence just as clearly: the will you come to New York? The will you stay in New York? The unasked question with an answer they both knew, just like they both know the Borgov v. Luchenko 1946 game by heart.
Their conversations got more difficult from there, with long stretches of silence and unsaid words haunting the line between them, tying up the minutes on the phone, like the path to victory slowly closing in, until they’d seen that they were just going through the motions, pushing wood around.
They’d always been a tinder fire, only needing the slightest spark, the quickest game of speed chess, to set them ablaze. But the wood needs proximity, and their roots were too far apart.
They hadn’t broken up exactly. To break up, you have to be together at some point. And neither of them, with their sharpest minds and ability to spot the best move within ten seconds of looking at a board, has ever been sure what exactly they are. But the next time Beth had been invited to New York for a magazine interview, she’d booked a hotel room instead and Benny hadn’t insisted she stay with him.
-
That had been two years ago. Now, they’ve settled into this, whatever this is.
They’d still seen each other of course, long after their phone calls had moved to purely chess strategy and barely any other words. It would have been difficult to avoid each other, even if they wanted to, after all, being the best two players in the country.
It had been after Beth’s first loss in a long time, against a European grandmaster, when it had happened. Beth didn’t know if she did it to forget, to go back to a time where she felt undefeatable, or to seek out someone who knew what it was like, but she’d gone down to the bar, not in search of a drink, but of a blond-haired cowboy.
They’d ended back in one of their rooms, a mix of fierce kisses and gentle touches. In the morning, neither had remarked on it, the feeling of everything and nothing changing heavy in the air.
Benny supposes that’s when it started, whatever it, this, is. When the New York State Tournament had come around and they’d been strategizing over the phone together (because that, that had never stopped, and was as natural as breathing for both of them), Beth had told him how hard it was booking a hotel near the convention center at that time of year. He’d surprised the both of them by telling her to just stay with him. She’d surprised them both even more by saying yes.
Whatever this thing is between them though, whatever different ideas they have about it, the one thing they are both aware of is its temporality. It is like a game of speed chess, the pieces falling through their fingers, grasped for a second before onto the next one. They don’t talk about it, spend their time together communicating in other ways, ways they’ve always been better at, like chess and sex. But it is understood that this exists in the world of hotel rooms, Benny’s basement, and Benny’s beetle. The world where only they exist, and the only thing between them is a chessboard. Where there is no time control and the board is clear.
-
The editorial staff insists on taking Beth out to dinner to celebrate the book deal. They give her the name and address of a fancy restaurant on the Upper East Side and she is glad she had the forethought to pack an appropriate dress.
She dresses in a little black dress and gets ready in Benny’s bathroom. Sometimes, she wishes she just splurged for a hotel room, but she knows it wouldn’t be the same. Sure, Benny would still probably come over and they’d fuck. But she’d miss the lazy way he lounges in his bed, his hair sticking to the pillows. She’d miss the cracked teacups he prepares their coffee in. She’d miss the bad selection of vinyls to play on a record player that squeaks like clockwork every seven seconds. She’d miss the way the quiet passes between them, lovely and unawkward, when they are alone in the same room. Those moments make it worth it, the trade-off a no-brainer.
(Of course, she’d never tell him this and will still take every opportunity to complain about the lack of creature comforts in his apartment.)
Beth reaches behind her to clasp her pearl necklace on and button her dress up. The pearls come together perfectly, but her hair, longer now, catches on one of the buttons and she can’t untangle it.
She struggles for a few minutes before calling, “Benny, can you come in here?”
He comes, slowly opening the creaking door. His eyes catch hers in the dirty mirror and she can see him suck in a breath. She knows she still has this effect on him, but it never hurts her ego to be reminded of it. The shy 15-year-old inside of her smiles.
“My hair’s stuck on one of the buttons, can you help?” she asks.
Benny nods and steps up behind her. Beth watches him through the mirror, his eyes cast down at the buttons. He fiddles with the problem button for a minute and then gently, ever so gently untangles it. Beth opens her mouth to thank him, but he’s not done and then he’s buttoning up the back of her dress, his fingers taking care as if they were pawns on a set made of ivory.
When he’s finished he looks up and their eyes meet in the mirror, illuminated by only the bare lightbulb above them.
“There,” he whispers.
“Thank you,” she says.
-
This is alright, Beth thinks, at dinner. The editorial staff are nice, praising her, flattering her, asking her polite questions. It’s not their fault that it makes her uncomfortable, that she has fight to keep a smile on her face. And the food is divine and when she sees the prices on the menu, she is certainly glad she’s not expected to pay. No, this is just fine, Beth thinks.
Still, these aren’t the people she would call up to have dinner or to hang out, if it were up to her. One of the editorial managers, a man with curly dark hair, who has been extremely, annoyingly attentive to her all night, makes a joke that isn’t funny at all, and she forces herself to politely laugh.
If Benny were here, he’d call the man out on his not-funny joke and his try-hard manners, or at least share an eye-roll with her across the table.
She quickly banishes the thought. There would be no reason for Benny to be here. This is a business dinner, not a social dinner with friends. Sure, some of the publishing house people have brought their spouses, but it is still a business dinner.
Still, if Benny were here, he’d be the center of attention, capturing everyone at the table with that easy confidence of his. She wouldn’t have to fake her laughter or interest in the dull conversation.
She teases Benny about his ego mercilessly, but she secretly enjoys his natural charisma, especially when it’s outside tournaments. Beth likes the spotlight on her when it’s about the game, when she’s tearing her opponent to pieces, pining their kings, likes reading about it in the news the next day. But she has always found it burdensome when it’s not in a hotel ballroom or a high school cafeteria or wherever they’re holding chess tournaments, and that has not changed.
The editorial manager, who has been monopolizing her attention all night turns to her in a lull in the conversation. “So, how do you like New York City?”
“It’s nice,” Beth says vaguely, hoping that will suffice for an answer and end the conversation.
It, apparently, does not. “Good, good. Must be different from where you’re from. Lexington, Kentucky right?”
“Right,” she says.
“Hmmm, yep the Big Apple sure is different.” She really wishes this conversation wouldn’t go on any longer, this uninteresting small talk. “Have you ever thought about living here?” the man asks, his eyes glinting.
Of course, she thinks. She thinks about it often, in fact. Thinks about what would happen if she sold her house in Kentucky and moved to New York, either to Benny’s shitty apartment or to a nicer one. But she knows that if she gave up Lexington, gave up the house, ran away from the past there, and the life she’s worked so hard to build and put so much time into, knows that if she up and left, she wouldn’t like herself very much. And she’s worked too hard to start liking herself to ever give that up for anyone, even if the choice is a bitter one sometimes.
Beth isn’t stuck, like Alma. She could do it, move, go wherever she wants. There’s nothing stopping her. But there are things, people, keeping her, and that’s something she’s had to learn just as much.
Beth swallows. “I like where I currently am.”
“Sure, sure,” the man says. “You know, I’m from a small town myself. And gotta say, much as I like the city, there’s nothing like home. Ain’t that right?” he says, as if it’s a joke between them. Beth doesn’t get it.
She just nods. “No place like home,” she says hollowly.
-
Benny drives to pick her up from dinner. She could have taken the subway back, he could have taken a long walk there, but he drives even though it’s actually the most inconvenient option of them all, with parking being increasingly difficult all around.
He idles the car across from the restaurant, 20 minutes before Beth told him she’d be finished by. He fiddles with the radio, changing songs every few notes.
He sees Beth walk out of the restaurant, along with what must be the publishing house staff. He sees a handsome looking man with curly dark hair slip Beth a piece of paper and give her a kiss on the cheek. Something twists in his gut but he pushes it down.
Snow flurries start to fall and the publishing crowd quickly disperses. Beth hurries across the street to Benny’s beetle and gets in, slamming the door so it stays shut.
“Thanks,” she says, quietly. “For picking me up.”
Benny stares straight ahead, turning the windshield wipers on to brush away the light snow coming down.
“How was dinner?” he asks. He doesn’t really actually care how dinner is, but it seems like the polite thing to do.
“Good,” she says, disinterestedly. “Boring.”
They drive silently for a few minutes, each taking in the gathering snow.
“I wish you were there,” she says. Benny looks at her, but she turns her head toward the window, looking at the lights slowly turning on.
He recognizes it as a small offering. It’s not quite a draw, but maybe it’s the closest they’ll ever get. So he says, “I do too.” Like the snow outside, a blanket of peace falls over them.
He doesn’t realize he’s doing it until it’s too late, but he takes the long way home. They sit in comfortable silence, both watching as the snow falls.
At one point, Beth’s hand comes to rest where his sits over the shift stick. He doesn’t know if she even notices she does it, since when he looks over at her, her eyes are closed, her breathing steady, coming out in perfect beats. He doesn’t move his hand.
-
When they pull up in front of his apartment, they sit there for a few minutes, neither moving, frozen like the forming ice outside.
Finally, Benny interrupts the silence, “I wish this weren’t so hard.”
Beth looks at him, clutching his hand a little tighter. “Me too.”
She knows that part of this, whatever this is, is a mess of their own making. That it’s a combination of their stubbornness, both of them being too set in their ways, too unwilling to change, that they are so similar that makes this mess. That they’ve both made choices they are intent on sticking to.
She thinks that some poets and lovesick high school girls might say that it’s a sign that they don’t care about each other enough. That if you want something badly enough, you can force the pieces to victory, you can open the window and steal it for yourself. A few years ago, she would have thought the same thing.
But she is older and wiser now, and she knows that it is not that simple, it is never as simple as that. That this game with Benny has never, and probably never will be simple. That life has never been simple, will never be simple. That you can care truly, madly, deeply about someone, (maybe even love them) and sometimes, life takes you on different paths. Sometimes you choose them.
Her love for herself has always been a painful, fascinating, sorrowful, multi-faceted, prickly thing. So why would her feelings for Benny be any different?
-
Their lovemaking that night is soft and sweet, burning promises they can’t make and wouldn’t keep into their kisses, pressing them into each other’s bodies instead.
They lie there, in Benny’s bed, side by side, afterward.
“When are you leaving?” Benny asks, turning on his side to her. He already knows the answer but he always asks. He doesn’t know whether he asks because he hopes the answer will change or if he asks just to confirm it to himself.
Beth turns toward him. “Tomorrow afternoon. I have an evening flight,” she says. She reaches out to brush his hair through her fingers. “Drive me to the airport?”
“Okay,” Benny says because there is nothing else to say. And then he moves to kiss her again, because there is nothing else to do.
-
They play on their way to the airport.
“Bishop to B5,”
“Rook to A6,”
They pull up to the drop-off terminal. Beth fiddles with her travel documents, while Benny taps the steering wheel.
“King to C6,” Benny says.
“Pawn to B7,” she replies.
They both sigh. The Immortal Draw.
But Beth and Benny are not immortal. They are simply mortals, fixed in this time and space, with Beth’s flight in half an hour.
Her hand hovers over the handle of his busted beetle. “Okay,” she says, swallowing down all the things they don’t say.
And because Benny has always been able to know her, because communicating with Benny has always been a little like talking to herself, easier than anything and more frustrating than anything as well, he gets it.
He nods. “Okay.”
-
We could call it even
Even though I’m leaving