Chapter Text
Even buried a mile deep under hotel pillows and starched comforters, the frantic thud of knuckles connecting with the wooden laminate was unmistakably clear.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
“Hello? Room service.”
Another two knocks. Metallic this time. It sounded like the attendant was wearing rings.
“Room service. Hello?”
A pause, some fumbling with trays and tissue paper.
“Excuse me, Mr…. ah… Trumper?”
The English was over-pronounced and his name was completely butchered, but Freddie hadn’t the energy to reply, let alone correct it.
More knocking, a sigh, some fumbling of trays and tissue paper, and then (finally) footsteps away .
Frederick Trumper never drank just like Molokov never lost, and yet, here they were. Freddie, with his skull stuffed in a cotton hangover, and Sergievsky , probably off with some European diplomats popping expensive champagne and cuddling up to his second. Well, not his anymore. She hadn’t been his for months, but a few foreign beers will do wonders for old wounds.
Freddie was happy for the Russian. He really was. Screw the KGB. Screw the CIA. This was chess—his chess—and the best player deserves to win. But, dear lord, why did the best player have to be him ? The red bastard who had stolen his title and his Florence? The man who had single-handedly destroyed all things good and holy in his life? God, he missed Florence.
Global had hired some other lean-legged, quick-witted chick to tail him with a legal pad and adjust his lapel mic, but it wasn’t the same. The chick (Dawn something?) was not Florence. She didn’t follow him back to the hotel room and switch the thin linen pillowcases to something tolerable. She didn’t squeeze his hand under rowdy restaurant tables or carry his fancy dress shoes when he couldn’t stand the stiff leather a moment longer. She didn’t even have the basic decency to learn—
Freddie’s brain spun and his throat tightened. Then, quickly digging up through the pile of bedspread to lean over the side of the mattress, he heaved. Into the wastepaper basket went his dinner from the night before (not much) and all his half-conscious thoughts of Florence and Anatoly. God, his pills did not mix well with alcohol.
Now, honestly broken from his sleep-addled stupor, Freddie looked down to his wrinkled white suit and half-socked feet with a sigh. At least the shoes had made it to the corner of the room. Scrunching his nose at the sweaty hair gel caked to his scalp and the remnants of waxy foundation sinking into his pores, he begrudgingly finished extracting himself from the blankets. Then, stepping around the trash can, he made for the washroom.
For the most part, Freddie liked hotels. They were clean, neat and, from Bangkok to Merano, they tended to be the same. Hyper-jet shower heads; lavender-mint soap bars; too-white, too-scratchy towels that he would despise if not for their keen ability to slough off skin cells. He stripped quickly and stepped into the shower.
Florence used to shower with him. Not like that . Never like that . It’s just that they both liked the water hot enough to scald and, back in the beginning when they’d shared hotel rooms, it had just made sense.
Instead of waiting for her to use up all the warm water, he would wake up early to join her and they would share. Then she would run her soapy hands through his hair and tell him how young he looked like this: pretty lashes damp with steam and lines of stress smoothed by the soft morning light. Then he would compliment her strategy from the day before while changing his bandages. Then, they would tuck into the ratty twin size of the week and flip through opening gambits while their hair dried. God, he missed Florence.
Now, he was haphazardly running his own hands through his overgrown hair and trying desperately not to drop the ever-slickening tube of conditioner. Jets of boiling water pricked his back red, but an overwhelming feeling of niceness pervaded the pain. This is as nice. Cleansing even.
From what he could remember, it had been a long and dirty evening. Walter had been pleased with the match, which meant a round of drinks for the Global staff as well as the horribly conspicuous agents who hid in the shadows around them. Freddie had ordered a coke, but then Walter started on about Florence’s father, and Freddie really couldn’t be sober for that conversation.
His memory goes dark for a while. Some flashes of kissing some blonde chick—was it Dawn?—then somehow losing her before stumbling alone back to his hotel room. He remembers frantically scribbling down notes for tomorrow’s analysis—now today’s analysis—then vomiting on his way to bed. He hadn’t gotten that shit-faced since college.
Freddie tilted his head back, letting the errant suds slide down his shoulders and back, following the path the warm water had carved for them. His skin had been burning from the inside out, but the steam soothed. He imagined delicate hands ghosting around his neck and working out the tension that had collected there. The imaginary figure moved its fingers downward, caressing his chest and covering him in warmth.
It was nice. Soft. So unlike Dawn’s pointed heels and tin scratch of a voice. Freddie missed soft. So little in his life was soft anymore. It was brash interviews and loud board meetings. It was exotic trips and unfamiliar faces. It was money—lots of money—but it was also wires and lying and a lot of Walter fucking de Courcey. He wasn’t a spy, really. They never told him anything about what exactly he was doing, but he was probably doing… something? Something enough to be implicated at least.
At the thought of Walter, the imaginary figure dissipated, leaving Freddie to sulk alone. His hair, sans gel, plastered straight to his forehead in wilting spikes and guided droplets of water directly to his eyes. He pressed his calloused palms to his face and rubbed petulantly, mourning the loss of soft hands. Once his eyes stopped stinging so bad, he dared to open the left one in an awkward half-squint and stagger for the shower knob.
Alone, wet, and now growing increasingly cold, Freddie’s mind wandered back to the brief period of time when his childhood had been normal. When his parents had been happy, or at the very least ignorant. When chess had been a game. When he had accidentally locked the beloved family cat outdoors during a rainstorm. Poor Tiger. He had stumbled in, dripping a pitiful trail behind him, and had refused to even look at Freddie for a week.
He toweled off the best he could but didn’t bother with his typical post-shower ritual. If all went according to plan, Freddie would not be leaving this hotel room today. They had pre-filmed the bumpers for Global yesterday, so all he had left was to finish the analysis notes for the real anchors. He could fax those over or something. Anything to avoid human contact for the next 24 hours. Just some time to forget, then he could go back to being a person again.
XXX
The bastard had lied. Her father was dead and Anatoly was moving back to Russia and she had moved to Europe for him and she hadn’t spoken to Freddie in months and now she was all alone in some crazy oriental city and set adrift in some crazy foreign land and nobody spoke a lick of English and once again no, she would not like to buy a scarf or spend the night, she would like directions back the hotel , please.
She had left quickly after her talk with Walter, head held as high as it could have been given the circumstances, but Florence was running out of cheeks to turn. Her intention was to let her emotions lead her through the city to salvation, but now she was just lost. How had things turned out this sour?
She had landed the position as Freddie’s second all the way back in university. He had been different then, unmedicated, but the early days had been nice: his misplaced kisses in train cars on the way back from matches, her head on his shoulder while she read him foreign tactics, his tousled ginger hair held back after long nights of celebration.
They weren’t like that —she’d figured through messy trial and error—but she had cared for him. Then, they started winning and he started getting money (and women), so they started getting separate hotel rooms. Then, he started spiraling and showing up late to matches, so she tried convincing him to see a psychiatrist. Then, he had medication and an action plan and hope, finally hope, and then it was getting better again and then, suddenly, it wasn’t getting better again and then he started forgetting to take care of himself again and Florence just couldn’t see him like that again and he looked so close to death somedays and then—and then—and then—they grew apart. Their relationship, like everything else in her life, had petered off and died. She hadn’t even noticed it until he was gone.
She didn’t miss him. She didn’t miss doing for him what he should do himself. She didn’t miss losing herself and her passions in the fiery intensity of his.
At least there were worse places to be lost in. This side of Bangkok was lined with bars and unfamiliar faces. She could get used to being an unfamiliar face, blending into the frantic ebb and flow of the city. Not some c-list celebrity second or last-minute elopement. Not some poor political pawn. Just another nobody.
She had wandered into a small noodle place. The name held no meaning to her, just glowing lines jumbled on the sign, but the smell . It was warm and spicy, tinged with fat and a hearty thickness that reminded her of home. Anatoly had liked to cook. Mostly little Russian things from his childhood, warning Florence of their unconventionality profusely before letting her taste even a spoonful. His apologies were unnecessary. The food was good. Sometimes he’d cook foreign cuisine. There was the noodle dish… something with peanut oil? The shop was filled with a similar flavor, wafting into her lungs and bringing her back to that small flat in London.
It was one week until their departure for Bangkok. They were sitting on the couch, cool leather warmed by their touch, when Florence had asked him about Svetlana. Then he had asked her about her father. There were bad excuses and worse tears, but in the end, they had held each other: wrapped in a lover’s embrace, sobbing into shoulders and staining expensive suit jackets. Now, without explanation or goodbye, he had left her. How had things turned out this sour?
When Freddie was leaving her life, Anatoly had waltzed in. Everything was perfect with him. He was a real man. Grown. Mature. She would never fault Freddie for what he was, the things he couldn’t control, but something about Anatoly was just so much better. He washed his own clothes and even took hers to the dry cleaners when she would get hung up with work. He remembered his own things and made his own food. He told her he loved her without room for doubt. Everything about him had been perfect—except his wife.
Ordering had been a mess. Florence, pocket dictionary in hand, spoke in broken Thai. The woman at the counter understood a few words where the dialects overlapped, but Florence was really making a massacre of the language. Eventually, after several stressed hands pushed back through her dark curls, they came to a nonverbal agreement. In exchange for several dollars of a currency Florence did not know, the woman would get her… something. She passed a neatly folded wad of bills across the shiny marble counter, then moved across the room to a dimly lit booth in the corner. She had no clue how much she had just paid the woman, but she would just about give her right hand for a warm meal right now.
The small light above her bounced around its stained-glass shade, filtering through reds and yellows, softly illuminating the small wooden table and the rough canvas benches on either side.
She could get used to Bangkok. The language barrier would be an issue, sure, but she could learn. It was nice just being another nobody. Just another unfamiliar face in the unfamiliar crowd.
“Ah, Florence!” Shit.
The bell jingling behind him broke her from her thoughts. His tall figure and crisp-white dress shirt were at stark odds with the place like the hard plastic army men her brothers used to leave in her dollhouse. She pressed a worrying hand to her nose bridge as his solid, steady footsteps approached.
“Look, I just wanted to apologize for—“
“No. I don’t know how you found me, but I am done with this, Walter. No more apologies, no more deals, and no more chess. I am going home.”
“Britain?”
“No.”
“No home there now that your lover boy’s abandoned you, huh?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Hm, getting a flight back to America is going to be hell. We’re under the iron curtain, you know? There will be authorities and documents, not to mention the money—“
“Where is this going, Walter?”
“Well, I’m staying in Bangkok a little longer than expected, so I just so happen to have a spare ticket back to New York.” His rumbling voice slid down an octave. “Funny how that works out.”
“I’m not playing these games anymore.”
“No games. I stand before you an honest man.”
“Bullshit. I know you, Walter. Nothing is for free with you.”
“This is a parting gift, Florence. That’s all.” He produced a fine envelope from the interlining of his jacket. Florence watched it flutter to the table. “Take it or leave it.”