she is on something. Librium and some mood elevators, maybe lithium, I don’t know. But I’m not on anything, not interested in anything. You should feel safe. And Mikey should feel protected. In good hands. Good regular and boring hands. But even when she’s on something, she’s a whole lot better than you are, so why don’t you shut up about her for a while?” I’m surprised by my sudden sentiment.
“So touchy,” Vera says, “so very touchy. I didn’t realize you were so connected to her.”
“Connected?” I am somewhat puzzled by my own growing irritation.
“Young love,” Vera says. “Ya want fresh coffee?”
“No. I want to meet Mikey.”
The hallway’s narrow, chocolate shag corridor is, in fact, a time warp. Coming into Mikey’s room is like coming into another country, another time. Initial obstacle course—stacks of books are in the doorway and against the walls and in the middle of the room. Some stacks are over four feet high. The ones against the wall reach to eye level, a little higher in the corners. In the center of the room, in a space consciously cleared among the stacks are three small typing tables, each one holding a wooden chess board and rather large Stanton-style chess pieces. Mikey sits on a heavily padded desk chair that can swivel and sway. Pam is kneeling beside him, hands on the top of his left thigh, watching him rearrange the pieces on the board in front of him. He quickly shuffles the pieces about and then asks her something. She arches up higher, pressing harder on his thigh, and points to a rook.
“Nah,” he says abruptly and quickly moves the queen down, offers a sacrifice, and shows Pam three variations and says, “He resigned.”
Pam laughs, wonderfully entranced.
“Mikey,” Vera calls from over my shoulder. “Mikey, this is Mr., Mr., what is it again?”
“Snell,” Mikey says. “And yes, I’ll do it. We’ll do it, won’t we?” he says holding Pam’s hand and pushing the black king over with her index finger. “Lemme show you Feldt versus Alekhine, 1917, a blindfold game. Unbelievable.” He drops her hand and begins rearranging the pieces.
“Congratulations on the U.S. Open,” I say to Mikey. “You played terrifically!”
He stops rearranging the pieces, looks down at Pam, then at me, then down at Pam. He says loudly, “They shoulda made me a grandmaster!”
Pam instantly applauds.
Chapter 11
“Can you believe it?” Pam shouts when we are back in our room. “My daddy should see those books. Books from everywhere. Maybe the biggest chess library in the world. Maybe bigger than the Library of Congress holdings. He says so anyway. And that’s only part of it. There’s more in Baltimore.”
“There’s always more in Baltimore.”
“And he knows every game ever played. Every one, every, every one! He let me open a book and start reading off the moves and then would go ahead and recite the rest for me. And he was always right. Always.”
“I suppose he cooks, too.”
Pam thinks a moment or two—an infuriatingly serious deliberation about my comment. “I don’t know. Maybe he does. I’m sure he could, if he put his mind to it. He just knows everything there is to know about chess.”
“Maybe we could get him to do the column.”
“He says he doesn’t like to write. Only to play chess.”
“You seem to have gotten along with him splendidly.”
“I like him a lot. And I want daddy to meet him. He’s very natural and kind of special.”
“Ahhh.”
“Oh, I see. You are, you actually are, jealous. Oh, that makes me feel very good. Very warm for you. Go on. Be a little more jealous, will you?”
“He has acne.”
“Yes, and it’s beautiful acne, sculptured acne. I bet his back has the most beautiful pock marks.”
“Very good, Pam.”
“He’s just a boy, Paul. You really shouldn’t think about him at all. You know that, don’t you? Don’t you? You ought to. You really ought to. I like what you think you are feeling. I do like that, but it’s not really very true at all. Nothing. Just nothing,” she says with a contrition and maternal solicitude that is all but unendurable.
We adjourn to a kitchenette dinner of minute steaks and salad with Ken’s Blue Cheese dressing purchased from the Korean-run market on 14th street. I plan a special dessert of Wattie’s canned plumbs. But before I serve it, I go back to matters at hand.
“How can he stand living with his mother?” I ask.
“She knows a lot about chess. That’s what’s important to him. And he is just a child.”
“I thought he was almost eighteen.”
“He is, but he’s much younger than that. He’s like a big eighth grader. Such a silly sense of humor. All those puns and scatology.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Oh, I can’t remember, but there was a lot of talk about farting. He really likes to talk about that.”
“You must have gotten along famously.”
“I think he’d like to see other people, but doesn’t know how. He pretends to be totally absorbed in chess, but I bet you could interest him in other people, if he had half a chance. If he could see half a chance, I know he would. Do you think he really will come to Florida?”
“If Waldo will spring for a place for him to stay—mother and son.”
“He could stay at our place on the bay.”
“I see.”
“Daddy and mama are at the ranch most of the time in the winter anyway. So there’s a whole house empty and ready for him.”
“And meals?”
“Well, I think he’d like to learn to cook, and there’s Marisela if he doesn’t. She’s there through the winter.”
“And you’d like to teach him.”
“I don’t cook. You know that,” she points to our dinner plates. “Besides, there are good Morrisons, lots of places to eat.”
A siren moans along Rhode Island Avenue. I get up from the table and go over to the Venetian blinds over the window. Cracking a little metallic space I watch a police cruiser soar up the road, litter flying behind it, siren triple blasting as the approach to 14th Street comes up. The back of the cruiser has a caged section. I catch just a glimpse of that as the car twists out of sight on Logan Circle. “I had a friend who lived for a while in New York City. The noise got too him after a while. He told me he’d hear gun shots and screaming late at night or early in the morning around three or four, and after a while he’d
