Grandmaster (8 page)

“A hundred,” she said. “And he never slows down. Isn’t that amazing?”

“Remarkable,” I agreed. “So what are you doing in Manhattan on a Friday night?”

“We were going to come tomorrow, but my mom got invited to some kind of charity ball this evening. I have to go with her, so I won’t be able to come to the steak house. But we can all go out to dinner tomorrow.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “Well, maybe I should jump in the shallow end and move my arms a little and pretend I can swim.”

She laughed. “Come on. I’m sure you can swim just fine.”

“Not like that,” I said, as Brad motored by.

“No one swims like that,” Britney responded softly.

“I’m off to do my dog paddle. Catch you later,” I told her. “Have a ball at the charity ball. Looking forward to meeting your mom.”

“Thanks. She’s eager to hang out with the team—” Britney broke off, and I was surprised to see tension in her face. “I don’t know exactly how she’ll fit in,” she admitted, sounding a little worried.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said quickly. She hesitated and then added: “My mom’s been through a rough time, and she’s a bit of a character, but I guess all parents are, right?”

“Absolutely,” I assured her. “My dad is short, bald, and the poorest father at Loon Lake. Believe me, if I can bring him on this trip, you shouldn’t have any worries about your mom.”

Britney flashed a grateful smile. “You don’t take yourself too seriously. That’s kind of a rare thing at our school.”

“If I took myself too seriously, I’d be disappointed,” I told her with a grin. “But seriously, if your mom raised you, I’m sure she must be pretty cool.”

“She is,” Britney agreed in a low voice. “Thank you…”

“What are you two whispering about?” a voice demanded.

I whirled around to see that Brad had finished his hundred laps, climbed out of the pool, and was toweling off just a few feet from us.

“Nothing,” I said. “I was just wondering how you can swim so many laps without slowing down.”

“This was nothing,” Brad told me, as if his usual workouts were twice as hard. Then he turned to Britney. “Did you get my time, baby?”

She looked down at the stopwatch. It was still running. She clicked it off. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I got distracted…”

“Yeah, well, I’m sorry, too,” Brad growled. “Without a time, it’s useless. I just wasted half an hour of training.”

“You were really swimming fast,” I told him.

Brad glared at me. “Did anybody invite you to speak?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Then make yourself scarce, Patzer-face.” He turned back to Britney. “I’m going to swim twenty laps of backstroke. Make sure you clock it to the second.”

13

“So you’re a bean counter, Morris?” Randolph Kinney said, taking a gulp from his gin martini and wrapping his tongue around an olive like an octopus seizing a small fish with its tentacle. Everyone but me had won, so the Mind Cripplers had posted five points in the first round and our host was in a genial mood. “What firm are you at?”

“Just a small outfit in Jersey,” my father replied, taking a sip from his glass of tomato juice.

We were standing at the bar of the Patagonia Steakhouse in a fashionable downtown section of Manhattan called Tribeca. The lighting was dim, the portions looked huge, and the high-ceilinged space was packed with diners even though it was past nine. Eric and Brad were chatting on cell phones, drawing dirty looks from other patrons at the bar. From what I overheard, Eric was browbeating his lab partner about a big project due next week, while Brad was making plans with Britney for Saturday night.

I was standing next to my dad, sipping a ginger ale and wondering if I should jump into the adult conversation and try to rescue him. “So what’s the name of your small firm?” Randolph pressed. “I do lots of work with bean counters in Jersey. I’m sure I’ve heard of you guys.”

“Haug and Gilooly,” my father said.

“Haug and Gilooly,” Randolph repeated, making the names sound even sillier than normal. “Never heard of it. Must be
really
small.”

“Sounds like Howdy Doody,” Dr. Chisolm contributed, well into his second large glass of red wine. “But all those bean counters have silly names.”

My father smiled at him. “So you’re a sawbones?”

Dr. Chisolm’s eyes narrowed. I don’t think anyone had referred to him as a sawbones in a while. “I’m Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Hackensack Hospital.”

“I’m kind of surprised to see you at a steak house,” Dad said. “You must know more about cholesterol than any of us. Doesn’t slicing into a rare steak make you think of the operating table?”

“I did become a vegetarian for a while during my residency,” Dr. Chisolm admitted. “But I can handle it now. You just have to learn to separate.”

Dad turned to Mr. Kinney. “And you’re a hedge trimmer?”

“You made that up,” Mr. Kinney said. “That’s pretty good. But, yeah, I run a four-billion-dollar global macro hedge fund that tilts toward technology…”

Meanwhile, I heard Brad telling Britney: “The steak house looks okay. Nothing special.”

A hostess walked over to us and said, “Kinney party? Your table is ready.”

“Gotta go chow down,” Brad grunted into the phone. “If I were you, I’d drag your mom out of there before she gets going. And watch out for those New York prep boys.” He hung up.

“Make sure you triple-check those graphs,” Eric ordered his lab partner, and then he also punched out.

“This way, please,” the hostess said, and we followed her through the restaurant to a table for six, in its own private alcove. I sat between my father and Eric. My family didn’t go out to eat often, and when we did it was usually for pizza or Chinese, or on special occasions to a nice family chain restaurant. Patagonia was by far the most elegant restaurant I’d ever been in.

“Welcome. I’m Claudio, your server,” a tall young man with an earring said. “Let me tell you about today’s specials. We have…”

“Save it,” Randolph cut him off. “We already know what we want. I’ll have the bone-in rib eye, bloody. Put something green next to it. And we need some wine.” He glanced at Dr. Chisolm, who was almost finished with his second glass. “Sam, what is that piss you’re drinking?”

“It’s an estate-bottled Malbec,” Dr. Chisolm said.

“Malbec went to hell in ’76 when frost killed off the old vines in Bordeaux,” Mr. Kinney declared.

“Actually, we have more than two dozen Argentine Malbecs on our list, several of which are stunning,” Claudio interjected proudly.

“Actually, they’re not,” Mr. Kinney told him, running his eyes down the extensive wine list. “So let’s not waste time. Bring us this Rhone—and let’s pair it with this Barolo. Now, I’m hungry, so let’s get some food on the table, pronto.”

“Yes, sir,” Claudio said, swallowing his pride and no doubt imagining his tip.

The rest of us ordered, and we were soon tucking into steaks the size of manhole covers. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was. Chess tournaments are very hard work. The game against Liu had exhausted me. I read somewhere that a grandmaster can lose between six to eight pounds of body weight during an average game just by concentrating so hard. Maybe this tournament would help Dad lose a little of his potbelly.

He had barely touched his steak, and he was understandably staying out of a conversation, between the two other dads, on who drove the better sports coupe. Meanwhile, Eric and Brad were going through the girls at our school year by year, picking out the cutest ones and rating them on a scale of one to ten.

I kept quiet and ate and thought we might get through this dinner without a major blowup.

Then the table conversations changed. Eric and Brad began planning what they were going to do with their share of the first-place prize money. Meanwhile, their fathers shifted from sports cars to the importance of winning. There was a candle on our table, and Brad’s father held his index finger above the flame. “It’s all in the mind,” he said, slowly lowering his finger till the flame licked his skin. I swear I could smell flesh burning. His eyes were fixed and hard.

My father reached out and pulled Mr. Kinney’s hand away from the candle. “You don’t have to do that,” he said. “We already know you’re tough.”

“It’s not about being tough,” Randolph told him. “It’s a lesson I want the boys to take away from this weekend. If you want to win, you’ve got to be willing to take risks and endure things that others can’t.”

As if on cue Dr. Chisolm got up from his chair and bent over all the way to the floor and then walked his feet up the wall of our dining alcove so that he was standing on his hands. He kicked away from the wall and began walking on his hands. Finally, with a great effort, he slowly picked his left hand up and stood on just his right, his face turning red from the pressure of his full body weight. “I used to be able to hold this position for two minutes,” he grunted, putting his other hand back down and then falling to his knees.

“Still pretty studly, Dad,” Eric said proudly. And then he told all of us: “Dad was a varsity gymnast at Stanford. He tried out for the Olympic team.”

“What about you, Morris?” Randolph asked. “Got anything you want to show the boys?”

Dad thought about it and smiled. “I’ve got one or two things up my sleeve,” he said. “Check this out.”

I knew what was coming and almost couldn’t bear to watch. He thrust his head slightly forward on his neck like a turtle poking out of its shell, tilted his chin up so that his bald pate gleamed under the one ceiling light, and concentrated.

“What the hell’s he doing?” Eric asked. “Is he trying to levitate?”

“No, he’s wiggling his ear,” Brad snorted.

“Both ears,” Dad said proudly. “And watch this.” He took off his glasses, and one of his eyebrows cocked up while the other one arched downward. “Pretty nifty, huh?”

“Morris, as one Mind Crippler to another, you need some new material,” Randolph Kinney told him, and the four of them burst into laughter.

I found myself on my feet, speaking a little too loudly. “My father’s the only grandmaster at this table, and he just won today with a brilliant rook sacrifice, so maybe all of you should shut your mouths.”

They stopped laughing. “Looks like Patzer-face is ready to take us all on,” Brad said with a grin.

“Yeah, well we probably shouldn’t laugh at a team member,” Eric said. “Even an ear-wiggling one.”

“We weren’t laughing at you, Morry,” Randolph chimed in. “Is it okay if I call you that? And I did hear about that rook sacrifice today. I’d love to see the game. But now that we’ve had a couple of glasses of wine I’ve gotta ask you something.” He lowered a glass of expensive Rhone wine and said: “Why on earth did you give up chess for the last thirty years?”

The table suddenly quieted.

“Personal reasons,” my father said, looking straight ahead.

“What possible personal reason could there be for giving up what you’re best at?” Dr. Chisolm followed up, his cheeks red. He had drunk too much too quickly, and it seemed to bring out the aggressive, nasty side of his character. “No offense, but you work for Howdy Doody, and you wiggle your ears and move your eyes like Mr. Potato Head…”

Eric and Brad howled with laughter.

“But you were a monster at chess,” the heart surgeon admitted. “I googled you and some of your games won brilliancy prizes and are posted online with grandmaster commentary. I played through a couple and they’re amazing. And I saw that you came in second at the U.S. Open one year—back when you were still a teenager. So what possible personal reason could make you quit…?”

I glanced at my father. It was news to me that he had finished second in a U.S. Open.

Dad stood up. “Daniel, I’ve finished my steak and I think we should go,” he said with quiet dignity. I stood up next to him, without a word.

“Don’t storm off, Morry,” Mr. Kinney said. “We didn’t mean anything. Sit back down. We were just naturally curious about why you gave up something you were so good at. Stay and have dessert. They make a mean cheesecake, and I was going to order a special port.”

“I don’t need your special port,” my father told him, looking him in the eye. “Thanks for dinner. Come on, Daniel.”

We started to walk away.

“Morry,”
Randolph Kinney called again, louder. “We apologize if we offended you. You don’t want the lesson you teach your son to be to walk away from his own team, do you?”

Dad whirled around. “Let’s get this out in the open. The only reason you invited Daniel to be on this team was so that I would help you guys win. But what’s even worse is that your two sons have made my boy feel like crud since the moment we showed up.” My father’s eyes swung to Dr. Chisolm. “And just so you know—one reason I quit chess was that I couldn’t control my temper, and that included nearly killing a rude asshole with my bare hands.”

Dad said this softly, his face deadpan, but for a moment his eyes flashed with such a maniacal gleam that Dr. Chisolm cringed.

“Let’s go, Daniel,” my dad said.

We headed away from the table. “Morry, come back,” Randolph called after us, and there was a note of pleading in his voice. Suddenly he barked out what sounded like a military order. “
Get back here now, Morris.
I’ve spent significant money putting this team together. Damn it, nobody walks out on me.”

But we left the Patagonia Steakhouse without a backward glance and the cool outside air felt good. “I think you scared the pants off Dr. Chisolm,” I told my father.

“He’s a piece of work,” Dad said. “I feel a little sorry for his son.”

“You put him in his place. You did great. Except for wiggling your ears.”

Dad took my arm as we crossed a street. “Okay, son. I’ll get some new material. Want to walk back? It’s a couple of miles.”

“Lead on,” I said. “The night is still young.”

14

We headed uptown on an avenue that was mostly empty, except for the steady stream of cars. Their lights swept the sidewalks and lit up the apartment lobbies where doormen stood as still as statues. Every now and then we would pass a bar or a restaurant, and knots of people would emerge, hail taxis, and disappear.