Fearless (7 page)

SAM MOON WASN’T SURE WHAT TO make of this girl. He’d sat down at her board because she was new, and that always represented an opportunity.

Well, okay. That wasn’t the only reason. Another reason

was that in spite of her somewhat disastrous personal hygiene, she was pretty. A pretty girl at a chessboard wasn’t your everyday sight. He hadn’t even realized just how pretty until he was within a couple of feet and had a chance to really look.

Some friends of his from high school used to rate a girl’s attractiveness by what was known as the fire hose test. If the girl’s looks were all about makeup and hair and clothes, she’d look like crap if you shot a fire hose directly in her face from point-blank range. A genuinely pretty girl would still look good. Now, this girl here looked as though a hose actually had blasted her, so there was no leap of imagination necessary to know that she passed the test. Passed it with an A, he decided as she bit her lip and tapped impatiently on the queen’s pawn.

“Okay, here goes,” he said, thumping to E4.

She predictably took E5.

Pretty as she was, though, she was annoying. She obviously thought she knew what she was doing—under her truly flimsy pretense that she didn’t. Maybe she’d won some high school tournament or something. Whoop-de-do. She had no business taking over a table here.

And why was she glaring at him like that? What had he done to piss her off?

H e ‘ d give her hope for a few

minutes and then shut her down. He could really use the twenty bucks.

He flinched a little as a clap of thunder roared overhead. The air felt heavy with coming rain. He’d give her a very few minutes.

SHE WAS SURPRISED. NOT ALARMED or anything. Just a little surprised.

She hadn’t expected him to respond so adroitly to her opening. They’d progressed quickly to the midgame, and she’d achieved almost no advantage. Now the wind was blowing in soot-colored clouds and thunder rolled through the sky and she was looking at the possibility of a complicated endgame.

He wasn’t the doofus she’d imagined. That much she had to admit. She hadn’t thought it possible to have perfect orthodonture and a good haircut and also be great at chess, but then, she was only seventeen. There had to be a few things left to learn.

She wasn’t pretending anything anymore. She was too focused on the board. All attempts at inane, geewhiz posturing had fallen away.

His manner had changed, too. His concentration on the game was so full, he let out these tiny, almost inaudible grunts every so often. He had this funny tick of drumming his fingers against his bottom lip before he made each move. She couldn’t exactly remember what about him had seemed so self-satisfied.

She unintentionally knocked her knee against his under the table. He glanced up.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. Her face felt warm. She prayed it wasn’t actually turning pink.

His hair had fallen over his forehead. She couldn’t read the expression in his eyes.

She commanded her own eyeballs back to the board.

A fat, cold raindrop landed on her scalp. Damn. Why couldn’t she just finish this up?

TINY DROPS OF SWEAT WERE collecting in his hairline, bleeding into the raindrops slapping on his head. Drops dribbled down his neck, and his sweater was starting to smell funky. He was concentrating too hard to care.

The girl moved her king’s bishop.

Ugh. He closed his eyes briefly in disgust at himself. Why hadn’t he seen the pin? What was wrong with him?

He was forced to defend with a knight. That was a tempo lost.

The main thing wrong was that this girl was totally shocking. She was not good She was very, very, very good Where had she come from? She couldn’t be from around here because he felt sure he would have met her in tournaments before. She had to be an internationally ranked player. Either that or he suddenly stunk.

He’d sacrificed material to no avail. She’d dismantled one of his most trusted combinations. But even so, it was a really exciting game. Her play was not only smart and challenging, but unorthodox. Who had taught her? Who was she?

He glanced up at her. Her light hair was soaked flat with rain. Her blue eyes darkened to mirror the sky, and they were steady with concentration. She was somewhere around sixteen or seventeen years old. He hadn’t detected any accent, which would have at least helped to explain how she was so good. It seemed like foreign players always dominated in competition.

The harsh, defiant set of her face had dissolved now. Self-consciousness had fallen away as her focus intensified. Her eyes were lovely, rimmed with long, dark (wet) lashes. Her cheekbones were

exceptionally prominent for a person her age. Her face was open now and almost sweet. Raindrops stood on her bare arms, and her T-shirt was …

She snapped her rook into the center of the action.

Okay, better not to look anymore. He was screwing up here. Lucky for him there weren’t many beautiful girls who played chess, or he’d probably be bowling right now.

His heart was speeding with nervousness and excitement. He could feel warmth radiating from her legs, so close to his. His palms felt tingly.

Think about chess, you idiot, he ordered himself.

YES, ALARMING. IT WAS NOW officially alarming. He was up a knight and coming on strong. How had she misjudged him so badly?

He was probably the best person she had ever played except for her father, maybe, and Zolov, who was nuts.

She studied his face. He was older than she, but not by much. Maybe twenty. He had to be an international master at least. She wasn’t on the chess circuit, but she knew an extraordinary player from a good one.

And as he played he was becoming real to her. His

little ticks were so peculiar. The skin around his fingernails was ragged from being picked at too much. Tiny blue veins zigzagged under the surface of the transparent skin beneath his eyes. Rain plastered thick dark cords of hair to his forehead. Now that it was no longer perfect, she could see it was beautiful.

Suddenly she had this powerful urge to touch the pale skin above his wrist, where she could see his pulse thumping. She stared transfixed at that spot, feeling that her own heart was beating out the same rhythm.

Oh, Gaia. She almost groaned out loud. Get a hold of yourself, girl.

This was an inexplicable reaction she was having to him. Was she profoundly low on sleep, maybe? When had she last eaten?

Another bolt of lightning blazed through the sky. Maybe it was the plunging barometer? The electricity in the air?

When she looked back at the board, she felt dizzy and disoriented. A chess game like this one meant holding a million teetering moves and possibilities in your mind, and here all at once she’d dropped them. The crowd of pieces left on the board had gone from a thrillingly complex and significant battle in one second to a meaningless jumble the next.

Blood rushed to her face. She tried to kick-start her

memory, to patch together her lost strategy. But it was as though the whole thing had existed in someone else’s mind.

Rain blanketed them. Steam rose from the surrounding pavement. Goose bumps pricked up and down her arms. Why had neither of them suggested giving up this ridiculous contest and going inside?

He was looking at her. Not silently, impatiently demanding her next move, as she would expect. Just looking. Looking for something. Rain dotted his eyelashes with diamonds, formed rivers down his cheeks.

His eyes had taken hers, and she couldn’t look away.

Then she felt something grab hold of her chest. It wasn’t fear. It couldn’t be. But what was it? She had to get out of there.

With a flick of her index finger she felled her precious king. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I have to go.” She got to her feet, reaching into her bag for her wallet. He stood, too. She fumbled the wet leather and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, then jammed it in his palm.

“No. No,” he told her. The bill fluttered to the ground, but neither of them stooped to get it. She was already walking, and he was hurrying alongside her, confused, surprised, stammering for a word.

“W-Wait. Please,” he whispered.

She was almost running. In her sneakers the water squished around her toes. The rain was so loud, it filled up all of her senses.

She hurried from him and from the strange perception that a million frozen feelings were about to thaw and the flood would certainly drown her.

HE WATCHED HER GO, FEELING A terrible tightness in his throat. What had she done to him?

It had all happened in that moment, when he’d met her eyes and, like a mystic, seemed to see her past and future. Her past was haunting, marked by bottomless wounds, and the future was terrifying because it included him.

For the last twenty-four hours his mind had behaved more like a badly trained dog on a too long leash.

“I WISH MY NAME WERE FARGO.”

Gaia was walking so fast, Ed Fargo was having a hard time keeping up with her. Her movements were strangely jerky, and her mouth was going a mile a minute.

“Why is that?” he had to practically shout at her because she kept getting ahead.

“It’s a cool name,” she said.

“You could marry me if you asked really nicely,” he proposed.

“Yeah, right.”

“What’s the matter with Moore?” he asked as they rounded the corner of Charles Street and Hudson.

“I don’t know.” Gaia’s eyes weren’t quite focused. She wasn’t completely paying attention to what she was saying or where her feet were going. “Moore … Less,” she mused absently. “Hey, Gaia Less. Guileless. I like that.”

He was getting annoyed. “Gaia, would you please slow down? I’m kind of in a wheelchair here.”

She glanced back at him. “Oh. Sorry,” she mumbled.

In her expression Ed saw traces of impatience but no embarrassment, no pity. He loved her.

“Guileless,” he continued. “What does it mean?”

“You know, without guile.”

“What does guile mean?”

“Deceit, duplicity, dishonesty.”

He slowed down a bit more. “Gaia, how do you Know these things?”

She shrugged. “I’m smart.”

“And modest, too.”

“Modesty is a waste of time,” she pronounced.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

They passed Zuli’s bakery and the tiny store that sold homemade ravioli. A woman passed them, pushing a toy poodle perched in a baby carriage. Gaia didn’t even seem to notice.

“For somebody so smart, you sure bombed the physics quiz today,” Ed pointed out

“Yeah, well. Parabolas are so simple, they’re boring.”

Ed laughed. “I’ll have to remember that excuse to tell my parents the next time I get a D.”

Suddenly Gaia stopped and grabbed his shoulder. “What’s that?”

“Ouch,” he said, and she lessened her grip on his clavicle. “What?”

“That music.” She yanked him around the corner. “Do you hear it? Where’s it coming from?”

He pointed across the street. “That band we heard at Ozzie’s. They practice in the basement of that building.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m smart.”

Gaia rolled her eyes. “What’s the name of the band?”

“Huh?”

“The name of the band?”

“Fearless. They’re always playing around the neighborhood. Ozzie’s on Friday afternoons, Dock’s on Wednesday evenings, and fully amplified at The Flood most Saturday nights. Our local OTB takes bets on when they’ll actually get signed.”

Gaia had completely tuned out.

“Ha-ha. That was a funny joke.” Ed pointed out.

Gaia nodded dumbly. “Fearless?” she asked. “No way.”

Ed shrugged. “No reason to lie.” He was bored with this conversation.

Gaia paused for another moment as slow lyrics drifted up to the street.

“… And I’m a stone/falling deeper/into your black, black ocean/let me drown …”

Gaia was off again like a shot.

“Where are we going now?” he asked, almost breathless in his effort to catch up.

“I don’t know. We’re strolling.”

“Oh.”

They strolled for a while in silence.

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said, slowing down warily as they sailed past Sixth Avenue without a pause.

“What?”

“I have a feeling we’re strolling to the park.”

“So?”

“I don’t want to go to the park.”

Gaia looked annoyed. “Why not?”

“Because innocent people are getting slashed there practically every day. Because there are evil bald guys carving swastikas into trees. Do you watch the news?”

“Ed, it’s broad daylight”

“That doesn’t stop you.”

“Stop
me?
Stop me from what?” she asked.

“From finding people to get into fights with,” he responded.

She looked slightly abashed.

“Let’s walk down Broadway toward Soho,” he suggested.

Gaia was quiet, fidgeting with the threads hanging off the bottom of her jacket, but she did follow him at least.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I’m trying to think of a way to apologize for the other night,” she explained.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“For ruining that party you invited me to.”

“You didn’t ruin it,” he said comfortingly. “We all had a perfectly good time after you left.”

She kicked his wheel.

“Gaia, Jesus!” He regained control of his chair. “I was just kidding. I left right away. I tried to catch you, but you were too fast for me.”

She slowed down a little. “Really?”

“Yeah. Anyway, it wasn’t you. It was Heather who was out of control.”

“You think so?”

He laughed. “For once, yeah.”

“She’s such a raving bitch,” Gaia declared.

Ed shook his head thoughtfully. “There’s actually more to her than that.”

“You know her well?” Gaia asked, clearly surprised.

“Sure. I went out with her for a few months.”

Gaia stopped cold in the middle of Bleecker Street. A truck honked loudly.

“Gaia, go!” Ed commanded, and she did.

“No way,” she stated when they were safely on the other side of the street.

Ed looked at her peevishly. “You say that too much.”

“Sorry. But I mean it. No way.”

Ed held up his hands. “It’s true. Heather and I went out for a while before my accident.”

“Wow.” Gaia was obviously struggling to absorb this. They walked for three blocks in silence.

“Hey, Gaia?” he asked finally.

“Yeah?”

“Are you ever going to ask me why I’m in a wheelchair?”

“No,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because if I do, you would have the right to ask

where I lived before, or why I’m a black belt in karate, or what happened to my parents.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”

And they kept walking.