The Queen's Gambit

God let me play Beltik and checkmate him.
In her desk drawer, in the toothbrush holder, were seventeen green pills,
and there were more in a little box on her closet shelf. She had thought

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earlier about taking two of them to help her doze off. But she did not. She
went back to bed, exhausted now and her mind blank, and slept soundly.
***
On Saturday morning she had hoped to be playing someone with a rating
over 1800. The man at registration had said there were three who were that
high. But on the pairings she was shown playing Black against someone
named Townes with a rating of 1724. That was lower than her last game,
the evening before. She went to the desk and asked about it.
“That’s the breaks, Harmon,” the man in the white shirt said. “Consider
yourself lucky.”
“I want to play the best,” Beth said.
“You have to get a rating before that happens,” the young man said.
“How do I get a rating?”
“You play thirty games in USCF tournaments and then wait four months.
That’s how you get a rating.”
“That’s too long.”
The man leaned toward her. “How old are you, Harmon?”
“Thirteen.”
“You’re the youngest person in the room. You can wait for a rating.”
Beth was furious. “I want to play Beltik.”
The other man at the table spoke up. “If you win your next three games,
honey. And if Beltik does the same.”
“I’ll win them,” Beth said.
“No, you won’t, Harmon,” the first young man said. “You’ll have to play
Sizemore and Goldmann first, and you can’t beat both of them.”
“Sizemore and Goldmann shit,” the other man said. “The guy you’re
playing now is underrated. He plays first board for the university team and
last month he came in fifth in Las Vegas. Don’t let the rating fool you.”
“What’s in Las Vegas?” Beth asked.
“The U.S. Open.”
***

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Beth went to Board Four. The man seated behind the white pieces was
smiling as she came up. It was the tall, handsome one. Beth felt a bit rattled
to see him. He looked like some kind of movie star.
“Hi, Harmon,” he said, holding out his hand. “It looks like we’ve been
stalking each other.”
She shook his big hand awkwardly and seated herself. There was a pause
for a long minute before he said, “Do you want to start my clock?”
“Sorry,” she said. She reached out to start it, almost knocked it over but
caught it in time. “Sorry,” she said again, almost inaudibly. She pressed the
button and his clock started ticking. She looked down at the board, her
cheeks burning.
He played pawn to king four, and she replied with the Sicilian. He
continued with book moves and she followed with the Dragon variation.
They traded pawns in the center. Gradually she got her composure back,
playing these mechanical moves, and she looked across the board at him.
He was attentive to the pieces, scowling. But even with a scowl on his face
and his hair slightly mussed he was handsome. Something in Beth’s
stomach felt strange as she looked at him, with his broad shoulders and
clear complexion and his brow wrinkled in concentration.
He surprised her by bringing his queen out. It was a bold move, and she
studied it for a while and saw that there wasn’t any weakness to it. She
brought out her own queen. He moved a knight to the fifth rank, and Beth
moved a knight to the fifth rank. He checked with a bishop, and she
defended with a pawn. He retreated the bishop. She was feeling light now,
and her fingers with the pieces were nimble. Both players began moving
fast but easily. She gave a non-threatening check to his king, and he pulled
away delicately and began advancing pawns. She stopped that handily with
a pin and then feinted on the queenside with a rook. He was undeceived by
the feint and, smiling, removed her pin, and on his next move continued the
pawn advances. She retreated, hiding her king in a queenside castle. She felt
somehow spacious and amused, yet her face remained serious. They
continued their dance.
It made her sad in a way when she eventually saw how to beat him. It
was after the nineteenth move, and she felt herself resisting it as it opened
up in her mind, hating to let go of the pleasant ballet they had danced

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together. But there it was: four moves and he would have to lose a rook or
worse. She hesitated and made the first move of the sequence.
He didn’t see what was happening until two moves later, when he
frowned suddenly and said, “Jesus Christ, Harmon, I’m going to drop a
rook!” She loved his voice; she loved the way he said it. He shook his head
in mock bafflement; she loved that.
Some players who had finished their game early had gathered around the
board, and a couple were whispering about the maneuver Beth had brought
off.
Townes went on playing for five more moves, and Beth felt genuinely
sorry for him when he resigned, tipping his king over and saying “Damn!”
But he stood up, stretched and smiled down at her. “You’re one hell of a
chess player, Harmon,” he said. “How old are you?”
“Thirteen.”
He whistled. “Where do you go to school?”
“Fairfield Junior.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know where that is.”
He was even better-looking than a movie star.
An hour later she drew Goldmann and Board Three. She walked into the
tournament room at exactly eleven, and the people standing stopped talking
when she came in. Everyone looked at her. She heard someone whisper,
“Thirteen fucking years old,” and immediately the thought came into her
mind, along with the exultant feeling the whispered voice had given her: I