The Queen's Gambit

café con leche from room service while two men with a stretcher came and
the manager instructed them. She heard him, but she did not watch. She

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kept her eyes on the window. Sometime later she turned to see a middle-
aged woman in a gray suit, using a stethoscope on Mrs. Wheatley. Mrs.
Wheatley was on the bed and the stretcher was under her. The two men in
green uniform were standing at the edge of the bed, looking embarrassed.
The woman took off her stethoscope, nodded to the manager and came over
to Beth. Her face was strained. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Beth looked away from her. “What was it?”
“Hepatitis, possibly. We’ll know tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Beth said. “Could you give me a tranquilizer?”
“I have a sedative…”
“I don’t want a sedative,” Beth said. “Can you give me a prescription for
Librium?”
The doctor stared at her for a moment and shrugged. “You don’t need a
prescription to buy Librium in Mexico. I suggest meprobamate. There’s a
farmacia in the hotel.”
***
Using a map in the front of Mrs. Wheatley’s Mobil Travel Guide, Beth
wrote down the names of the cities between Denver, Colorado, and Butte,
Montana. The manager had told her his assistant would be of whatever help
she needed in phoning, signing papers, dealing with the authorities. Ten
minutes after they had taken Mrs. Wheatley away, Beth called the assistant
and read him the list of towns and gave him the name. He said he would
call her back. She ordered a Coca-Cola grande and more coffee from room
service. Then she undressed quickly and took a shower. There was a phone
in the bathroom, but the call did not come through. She still felt nothing.
She dressed in fresh jeans and a white T-shirt. On the little table by the
bed was Mrs. Wheatley’s pack of Chesterfields, empty, crumpled by Mrs.
Wheatley’s hands. The ashtray beside it was full of butts. One cigarette, the
last one Mrs. Wheatley had ever smoked, sat on the edge of the little tray,
with a long cold ash. Beth stared at it a minute; then she went into the
bathroom and dried her hair.
The boy who brought the big bottle of Coke and the carafe of coffee was
very respectful and waved away her attempt to sign the bill. The telephone
rang. It was the manager. “I have your call,” he said. “From Denver.”

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There was a series of clicks in the receiver and then a male voice,
surprisingly loud and clear. “This is Allston Wheatley.”
“It’s Beth, Mr. Wheatley.”
There was a pause. “Beth?”
“Your daughter. Elizabeth Harmon.”
“You’re in Mexico? You’re calling from Mexico?”
“It’s about Mrs. Wheatley.” She was looking at the cigarette, never really
smoked, on the ashtray.
“How’s Alma?” the voice said. “Is she there with you? In Mexico?” The
interest sounded forced. She could picture him as she had seen him at
Methuen, wishing he were somewhere else, everything about him saying
that he wanted to make no connections, wanted always to be somewhere
else.
“She’s dead, Mr. Wheatley. She died this morning.”
There was silence at the other end of the line. Finally she said, “Mr.
Wheatley…”
“Can’t you handle this for me?” he said. “I can’t be going off to Mexico.”
“They’re going to do an autopsy tomorrow, and I’ve got to get new plane
tickets. I mean, get a new plane ticket for myself…” Her voice had
suddenly gone weak and aimless. She picked up the coffee cup and took a
drink from it. “I don’t know where to bury her.”
Mr. Wheatley’s voice came back with surprising crispness. “Call Durgin
Brothers, in Lexington. There’s a family plot in her maiden name. Benson.”
“What about the house?”
“Look”—the voice was louder now—“I don’t want any part of this. I’ve
got problems enough here in Denver. Get her up to Kentucky and bury her
and the house is yours. Just make the mortgage payments. Do you need
money?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what it will cost.”
“I heard you were doing all right. The child prodigy thing. Can’t you
charge it or something?”
“I can talk to the hotel manager.”
“Good. You do that. I’m strapped for cash right now, but you can have
the house and the equity. Call the Second National Bank and ask for Mr.
Erlich. That’s E-r-l-i-c-h. Tell him I want you to have the house. He knows
how to reach me.”

---

There was silence again. Then she said, as strongly as she could, “Don’t
you want to know what she died of?”
“What was it?”
“Hepatitis, I think. They’ll know tomorrow.”
“Oh,” Mr. Wheatley said. “She was sick a lot.”
***
The manager and the doctor took care of everything—even the refund on
Mrs. Wheatley’s plane ticket. Beth had to sign some official papers, had to
absolve the hotel of responsibility and fill out government forms. One had
the title “U.S. Customs—Transfer of Remains.” The manager got Durgin
Brothers in Lexington. The assistant manager drove Beth to the airport the
following day, with the hearse discreetly trailing them through the streets of
Mexico City and along the highway. She saw the metal coffin only once,
looking out the window from the TWA waiting room. The hearse had
driven up to the 707 at the gate and some men were unloading it in brilliant
sunlight. They set it on a forklift, and she could hear the dim whine of the
engine through the glass as it was raised to the level of the cargo hold. For a
moment it trembled in the sunshine and she had a sudden horrific vision of
it falling off the lift and crashing to the tarmac, spilling out the embalmed
middle-aged corpse of Mrs. Wheatley on the hot gray asphalt. But that did
not happen. The casket was pulled handily into the cargo hold.
On board Beth declined a drink from the stewardess. When she had gone
back down the aisle, Beth opened her purse and took out one of her new
bottles of green pills. She had spent three hours the day before, after signing
the papers, going from farmacia to farmacia, buying the limit of one
hundred pills in each.
***
The funeral was simple and brief. A half-hour before it began, Beth took
four green pills. She sat in the church alone, in a quiet daze, while the
minister said the things ministers say. There were flowers at the altar, and
she was mildly surprised to see a pair of men from the funeral home step up
and carry them out as soon as the minister had finished. Six other people

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were there, but Beth knew none of them. One old lady hugged her afterward
and said, “You poor dear.”
She finished unpacking that afternoon and came down from the bedroom
to fix coffee. While the water was coming to a boil she went into the little
downstairs bathroom to wash her face and suddenly, standing there
surrounded by blue, by Mrs. Wheatley’s blue bathroom rug and blue towels
and blue soap and blue washcloths, something hot exploded in her belly and
her face was drenched with tears. She took a towel from the rack and held it
against her face and said, “Oh Jesus Christ” and leaned against the
washbasin and cried for a long time.
She was still drying her face when the phone rang.
The voice was male. “Beth Harmon?”
“Yes.”
“This is Harry Beltik. From the State Tournament.”
“I remember.”
“Yeah. I hear you dropped one to Borgov. Wanted to give condolences.”
As she laid the towel on the back of the overstuffed sofa she noticed a
half-finished pack of Mrs. Wheatley’s cigarettes on its arm. “Thanks,” she
said, picking up the package and holding on to it tightly.
“What were you playing? White?”
“Black.”
“Yeah.” There was a pause. “Is something wrong?”
“No.”
“It’s better that way.”
“What’s better?”
“It’s better to be Black if you’re going to lose it.”
“I suppose so.”
“What’d you play? Sicilian?”
She gently set the package of cigarettes back on the chair arm. “Ruy
Lopez. I let him do it to me.”
“Mistake,” Beltik said. “Look, I’m in Lexington for the summer. Would
you like some training?”
“Training?”
“I know. You’re better than me. But if you’re going to play Russians,
you’ll need help.”
“Where are you?”

---

“At the Phoenix Hotel. I’m moving to an apartment Thursday.”
She looked around the room for a moment, at the stack of Mrs.
Wheatley’s women’s magazines on the cobbler’s bench, the pale-blue
drapes on the windows, the oversized ceramic lamps with the cellophane
still wrapped around their yellowing shades. She took in a long breath and
let it out silently. “Come on over,” she said.
He drove up twenty minutes later in a 1955 Chevrolet with red-and-black
flames painted on the fenders and a broken headlamp, pulling up to the curb
at the end of the patterned-brick walk. She had been watching for him from
the window and was on the front porch when he got out of the car. He
waved at her and went to the trunk. He was wearing a bright-red shirt and
gray corduroy pants with a pair of sneakers that matched the shirt. There
was something dark and quick about him, and Beth, remembering his bad
teeth and his fierce way of playing chess, felt herself stiffen a little at the
sight of him.
He bent over the trunk and lifted out a cardboard box, clearly heavy,
tossed the hair out of his eyes and came up the walk. The box said HEINZ
TOMATO KETCHUP in red letters; it was open at the top and filled with
books.
He set it on the living-room rug and unceremoniously took Mrs.
Wheatley’s magazines from the coffee table and slipped them into the
magazine rack. He began taking books out of the box one at a time, reading
off the titles and piling them on the table. “A. L. Deinkopf, Middle Game