“It worked,” Delmario protested. “It was voice-activated too, like you said, but real primitive. Just on and off, that’s all, and you had to speak real loud. I figured I could improve on it after I got out of school, but I never did.” He shrugged. “Nothing like this. This is real sophisticated.”
“I’ve noticed,” E.C. said. He craned up his head slightly and said, in a very loud clear voice, “I’ve had enough music now, thank you.” The silence that followed was briefly startling. Peter couldn’t think of a thing to say.
Finally E.C. turned to him and said, all seriously, “How did Bunnish get you here, Peter?”
Peter was puzzled. “Get me here? He just invited us. What do you mean?”
“He paid Steve’s way, you know,” E.C. said. “As for me, I turned down this invitation. Brucie was never one of my favorite people, you know that. He pulled strings to change my mind. I’m with an ad agency in New York. He dangled a big account in front of them, and I was told to come here or lose my job. Interesting, eh?”
Kathy had been sitting on the sofa, sipping her martini and looking bored. “It sounds as though this reunion is important to him,” she observed.
E.C. stood up. “Come here,” he said. “I want to show you something.” The rest of them rose obediently, and followed him across the room. In a shadowy corner surrounded by bookcases, a chessboard had been set up, with a game in progress. The board was made of squares of light and dark wood, painstakingly inlaid into a gorgeous Victorian table. The pieces were ivory and onyx. “Take a look at that,” E.C. said.
“That’s a beautiful set,” Peter said, admiringly. He reached down to lift the Black queen for a closer inspection, and grunted in surprise. The piece wouldn’t move.
“Tug away,” E.C. said. “It won’t do you any good. I’ve tried. The pieces are glued into position. Every one of them.”
Steve Delmario moved around the board, his eyes blinking behind his thick glasses. He set his drink on the table and sank into the chair behind the White pieces. “The position,” he said, his voice a bit blurry with drink. “I know it.”
E.C. Stuart smiled thinly and brushed his mustache. “Peter,” he said, nodding toward the chessboard. “Take a good look.”
Peter stared, and all of a sudden it came clear to him, the position on the board became as familiar as his own features in a mirror. “The game,” he said. “From the nationals. This is the critical position from Bunnish’s game with Vesselere.”
E.C. nodded. “I thought so. I wasn’t sure.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” Delmario said loudly. “How the hell could I not be sure? This is right where Bunny blew it, remember? He played king to knight one, instead of the sac. Cost us the match. Me, I was sitting right next to him, playing the best damned game of chess I ever played. Beat a Master, and what good did it do? Not a damn bit of good, thanks to Bunnish.” He looked at the board and glowered. “Knight takes pawn, that’s all he’s got to play, busts Vesselere wide open. Check, check, check, check, got to be a mate there somewhere.”
“You were never able to find it, though, Delmario,” Bruce Bunnish said from behind them.
None of them had heard him enter. Peter started like a burglar surprised while copping the family silver.
Their host stood in the doorway a few yards distant. Bunnish had changed, too. He had lost weight since college, and his body looked hard and fit now, though he still had the big round cheeks that Peter remembered. His crew cut had grown out into a healthy head of brown hair, carefully styled and blow-dried. He wore large, tinted glasses and expensive clothes. But he was still Bunnish. His voice was loud and grating, just as Peter remembered it.
Bunnish strolled over to the chessboard almost casually. “You analyzed that position for weeks afterward, Delmario,” he said. “You never found the mate.”
Delmario stood up. “I found a dozen mates,” he said.
“Yes,” Bunnish said, “but none of them were forced. Vesselere was a Master. He wouldn’t have played into any of your so-called mating lines.”
Delmario frowned and took a drink. He was going to say something else—Peter could see him fumbling for the words—but E.C. stood up and took away his chance. “Bruce,” he said, holding out his hand. “Good to see you again. How long has it been?”
Bunnish turned and smiled superciliously. “Is that another of your jokes, E.C.? You know how long it has been, and I know how long it has been, so why do you ask? Norten knows, and Delmario knows. Maybe you’re asking for Mrs. Norten.” He looked at Kathy. “Do you know how long it has been?”
She laughed. “I’ve heard.”
“Ah,” said Bunnish. He swung back to face E.C. “Then we all know, so it must be another of your jokes, and I’m not going to answer. Do you remember how you used to phone me at three in the morning, and ask me what time it was? Then I’d tell you, and you’d ask me what I was doing calling you at that hour?”
E.C. frowned and lowered his hand.
“Well,” said Bunnish, into the awkward silence that followed, “no sense standing here around this stupid chessboard. Why don’t we all go sit down by the fireplace, and talk.” He gestured. “Please.”
But when they were seated, the silence fell again. Peter took a swallow of beer and realized that he was more than just ill at ease. A palpable tension hung in the air. “Nice place you’ve got here, Bruce,” he said, hoping to lighten the atmosphere.
Bunnish looked around smugly. “I know,” he said. “I’ve done awfully well, you know. Awfully well. You wouldn’t believe how much money I have. I hardly know what to do with it all.” He smiled broadly and fatuously. “And how about you, my friends? Here I am boasting once again, when I ought to be listening to all of you recount your own triumphs.” Bunnish looked at Peter. “You first, Norten. You’re the captain, after all. How have you done?”
“All right,” Peter said, uncomfortably. “I’ve done fine. I own a bookstore.”
“A bookstore! How wonderful! I recall that you always wanted to be in publishing, though I rather thought you’d be writing books instead of selling them. Whatever happened to those novels you were going to write, Peter? Your literary career?”
Peter’s mouth was very dry. “I…things change, Bruce. I haven’t had much time for writing.” It sounded so feeble, Peter thought. All at once, he was desperately wishing he was elsewhere.
“No time for writing,” echoed Bunnish. “A pity, Norten. You had such promise.”
“He’s still promising,” Kathy put in sharply. “You ought to hear him promise. He’s been promising as long as I’ve known him. He never writes, but he does promise.”
Bunnish laughed. “Your wife is very witty,” he said to Peter. “She’s almost as funny as E.C. was, back in college. You must enjoy being married to her a great deal. I recall how fond you were of E.C.’s little jokes.” He looked at E.C. “Are you still a funny man, Stuart?”
E.C. looked annoyed. “I’m hysterical,” he said, in a flat voice.
“Good,” said Bunnish. He turned to Kathy and said, “I don’t know if Peter has told you all the stories about old E.C., but he really played some amazing pranks. Hilarious man, that’s our E.C. Stuart. Once, when our chess team had won the city championship, he had a girlfriend of his call up Peter and pretend to be an AP reporter. She interviewed him for an hour before he caught on.”
Kathy laughed. “Peter is sometimes a bit slow,” she said.
“Oh, that was nothing. Normally I was the one E.C. liked to play tricks on. I didn’t go out much, you know. Deathly afraid of girls. But E.C. had a hundred girlfriends, all of them gorgeous. One time he took pity on me and offered to fix me up on a blind date. I accepted eagerly, and when the girl arrived on the corner where we were supposed to meet, she was wearing dark glasses and carrying a cane. Tapping. You know.”
Steve Delmario guffawed, tried to stifle his laughter, and nearly choked on his drink. “Sorry,” he wheezed, “sorry.”
Bunnish w
aved casually. “Oh, go ahead, laugh. It was funny. The girl wasn’t really blind, you know, she was a drama student who was rehearsing a part in a play. But it took me all night to find that out. I was such a fool. And that was only one joke. There were hundreds of others.”
E.C. looked somber. “That was a long time ago. We were kids. It’s all behind us now, Bruce.”
“Bruce?” Bunnish sounded surprised. “Why, Stuart, that’s the first time you’ve ever called me Bruce. You have changed. You were the one who started calling me Brucie. God, how I hated that name! Brucie, Brucie, Brucie, I loathed it. How many times did I ask you to call me Bruce? How many times? Why, I don’t recall. I do recall, though, that after three years you finally came up to me at one meeting and said that you’d thought it over, and now you agreed that I was right, that Brucie was not an appropriate name for a Class A chess player, a twenty-year-old, an officer in ROTC. Your exact words. I remember the whole speech, E.C. It took me so by surprise that I didn’t know what to say, so I said, ‘Good, it’s about time!’ And then you grinned, and said that Brucie was out, that you’d never call me Brucie again. From now on, you said, you’d call me Bunny.”
Kathy laughed, and Delmario choked down an explosive outburst, but Peter only felt cold all over. Bunnish’s smile was genial enough, but his tone was pure iced venom as he recounted the incident. E.C. did not look amused either. Peter took a swallow of his beer, casting about for some ploy to get the conversation onto a different track. “Do any of you still play?” he heard himself blurt out.
They all looked at him. Delmario seemed almost befuddled. “Play?” he said. He blinked down at his empty glass.
“Help yourself to a refill,” Bunnish told him. “You know where it is.” He smiled at Peter as Delmario moved off to the bar. “You mean chess, of course.”
“Chess,” Peter said. “You remember chess. Odd little pastime played with black and white pieces and lots of two-faced clocks.” He looked around. “Don’t tell me we’ve all given it up?”
E.C. shrugged. “I’m too busy. I haven’t played a rated game since college.”
Delmario had returned, ice cubes clinking softly in a tumbler full of bourbon. “I played a little after college,” he said, “but not for the last five years.” He sat down heavily, and stared into the cold fireplace. “Those were my bad years. Wife left me, I lost a couple jobs. Bunny here was way ahead of me. Every goddamn idea I came up with, he had a patent on it already. Got so I was useless. That was when I started to drink.” He smiled, and took a sip. “Yeah,” he said. “Just then. And I stopped playing chess. It all comes out, you know, it all comes out over the board. I was losing, losing lots. To all these fish, God, I tell you, I couldn’t take it. Rating went down to Class B.” Delmario took another drink, and looked at Peter. “You need something to play good chess, you know what I’m saying? A kind of…hell, I don’t know…a kind of arrogance. Self-confidence. It’s all wrapped up with ego, that kind of stuff, and I didn’t have it anymore, whatever it was. I used to have it, but I lost it all. I had bad luck, and I looked around one day and it was gone, and my chess was gone with it. So I quit.” He lifted the tumbler to his lips, hesitated, and drained it all. Then he smiled for them. “Quit,” he repeated. “Gave it up. Chucked it away. Bailed out.” He chuckled, and stood up, and went off to the bar again.
“I play,” Bunnish said forcefully. “I’m a Master now.”
Delmario stopped in midstride, and fixed Bunnish with such a look of total loathing that it could have killed. Peter saw that Steve’s hand was shaking.
“I’m very happy for you, Bruce,” E.C. Stuart said. “Please do enjoy your Mastership, and your money, and Bunnishland.” He stood and straightened his vest, frowning. “Meanwhile, I’m going to be going.”
“Going?” said Bunnish. “Really, E.C., so soon? Must you?”
“Bunnish,” E.C. said, “you can spend the next four days playing your little ego games with Steve and Peter, if you like, but I’m afraid I am not amused. You always were a pimple-brain, and I have better things to do with my life than to sit here and watch you squeeze out ten-year-old pus. Am I making myself clear?”
“Oh, perfectly,” Bunnish said.
“Good,” said E.C. He looked at the others. “Kathy, it was nice meeting you. I’m sorry it wasn’t under better circumstances. Peter, Steve, if either of you comes to New York in the near future, I hope you’ll look me up. I’m in the book.”
“E.C., don’t you…” Peter began, but he knew it was useless. Even in the old days, E.C. Stuart was headstrong. You could never talk him into or out of anything.
“Good-bye,” he said, interrupting Peter. He went briskly to the elevator, and they watched the wood-paneled doors close on him.
“He’ll be back,” Bunnish said after the elevator had gone.
“I don’t think so,” Peter replied.
Bunnish got up, smiling broadly. Deep dimples appeared in his large, round cheeks. “Oh, but he will, Norten. You see, it’s my turn to play the little jokes now, and E.C. will soon find that out.”
“What?” Delmario said.
“Don’t you fret about it, you’ll understand soon enough,” Bunnish said. “Meanwhile, please do excuse me. I have to see about dinner. You all must be ravenous. I’m making dinner myself, you know. I sent my servants away, so we could have a nice private reunion.” He looked at his watch, a heavy gold Swiss. “Let’s all meet in the dining room in, say, an hour. Everything should be ready by then. We can talk some more. About life. About chess.” He smiled, and left.
Kathy was smiling too. “Well,” she said to Peter after Bunnish had left the room, “this is all vastly more entertaining than I would have imagined. I feel as if I just walked into a Harold Pinter play.”
“Who’s that?” Delmario asked, resuming his seat.
Peter ignored him. “I don’t like any of this,” he said. “What the hell did Bunnish mean about playing a joke on us?”
He didn’t have to wait long for an answer. While Kathy went to fix herself another martini, they heard the elevator again, and turned expectantly toward the doors. E.C. stepped out frowning. “Where is he?” he said in a hard voice.
“He went to cook dinner,” Peter said. “What is it? He said something about a joke….”
“Those garage doors won’t open,” E.C. said. “I can’t get my car out. There’s no place to go without it. We must be fifty miles from the nearest civilization.”
“I’ll go down and ram out with my VW,” Delmario said helpfully. “Like in the movies.”
“Don’t be absurd,” E.C. said. “That door is stainless steel. There’s no way you’re going to batter it down.” He scowled and brushed back one end of his mustache. “Battering down Brucie, however, is a much more viable proposition. Where the hell is the kitchen?”
Peter sighed. “I wouldn’t if I were you, E.C.,” he said. “From the way he’s been acting, he’d just love a chance to clap you in jail. If you touch him, it’s assault, you know that.”
“Phone the police,” Kathy suggested.
Peter looked around. “Now that you mention it, I don’t see a phone anywhere in this room. Do you?” Silence. “There was no phone in our suite, either, that I recall.”
“Hey!” Delmario said. “That’s right, Pete, you’re right.” E.C. sat down. “He appears to have us checkmated,” he said.
“The exact word,” said Peter. “Bunnish is playing some kind of game with us. He said so himself. A joke.”
“Ha, ha,” said E.C. “What do you suggest we do, then? Laugh?”
Peter shrugged. “Eat dinner, talk, have our reunion, find out what the hell Bunnish wants with us.”
“Win the game, guys, that’s what we do,” Delmario said. E.C. stared at him. “What the hell does that mean?”
Delmario sipped his bourbon and grinned. “Peter said Bunny was playing some kind of game with us, right? OK, fine. Let’s play. Let’s beat him at this goddamned game, whatever the
hell it is.” He chuckled. “Hell, guys, this is the Funny Bunny we’re playing. Maybe he is a Master, I don’t give a good goddamn, he’ll still find a way to blow it in the end. You know how it was. Bunnish always lost the big games. He’ll lose this one, too.”
“I wonder,” said Peter. “I wonder.”
PETER BROUGHT ANOTHER BOTTLE OF HEINEKEN BACK TO THE suite with him, and sat in a deck chair on the patio drinking it while Kathy tried out the hot tub.
“This is nice,” she said from the tub. “Relaxing. Sensuous, even. Why don’t you come on in?”
“No, thanks,” Peter said.
“We ought to get one of these.”
“Right. We could put it in our living room. The people in the apartment downstairs would love it.” He took a swallow of beer and shook his head.
“What are you thinking about?” Kathy asked.
Peter smiled grimly. “Chess, believe it or not.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
“Life is a lot like chess,” he said.
She laughed. “Really? I’d never noticed, somehow.”
Peter refused to let her needling get to him. “All a matter of choices. Every move you face choices, and every choice leads to different variations. It branches and then branches again, and sometimes the variation you pick isn’t as good as it looked, isn’t sound at all. But you don’t know that until your game is over.”
“I hope you’ll repeat this when I’m out of the tub,” Kathy said. “I want to write it all down for posterity.”
“I remember, back in college, how many possibilities life seemed to hold. Variations. I knew, of course, that I’d only live one of my fantasy lives, but for a few years there, I had them all, all the branches, all the variations. One day I could dream of being a novelist, one day I would be a journalist covering Washington, the next—oh, I don’t know, a politician, a teacher, whatever. My dream lives. Full of dream wealth and dream women. All the things I was going to do, all the places I was going to live. They were mutually exclusive, of course, but since I didn’t have any of them, in a sense I had them all. Like when you sit down at a chessboard to begin a game, and you don’t know what the opening will be. Maybe it will be a Sicilian, or a French, or a Ruy Lopez. They all coexist, all the variations, until you start making the moves. You always dream of winning, no matter what line you choose, but the variations are still…different.” He drank some more beer. “Once the game begins, the possibilities narrow and narrow and narrow, the other variations fade, and you’re left with what you’ve got—a position half of your own making, and half chance, as embodied by that stranger across the board. Maybe you’ve got a good game, or maybe you’re in trouble, but in any case there’s just that one position to work from. The might-have-beens are gone.”