Читать книгу Manila Gambit - John Zeugner - Страница 18

No slender operation, this park. Carefully planted pine trees mask the rather shabby aluminum residences. Wide spacious boulevards. Nifty white cement statues of baseball players mark off the corners. The meeting hall looks like a long, low ship—port hole shaped windows spread across the wide Ocala block front façade. Automatic sliding glass doors.

The thirty-six boards have been arranged in a large circle in the cleared main ballroom. The bleachers have been pushed away. Instead, folding chairs have been set up about ten feet behind the circle. It makes little sense, since you cannot see anything from these chairs. Doubtless the audience, what audience there will be, will crowd around the thirty-six players. Inside the circle there are three stools arranged equi-distantly. So this will be the house where Mikey lives, the house that Vera built. His opponents are a motley group, perhaps twenty of them come directly out from under the aluminum shelters hidden in the pine trees. The rest appear much younger. Two clearly are junior high school students. There is a single black man.

At the far end of the room a long table has been set up holding a mammoth silver coffee container and several baskets of potato chips. The Tribune photographer poses Mikey on the third stool. Mikey works his fingers back and forth as if pulling them into proper shape for the big match. Vera and a designated official slip into the circle. Vera motions and the man places a Number 1 sign on the edge of the table below the board. He proceeds to number each table around the circle. Opponents are all in place. Where are the spectators?

As soon as the official announces the start of the exhibition, Mikey hops off his stool and goes directly to Board #1. He holds out his fists and wins the white pieces, makes a move and quickly turns to Board #2.

Waldo says, “You have to have strong legs for these kinds of things.”

Pam smiles in a lewd way, as if sharing knowledge of his leg strength, a little joke that I find annoying, but which seems to amuse Waldo greatly.

“When did you get here?” I ask.

“I never miss an opening,” Waldo answers. “I don’t suppose I upset him very much, did I?”

“I don’t think so.”

“He may be better, stronger, than he seems,” Waldo says.

Mikey has made one circle already and pauses back at the first board. In rapid fire he and his opponent, a slightly balding, red-haired fellow in a bright blue, swan-studded nylon shirt trade moves furiously for about a minute. Then the red-haired fellow tips his chair back, shoves it away from the board and indicates that Mikey should go on. All the prepared moves are over. Has Mikey thrown him a surprise, or did he somehow get off the pattern? Chair pulled back in closer again, the red-haired fellow grips his temples and frowns over the situation. Mikey merely smiles to Pam and mouths silent a rather clear, “No sweat.” He bounds along the circle, once or twice getting onto a stool as if to survey the little landscape of his domination. Vera, on the outside of the lineup, follows along, checking the notations and apparently worrying only about one difficulty on either board 17 or 18, I can’t quite tell.

In the far corner of the meeting hall there is an alcove of electronic games and a small, low bowling platform table with weighted metal discs for sliding. I try to get Pam interested, but she prefers first to stand by the circle, as if to offer Gatorade or encouragement to Mikey as he makes his periodic revolution and then, apparently tiring of that service role, Pam slips into one of the folding chairs.

After a while Waldo sits next to her and says loud enough for me to hear. “I can see why there are no spectators. This has got to be the boringest thing imaginable. Snelly!” Waldo shouts at me (I am about half way to the bowling/sliding game). “Snelly, why don’t you do some commentary so we can avoid falling asleep?”