started laying out the game where we’d left it three months ago, at the seventieth move. We’d started it at the Stake, during the Madison business, and a lot had happened since then, but—as I maybe should mention for the benefit of non-Go players in the audience—there wasn’t anything outstandingly mentally acrobatic about picking it up again now. Actually, all Go players above a certain level can remember all their games and can pick up any of them at any stage. Also, as long as we’re making explanations, maybe I should say how it might seem a little odd that we’d do this now, but only to people who don’t play. No Go player wants an unresolved game hanging around in the air like a hungry ghost.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“You’re not planning some damn thing for my birthday, are you? Because I’m not putting this one on my résumé.” She snuck her right middle finger into the side of her mouth and, discreetly, bit on it.
“Oh, uh, sorry, no.”
Mierditas,
I thought. I hate mind readers.
“So what’s up? I bet you made another huge and foolishly attention-getting investment coup.”
“No, no . . . it’s just you haven’t seen me for a while, that’s all—”
“Uh-huh.” She conveyed a mass of dubiousness. Hell, I thought.
(EOE)
I’m transfuckingparent. Better take off now. No, wait. That’s even more suspicious-making. I looked up at the nearest one of the nine or so clocks on her desk. It was some I guess Masonic antique that said it wasto. The next one in the row was an impossible-to-read skeleton clock—maybe it told the time in Xibalba—but the third one was highly legible:
“6:41,”
it said.
“Smartlite Sweeper
™
/Quartz USA
.” Damn. The night is far-effing young. Damn. Okay, just stick it out. It’s no biggie. Don’t get para. All chicks have empath powers. Right? But she can’t
actually
read your mind. Not without a whole lot of gadgetry, anyway.
“Nothing’s up,” I said.
(EOE! EOE!)
“Are you sure—wait, hang on.” She paused for eight seconds. I finished laying out the game. “Okay, just use the Amex number,” she said. “Sorry,” she said to me. Oh, that’s why, I thought. I mean, why she had those big earrings. They were telephones. I mean, one of them was. The other probably had an extra condom in it or something.
“Okay,” I said. I nodded. Marena nodded. I punched my clock. As it does, time seemed to slow down slightly. I’d decided on my move weeks ago, so I put it right down. She’d anticipated it and responded immediately. The world slowed down another five clicks. Despite everything else that was going on, despite whatever little secrets she had and despite the big deal-breaking secret I had, we were in Gametime.
And so it came to pass that there now followed about twelve and one-fifth minutes of silence, punctuated by six raps of stones hitting the thick wood. I always thought one of the most off-balancing things in life is when there’s a pause at the wrong time, and this felt especially wrong, a strange interlude with nothing happening in the middle of—well, maybe it just feels wrong to me. Damn it, how can Korean food take so long? Like it takes time to open ten jars of assorted kimchee. I focused on the board. In the first stages of a Go game it feels like you’re emplacing forts on a wide, desolate frontier. But at this point, almost halfway in, the stone pictures were coming into focus, crosses, flowers, a poodle, a long black staircase growing out of her second corner and bifurcating near the center into distended jaws, like the Star Rattlers balusters at Chichen. I pushed through a gap in the stairs and, maybe too fliply, hit the clock.
She didn’t make a move. One minute. She bit down again on her presumably nonconforming fingernail, noticed she was doing it, and pulled her hand away and tucked it under her thigh. Two minutes.
“Damn,” she said, at two minutes and eighteen seconds. Her biggest group was in real trouble.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“You’re not planning some damn thing for my birthday, are you? Because I’m not putting this one on my résumé.” She snuck her right middle finger into the side of her mouth and, discreetly, bit on it.
“Oh, uh, sorry, no.”
Mierditas,
I thought. I hate mind readers.
“So what’s up? I bet you made another huge and foolishly attention-getting investment coup.”
“No, no . . . it’s just you haven’t seen me for a while, that’s all—”
“Uh-huh.” She conveyed a mass of dubiousness. Hell, I thought.
(EOE)
I’m transfuckingparent. Better take off now. No, wait. That’s even more suspicious-making. I looked up at the nearest one of the nine or so clocks on her desk. It was some I guess Masonic antique that said it wasto. The next one in the row was an impossible-to-read skeleton clock—maybe it told the time in Xibalba—but the third one was highly legible:
“6:41,”
it said.
“Smartlite Sweeper
™
/Quartz USA
.” Damn. The night is far-effing young. Damn. Okay, just stick it out. It’s no biggie. Don’t get para. All chicks have empath powers. Right? But she can’t
actually
read your mind. Not without a whole lot of gadgetry, anyway.
“Nothing’s up,” I said.
(EOE! EOE!)
“Are you sure—wait, hang on.” She paused for eight seconds. I finished laying out the game. “Okay, just use the Amex number,” she said. “Sorry,” she said to me. Oh, that’s why, I thought. I mean, why she had those big earrings. They were telephones. I mean, one of them was. The other probably had an extra condom in it or something.
“Okay,” I said. I nodded. Marena nodded. I punched my clock. As it does, time seemed to slow down slightly. I’d decided on my move weeks ago, so I put it right down. She’d anticipated it and responded immediately. The world slowed down another five clicks. Despite everything else that was going on, despite whatever little secrets she had and despite the big deal-breaking secret I had, we were in Gametime.
And so it came to pass that there now followed about twelve and one-fifth minutes of silence, punctuated by six raps of stones hitting the thick wood. I always thought one of the most off-balancing things in life is when there’s a pause at the wrong time, and this felt especially wrong, a strange interlude with nothing happening in the middle of—well, maybe it just feels wrong to me. Damn it, how can Korean food take so long? Like it takes time to open ten jars of assorted kimchee. I focused on the board. In the first stages of a Go game it feels like you’re emplacing forts on a wide, desolate frontier. But at this point, almost halfway in, the stone pictures were coming into focus, crosses, flowers, a poodle, a long black staircase growing out of her second corner and bifurcating near the center into distended jaws, like the Star Rattlers balusters at Chichen. I pushed through a gap in the stairs and, maybe too fliply, hit the clock.
She didn’t make a move. One minute. She bit down again on her presumably nonconforming fingernail, noticed she was doing it, and pulled her hand away and tucked it under her thigh. Two minutes.
“Damn,” she said, at two minutes and eighteen seconds. Her biggest group was in real trouble.
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