The Chess Piece

[This piece was written for a friend, about a friend, and was intended as a gonzo-style venue review. I hope you like it.]

Richard rolls up the marble steps of the State Library, chessward and chilled. As if the fritzing, fizzing fluros of The Chess Room (official title) don't matter, as if the heavy-levying of the SL goons who line the very walls ain't happening, pardner.

Pardner? Pah! Player. Pussycat. Pawn.

Richard is here to crush me like the slightly-more-mediocre chess chump that I am.

Up the stairs, up again, and left into the bowels, what passes—ahem—as the very large intestine of "recreation" in this hell-hole of hallowed highbrowety:

The Chess Room

These chess pieces,

I tell him, having lurched into a wonky wheelie-chair near a perilously high dropoff into the AV "space",

are blunt.

Blunt? 

He cocks a crazy eyebrow.

L-l-look at them! 

I stammer, waving a rook frantically before his eyes. It's big and plastic and white and an insult to the sensibilities not just of these esteemed halls of uni-student z's, but also to the coiled-spring temperaments of the players who surround us.

(There's a couple of rows of shelves behind us, housing what I glance out of the sweaty corner of one eye to be books on chess. Just to, you know, keep with the theme of the place and all, like we could ever forget where we are. As I await his reply, a couple of kids clearly wagging some tedious lecture on post-modern-modernism or, I hope, something even more brutal, gaze longingly into each other's eyes over their unplayed pieces. I stifle a gag…)

Blunt!

I scream, the room spinning, the scent of the plastic sheeting they use to wrap the countless mountains of tomes in that place finally making me crack.

Hey, 

Says a low, meancing voice.

What's going on here?

A shadow deep as time casts our board into a totalitarian gloom: Security Guard.

I reel back in my seat, bugeyed and green.

We're playing chess, 

says Richard, all nice-as-pie, all sweet-as-you-please, and I know, I just know his next move will start the sweeping, brakeless carve-up that will clear the board of half the pieces in the next three minutes. I wanna buy time.

Yeah, 

I squeak, trying to control myself.

Ahem, yeah. We're just playing, boss.

Glowers from on high. This guy's frown is neanderthal in both stature and sensitivity. Oaf! I scream silently;

Boss.

I say again, aloud.

Well, keep it down, or you'll have to leave. This is a quiet area.

Richard's gaze crackles with electricity; the lights dim again (or am I losing consciousness?) and the henchman skulks off elsewhere. Before I know it, the kid has castled and the queen is dead.

Checkmate.

Better luck next time? There is no next time. My glorious, gorgeous, gobsmacker of a plan is to confuse him.

Rico, 

I tell him.

The Library's out, pal.

His face registers nothing but ethereal calm. Gaze? Unreadable. Shoulders? Set. Breathing? Level.

Match Bar!

I scream. He follows.

It's similar—steps, seating, a view of the curious circus on the State Library lawn—but different from The Chess Room.

For one thing, the rum is better. Hell, the rum is present. So is anything else you care to drink, along with imported Japanese ice-chillers in which, presumably, Rich will collect the corpses of my soon-to-be-slayed regiments.

My secret weapon? The tiniest travel-chess set in existence. A hand-me-down heirloom from the dimmest reaches of my flayed family tree, it boasts a magnetic board (I suspect ol' Rich has been knocking the board while I'm otherwise, shall we say, engaged—in talk, you understand. This will put us on an even, ahem, playing field…).

He orders the city's thinnest French fries as a distraction and has, it seems, had them import Britain's most charming barmen, who, along with the black-and-white bastion of the board, now vie for my bleary-eyed attentions.

Damn him!

We have an entire lounge to ourselves, acres of it, and the waitresses keep bringing drinks to the low table on which blood is spilled from the first.

Another ploy, fair boy?

I curl my lips into a maniac grin and strike!

Take that! 

I cry, slamming a tiny black pawn down between the board and my Mojito.

One of his knights is damaged, yet he steers this headless horse around the board as an apocalyptic oracle, threatening pieces left and right until I manage to get him into a corner and hang him, greasy-fingered, from the disco ball that Match Bar, on non-Mondays, presumably sets to a slowly rotating shimmer.

Stalemate, sucker!

Rue Bebelons

This time, this time, I'm determined.

To the home turf, homey! 

I yelp, dragging him westward, pulling him wayward, into the bloody red Rue Bebelons we both know and love.

No chips, but dips; no matt-sheen cocktail list, but decent house red and that cosy-as-an-old-pair-of-jeans feel that soothes the beleaguered chess player all the way back from the brink.

There's a half-booth in the corner and we take it. Rico chooses black. The bar tender changes the record, vinyl being, of course, the stock-standard at Bebelons.

Here, then, is a bar where you can wear a beret or a bassoon, play chess or play the field, and no one raises an eyebrow. It's a bar for anyone with a brain who's over eighteen, a bar where hipsters need not apply. Why it doesn't support more obvious alcoholics is beyond me, but kids, I'm not paying attention to my chic cohabitants right now.

What matters here are Richard's nimble fingers, and how he shuffles those pieces among the squares.

I eye his moves, a singular, spasming portion of my brain toying crazily with the idea of tearing down the string of dried red roses from above the bar and throwing the dusty blooms at my opponent. Or bribing the bar tender to play something a little less relaxing, a little more threatening. Anything to beat Richard. Anything.

Then, it happens: Reggae. Bob Marley. My formidable opponent is for the moment distracted; I am too. Delirious and seeing only the chalky red of the Beblons walls, I counter his move, whatever that was, slamming a sequestered piece onto the checked red tablecloth.

His eyes swing back to the board.

Checkmate! 

he cries. Only this time, it's mine.