Tlingel drained it and moved the King to B1.
Martin leaned forward immediately and pushed the Rook to R3. Tlingel looked up, stared at him.
“Not bad.”
Martin wanted to squirm. He was struck by the nobility of the creature. He wanted so badly to play and beat the unicorn on his own, fairly. Not this way.
Tlingel looked back at the board, then almost carelessly moved the Knight to K4.
“Go ahead. Or will it take you another month?”
Martin growled softly, advanced the Rook and captured the Knight. “Of course.”
Tlingel captured the Rook with the Pawn. This was not the way that the last variation with Grend had run. Still…
He moved his Rook to KB3. As he did, the wind seemed to commence a peculiar shrieking above, amid, the ruined buildings.
“Check,” he announced.
The hell with it! he decided. I’m good enough to manage my own end game. Let’s play this out.
He watched and waited and finally saw Tlingel move the King to N1.
He moved his Bishop to R6. Tlingel moved the Queen to K2. The shrieking came again, sounding nearer now. Martin took the Pawn with the Bishop.
The unicorn’s head came up and it seemed to listen for a moment. Then Tlingel lowered it and captured the Bishop with the King. Martin moved his Rook to KN3.
“Check.”
Tlingel returned the King to B 1.
Martin moved the Rook to KB3.
“Check.”
Tlingel pushed the King to N2.
Martin moved the Rook back to KN3.
“Check.”
Tlingel returned the King to B1, looked up and stared at him, showing teeth.
“Looks as if we’ve got a drawn game,” the unicorn stated. “Care for another one?”
“Yes, but not for the fate of humanity.”
“Forget it. I’d given up on that a long time ago. I decided that I wouldn’t care to live here after all. I’m a little more discriminating than that.
“Except for this bar.” Tlingel turned away as another shriek sounded just beyond the door, followed by strange voices. “What is that?”
“I don’t know,” Martin answered, rising.
The doors opened and a golden griffin entered.
“Martin!” it cried. “Beer! Beer!”
“Uh—Tlingel, this is Rael, and, and—”
Three more griffins followed it in. Then came Grend, and three others of his own kind.
“—and that one’s Grend,” Martin said lamely. “I don’t know the others.”
They all halted when they beheld the unicorn.
“Tlingel,” one of the sasquatches said, “I thought you were still in the morning land.”
“I still am, in a way. Martin, how is it that you are acquainted with my former countrymen?”
“Well—uh—Grend here is my chess coach.”
“Aha! I begin to understand.”
“I am not sure that you really do. But let me get everyone a drink first.” Martin turned on the piano and set everyone up.
“How did you find this place?” he asked Grend as he was doing it. “And how did you get here?”
“Well …” Grend looked embarrassed. “Rael followed you back.”
“Followed a jet?”
“Griffins are supernaturally fast.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, he told his relatives and some of my folks about it. When we saw that the griffins were determined to visit you, we decided that we had better come along to keep them out of trouble. They brought us.”
“I—see. Interesting… .”
“No wonder you played like a unicorn, that one game with all the variations.”
“Uh—yes.”
Martin turned away, moved to the end of the bar.
“Welcome, all of you,” he said. “I have a small announcement. Tlingel, a while back you had a number of observations concerning possible ecological and urban disasters and lesser dangers. Also, some ideas as to possible safeguards against some of them.”
“I recall,” said the unicorn.
“I passed them along to a friend of mine in Washington who used to be a member of my old chess club. I told him that the work was not entirely my own.”
“I should hope so.”
“He has since suggested that I turn whatever group was involved into a think tank. He will then see about paying something for its efforts.”
“I didn’t come here to save the world,” Tlingel said.
“No, but you’ve been very helpful. And Grend tells me that the griffins, even if their vocabulary is a bit limited, know almost all that there is to know about ecology.”
“That is probably true.”
“Since they have inherited a part of the Earth, it would be to their benefit as well to help preserve the place. Inasmuch as this many of us are already here, I can save myself some travel and suggest right now that we find a meeting place—say here, once a month—and that you let me have your unique viewpoints. You must know more about how species become extinct than anyone else in the business.”
“Of course,” said Grend, waving his mug, “but we really should ask the yeti, also. I’ll do it, if you’d like. Is that stuff coming out of the big box music?”
“I like it. If we do this think-tank thing, you’ll make enough to keep this place going?”
“I’ll buy the whole town.”
Grend conversed in quick gutturals with the griffins, who shrieked back at him.
“You’ve got a think tank,” he said, “and they want more beer.” Martin turned toward Tlingel.
“They were your observations. What do you think?”
“It may be amusing,” said the unicorn, “to stop by occasionally.” Then, “So much for saving the world. Did you say you wanted another game?”
“I’ve nothing to lose.”
Grend took over the tending of the bar while Tlingel and Martin returned to the table.
He beat the unicorn in thirty-one moves and touched the extended horn. The piano keys went up and down. Tiny sphinxes buzzed about the bar, drinking the spillage.
Joan Rivers made a movie (Rabbit Test) about the subject of this story some time ago. The movie is all but forgotten. Joan Rivers, who has turned out to be a pretty good interviewer, is not.
There’s a lot to say on the subject, but in the movie, as in most stories dealing with same, it’s said by others and not the subject most concerned. Daniel Dem addresses that imbalance in the cheerful, easygoing, no-problem-here style
Yes Sir That’s My
DANIEL P. DERN
I try to imagine, amid our early-morning tussling, what it must be like, in her body, how it feels, to have foreign flesh pushed within me; how strange it is, that in pressing two bodies so close together another body could be formed and plucked from me. And that would be the meaning of it all, a meaning so clear that all attempts to subvert it would seem distasteful, no matter how necessary. And I would stay home and cook and wash dishes while she went out to hustle nine to Five (assuming rotation rather than revolution) and the moon would go round the earth and I would feel mysterious and burbling (so they say); but I’ll never understand, all I can do is hold her tight as one of us bucks above the other, and smile, feeling that I do understand something, and that I must pretend the rest. Or make do, accepting that there are some things I will never understand.
We drift back to sleep, and then the alarm is going off, brrp. barrupp, ho, time to get up. I blink hard, tap the switch for silence, and walk my fingers up the arm across my chest to her neck, chin, nose. Her face tells me she has cramps, slight ones; I kiss her gently and place my palms below her stomach for a moment, then turn her on her side and rub her back, paying special attention to the diagonals behind her kidneys, where the warmth is most needed. We get up, and in the shower she pinches my waist; you’re getting fat, she says, so I promise to skip lunch and jog, which satisfies her. Then, as we clear away break
fast and she leafs through her papers for the morning’s appointments, she curses and snaps the briefcase shut, biting her upper lip between the teeth.
What’s wrong? I ask. She has to go to the clinic, some special test they want her to take, a urine sample, sugar levels, whatever. Can I help? I offer. She goes and dials a number on the phone, chews on a nail while they leave her holding. I put the dishes away and knot my tie. Yes, she tells me; I can bring it in for her. In fact, they want my sample, too, while I’m there. One moment. She shuffles through the shelves. Here, this will do. Hang on.
Lawyers—even bright-eyed, red-haired, long-nosed lawyers—have to start their days early. Especially when they’re just out of law school, as my wife is, and don’t own or run the office, which she doesn’t. Us photographers have it easier. No model is going to show her body, much less her face, before ten, and all the adfolks I know believe it’s immoral to start drinking before ten-thirty. So all I have to do, unless there’s work left over from the day before, is know what to set up and check over my equipment and hope it’s merely another long day in the studio and not some bright sales maven’s idea of inspiration to make me go out on location chasing long-legged dreams in this New York’s most unlikely folly of a cold, cold winter. Never mind my solidified sinuses and blue-tinged fingers—do you know what those subfreezing temperatures do to my film? Not to mention my shutters? Give me a CIA special Besseler Topcon Super D and I’ll shoot your frozen beauties; just spare, if you will, my poor gray Hasselblad.
So while she makes ready to go off to help honest, outraged prostitutes bring suit against the police department in arresting sellers while ignoring purchasers—tort for tart, she calls it—I hunt up a book to accompany me to the clinic, knowing there will be a wait. “Feel better?” I ask as she leaves. She nods. “See you tonight.”
Her family’s got this hyperglycemia habit; we check her every so often but luckily haven’t nabbed her metabolism yet. She shows traces, however, so she eats real careful. Me, I got my own worries. Now they find another new test, or it*s a golden oldie, or maybe they just want to keep us worried, whatever the reason, off I go, maybe we’ll learn something new today.
The doctor’s office is typically clogged; squalling rug rats quiver in their mothers’ laps; lizard-skinned septuagenarians sit motionlessly; I twiddle a Reader’s Digest. taking two and three readings to decode each joke. Vaguely I remember my first visits as a child: brown block toys, the bristling smell I now know to be ammonia, the anticipation of pain. My eyes take in the paragraph once again; I know there is humor in there, but it evades me with Middle-American cunning.
A starch-white nurse gargles my name.
I quickstep down the hallway and return with filled bottle and vial, extract from my pocket the home brew. Tests, yes, mumble check babble the doctor mutters, see you at pay the next week call you. Still cringing from the shot my childhood memories awaited, I rebundle and trudge off.
It’s a problem day, they keep sending models with skin tones half a zone off, too dark, too light, I’m tempted to send them back saying, not cooked enough, another turn on he spit please. Finally we slide the last film back off and call it a day. That’s all girls see you tomorrow and don’t Break that smile.
The phone is ringing when I unboot in the doorway; I ignore it, knowing you never make it in time. Settling back with a light drink and heavy novel, I brood over Eleanor of Aquitaine until another car rattles in the driveway.
She is perturbed, I can tell; I start tea and gentle her as she uncloaks. The doctor called, she recites, they want me in for testing.
I hold her and ask, did they say why; she shakes her head. Tea, news, dinner, work, wine, shower, and bed. I hold her again and whisper not to worry. She cries out as she clutches me, and in relaxing, weeps.
The look upon her face next evening is stranger still: They thought I was pregnant, but I’m not, they want to see you tomorrow at ten.
Penetration, relaxation, penetration, relaxation—whose arrogance is it to classify this act “invasion”? For every woman demanding out, out, is there not a male whose inner voice screams, keep it in, don’t let anything escape, and then roll away before feeling becomes a fact. Lock it in, lock it out; it is the violation of surfaces that distresses. I cannot imagine what it would be to have her squirt inside me, fill me and lie by my side empty and drained. Nor the inexhaustible transport of her release; this jealously will never be reconciled. What soft, bleary smile might I drift with after such elevation, and the warm knowing shit-eating grin that would mist my eyes till noon?
I cannot know, only cause; rod and tongue march around her flesh like Jericho horns until she crumbles.
The office is still fey; they pluck fluids from me, prod me, ray me, invade me, with stiff lights and cold devices up every orifice, and gather like flies to prognose.
It is evident, it is impossible, I am enceinte.
*
A blessed event! Will it be a boy or a girl? Shall I knit booties and crave pickles? What are the rules in such circumstances? Man Expecting, tabloids would hawk. Hubby Takes Turn—Mom Stays Mum. Men’s faces grow pale; women guffaw. They have to be carried; their deep laughter overcomes them. The rich chortling echoes down the hallways and explodes in amazed whispers. I sit there, stomach twisting; I am not amused.
Ectopic pregnancy, they chant. Parthogenetic reproduction, reverse ovarian drift. Not impossible, not odd. Perfectly explainable. Nature not putting all her eggs in one basket. Liberoparous hominem. Homo anticipatus. Their professional mumbo-jumbo permits them to gloss over the miraculous with blase jargon, but I am not fooled. They are staggered and still reeling from the blow; all their fancy words are just a mask for their fright. I loosen my belt thoughtfully; I’ve got love in my tummy.
How do I tell her? Am I going to be a father or a mother? Will she be suspicious, suspect another woman? Is she willing to accept this child? My God, suppose she refuses—am I prepared to sacrifice this flesh of my flesh,‘ say yes to the silver knife and sucking tube? Not with my child you don’t!
Then again, this could be more than a mild disruption in my life: by what right would the church and others decide what I will do with my body?
Thoughts avalanche faster than I can cope: what about my job, my career? Is it all right for me to work, can I get paternity leave?
I wonder if my medical plan will cover the hospital bills. And will my dry breasts blossom in time to suckle my child?
First she is amused, then startled, then shocked. As she slowly believes, her emotions do a tango. The lawyer’s cool surfaces, mixed with spousely concern. Unbelief returns; she cannot grasp the truth. Jealously. Confusion. Love. Fear. Joy. Humor. Concern. Doubt. She proves equal to the situation; she is no more capable of accepting it than I am.
We sit and think.
A strange, loving look suffuses her features. Never before has she been gentle in this way. It is a deep loving we make late that evening, almost irrelevant to pleasure. I hold her close and weep.
My belly is swelling; we have abandoned tobacco, alcohol, aspirin. Loose trousers hide my precious paunch; even so, I get comments—Too much beer. old fellow? Better get to work on those pounds. boy.
I banter back and look chagrined. Conveniently, the clinic has maintained my delicate condition entre nous and sub rosa and no doubt ox vex iz mir but I still fear someone will discover me.
Is it embarrassment or the inevitable pursuit by the media and fanatics that encourages my furtiveness? It is not yet too late for this all to turn out a bad dream, or at least a creative tumor.
No one could be more loving, more supportive than that bright-eyed, red-haired, long-nosed lawyer who is my wife. “The entire legal establishment is prepared to defend you.’* she assures you. “At least. I pledge myself without cost in your cause, no matter how prolonged. So long. Mom. and all that. Here is a list of precedents I have made up for you already.”
Spencer Tracy never received so magnanimous an offer f
rom his legal-minded screenmate Kate; happy am I to have such a wife, to care for the swelling life within me.
The doctors are very puzzled.
“It’s not a parthen,” they declare. “It’s clearly got both your chromosomes. Confess, sly scoundrel, how did you do it? Did Johns Hopkins pull this fast one? What perverse position did your wife and you employ that fatal night? Talk, or we shall publish!*’
I stay silent, aware of my rights. Their bluster cannot budge me. I know they are relieved that Christmas will come only once this year.
She is gentle with me now. allowing me the bottom in all but our most energetic moments. Even so, my tongue is more convenient. We do not go out much; our evenings are preoccupied with reading and talk. We have much to discuss; all these years she has been a woman and I have failed to take interest except in the obvious. Suddenly I am very concerned; the rights of mothers, Lamaze and painless birth, proper nutrition, obligations to the state—1 find I am less alert to the outside world than I used to be; my mind drifts at unlikely moments and fills with thoughts of sky.
To hide our fear, we joke: will she join me in the delivery room, or pace frantically outside, choking on cigars?
Someone has told the papers, the mercenary scoundrel. Peace is a forgotten concept; the household, the driveway, the entire block is littered with news-sneaks. Our phone sounds like an ice cream truck. Our mailbox is overrun; indeed, the mailman has taken to doing our house as an entire bag drop. Luckily, no one has yet been violent.
The church is rather off-balance. Hurrah!
I can feel movement already. My body feels light in spite of its new bulk; I rest my hands on my hairy navel and wonder whether some mistake has not been made. Surely the noble doctors could not be wrong?
Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves Page 17
