“No,” said E.C. “I’m doing well enough, thank you.”
Bunnish smiled. “I played one other little joke on you, too. You can thank me for that case of herpes you picked up last year. The lady who gave it to you was well paid. I had to search for her for a good number of years until I found the right combination—an out-of-work actress who was young and gorgeous and precisely your type, yet sufficiently desperate to do just about anything, and gifted with an incurable venereal disease as well. How did you like her, Stuart? It’s your fault, you know. I just put her in your path, you did the rest yourself. And I thought it was so fitting, after my blind date and all.”
E.C.’s expression did not change. “If you think this is going to break me down or make me believe you, you’re way off base. All this proves is that you’ve had me investigated, and managed to dig up some dirt on my life.”
“Oh,” said Bunnish. “Always so skeptical, Stuart. Scared that if you believe, you’ll wind up looking foolish. Tsk.” He turned toward Peter. “And you, Norten. You. Our fearless leader. You were the most difficult of all.”
Peter met Bunnish’s eyes and said nothing.
“I read your novel, you know,” Bunnish said casually.
“I’ve never published a novel.”
“Oh, but you have! In the original timeline, that is. Quite a success too. The critics loved it, and it even appeared briefly on the bottom of the Times bestseller list.”
Peter was not amused. “This is so obvious and pathetic,” he said.
“It was called Beasts in a Cage, I believe,” Bunnish said.
Peter had been sitting and listening with contempt, humoring a sick, sad man. Now, suddenly, he sat upright as if slapped.
He heard Kathy suck in her breath. “My God,” she said. E.C. seemed puzzled. “Peter? What is it? You look…”
“No one knows about that book,” Peter said. “How the hell did you find out? My old agent, you must have gotten the title from him. Yes. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“No,” said Bunnish, smiling complacently.
“You’re lying!”
“Peter, what is it?” said E.C. “Why are you so upset?”
Peter looked at him. “My book,” he said. “I…Beasts in a Cage was…”
“There was such a book?”
“Yes,” Peter said. He swallowed nervously, feeling confused and angry. “Yes, there was. I…after college. My first novel.” He gave a nervous laugh. “I thought it would be the first. I had…had a lot of hopes. It was ambitious. A serious book, but I thought it had commercial possibilities as well. The circus. It was about the circus, you know how I was always fascinated by the circus. A metaphor for life, I thought, a kind of life, but very colorful too, and dying, a dying institution. I thought I could write the great circus novel. After college, I traveled with Ringling Brothers’ Blue Show for a year, doing research. I was a butcher, I…that’s what they call the vendors in the stands, you see. A year of research, and I took two years to write the novel. The central character was a boy who worked with the big cats. I finally finished it and sent it off to my agent, and less than three weeks after I’d gotten it into the mail, I, I…” He couldn’t finish.
But E.C. understood. He frowned. “That circus bestseller? What was the title?”
“Blue Show,” Peter said, the words bitter in his mouth. “By Donald Hastings Sullivan, some old hack who’d written fifty gothics and a dozen formula westerns, all under pen names. Such a book, from such a writer. No one could believe it. E.C., I couldn’t believe it. It was my book, under a different title. Oh, it wasn’t word-for-word. Beasts in a Cage was a lot better written. But the story, the background, the incidents, even a few of the character names…it was frightening. My agent never marketed my book. He said it was too much like Blue Show to be publishable, that no one would touch it. And even if I did get it published, he warned me, I would be labeled derivative at best, and a plagiarist at worst. It looked like a rip-off, he said. Three years of my life, and he called it a rip-off. We had words. He fired me, and I couldn’t get another agent to take me on. I never wrote another book. The first one had taken too much out of me.” Peter turned to Bunnish. “I destroyed my manuscript, burned every copy. No one knew about that book except my agent, me, and Kathy. How did you find out?”
“I told you,” said Bunnish. “I read it.”
“You damned liar!” Peter said. He scooped up a glass in a white rage, and flung it down the table at Bunnish’s smiling face, wanting to obliterate that complacent grin, to see it dissolve into blood and ruin. But Bunnish ducked and the glass shattered against a wall.
“Easy, Peter,” E.C. said. Delmario was blinking in owlish stupidity, lost in an alcoholic haze. Kathy was gripping the edge of the table. Her knuckles had gone white.
“Methinks our captain doth protest too much,” Bunnish said, his dimples showing. “You know I’m telling the truth, Norten. I read your novel. I can recite the whole plot to prove it.” He shrugged. “In fact, I did recite the whole plot. To Donald Hastings Sullivan, who wrote Blue Show while in my employ. I would have done it myself, but I had no aptitude for writing. Sully was glad for the chance. He got a handsome flat fee and we split the royalties, which were considerable.”
“You son of a bitch,” Peter said, but he said it without force. He felt his rage ebbing away, leaving behind only a terrible sickly feeling, the certainty of defeat. He felt cheated and helpless and, all of a sudden, he realized that he believed Bunnish, believed every word of his preposterous story. “It’s true, isn’t it?” he said. “It is really true. You did it to me. You. You stole my words, my dreams, all of it.”
Bunnish said nothing.
“And the rest of it,” Peter said, “the other failures, those were all you too, weren’t they? After Blue Show, when I went into journalism…that big story that evaporated on me, all my sources suddenly denying everything or vanishing, so it looked like I’d made it all up. The assignments that evaporated, all those lawsuits, plagiarism, invasion of privacy, libel, every time I turned around I was being sued. Two years, and they just about ran me out of the profession. But it wasn’t bad luck, was it? It was you. You stole my life.”
“You ought to be complimented, Norten. I had to break you twice. The first time I managed to kill your literary career with Blue Show, but then while my back was turned you managed to become a terribly popular journalist. Prizewinning, well known, all of it, and by then it was too late to do anything. I had to flash back once more to get you, do everything all over.”
“I ought to kill you, Bunnish,” Peter heard himself say. E.C. shook his head. “Peter,” he said, in the tone of a man explaining something to a high-grade moron, “this is all an elaborate hoax. Don’t take Bunny seriously.”
Peter stared at his old teammate. “No, E.C. It’s true. It’s all true. Stop worrying about being the butt of a joke, and think about it. It makes sense. It explains everything that has happened to us.”
E.C. Stuart made a disgusted noise, frowned, and fingered the end of his mustache.
“Listen to your captain, Stuart,” Bunnish said.
Peter turned back to him. “Why? That’s what I want to know. Why? Because we played jokes on you? Kidded you? Maybe we were rotten, I don’t know, it didn’t seem to be so terrible at the time. You brought a lot of it on yourself. But whatever we might have done to you, we never deserved this. We were your teammates, your friends.”
Bunnish’s smile curdled, and the dimples disappeared. “You were never my friends.”
Steve Delmario nodded vigorously at that. “You’re no friend of mine, Funny Bunny, I tell you that. Know what you are? A wimp. You were always a goddamn wimp, that’s why nobody ever liked you, you were just a damn wimp loser with a crew cut. Hell, you think you were the only one ever got kidded? What about me, the ol’ last man on earth, huh, what about that? What about the jokes E.C. played on Pete, on Les, on all the others?” He took a drink. “Bringing us here like th
is, that’s another damn wimp thing to do. You’re the same Bunny you always were. Wasn’t enough to do something, you had to brag about it, let everybody know. And if somethin’ went wrong, was never your fault, was it? You only lost ’cause the room was too noisy, or the lighting was bad, whatever.” Delmario stood up. “You make me sick. Well, you screwed up all our lives maybe, and now you told us about it. Good for you. You had your damn wimp fun. Now let us out of here.”
“I second that motion,” said E.C.
“Why, I wouldn’t think of it,” Bunnish replied. “Not just yet. We haven’t played any chess yet. A few games for old times’ sake.”
Delmario blinked, and moved slightly as he stood holding the back of his chair. “The game,” he said, suddenly reminded of his challenge to Bunnish of a few minutes ago. “We were goin’ to play over the game.”
Bunnish folded his hands neatly in front of him on the table. “We can do better than that,” he said. “I am a very fair man, you see. None of you ever gave me a chance, but I’ll give one to you, to each of you. I’ve stolen your lives. Wasn’t that what you said, Norten? Well, friends, I’ll give you a shot at winning those lives back. We’ll play a little chess. We’ll replay the game, from the critical position. I’ll take Vesselere’s side and you can have mine. The three of you can consult, if you like, or I’ll play you one by one. I don’t care. All you have to do is beat me. Win the game you say I should have won, and I’ll let you go, and give you anything you like. Money, property, a job, whatever.”
“Go t’hell, wimp,” Delmario said. “I’m not interested in your damn money.”
Bunnish picked up his glasses from the table and donned them, smiling widely. “Or,” he said, “if you prefer, you can win a chance to use my flashback device. You can go back then, anticipate me, do it all over, live the lives you were destined to live before I dealt myself in. Just think of it. It’s the best opportunity you’ll ever have, any of you, and I’m making it so easy. All you have to do is win a won game.”
“Winning a won game is one of the hardest things in chess,” Peter said sullenly. But even as he said it, his mind was racing, excitement stirring deep in his gut. It was a chance, he thought, a chance to reshape the ruins of his life, to make it come out right. To obliterate the wrong turnings, to taste the wine of success instead of the wormwood of failure, to avoid the mockery that his marriage to Kathy had become. Dead hopes rose like ghosts to dance again in the graveyard of his dreams. He had to take the shot, he knew. He had to.
Steve Delmario was there before him. “I can win that goddamned game,” he boomed drunkenly. “I could win it with my eyes shut. You’re on, Bunny. Get out a set, damn you!”
Bunnish laughed and stood up, putting his big hands flat on the tabletop and using them to push himself to his feet. “Oh no, Delmario. You’re not going to have the excuse of being drunk when you lose. I’m going to crush you when you are cold stone sober. Tomorrow. I’ll play you tomorrow.”
Delmario blinked furiously. “Tomorrow,” he echoed.
LATER, WHEN THEY WERE ALONE IN THEIR ROOM, KATHY TURNED on him. “Peter,” she said, “let’s get out of here. Tonight. Now.”
Peter was sitting before the fire. He had found a small chess set in the top drawer of his bedside table, and had set up the critical position from Vesselere-Bunnish to study it. He scowled at the distraction and said, “Get out? How the hell do you propose we do that, with our car locked up in that garage?”
“There’s got to be a phone here somewhere. We could search, find it, call for help. Or just walk.”
“It’s December, and we’re in the mountains miles from anywhere. We try to walk out of here and we could freeze to death. No.” He turned his attention back to the chessboard and tried to concentrate.
“Peter,” she said angrily.
He looked up again. “What?” he snapped. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“We have to do something. This whole scene is insane. Bunnish needs to be locked up.”
“He was telling the truth,” Peter said.
Kathy’s expression softened, and for an instant there was something like sorrow on her face. “I know,” she said softly.
“You know,” Peter mimicked savagely. “You know, do you? Well, do you know how it feels? That bastard is going to pay. He’s responsible for every rotten thing that has happened to me. For all I know, he’s probably responsible for you.”
Kathy’s lips moved only slightly, and her eyes moved not at all, but suddenly the sorrow and sympathy were gone from her face, and instead Peter saw familiar pity, well-honed contempt. “He’s just going to crush you again,” she said coldly. “He wants you to lust after this chance, because he intends to deny it to you. He’s going to beat you, Peter. How are you going to like that? How are you going to live with it, afterwards?”
Peter looked down at the chess pieces. “That’s what he intends, yeah. But he’s a moron. This is a won position. It’s only a matter of finding the winning line, the right variation. And we’ve got three shots at it. Steve goes first. If he loses, E.C. and I will be able to learn from his mistakes. I won’t lose. I’ve lost everything else, maybe, but not this. This time I’m going to be a winner. You’ll see.”
“I’ll see, all right,” Kathy said. “You pitiful bastard.”
Peter ignored her, and moved a piece. Knight takes pawn.
KATHY REMAINED IN THE SUITE THE NEXT MORNING. “GO PLAY your damn games if you like,” she told Peter. “I’m going to soak in the hot tub, and read. I want no part of this.”
“Suit yourself,” Peter said. He slammed the door behind him, and thought once again what a bitch he’d married.
Downstairs, in the huge living room, Bunnish was setting up the board. The set he’d chosen was not ornate and expensive like the one in the corner, with its pieces glued into place. Sets like that looked good for decorative purposes, but were useless in serious play. Instead Bunnish had shifted a plain wooden table to the center of the room, and fetched out a standard tournament set: a vinyl board in green and white that he unrolled carefully, a well-worn set of Drueke pieces of standard Staunton design, cast in black and white plastic with lead weights in the bases, beneath the felt, to give them a nice heft. He placed each piece into position from memory, without once looking at the game frozen on the expensive inlaid board across the room. Then he began to set a double-faced chess clock. “Can’t play without the clock, you know,” he said, smiling. “I’ll set it exactly the same as it stood that day in Evanston.”
When everything was finished, Bunnish surveyed the board with satisfaction and seated himself behind Vesselere’s Black pieces. “Ready?” he asked.
Steve Delmario sat down opposite him, looking pale and terribly hungover. He was holding a big tumbler full of orange juice, and behind his thick glasses his eyes moved nervously. “Yeah,” he said. “Go on.”
Bunnish pushed the button that started Delmario’s clock.
Very quickly, Delmario reached out, played knight takes pawn—the pieces clicked together softly as he made the capture—and used the pawn he’d taken to punch the clock, stopping his own timer and starting Bunnish’s.
“The sac,” said Bunnish. “What a surprise.” He took the knight.
Delmario played bishop takes pawn, saccing another piece. Bunnish was forced to capture with his king. He seemed unperturbed. He was smiling faintly, his dimples faint creases in his big cheeks, his eyes clear and sharp and cheerful behind his tinted eyeglasses.
Steve Delmario was leaning forward over the board, his dark eyes sweeping back and forth over the position, back and forth, over and over again as if double-checking that everything was really where he thought it was. He crossed and uncrossed his legs. Peter, standing just behind him, could almost feel the tension beating off Delmario in waves, twisting him. Even E.C. Stuart, seated a few feet distant in a big comfortable armchair, was staring at the game intently. The clock ticked softly. Delmario lifted his hand to move his que
en, but hesitated with his fingers poised above it. His hand trembled.
“What’s the matter, Steve?” Bunnish asked. He steepled his hands just beneath his chin, and smiled when Delmario looked up at him. “You hesitate. Don’t you know? He who hesitates is lost. Uncertain, all of a sudden? Surely that can’t be. You were always so certain before. How many mates did you show me? How many?”
Delmario blinked, frowned. “I’m going to show you one more, Bunny,” he said furiously. His fingers closed on his queen, shifted it across the board. “Check.”
“Ah,” said Bunnish. Peter studied the position. The double sac had cleared away the pawns in front of the Black king, and the queen check permitted no retreat. Bunnish marched his king up a square, toward the center of the board, toward the waiting White army. Surely he was lost now. His own defenders were all over on the queenside, and the enemy was all around him. But Bunnish did not seem worried.
Delmario’s clock was ticking as he examined the position. He sipped his juice, shifted restlessly in his seat. Bunnish yawned, and grinned tauntingly. “You were the winner that day, Delmario. Beat a Master. The only winner. Can’t you find the win now? Where are all those mates, eh?”
“There’s so many I don’t know which one to go with, Bunny,” Steve said. “Now shut up, damn you. I’m trying to think.”
“Oh,” said Bunnish. “Pardon.”
Delmario consumed ten minutes on his clock before he reached out and moved his remaining knight. “Check.”
Bunnish advanced his king again.
Delmario licked his lips, slid his queen forward a square. “Check.”
Dreamsongs. Volume II Page 53
