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around with some old Russian guy and play a board game for hours at a time.
So I pretended I was doing other things. So I wouldn’t have to try to explain
how I feel.”
    “How you feel? About what?” Marcy managed
to say.
    Her throat was like flypaper. Her legs felt
rubbery.
    “Chess,” Jess responded.
    His eyes sparked, and his voice rose, like
he was about to break into song.
    “I love it. Always have, ever since my dad
taught me to play when I was like five or six. I was good, Marcy. I could beat
the adults, so my parents got me a tutor. They let me play in tournaments. I
worked hard at the game until I was professionally ranked. Seventeen-fifty,
that’s my national rating. Which is pretty damn close to master level. Or so we
amateurs like to tell ourselves.”
    He stood up and eased by her. “Shouldn’t I
turn off the oven?”
    She nodded and sank onto the desk chair.
Chess? All this worry had been about him cheating on her with a bunch of pawns
and rooks?
    His back was to her as he fiddled with the
stove and continued to explain his love affair. With chess.
    “Marcy, chess is so awesome. It’s the
ultimate high. It’s intense. I get the biggest charge out of playing in
tournaments. It’s so damn tough, and so intellectually stimulating, you can’t imagine
the rush. All your brain cells are activated, and you sweat like a pig. While
sitting absolutely still for four, five, eight, ten hours. At a weekend tournament,
you can rack up twenty or more hours of chess. It’s fantastic.”
    Which explained the way he smelled when he
arrived home. Not reeking of sex, but rank from the tension of competition and
high-stakes mental exertion. That was the odor: the garlicky smell of nervous
sweat.
    He leaned against the stainless steel stove
for a moment, then moved away from the heat.
    “As a kid, I won a few local tournaments and
traveled to some out of state. I entered as many as I could afford, even in
college. But I stopped playing around seven years ago. Because I wanted to
focus on my career, on establishing myself as an engineer and entrepreneur. And
then we met. And I wanted to focus on you.”
    He smiled at her, even though Marcy was
sure she was just a big blur in his eyes. She looked away, embarrassed. What if
she’d gone ahead and fucked Peter? What if she’d left Jess, filed for divorce?
Over a misunderstanding about his lifelong secret passion. For chess, of all
things.
    Jess continued, “I wanted to make us work, Marce. And I knew I had to really focus my energy if I wanted to make us some
serious money. Because that’s what you wanted.”
    Marcy’s mouth dropped open. She couldn’t
believe he’d say such a thing. As if becoming filthy rich had been all her
idea. But she clamped her lips together and nodded, allowing him to continue.
    He inserted the bottle opener in the
Prosecco she’d selected from the wine cooler an hour before.
    “This is the thing about chess. It’s
incredibly time consuming. Hours disappear while you sit there like a statue,
brainstorming for the best move, looking for the traps waiting for you,
weighing all the tactics you could try, examining each of the avenues available
to you. You have to expand your mind so you can imagine the move after the move
after the move after the next move you make.”
    He yanked at the cork until it popped free.
    “And you have to study the game in order to
improve. You have to study a lot. “ He bent to smell the cork. “These
days, unlike when I was a kid, you can study chess with computer programs. And
you can play online. Anytime, day or night. So that’s what I’ve been doing.”
    Cork in hand, he thumbed over his pale
shoulder in the direction of his home office. “In case you’ve been wondering. I’ve
been playing chess on a website that matches you up with players from all over
the world. It’s awesome, Marce.”
    While he poured the sparkling wine into two
crystal glasses, she recalled the clock-like sounds she’d heard