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“I'm sure she's insanely worried.”
    Randy locks his eyes on Pramod's and juts his head toward the conference room. “Why don't you go find yourself some more ‘ladies’?”
    “In there?”
    “Anywhere.”
    “You think I can't?”
    Randy laughs. “You're such a bullshitter. Two hundred bucks, huh?”
    Pramod glares at Zeke. “Something like that,” he says.
    “Anyway,” Randy says, “this is a private conversation.” He raises his hand and wiggles his fingers. “Bye-bye, Pramod.”
    “Screw you.” But he walks away.
    “What a putz,” Randy says.
    Zeke is embarrassed. He should have been the one to tell Pramod to screw off, not his little brother. “He's totally full of himself,” he says.
    “As if we aren't?”
    “Not like that guy,” Zeke says.
    “As I was saying, you can beat her.”
    “Like
I
was saying, I don't need your help.” Zeke looks up at the clock and says, “I'm going upstairs for a minute.” He walks toward the elevator.
        
    Randy plunks himself onto the leather couch and looks at a spiky plant in a pot. Zeke has always been like that, resistant to any outreach from his brother. On the scale in Randy's head, guys like Pramod are near the upper echelon of jerks, with Zeke a notch or two below but well up there nonetheless. A guy like Buddy Malone—smart and talented and successful—somehow manages to hardly be a jerk at all, at least to Randy.
    The leather cushions hiss as Mr. Mansfield sits down. “Concentrating on your next match?” he asks.
    “Yeah.”
    The truth is, Randy hasn't even thought about it. Lucy Ahada is small and quiet, but she seemed very nice when she beat him a few weeks ago. As usual, he'll see how the match develops rather than going in with a definitive strategy.
    “Remember,” his father says, “you start out with an advantage.”
    “How so?”
    Mr. Mansfield lowers his voice. “You're a
man.”
    “Oh yeah.” Randy says it slowly, with mock surprise in his voice. “I'm very bemasculant. I forgot.”
    “Don't
ever
forget that.”
    “Right. I suppose that'll help Zeke a
lot
against Jenna.”
    “Listen, Jenna hasn't won anything that matters, okay? Dual matches and some half-assed tournaments. This one is
big.
Your brother is game-tested. On the
field.
We'll see how the chess queen holds up against that kind of pressure.”
    “This isn't soccer.”
    Mr. Mansfield leans forward and pokes a thumb into Randy'sarm. “You don't get it, do you? I don't care if it's chess or soccer or business negotiations. When you've taken a few hits”—he jabs the thumb harder—”been under the boards with an elbow in your chest or it's fourth-and-goal and your mouth is bleeding,
that's
when you learn about toughness. That's when you find out if you've got what it takes to kick anybody's rear end. Whatever the situation. You hear me?”
    Randy shuts his eyes, opens them in a hurry, and nods. “Loud and clear,” he says, rubbing his arm where his father jabbed it.
    “Yeah, you have to be smart,” Mr. Mansfield says. “Yeah, you have to know chess. You have to be constantly aware.” He makes a circle with his thumb and first finger and pushes it hard into the air. “But everything else being equal, it's the one who makes the other one crack that'll win. The one who gets in his opponent's head and stays there.”

FIVE
Unslept-in
    Zeke brushes his teeth for the third time this morning and stares at himself in the mirror. He's got
two
opponents in his head; how good can that be? Jenna has coolly disposed of her first three opponents and hasn't lost to anyone younger than forty for at least six months. And Pramod—hell, Zeke would have to win twice more just to face Pramod—he's got Zeke rattled as well.
    They both think they're such hot shit.
    And Zeke lets Pramod do that to him, insult him to his face and get away with it.
    Frickin’ Randy stands up and tells Pramod to get lost; how bullshit is that? Because Randy's such a dweeb he doesn't even know