Chapter Text
1958
It’s 450 miles to Cleveland and Benny does it in one shot. No piss breaks, no food breaks, just eight hours of Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry and Ray Charles on the radio.
He bought the bug for a hundred and twenty bucks. Thinks maybe he’ll live out of this thing for a bit, save some cash up til he can get a decent place. Now that he’s cut and run from his parents, he can go anywhere, do anything. The freedom of it is exhilarating, and he thinks he never wants to be held down by another person ever again.
In the same way he’s not interested in parents, he’s not interested in going steady either, lest one day he end up just like dear old Ma and Dad, trapped in a loveless pit of despair.
Maybe after this tournament he’ll head to California or New York. The truth is, it doesn’t matter where he goes. He’s got his duffel bag, and in it, his chess set and some spare clothes. What else is there?
They make an odd set—the trio in front of Benny in the tournament check-in line: a middle-aged woman with perfectly coiffed hair, a colored girl who’s maybe thirteen years old, and a lanky redheaded kid with a short bob.
There’s a heated argument happening at the back of the line, and the colored girl turns around to check it out. She notices Benny’s stare before he can flick his eyes away in time, and she fixes him with a hard, accusatory glare.
“What you looking at?” she asks.
Instead of answering—he’s not intimidated by some girl—he counters with his own question. “You playing in the tournament or what?”
She seems surprised that he’d ask, and her glare softens a fraction (a very small fraction). “Not me. My sister. Beth,” she says, and points to that scrawny kid next to her.
The little girl—Beth—turns to see what her sister is on about, gazes at Benny with an unnerving seriousness that makes him think she probably does know what she’s doing over a chessboard. He’d win against her, obviously, but he’s got a feeling she’d make a fun opponent. Well, fun probably isn’t a word you’d associate with this girl. She’s got blunt bangs that make her look like a haunted porcelain doll, and she’s way too somber be all of, what, seven years old? Ten at most?
The guys arguing at the back of the line are louder now—it’s Johnson and Taglinetti, two players who are always getting into it over chess theory.
Beth shakes her head. “They’re both wrong,” she says (she’s right), her voice a little deeper than he was expecting given how young she is. She and her big sister turn back around when they’re called to the front of the line.
“I’m Beth—”
“Harmon. Kentucky State Champion and only nine years old,” says the guy behind the table. Benny can see the man’s impressed smile. “There are two games a day, and the time control is 120/40. That means you get two hours to make forty moves.”
Kentucky State Champion. Not bad. A guy named Harvey Whitman had held that title for the last three years.
Beth and her family leave the line, and the colored girl turns back again to Benny. “You heard that? Beth Harmon . Remember her name, asshole. She’s gonna be World Champion one day.”
“Language, Jolene,” snaps the dark-haired woman with them—their mother, Benny guesses. She faces Benny for the first time, looks him over. While there’s a little hesitation in her eyes, it’s not quite the usual scathing onceover he’s used to getting from her type.
“Sorry, Mother,” Jolene says, but the look she’s giving Benny, he doesn’t think she’s sorry at all.
He sees Beth a little later in the hotel lobby playing blindfold chess, her back to her opponent and her arms at her sides. Not actually blindfolded, obviously.
As he passes by, she takes a look at him, holds his gaze for several seconds. He raises an eyebrow at her, wonders why she’s staring, not that he doesn’t get that a lot. Chess tournaments are filled with studious, middle class, straight-laced types—all crew cuts and side parts. Benny stands out in his chains and all black clothing, his hair swept up in a pompadour like Elvis.
“Pawn takes. Mate,” she says. Rick Stein—an old timer who’s been around forever—looks down at the board, then back up at Beth.
Benny’s seventeen now, too old to be called a prodigy anymore, but he remembers the utter amazement people felt watching him play when he was Beth’s age. The way this guy’s looking at her right now, it’s like he suddenly believes in God—and also suddenly hates God, because if the guy upstairs is bestowing gifts like this, why not on him?
Benny wants to tell Rick it’s not all rainbows and butterflies being preternaturally good at chess. Mostly it means having a mind that won’t ever shut the fuck up and being surrounded by people who don’t actually give two shits about you but like to blow smoke up your ass.
Beth shakes Rick’s hand, then, catching Benny before he makes it out the lobby, calls after him. “Hey,” she says. She’s dressed in a plaid dress with a white peter pan collar, black and white saddleback shoes, all awkward school girl. “You’re Benny Watts, aren’t you?” she asks.
“So?” he says.
“They say you’re the best American player since Morphy.” There’s more than a little challenge in her tone. “So come on. Let’s play,” she says, no attempt to disguise her cockiness. Benny almost laughs at the presumptuousness of it all. She’s not even four foot tall but looks at him with the fire of someone who’s lived several lifetimes and left a wake of casualties in each one.
“Beth, honey, no. No more chess,” says the dark-haired woman from before—her mom. She walks over from the front desk and throws a possessive arm around Beth. “We don’t have time. Your sister’s waiting for us back in the room. Our dinner reservations are for six.”
“Jolene won’t mind,” says Beth, eyes never leaving Benny’s. “Please, Mother?”
Beth’s mom sighs, then she looks at Benny with a bit of suspicion. “Hello again, young man,” she says.
Benny thinks maybe he’s supposed to introduce himself, that that’s the kind of thing well-adjusted people raised in polite society do, so he holds out his hand. “Benny Watts,” he says, then adds on, “ma’am.”
“Mrs. Wheatley,” she says, and shakes his hand. “One game and one game only. And keep it short, Beth. How is it that we came down to ask for an extra set of keys and have somehow spent nearly an hour here?”
“Thank you, Mother,” says Beth and hurries to set up the chessboard. “Come on,” she tells Benny, even though Benny hasn’t actually agreed to a game. “You can play white.”
“How very generous of you” he says, taking a seat across from her in front of the white pieces. If she notices his sarcasm, she doesn’t show it. “Five minutes?” he asks.
Beth nods, and after he sets the time control, she punches his clock. He opens with his king pawn and she goes for the Scandinavian, pushing her queen pawn forward, which he takes, and she takes back with her queen. As black, he’d never play it himself—there’s very little that would ever convince himself to force his queen out early and waste development time—but he appreciates the openness of the center the Scandinavian defense leaves. There's a lot of room for creativity with the central pawns done away with so quickly, and the major pieces can battle it out by themselves over the center.
She’s probably expecting him to kick her queen with his queen-knight, but he’s in no rush, so he goes for the line where he gets his king-knight out instead. She moves her bishop to pin his knight to his queen, and he unpins it by pushing his bishop in front of his queen.
Two more moves and they’re out of the book lines of the opening and both castle. Her style surprises him—aggressive, sure, but also elegant and unexpected. Some of her moves shock him enough that he has to pause to calculate the ways it might play out. Even her inaccuracies (and there are a couple) have a dazzle to them once he’s able to see into her plan, figure out what she’s thinking.
But Benny’s going to finish her off. She’s only nine and can’t see everything he does, doesn’t know she shouldn’t be ignoring the threat of him doubling his rooks on the king-rook file. Thinking she has an escape square, she focuses solely on her attack.
So Benny sacrifices his queen. Beth will have no choice but to take, then he’ll take back with his pawn, eliminating her king’s getaway before he check mates with his rook.
She sees it right away, as soon as he moves his queen onto the sacrificial square, and Beth Harmon topples her king. “Good game,” Benny says, really meaning it, and though she looks a bit perturbed, she nods.
“Good game,” she says back quietly. He can already see that she’s replaying the game in her head, trying to figure out where she went wrong.
It’s a good habit to get into, but she’d be better off playing lots of games with different people over and over, studying the games of others. No matter how much of a genius you are—there are more possible variations of chess games than there are atoms in the universe.
It still happens to Benny sometimes, finding yourself in positions you never thought to imagine. But the more you play, the more you study, the less that happens.
That queen sac—it was Morphy inspired, and Benny knows he’s got to be forever grateful to every player who’s come before him.
“Benny,” says Mrs. Wheatley. “Would you and your parents like to join us for dinner?”
Benny catches the way Beth looks up at her mother as if betrayed, and he smiles. So the girl doesn’t like to lose.
“It’s just me actually,” says Benny,.
“What do you mean?” asks Mrs. Wheatley.
“I mean it’s just me here,” he says and thinks about bullshitting some kind of explanation about his mom being sick or his dad having to work but he can’t be bothered. The truth is his parents have never accompanied him on tournaments, certainly not since he could drive, and when he was a kid it was mostly an assortment of chess coaches and chaperones from the chess federation who chauffeured him place to place.
“You mean you’re all alone?” she asks, like that isn’t a distinctly good thing (it is). Mrs. Wheatley looks at Benny like he’s Bambi, but he’s been taking care of himself for a while now so she can cool it. “How old are you, son?” she asks with concern.
“Seventeen,” he says, and he’s never really had anyone grill him about his tendency to show up to tournaments by himself before.
“Well, I do suppose that’s a little older than I’d guessed. I thought you were closer to my Jolene’s age. Still, that won’t do. You must join us, Benny. It’s not right for a child to be by himself.”
“I’m not a—”
“Ah ah ah—no arguing. It will be my treat. Please,” says Mrs. Wheatley. “You’re coming.”
Beth and Jolene play Crazy 8s at dinner, much to Mrs. Wheatley’s consternation. “Girls, you’re being absolutely ridiculous right now,” she says, but there’s amusement in her tone, even something like pride. “I brought those cards for the bus ride and the hotel room, not for fancy Italian restaurants.”
“Please?” asks Jolene, dramatically poking out her bottom lip in a pout, pressing her hands together in prayer. “They never ever let us play cards at the orphanage,” she goes on, lips trembling as she begins to fake sniffle and cry.
Benny sees Beth crack a smile for the first time, and it’s only a half-realized movement, like she somehow thinks better of it before actually letting it transform into a proper grin.
“How is it possible that I have on one side of me the silliest child that has ever lived and on the other side, the most serious?” asks Mrs. Wheatley. She shakes her head and takes a drink of her Gibson.
“She’s actually telling the truth,” says Beth. “They really didn’t let us play cards at Methuen.”
“Ferguson sometimes snuck us decks, but Deardorff always confiscated them. You see, cards are a one stop shop to gambling, and that’s a sin,” Jolene explains.
“Ah, yes, the notoriously short pathway between Crazy 8s and blackjack at the Flamingo in Vegas,” says Mrs. Wheatley dryly. “Not that I can blame them from wanting to keep you away from gambling. It’s dangerous, girls.”
Benny sips the Coke he’s ordered—perhaps a bit too nervously. Jolene, eyes like a hawk, zeros in on him, catches the tell. “Do you gamble, Benny?” she asks with faux sweetness.
Denying it completely would probably be an obvious lie now that he’s already on the spot. “A little,” he says.
Mrs. Wheatley’s eyes find his. He can tell she thinks he’s not being properly mothered, and well, he probably isn’t. “Poker?” she asks, like she knows his type. It’s not the first time he’s been made.
He nods his head. “Just for fun, every once in a while.”
“Be careful,” she says, reaching out her hand to his, squeezing it.
Benny doesn’t remember the last time he’s had someone treat him so daintily, doesn’t know if anyone ever has.
“No cards, so what, you played chess? Is that place where you learned?” Benny asks Beth, redirecting the conversation away from his vices.
“Ms. Deardorff didn’t even know about it for forever. She played in the basement with the janitor like a freak,” says Jolene.
“The janitor, he was the one to teach you?” asks Benny.
“Yeah, last year,” says Beth.
Jesus—last year? And she’s already playing like that?
She doesn’t seem quite as impressed with herself as he is, probably still licking her wounds from her loss.
“She’s absolutely marvelous, isn’t she?” says Mrs. Wheatley.
Benny can’t disagree. With the right training, she’ll go far. But pure, raw talent like that—it’s a furnace. Can burn you right up. He knows that and already sees it in her eyes, a strange, directionless fury.
“Now teach us poker,” says Jolene, shuffling the cards and handing them to Benny.
When it comes down to Beth and him at the final, he knows he’s going to win, has studied all her games at the tournament. She’s—yeah, he’ll admit it—stunningly brilliant, especially tactically—but she’s all attack. It’s clear she hasn’t played anyone who’s properly challenged her because if she had she’d know how to mount a defense. She’s not used to having to battle over a diagonal or file to win an advantage because she gets away with finishing off challengers with her traps.
She’s playing white so Benny starts her clock. She opens with a knight—the first time she’s done that, at least here in Cleveland, and maybe she knows he’d been studying her games and is changing course.
It’s no matter. He’s going to play the London. He never plays it as white—the development of pieces is too slow for his taste, ruins the advantage of going first—but he likes to play it as black when he gets the chance, to lean in to the inherent sense of lost time that comes with playing second. It only works when white doesn’t play their king pawn first.
Benny pushes his queen pawn two spaces forward.
And hour and a half later, he’s got her pieces tied up in knots and is up 4 points in material.
Stony faced and gaunt, Beth studies the board with quiet exasperation. He wants to tell her, losing doesn’t make you any less of a person, okay? Learn that now or you’re totally fucking fucked. But he’s never believed it when someone’s said it to him so he knows it won’t matter if he says it to her. Besides, it’s not the kind of sentiment that comes off right from someone you’re playing against. In her head she’ll just be thinking: easy for you to say; you’re winning.
In the end, after thirty-six minutes spent staring at the board, she runs out her time. When her flag falls, she slumps back into her seat. Dutifully, she sticks out her hand, and Benny shakes it. He wants to say, you’re really good, kid but she’s already running from the table into her mother’s and Jolene’s arms, crying.
It’s not the first time he’s made an opponent cry, but it’s the first time it feels like absolute fucking shit doing it.
“Benny,” calls out Mrs. Wheatley. He turns to face her in the hotel lobby, wonders if she’s pissed at him for beating her little girl in the final. “I’ve been hearing a lot about you, and I was hoping I could have your contact information. All of this,” she says, gesturing to the hotel, but he figures she means the chess world. “I don’t really understand it or know anything about it, and you seem rather well-seasoned. I wouldn’t mind some advice when it comes to Beth.”
“I’m kind of on the road a lot,” he says, and it’s true. The only phone number he has at the moment is his parents’, and he’s not going back there any time soon. He needs to pick a city and set up a P.O. Box or something.
“Right, of course, I understand,” she says. “May I at least give you my phone number, in case your circumstances change?”
Benny figures he’s got no real good reason to say no. “Sure, fine,” he says.
Mrs. Wheatley removes a small notebook from her purse and jots down Alma Wheatley & Beth Harmon above her phone number, then rips out the sheet of paper and hands it to him. “Well, thank you anyway. It was lovely to meet you. You take care of yourself, young man, and congratulations.”
At a bar that night, he buys himself and his friends more than a few rounds. After he stumbles back to his hotel room and collapses on the bed, he falls asleep wondering what move she would’ve played if she hadn’t accidentally run out her clock.
He asks around about her after the tournament and eventually someone points him to a newspaper article about her winning that Kentucky State Championship a couple months ago.
This doesn’t surprise him. She’s—to lay his ego aside—like nothing he’s ever seen on the board, and while he doesn’t intend on getting beaten by her any time soon, she’s better than he’d been at her age, if he’s being honest, and that’s something Benny has always been. Their game had been one of the best he’s played in a while.
Man, he’s got to figure out a way to get to Europe. It’s sad when the best opponent he can find on American soil is still in primary school.
1959
Benny’s been keeping his eye out. The girl plays a lot , multiple tournaments a month even during the school year—winning them all—so he's surprised when she's not at the US Open.
He hasn’t gotten to play her again since back in Cleveland last year because they don’t overlap much as far as tournaments. In fact, these days, Benny doesn’t actually play tournaments that much, except for the most important ones. He prefers to devote his time to study, memorizing beautiful games of the past like the works of art they are.
He’s lost weeks of his life studying Capablanca and Reshevsky’s repertoire. Talk about two prodigies.
Anyway, it doesn’t make sense for Beth not to be here, especially given how big the prize money is. He sees how they go after the tournaments with the most lucrative winnings.
And this is the US Fucking Open. If she wants to play people who are truly on her caliber, she’s got to play at the biggest tournaments, get herself on the map so she can start going to the invitation-only events.
That LIFE magazine puff piece was cute, sure, and folks might know her name, but it’s not something that serious chess players on the international circuit are going to care about.
Beth clearly needs someone to help guide her chess career, so Benny digs out Mrs. Wheatley’s number from his black book. Now he maybe gets why she’d asked for his contact information last year. He’d probably been an asshole for saying no.
Jolene is the one to answer the phone. “Wheatley residence. Jolene speaking. Who’s calling?”
“Yeah, hi. It’s, uh, Benny. Benny Watts,” he says. “We met at—”
“No, I remember you. With all them necklaces, right? What you want?”
Benny drags his hand through his hair, tries to figure out what he’s even going to say. He isn’t 100% sure why he’s calling in the first place. “Can I talk to Mrs. Wheatley?” he asks.
“No, you can’t actually,” says Jolene. “She’s real sick and sleeping right now.”
“That why y’all aren’t at the Open?”
“Pretty much. Mother tried to get Mr. Wheatley to take us, but.”
Interesting how it’s Mother but Mr. Wheatley.
“Right, yeah, okay. Well, uh, tell her to get well soon, I guess. And um, tell Beth, in that game with Donovan, she shouldn’t have taken that pawn—she’ll know which one I mean—and if Donovan had seen her error, she would’ve lost her advantage. And Mrs. Wheatley needs to buy Beth My System by Aron Nimzowitsch. And Chess Praxis by the same guy. You got that?”
“Hold on cuz there’s no way I’m writing all that shit down,” says Jolene, then Benny hears her shout for her sister. “Cracker! One of your chess freaks is on the phone for you.”
“Matt?” Beth calls out back, Benny overhearing through the line.
“Nah.”
“Mike?”
“No.”
“Harry?”
“No, not from the chess club. The guy who beat your ass last year. You know, the one who kinda looks like James Dean?”
“Benny Watts?”
“Yeah, him.”
Benny sits on th edge of the bed in his hotel room while listening to this entire exchange, rolling his eyes, wondering if at any point Beth is going to actually come to the phone or if he’s going to spend the next several minutes listening to the two sisters shout to each other.
“Hello?” he hears finally.
“Yeah, hi, Beth. It’s Benny.”
“How did you get this phone number?” she asks.
“Uh, your mother gave it to me in Cleveland after our game. Anyway, I want you to write this down. Aron Nimzowitsch. He’s got two books you need to look at. My System and Chess Praxis. Let me know if you can’t track them down. I have some spare. Have you gone over your game with Donovan, yet? Did you see what you missed?”
Beth pauses a moment. “I didn’t miss anything,” she says. “I won.”
“You shouldn’t have taken that pawn, Beth,” he says.
Her silence means she knows exactly what pawn he’s talking about. “You think I should’ve pushed forward rather than taken,” she says. “But it was free.”
“But look at how weak it left your castled king. Get out a board. Set it up. Think it out. You’ve got a coach, right? Is he going over your games with you?”
“I don’t have a coach,” says Beth. “And if I did, why would it be a he?”
Touche but—there are few players in the US on Beth’s level, let alone women. It’s a sheer statistics game. “Well, what about whoever taught you chess? Can they go over your games with you?”
“Mr. Shaibel?” she asks, like he’s supposed to know who the fuck Mr. Shaibel is.
“Yeah, I guess, Mr. Shaibel. Can’t he go over games with you? It can’t just be you and the board.”
“I’ve made it this far that way, haven’t I?” she says, and it’s more resignation in her voice than indignation. “Anyway, it’s not just me and the board. I’ve got my friends.” Benny guesses she’s referring to her “chess freaks” as Jolene had called them. “There’s a local chess club and we meet up second Tuesday of every month.”
Once a month? They might as well never meet.
“Is there anybody at this chess club who actually challenges you?”
“Harry’s pretty good,” says Beth. “I haven’t lost yet, but we drew a couple times and he makes me think. He’s only fourteen and already rated 1800.”
1800 isn’t bad but he guesses Beth is easily around 2100. On her way to being a master and probably a grandmaster before she’s 18— if she doesn’t fuck about and sit out on the most important tournaments. She can’t go up in rating until she’s playing the highest ranked players.
“Yeah, well, you’re only ten and you can beat him, so. Harry…hmm. Not Harry Beltik?”
“You know him?” Beth asks.
“Not really, but I play him tomorrow.”
“Poor Harry,” says Beth.
It’s not unusual for teenagers to show up at the open. Sometimes they even place, but fourteen years old—brave kid. Brave when you’re not the likes of Beth, or Benny back in the day.
At 18, Benny’s often one of the youngest at these things.
“Benny? I got to go. I need to run to the drugstore with my sister for my mom. Tell Harry I said hi when you see him tomorrow.”
“Don’t forget about the books I mentioned,” says Benny, but she’s already hung up the phone.
He sees the Wheatley crew about six months later at a weekend chess conference in Indiana. Benny’s on a bunch of panels and is giving some talks and masterclasses.
“Benny,” says Mrs. Wheatley, catching him after a panel he was on on Soviet Chess—which sucked because he couldn’t say anything he really wanted to say lest he get branded a commie, and well, maybe he is.
“Mrs. Wheatley. Glad to see you’re feeling better,” he says with a nod.
“That’s very kind, thank you. Your panel was very…interesting. I’ve never been one for politics but I’m trying to learn everything I can about chess, and the Soviets seem to be integral.”
“They are. They’re the best, bar none,” says Benny. “Soviet players get the kind of resources and training that would make someone like Beth absolutely unstoppable.”
“She’s already unstoppable,” says Mrs. Wheatley. Her admiration for her daughter shines on her face. “Even more so now with your help. She tore through those books you recommended. I—I hope you don’t mind me coming up to you like this, but there aren’t many other people I can ask—”
“No, it’s fine. What is it?” he asks.
“Beth had mentioned you saying something about a coach. I met with a few candidates, but I don’t have any real way of knowing if they’re any good. One of them suggested taking Beth out of school right away, that she should be homeschooled so she can train more and play more. What do you think? It would certainly make travel a lot easier. It would even allow us to do it even more.”
Benny doesn't like it, not at all. “I don’t know. Beth doesn’t need to be doing as many tournaments as she is, anyway. It’s a lot,” says Benny. “One every couple months, once a month at most, is more than enough at her age. Why blow off school for them? What’s the rush?”
Benny more or less grew up in hotels doing stupid, mindless math worksheets between chess matches. There have got to be better options for a chess prodigy these days. “Any coach who said that just wants to turn her into a machine. Probably thinks he can get famous off her success,” says Benny. “Look—she doesn’t need much. She’s obviously got an, uh, knack for the game.”
“To put it mildly,” says Mrs. Wheatley.
“And I can help out a bit. At least tell you which tournaments to go to, which to skip out on. The main thing is getting her facing the strongest players. That’s not going to happen if you’re solely chasing money. I mean, I don’t know your circumstances, but she shouldn’t be playing chess for the cash anyway. There are child labor laws for a reason.” He gives her a look, doesn’t remotely try to hide the judgment in it.
“We’re well taken care of thank you very much,” says Mrs. Wheatley. “And aside from a few girlish frivolities, Beth puts all of her money away in a savings account save for what we need to travel. But I’ll take everything you’re saying under advisement. I truly want what’s best for Beth and this is all still very new.”
Benny nods, walks with Mrs. Wheatley through the hotel’s winding hallways of conference rooms. He figures this stuff must be pretty boring to a ten year old, and that’s why she hadn’t been at the panel.
He’s glad she’s got the choice to opt out.
“Have lunch with me? The girls are going crazy with room service, and I could use this time away from them to make sense all of this. I have my notebook. Any notes you can give me would be very cherished.”
So Benny recommends a few more books for Beth, gives Mrs. Wheatley some guidelines for which tournaments to go to. Talks a little (a very little) about what it had been like for him growing up and what pitfalls to avoid (Don’t have her do more interviews. She’s young enough that she could accidentally say something really personal or stupid that she’ll end up regretting later, but it will be in print forever. Even this panel I’m supposed to do with her on the future of American chess, if she wants to do it, fine, but if she doesn’t want to, I say let her skip it, even if the federation gave her a stipend for being on it and are gonna give her grief. Tough for them. They shouldn’t have even asked. A kid shouldn’t have to be weighing in on this shit.)
He runs into Beth and Jolene a couple of times at the conference, mostly when they’re bumping into him as they run through the halls.
Beth doesn’t end up doing the panel (good), but afterwards she comes up to him and asks him what it was like to play Najdorf, who she apparently has a soft spot for.
He tells her about other games he’s played with famous players, too, like Reshevsky.
When Benny’s tempted to summarize, skip over a boring section of the middle game, she stops him, asks him—well then what move did he play? So he narrates the games start to finish, move by move.
Another time, she catches him in the lobby fleecing people for fives over speed chess. “You wanna play?” he asks when he sees her standing there, staring. “We can just do a nickel.”
She looks at him and says what everybody else here should be saying but doesn’t have the sense to: “I can’t beat you. What would be the point? Might as well just hand you the five cents.”
“Hey,” says Benny, staring her down the same way she’s staring him down. “You can’t beat me yet. ”
Beth looks toward the crowd of chess bums (no offense to them—Benny’s one, too). “I bet I could beat all of you, though,” she says. “And not for a nickel. I could do it for five dollars a game, too.”
“No, Beth,” says Benny, about to put away his board. “Mrs. Wheatley would kill me.”
“We can just do it for fun—no money,” says Peter Holt, a smarmy little fuck that Benny hates. He’s pretty damn good at chess, though.
Beth looks at Peter. “No,” she says. “I want to take your money. That sounds fun.”
Peter’s face sours, his eyes narrowing. “I’d like to see you try. Winning a few tournaments doesn’t make you special. You know how many I’ve won?”
“No,” says Beth, taking the question literally and not for the rhetorical threat it is. “I don’t.”
“Leave her alone,” says another guy to Peter. “She’s just a little girl. What are you getting so worked up for?"
“She said she wants to play so let’s see it,” says Peter.
A third person chimes in. “Christ, Pete, let her be. You get your rocks off making little kids cry or something?”
And the thought that it would be Peter to make Beth cry and not the other way around is absolutely laughable. Have these guys been living under a rock or something? Don’t they know who she is?
“One game,” says Benny, and moves so Beth can take his spot at the table.”
She takes his spot, and Peter sits across from her. “Do you even have five dollars?” he asks.
“I’ll front her,” says Benny, and reaches into his pocket, puts a five dollar bill on the table.
Beth draws white, and the game begins—and finishes just as quickly in seventeen moves, Peter not even having the decency to resign when he sees the forced checkmate, playing it out on the board to the inevitable end.
“Beginner’s luck,” he says, and puts another five on the table.
This time, the game stretches to all of 23 moves.
“Another,” says Peter. The crowd around them has grown larger.
“I don’t think that would be very kind to you,” says Beth. “Can’t you see you’re just going to lose again?”
She asks this genuinely, no hint of a taunt, confused about why he’d want to play another game when she’s so clearly the much superior player. Her obliviousness in the face of Peter’s ego makes Peter seem even more pathetic. When faced with playing Benny for money, Beth had sensibly bowed out. Why doesn’t Peter do the same, she’s thinking.
“I said I want another game,” says Peter, laying down more money.
“Brother, we’re bored of watching you lose,” says Gus Martok. “At least let someone else give it a shot.”
But no one’s actually bored at all watching Beth flay Peter alive. Her gameplay is electric.
Peter loses three more games before one of his friends forces him to stop, and Benny’s got to go because he’s giving a master class on the Sicilian in about ten minutes.
“Please don’t tell your mom I let you do this,” says Benny, as Beth pockets her winnings.
“Don’t worry. I’m good at keeping secrets,” she says. Her words are probably meant to be reassuring, but Benny’s just thinking—what secrets? Kids shouldn’t have those. Not real ones, anyway.
“What secrets?” he asks.
She looks at him, then around the lobby to check if Mrs. Wheatley’s there. “You’re not a rat, are you?” she says, and it’s the first time Benny sees it fully, that she’s spent time at an orphanage, at an institution because Benny's been around the block, and suburban white girls in peter pan collar dresses don't even know what a rat is.
“Do I look like a rat?” asks Benny.
She looks at him, considering.
“Ouch,” he says.
A few moments later, Beth reaches into the pocket of her cardigan, then holds out her palm quickly. Three green and white pills. They’re back in her pocket a second later.
Shit.
All right, maybe he is a rat, because this seems like something Mrs. Wheatley should definitely be informed about. “Where did you get those?” he asks. Even if he doesn’t know exactly what flavor of experience these particular pills are offering, he can guess they’re not fucking aspirin.
“There you are, Beth,” Benny hears from across the lobby and looks up. Mrs. Wheatley and Jolene have just come out of the elevator.
Benny wants to get out of here before he’s properly face to face with Mrs. Wheatley. She’ll probably know he’s holding onto something he shouldn’t. Mother types are always like that.
“See you around, Beth,” he says, and hurries off, tries not to run into any of them the rest of the conference.
This is why it’s better not to get too involved with people. You start feeling responsible. You start having to make choices. Weighing pros and cons that aren’t any of your business anyhow.
Benny’s not a babysitter. Isn’t Beth Harmon’s keeper. Isn’t Mrs. Wheatley’s trusted advisor. He’s just someone who knows way too much about chess—and absolutely nothing about anything else.