Distraction - Bruce Sterling [57]
“Even if you totally surround me.”
“Exactly.”
She hunched her shoulders and stared at the board. “I can see why your friend likes this game.”
“Yes, it’s very architectural.… All right, we’ll try a practice game.” He swept the board clean of stones. “You’re the beginner, so you get nine free stones on these nine crucial spots.”
“That’s a lot of free stones.”
“That’s not a problem, because I’m going to beat you anyway.” He clicked down his first white stone with two fingertips.
They played for a while. “Atari,” he repeated.
“You can stop saying that word now, I can see that my group’s in check.”
“It’s just a customary courtesy.”
They played more. Oscar was starting to sweat. He stood up and turned down the heaters.
He sat down again. All the tension had left their situation. The two of them were totally rapt. “You’re going to beat me,” she announced. “You know all those foul little tricks in the corners.”
“Yes, I do.”
She looked up and met his eyes. “But I can learn those little tricks, and then you’re going to have a hard time with me.”
“I can appreciate a hard time. A hard time is good to find.”
He beat her by thirty points. “You’re learning fast. Let’s try a serious game.”
“Don’t clear the board yet,” she said. She studied her defeat with deep appreciation. “These patterns are so elegant.”
“Yes. And they’re always different. Every game has its own character.”
“These stones are a lot like neurons.”
He smiled at her.
They started a second game. Oscar was very serious about go. He played poker for social reasons, but he never threw a game of go. He was too good at it. He was a gifted player, clever, patient, and profoundly deceptive, but Greta’s game play was all over the map. She was making beginner’s mistakes, but she never repeated them, and her mental grasp of the game was incredibly strong.
He beat her by nineteen points, but only because he was ruthless.
“This is a really good game,” she said. “It’s so contemporary.”
“It’s three thousand years old.”
“Really?” She stood up and stretched, her kneecaps cracking loudly. “That calls for a drink.”
“Go ahead.”
She found her carpetbag and retrieved a square bottle of blue Dutch gin.
Oscar went to the kitchen and fetched two brand-new bistro glasses from their sanitary wrap. “You want some orange juice with that stuff?”
“No thank you.”
He poured himself an orange juice and brought her an empty glass. He watched in vague astonishment as she decanted three fingers of straight gin, with a chemist’s painstaking care.
“Some ice? We do have ice.”
“That’s all right.”
“Look, Greta, you can’t drink straight gin. That’s the road to blue ruin.”
“Vodka gives me headaches. Tequila tastes nasty.” She placed her pointed upper lip on the rim of her bistro glass and had a long meditative sip. Then she shuddered. “Yum! You don’t drink at all, do you?”
“No. And you should take it a little easier. Straight gin kills neurons by the handful.”
“I kill neurons for a living, Oscar. Let’s play.”
They had a third game. The booze had melted something inside her head and she was playing hard. He fought as if his life depended on it. He was barely holding his own.
“Nine free stones are way too many for you,” he said. “We should cut you back to six.”
“You’re going to win again, aren’t you?”
“Maybe twenty points.”
“Fifteen. But we don’t have to finish this one now.”
“No.” He was holding a white stone between two fingertips. “We don’t have to finish.”
He reached out across the board. He touched his two fingers to the underside of her chin very gently. She looked up in surprise, and he drew a caress along the line of her jaw. Then he leaned in slowly, until their lips met.
A throwaway kiss. Barely there, like eiderdown. He slipped his hand to the nape of her neck and leaned in seriously. The bright taste of gin parched his tongue.
“Let’s get in bed,” he said.
“That really isn’t smart.”
“I know it isn’t, but let’s do it anyway.”
They levered themselves from the floor. They crossed the room and climbed into the square brass bed.
It was the