Checkmate, p.2
Checkmate, page 2
The next morning, the boss came in with another box, bubbling with excitement around it, like a kid poking the full stockings on Christmas morning before everyone woke up, too afraid to tip them over.
"Another chess set?" I said, trying to muster some sort of happiness in my voice.
"Yes," he nodded enthusiastically, "This one's especially unique!" He pulled out a wooden checkerboard and tilted the box, allowing all of the painted wooden figurines to fall out. A selection of them had red robes with red crosses and shields, while the others wore grey.
"What sort of theme is this then?" I said, picking up a tiny castle and tracing the grey cross with my forefinger.
"Crusades!"
I let my wrist go limp and dropped the piece on the table.
"Crusades. Great," I said. Fantastic dinner conversation. You'd think that the unspoken subject of animal cruelty and horrible grease laden food was enough of a mood killer without having to add a reign of homicidal terror to it, but I guess hipsters like the sort of irony in tragedy they don't feel directly culpable for, which is most if not all tragedy, except for the revival of cat sweaters, so maybe it would work perfectly.
"These you can't put in bleach," he said, stacking the figurines on their respective squares.
I thought about saying, "I know a thing or two about cleaning wood," until I saw the vacant and self-serving stare of yet another wannabe member of ZZ Top. "Gotcha," I said, turning around and heading back towards the kitchens.
For what it was worth, over the past couple of days people did seem genuinely amused by the thought of a chess set in a hamburger and fries restaurant. The boss kept coming to the front of the house in his cook's apron that only ever wore when he came out into the front of the restaurant to be the "face of the business". They told him how incredibly charming they found the set and how they hadn't played chess in so long, which I felt sure they weren't lying about.
I wiped the wooden set down quickly with one of those awfully orange-y smelling disposable wipes and headed back towards the shiny marble one, black and white pieces facing each other respectively. I set the bleach bucket down and tilted them all in again, pulling them out one by one. By chance, the white Queen was the last one in the bucket.
She no longer looked like she wanted to sell me plastic food storage solutions, and instead had a grimace worthy of Mr. Hyde that spread across her face, making her look grotesque in comparison with all of the other pieces. I inhaled sharply and jumped when I noticed it, dropping the piece on the floor.
"Hurry up!" the boss said, busting through the kitchen door, "I can't sit here all night waiting for you."
"I'm coming. Sorry. Just finishing the last piece, that's all."
When I picked up the white Queen, I looked at her face quickly and it had returned to it's pleasant demeanor, but the fall to the floor had very obviously chipped her delicate hands. I cursed under my breath and set her back on the board, yanking the bleach bucket up, snapping off the light, and heading towards the kitchen.
He brought in yet another set the next day as I groaned, but this one at least didn't have the awful subheading of mass murder and I when I noticed the plastic pieces, I did a little dance in my head.
"You definitely can't put these in the bleach bucket," the boss said slowly, "Because these ones glow in the dark!" He grabbed a piece and cupped it in the dark of his own hand, trying to somehow show me that they actually glowed in the dark and he didn't make it up. I picked up my own piece and shielded it from the light and, sure enough, it flashed its neon green essence right in my eye.
"The bleach would probably damage it," he said seriously, putting the set at one of our booths. I didn't study the finer methods of cleaning during the hours I attended classes instead of shifts, but I would bet that bleach wouldn't do terrible things to the pieces. But then, I knew about Albrecht Durer and his woodcuts and really nothing about cleaning except the obvious steps. Step one, rub with a rag. Step two, rub harder. And they say those infomercials just waste everyone's time.
It didn't take him half as long as it had the first time to collect all of the salt and pepper shakers, condiments, and sugars, wipe off the tables, and stack the chairs and it seemed like it took me even longer to clean the chess sets the third time around than the first. The inexplicable urge to count all of the squares and make sure that they were the same across all of our chess sets strengthened the more I had to be around them all.
"I'm going to give you this," he said, passing me a key, "It's a key to the front and back doors. I've shown you how to use the burglar alarm, right?"
"Right…" I said, waiting for the eventual bomb to drop.
"Good. You can lock up then," he said grinning, face poking back at his phone.
"What? But I've never done it before all by myself," I said. The walls seemed to close in a bit further around me.
"You'll be fine," he said, waving a non-concerning hand, "Besides, you only have one more set to go any way." And with that, he walked out of the kitchen door, leaving me behind with the bleach bucket.
This time, I made no mistake about tilting the board and letting the marble pieces fall right into the bucket, splashing some of the awful water onto my apron in the process, but I didn't really care. Something incredibly toxic about this bleach possibly seeped through every pore I had whenever I cleaned with the stuff and I was sure that early prevention already passed it's expiration date. I barely wiped the pieces as I sat them rapidly down on the board. Just a few pieces to the last and I found her.
The white Queen's face looked blankly at me, not sad, not happy, not anything. Before I knew it the piece felt like a soldering iron and I dropped it again on the floor, backing away. It landed directly on it's bottom. As I rubbed my fingers, the piece grew and grew, towering like a statue over me, cracking as the white Queen set her arms free from the sides of her stone dress, nostrils flaring as she breathed in what I assume was air into her marble lungs. I kept backing away, staring at the marble figure in disbelief. She looked like she emerged from a long nap, stretching out her limbs and smoothing out her already smooth dress.
"There," she said in a light, honey coated voice, pointing her cold face and empty eyes my way, "That's not so bad, is it? Much better."
I stared in the only way I knew how. A tiny piece from a chess set had just grown to human proportions and started to have a conversation with me. And while the adults in my life had done the very best they could to equip me with the tools that I needed to survive, how to talk to a marble statue certainly didn't rank in their priorities of transferable skills.
"Now dear," the white Queen said, "You look like you've had quite a rough night. Why don't you come over here and have a seat. We can talk all about it if you'd like?"
I froze, holding my hand as I stared at her.
"You wouldn't want me to feel like you don't want to be around me, would you? Come, come! Sit down!" she said, "patting" a booth, the result sounded more like a knock than a pat. I walked slowly towards the statue, eking my way toward the seat and sitting down, letting my sweaty palms rest in my lap.
"Now, dear," she sat, lunging her marble arms onto the table and causing a few more cacophonous knocks in the room, "we must talk about what's going here, you know. In your life? This whole waitressing thing?"
"… yes?" I asked, not entirely sure whether I wanted to accept unsolicited advice on my life from a woman made of marble. But then, could I tell a woman made of marble off? Considering her varying expressions over the past couple of days, testing her temper seemed like a really unintelligent decision at this point.
"Really, it's awful. And you can't expect yourself to live this way. It's no life for a young lady. Wouldn't you agree?"
Again, I stared blankly. I secretly hoped that this challenge or whatever it was could somehow involve staring. Maybe a staring contest? I definitely would win a staring contest. Even against a marble statue.
"Really, dear. Don't make me feel like I'm talking to myself here? That makes one feel awfully stupid."
"W-well I mean… it's no ideal life for anyone I suppose but it's just while I get my degree. The Associate's. They maybe I can transfer to a Sta-"
"And then you'll definitely get in with a load of scholarships and be extremely successful, right?" the white Queen said, bunching her marble hands and fingers in a ball under her chin. It was all incredibly hokey and the fact that her marble fingers hadn't made many sounds astonished me.
"I… I-I mean I suppose that's the idea," I said.
"It's definitely the idea. You won't be able to take care of all your affairs otherwise, so it's always best to aim for the highest peak. That way, even if you fall, you're still up pretty high. Wouldn't you say, dear?"
I nodded, taking a glance at the kitchen door.
"We'll definitely have to work on your conversational skills," she said, grinning. She didn't have eyes per say, just blank slates of white between two carved eyelids. But I could still see the twinkle in her eye as she spoke, "And of course the stammering."
"That sounds great," I said, sliding myself slowly out of the booth. Sudden movements seemed like a very bad idea at this point, "Right now though, it's getting pretty late and I really have to go. So… if you don't mind…"
"Oh no dear," she said, waving a marble finger, "You go ahead. You've got a lot of studying to do, I'll imagine. And make sure you get adequate rest. I see you're starting to get some bags under those lovely eyes. A bit of evening primrose oil should get that in control."
"Yeah, definitely," I said, grabbing the bleach bucket and backing away slowly, keeping my eyes on the adoring marble figure, "I think I have some of that somewhere in my cabinet."
The white Queen grinned, "Very good. No snacks before bedtime. There's a good girl."
As I backed through the kitchen doors, I threw myself towards the sink, dumping the bleach water down the drain, leaving behind a few stray pieces from the set and not really giving a shit either way. I threw the bucket onto the bench in the hallway where it usually sat, nearly dropped to my knees in thankful prayer when I realized the keys to the place were in my pocket, grabbed my jacket, set the burglar alarm as fast and as best as I could, ran out the door and straight to my apartment down the street.
I brushed my teeth the next morning, laughing it off. Definitely had a bit too much of the rum when the boss made tira misu, or something like that. Some sort of rational explanation for what had happened the previous evening existed; I just had to figure out what that perfectly rational explanation was that's all. I groaned as I walked through the back door of the restaurant again, remembering how I had left the rest of the chess pieces in the sink. Probably wouldn't win me any good points with the boss that morning, but when I went to sink and peeped over the edge with one eye closed, nothing was there.
The boss bust through the kitchen door, wearing another wide grin. "I managed to find another last night on eBay," he said, leaning on the side of one of the kitchen counters, "A Star Wars one that's pretty cheap considering."
"Star Wars," I said flatly, waiting to hear about the other chess set I'd probably ruined or dishonored in some way by leaving bits of it in the sink. That would surely represent a betrayal to the business or the basic foundations of marketing he had picked up somewhere from an overenthusiastic video with cheesy 80s music that promised that you (yes you!) could make a hell of a lot of money doing exactly what all of these thrilled cookie cutter white dudes did on a daily basis. In no time, we could all be driving Porches and owning timeshares, whatever those were.
"Yes. We need a bit of edge, you know," he said, walking back towards the front of the house after he'd grabbed a stray rag.
"Wait a minute, let me get this straight," I said following him, "The Crusades chess set is not edgy, the dark marble chess set isn't edgy, and neither is the glow in the dark one, so you needed to buy a Star Wars themed one to show we've got a bit of the rough?"
"The wooden chess set looks a bit old timey," he said, picking up a piece of it. He'd already taken down the chairs and put out the condiments. I peeked back over at the marble chess set and it looked pristine and perfect. All of the pieces were present and accounted for. "The glow in the dark one is far too happy," he continued, "And this marble one… well, all of the faces are way too smiley."
I walked quickly over towards the table and looked at their faces. My heart skipped a beat.
All of them had wide eyed Tupperware grins, faces almost sticking up with the sheer raw power of their cheerfulness. It was like "It's a Small World", Richard Simmons, and a Wal Mart greeter rolled into a burrito of toxic sunshine staring back up at me.
"Holy shit," I said under my breath.
Something was definitely wrong. Either with the chess set or my head, and all of the signs pointed directly at me. I could blame many things in my life on drunkenness, and this was definitely not one of them.
Chapter 3
"What do you think all of this represents in your life?"
"Represents?" I said. Sometimes Phyllis asked me some really useful questions, questions that made me think about why things happened the way they did in my life. Sometimes she even made me think critically about my attitude and what it protected me from, but I usually shrugged those thoughts off. I figured that whatever my attitude did protect me from, it probably did a pretty decent job, so that's a plus.
"Yes, represents," she continued, "Obviously you didn't actually see the white Queen grow to human proportions in real life. It must've been a psychotic delusion on your part. And I don't think we can ignore that at this point."
Really? I imagine a chess piece comes to live and gives me makeup tips and all you say is you don't think we can ignore it at this point. No shit. I don't even know what evening primrose oil actually is.
"Well, no. I'm not trying to ignore it-"
"Then I need you to consider what the white Queen represents in your life," Phyllis said, "Whether she actually represents a family member or just some sort of general concept that you've been thinking about."
I nodded, turning my head to the side. I always did that when I wanted Phyllis to think I seriously considered what she said. It's not that I didn't seriously consider what she said, it's just that whenever I went to therapy, I was always terrified of saying some sort of magic crazy word that unlocked the guys bursting through the door in white coats and hypodermic needles, ready to cart me away. I knew I probably should tell Phyllis about all of these worries, but it struck me as one of those things that I should probably keep to myself.
Neither Phyllis nor I could remember how we met precisely, but I started to come to her to talk a couple of months ago. Forgive me for my ignorance, but I've always had a lot of reservations about therapy. Well, I've always had a lot of reservations about everything except maybe toilets and delivery pizza, and I'd like to not think about how those two things often coincide. Oh, and alcohol. I generally didn't have any reservations about drinking something that looked like a science project if I was guaranteed a few shots of tequila in the deal. It seemed worth the risk.
Regardless of my reservations, I found myself sitting in her office once every other week, painted with the calming tone of pastel blue. She'd sit a wooden chair furnished with comfortable upholstery, or at least I assumed she found it comfortable. She didn't usually fidget or yawn when I talked about all of the things that went on: my horrible job, my boss, how incredibly boring I found school and how much that frightened me. I very rarely admitted being frightened to anyone, but it seemed fairly easy to do around Phyllis. Whenever I tried to remember all of our sessions together, my brain felt oddly empty, though. That must be the hallmark of therapy. And maybe it's why therapists can be so stinking rich. Imagine how much car mechanics would get away with if you couldn't remember why you drove your car in there in the first place.
"I guess the white Queen represents my insecurities? I mean... she did give me a serious talking to about the state of my life... and the bags under my eyes."
Phyllis nodded.
"Do I seriously have them though?"
"What?"
"Bags under my eyes. I mean I know I stay up a lot, but I have seen mirrors before-"
"I don't think that's the critical issue here when it comes to the white Queen. I think she'd say anything to make you feel uncomfortable. It kind of sounds like something else we both know about? Something we've talked about before?"
That's right. That, I could definitely remember.
We recently had what Phyllis calls "a real breakthrough", but what I call "an 'oh shit' moment". There's this little voice I used to hear, before I started coming to Phyllis. Well, I didn't actually hear it, which I'm pretty thankful for. But it's this voice that whispers in my ear and tells me that terrible things are going to happen. Yeah, I know saying it like that doesn't make you realize what that really means for me but I do actually believe that terrible things are going to happen. And I start to get scared and I think all I have to do is this thing. If I do this thing than everything else will automatically fix itself. It's ridiculous and I know it, but it's there. Staring at me in the face.
