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"You were the one who lost the rook," Carol says.
She unfolds the chess board, places it on the coffee table, and starts setting up the pieces.
"I didn't do it," she adds.
She carefully adjusts the pieces so the base of each of them is dead center of their squares.
"It was your fault. I remember. You captured it from me and it was never seen thereafter."
She moves the pawn in front of the white queen forward by two squares.
There's a formal way of identifying that move, but she doesn't know what it is.
"What's that called?" she asks.
She repositions the board so black is before her. The pieces shift with the movement.
"It's called 'your first mistake' because you are the worst at this game," she replies, and moves a black knight out.
Carol flips the board around to its original position. "You never know." She moves the king's pawn out one square so it can protect the first. "I think I might actually win this one."
Black pawn forward. "I doubt it, but if you do it's because you're cheating. Reading my mind."
Carol doesn't actually think that's much of an advantage because she gets muddled just keeping track of her own pieces even when she's sober, but she maintains a smug silence as she moves a bishop. Now that black knight can't be moved without putting the king into check.
Pawn forward, attacking bishop. "Nice try."
"First check," she announces as she takes the knight.
"Your last one." Bishop down.
"I've beaten you before."
"Are you sure I didn't let you win?"
"Nah. You're too competitive." The one accommodation made for the disparity in their skill levels was that Carol always played white. Being thrown a softball victory just to soothe her ego? Out of the question.
As if to demonstrate the point, black takes white's only rook.
"That rook," she says after a few more moves. "You took so many of my pieces that night you lost it in the confusion."
"Still on the rook? The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
"You can't pin it on me."
"I can pin your queen."
"Of course you're winning," she says. "You have two rooks and I only had one. Unfair advantage."
"Yeah, the unfair advantage of I can play chess and you're so bad you'd be better off not knowing the rules."
"You and your king's pawn game and that was just an x-ray. Which, still think you made that up."
"You can look it up if you don't believe me."
Google's dead, so what the hell. Carol gets up and goes over to her phone.
Hello, Carol. This is a recording. At the tone, you can leave a message to request anything you might need. We'll do our best to provide it. Our feelings for you haven't changed, Carol. But after everything that's happened, we just need a little space.
"Hey, assholes. What's an x-ray in chess?"
Hello, Carol. This is a recording. An x-ray occurs when a piece controls a square through an intervening second piece. It differs from a skewer in that—
Carol hangs up. She doesn't care enough. X-rays, skewers, pins, forks, all of that is a morass of whatever. She did consider including a high stakes chess match in Wycaro Two, but decided (in retrospect, with gentle assistance from her manager) she couldn't pull it off.
"Fine," she says. "I guess it is real and you weren't fucking with me."
"Oh, I was. I knew you wouldn't believe me and fed you that line to distract you."
"Now who's the cheater?"
Carol drains her rocks glass and fills it three quarters full, then moves pieces around some more. When the glass is empty again, she asks:
"Why didn't you tell me about Bitter Chrysalis?"
"What would you have done if I had?"
"'Wouldn't hurt my career,'" Carol says, dodging the question. "If you had thought it would hurt Wycaro, would you have been honest?"
She turns the board around and takes her time moving.
"Possibly," she allows. "Wait, that's check."
God damn it, that had been an accident. Stupid knights and their stupid Ls. She flips the board back around and moves white's king out of the way.
When it's black's turn again, she waits even longer before speaking. "I would probably have suggested pseudonymous publishing. It would have made marketing trickier, and then I'd have had to hold your hand when it flopped, but…"
"You think it would have made everyone as miserable as it did you." She's flustered and she doesn't know where to move and she blunders her queen.
Black takes it in silence.
"Well, I'm just fucking brilliant, aren't I? Wycaro's up there with Shakespeare and Bitter Chrysalis is the same as Finnegans Wake."
"Don't be like that. It wasn't my fault you suck. Check again."
King takes bishop. "I'm still in the fight."
"If I were me you'd have lost, like, ten moves ago."
"Showoff."
"Check, fool."
There are few enough pieces now that they don't bewilder her, even in her state. Black has two rooks still, and the three pawns white has are too close to their starting positions to get promoted in time.
She's about to lose.
She could just resign, but she decides she'll make this last as long as possible, drag it out to the bitter end.
"Actually," Carol says. "I do know what happened to the rook."
As the rooks chase her king around the board, she explains.
"You had me clean up because I lost. The game, dishes, snacks, kleenex because we both had the flu. I think I swept it into the trash when I was doing that. Was too drunk to notice."
"I know." The second black rook moves into its final place.
She flicks white's king off the board. She doesn't see where it lands. Either it will join the rook in oblivion or she'll find it by stepping on it when she wakes up with a pounding head and roiling stomach.
"Loser," she says.