The West Texas Ladies Chess Club Ch. 04

Chapter IV

Betrayal

Our big match, or what we had all considered our "big match," had come: we were playing the Athletics Dept. again. And this time, we were ready. Or so I thought. However, from the moment we entered the auditorium, things started to go off the rails. Naturally, the national and international media were there to record the emotional trainwreck that followed.

"Sam's not herself," Becky said. We were setting up the tables and chairs.

"How so?" I asked her.

"She's been distracted all last night and this morning. Says her guts are tied up in knots."

"Is she ill?"

"No. But whatever it is, it started a week or so ago. She can't remember anything, she stays up late, reading, comes to bed late, gets up late. It's gotten worse, too. The last three days, she hasn't wanted to make love!"

"I thought I hadn't seen her around as much," I said. "I should have noticed! But I was so caught up in all of this. All the prep. All the tutoring-"

"All your time with your new love?" Lisa interrupted. "You've hardly had any time for me, or Cassandra, or even Jenn and Martha. It's always "Ginny says this, and Ginny says that."

"Lisa!" Her words stung me. "That's not true! I will always have a place in my heart for all of us, you, more than most! How have I made you feel this way? What can I do to show you I love you?"

She rushed forward and wrapped me in her arms, holding me tightly, her face buried against my neck. "I'm sorry I said that! It's just all this-" she gestured with her arm, showing the packed auditorium, the news cameras, and reporters. "I'll just be glad when this is over. And we can just return to being ourselves, our happy little club."

"Me, too," I said. I noticed numerous cameras being trained on us. Typical. You get two girls hugging each other, everybody forgets everything else. But it turned out there was another element to the news crews' sudden interest in watching Lisa and I embrace. One I had not yet been made aware of.

So, Sam wasn't acting like her usual self. And Lisa was growing weary of all the media hype that had been surrounding us. And feeling neglected. By me! And maybe, I guess, she did have a reason to feel that way. A significant element of what she said was true, which made it sting all the more. So now I was feeling down, at entirely the wrong moment. I made a mental note to get to the bottom of these issues, when the match concluded. But for now, we had to go forward.

Just then, Ginny came up. The instant we had entered the stadium, she had split off from us to grant some interviews. "Game faces, ladies," she said. "It is time for war!"

She noted Lisa was still embracing me and said, "Lisa! You're up first! Get yourself collected and get out there!"

Lisa took a deep breath and gave me a quick kiss. Was it just my imagination? Or was every camera in the place suddenly focused on us? On the large TV screen, I saw our hug and kiss being replayed. Really? In the 21^st Century, two girls kiss, and it's huge news? I was about to ask what was happening, but I had to go and talk to the judges about the order of players and how the match would go.

"Five players of the Athletics Club vs five players of the EWTCCfL-club, best 3 out of five wins the match. Club presidents, do you have your list of players ready?"

We chose Lisa, Cassandra, Sam, Becky, and me to play against their five challengers.

Lisa's game went first, and she won! We all exchanged high-fives and hugs. Except Ginny, who was practically boiling with fury. She immediately started criticizing Lisa's game. "You took way too long, Lisa," Ginny said. "You should have had him beaten long before this. You nearly forfeited on time!"

Uncharacteristically, Lisa completely lost her temper and shouted, "Fuck you, bitch! I won, didn't I? I played it just like you said, didn't I?"

"Your mind was NOT in the game like it should have been!" Ginny said, refusing to back off her criticism.

"Go screw yourself!" Lisa said.

"Guys! This is not the time for this!" I said. "Clearly something is bothering you both-"

"Nothing is bothering me except a lack of commitment," Ginny said, staring pointedly at Lisa.

"-and we will get to the heart of it," I said. "But later, when it's just us!"

"I don't think you can fix this," Lisa said, tears in her eyes. I had never seen her look more miserable. Especially considering she had just won a crucial game.

"Yes, we can!" I said. "I promise you, Lisa, my darling, we can, and we will, fix this!"

"You can't. You don't even know what's wrong," Lisa said. She sat down, put her head in her hands, and fought against her tears. Ginny ceased berating Lisa for the quality of her game.

"Now," I said, "Sam's up next! Where is she?"

"In the bathroom," Becky said. "Crying."

"What?"

"She ran in there when Ginny started in on Lisa," she said, glaring at Ginny. I thought she might be sick, but she was crying. She asked me to leave her alone for a minute."

I couldn't believe what was happening, how this was all turning out. What was going on?

"Guys, when this is over, we're making some changes," I said. "I never meant for any of this to happen, and I certainly never meant for any of you to feel this kind of pressure. We'll fix this! All of us, together, we'll fix this!" Ginny continued to fume with anger; Lisa put her face back in her hands and started sobbing, no longer able to fight her tears.

"Ok, we'll have to make a substitution to the order of play," I said. "Can someone find the referee and ask how we do that?"

"We don't have to," Sam said. She had come out of the bathroom and approached our area. We hadn't noticed while we had been in our state of crisis.

"Sam?" I said. One look at her eyes, and you could see she had been crying. But she had collected herself and fixed her makeup. "I'm ready," she said. I was holding her in a tight hug, and yet again, I noticed on all the large monitors they showed Sam and I embracing each other. But I didn't have time to wonder why; I was focused on consoling Sam.

"You're sure?" I asked. "You don't have to if you're not up for it."

"We'll forfeit if any of us backs out!" Ginny said. "She has to play! Sam! Get yourself together!"

Sam stepped forward and hugged me again. This time, I knew it wasn't my imagination. From the instant she made contact, all cameras were on us, our image plastered on all the large external monitors. A banner scrolled underneath our image, but I couldn't read it because Sam's hair blocked my view.

She moved her mouth to my ear and said, "If I screw this up, can you forgive me?"

"Of course!" I said.

"If I... if I made a horrible mistake... could you forgive me?"

"Sam, this is just a game," I said.

"No, I don't mean the game. I mean, something else. Something awful."

"Sam, I'm certain I could forgive you of anything! I'm telling the judges we're forfeiting; you cannot be expected to play like this!"

"No, you aren't!" Ginny said. "We are not going to forfeit! I am not going to forfeit! You, all of you, asked me to teach you, and I have. And now you're representing me. And you will not forfeit!"

"Ginny," I said, "I've had just about enough out of you. The next words you say, if they can't be supportive, then just shut up and don't say anything."

I'd expected Ginny to be hurt by how I responded, by what I said. But she seemed pleased. What in the Hell was going on here? "Sam, I guess I haven't said it enough lately, but I love you." That only seemed to make her more despondent. "Ok," I said, "When this is over, we are going to work this all out." I put my hand under Sam's chin, and said, "You do believe I love you, don't you?"

She nodded her head, and went to the table. From the instant the game began, however, it was clear Sam was not playing at her usual level. She lost due to a simple, obvious error anyone could have seen from a mile away. She was destroyed. She broke down in sobs, and we had to lead her away from the table by hand. She was saying over and over how sorry she was.

I saw Ginny approaching, fire in her eyes. I stood between her and Sam, and when she tried to go around me, I put my hand against her chest and shoved her back. "Ginny! I am warning you, back off! Just. Back! OFF! Don't you say one word to Sam, do you hear me?"

That, I could see, surprised her. Hell, it surprised me, too. I had never been so angry in my life. Especially not with some I loved!

Becky was up for the next round. "Becky, you don't have to play, if you don't want to," I said. "Let's just get out of here."

"Again, with this?" Ginny said. "YOU are supposed to be our leader, not our excuse-maker!"

"Ginny, that is ENOUGH!" I shouted.

"Oh, it's all right," Becky said. She gently stroked my face, but in her tone of voice there was nothing but steel and fire. "I feel like kicking some ass," she said. "And somebody-" she was looking at Ginny, "had better watch out. Because I could easily be inspired to kick more than one ass. I'm going to play. Ginny, I'll be watching you. If I see you go near Sam, I'll forfeit, I'll get up and walk away from the game, and I will come over here, and I will kick your ass for real. Understand? Stay away from Sam! Leave Lisa alone, too!"

After what was going on within the team, she was snorting fire, and her opponent never had a chance. She destroyed him in record time.

"Now that's more like it!" Ginny said, and she tried to hug Becky, but Becky shoved her away, hard enough that Ginny was shocked. Becky went straight to Cassandra and wrapped her up in a hug. I saw her speaking in Cassandra's ear, Cassandra nodding her head. They released each other from their embrace, and Cassandra went to play her round.

Becky walked over to Sam, sat beside her, and put her arm around her shoulders. This only seemed to make Sam cry even harder. I walked over and sat on the other side of Sam, gently rubbing her back.

"Cassandra should be ok," Becky said.

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her to remember why we were all here. How we love the club, we love you, and we love this game. I told her to just ignore Ginny and play for the love of the game, the club, and you."

"Oh, Becky! I don't know what the Hell is happening here today with Ginny, Lisa, and Sam!" Sam's crying doubled. Becky and I wrapped her up in a hug and held her. Again, I saw our image plastered on all the big screens. Come on, really? What is going on with this?

Becky's hairstyle is quite short. Because of that, I could see the caption beneath our images, this time, and my blood turned cold. The caption read,

"Lesbian Chess Team Captain tries to rally her team using similar methods to their training rituals."

Becky noticed how stiff I had become. "Tish? Are you ok?"

"Becky... look at the caption on the big displays..."

She saw it, too, because I felt her stiffen in my arms.

"How?" I said. "How did they know?"

We found out, because the image of us cut away to the interview Ginny had given earlier. I could see her talking, but couldn't hear what she was saying over the general noise level in the auditorium. But the caption read,

"Grand Master says she can teach anyone to excel at Chess, takes on a team of Lesbians to prove her claims."

At the table, Cassandra, who had been playing in top form, saw the headline, and froze. I remembered what she had told Lisa and me about her culture's views on Lesbianism. And now, here she was with us, on national news, being publicly outed.

She collected herself, resumed playing, and played very well. But if you knew her, like we did, you could see her mind simply wasn't in the game. And yet, as she had told us about concealing your emotions, you would never have known, looking at her face, of the torment in her soul. Still, she managed to soldier on through her round.

I turned to look for Ginny, and found her standing close, right behind me.

"Why did you do this to us?" I asked.

She went to put her hand on my face, but I slapped it away, hard. Instantly, we were the focus of all the cameras. "Kitten-"

"Don't call me that! Why have you done this to us?"

"I needed a way to return to the top of the pyramid. I didn't want it to take years, like it did the first time, just to find out no one will play me. And there's more money in teaching the game than playing it, I believe. So: you guys. I needed a group who was new to the game, who needed to learn fast, who the rest of the world would have dismissed without a second thought. If you win this tournament, I win this tournament.

"You set this up, Ginny?"

"I did."

"To win a Chess tournament?"

"Initially, yes. But when it became obvious you weren't going to win-"

"You don't even think we can win?" I said.

"No. Look at Cassandra's situation. She's lost already. Checkmate in five more moves, no hope at all.

"Now, since I'm focusing on teaching, I figured why not go for notoriety, instead? And it worked. The match isn't even over, and I've already got thousands of offers from all over the world, requesting tutoring."

"And you had to out us in the process? Did we deserve that?"

Just then, it was announced that Cassandra had lost her round. Becky, Jenn, and Martha went to her and gently led her away from the table.

"You're up," Ginny said.

"What if I don't play?" I said. "What if I decide I'm done with your bullshit schemes and just go home?"

"You forfeit!" Ginny said, horrified.

"Fuck you, you lose, then. Sucks to be you! Where's the god damned judge?"

"No!" Ginny said. "You can't!"

"Fuck you!"

As I turned to look for a judge, I saw Ginny make a motion with her hand, to someone behind me. Instantly, many lewd catcalls erupted from the Athletics Dept. area. I won't dignify what they said by repeating it, but suffice it to say it was every stupid, dumb, sexist, idiotic slander against female competitors in general, and our club in particular.

I became more furious than I had ever been in my entire life. The dipshits could say whatever in the Hell they wanted to about me, but I wasn't about to stand there and let them disparage my girls! We had been manipulated and betrayed by Ginny. We had been publicly humiliated by being outed as lesbians to the entire world, and for Cassandra, the price of that might be extremely high. And it wasn't even true! We weren't even lesbians, even if we acted like it a lot and did a lot of the same things. But just try explaining all that in a sound-bite world, looking for the next scandalous headline.

They were expecting us to quit. The whole world, it seemed, was expecting us to forfeit. "The girls had gone as far as they could before they folded," I bet was how it would read. And these dipshit troglodytes were delighting in our humiliation, trying to add to it with the dumbest slurs against women ever concocted in the English language.

I was so mad, I was utterly calm. I looked at Ginny and said, "You set that up, too, didn't you? Rather than have me quit? You set it up to signal those assholes, to make me mad, and make me play. Didn't you?"

Ginny sighed and said, "Kitten, are you sure you want to discuss this now? In public?"

"I DON'T CARE!" I shouted. "And you don't get to call me "Kitten," anymore! And if we're in public, IT'S BECAUSE YOU SET IT UP!"

I could see I was scaring her. I walked up to her before she could back away, grabbed her arms, pulled her to me, and said, loud and clear, "Give us one last kiss for luck, lover." I pressed my lips to hers hard enough to bruise each other's lips, hard enough she had to open her mouth so her lips weren't crushed against her own teeth, and then I had my tongue in her mouth. I held her in that kiss until I was good and damned finished with it, with her, forever. I released her arms and shoved her away from me. She lost her balance and landed flat on her ass, all of it caught by the cameras.

I heard the one-minute-to-forfeit buzzer, approached the table and took my seat. I looked at my opponent. Their best player. A football player everyone called "Tiny Tim." A big, stocky guy, dumb looking, but an outstanding rusher and a Hell of a Chess player. My consuming fury must have been written all over my face, because he almost jumped back in his seat when he met my gaze. But he had to keep some bravado, so he made some idiotic remark I didn't even listen to because I knew it was stupid.

Instead, I asked him, "Do they call you "Tiny Tim" because a football is the biggest thing you've ever held in hand?"

Later on the recorded video, I saw that my comment got a big laugh. At the time, I didn't even notice. There was only me, the Chessboard, and him. So, Ginny didn't think we could win? I decided right there:

I was going to win.

Win? Fuck that! I was going to fucking destroy this miserable worm!

The game started. It seemed to go on forever. It seemed to be over instantly. At one point he offered a draw, and I declined. I managed to promote three pawns to Queens, and at one point, I had all three Queens on the board at once. He offered to concede. Bad manners, in terms of Chess etiquette, not to accept an offer of concession. I declined. I wasn't letting him off easy. It was a slaughter. I played to intentionally show him he was an inferior player compared to me. To show the entire world. I could have won much sooner. But no, I had a point to prove. So, I tore his game apart, piece by piece, and rubbed his face in it while I did it. Without ever saying a word.

And while I had thought I was as angry as I could get when I sat down to start the match, as we played I quickly became even more angry. Because I had, by now, learned enough about Chess to recognize a certain style of play. And I knew who had taught Tiny Tim to play: Ginny. Too bad for him I had a particular axe to grind with her. He was just an innocent bystander, but, too bad!

I wish I could remember any of it. But I don't. I only ever see it, feel it, in bits and pieces, in my dreams. I can watch it on recordings. Which I have, many times. But it's like I'm looking at someone else who just happens to look a lot like me but isn't really me. Or so it seems.

I don't remember standing and shaking Tiny Tim's hand. Or his sincere "Congratulations, Hell of a game!" when he said it. It happened, it's all on video. So, I've seen it. A lot. But I don't remember it. Don't really care, though, because what I do remember is so much sweeter:

I remember suddenly being rushed by all my girls, pulling me up from my seat at the table. I remember being enveloped in their hugs. I remember their cries of happiness. I remember their kisses. I remember, very vividly, Cassandra holding me tightly to her breast in those long, graceful arms, saying, "You won for us. I don't regret anything. Even being exposed like this. I don't care. I am what I am, and that's good enough for me, and anyone who genuinely loves me won't be bothered by it. You have given me the strength for this." And then I remember bawling like a baby while she held me to her breast.

Suddenly, it was quiet. I looked up and saw Ginny approaching us. My fury instantly returned.

"What do you want, now?" I spat at her. That brought her up short.

"Well?" I demanded. "What? Is there some part of your manipulation you have yet to achieve? Some other way we can be used to further your goals? What? Bitch! You miserable fucking bitch! Do you even know what you meant to me? How I loved you? Did you mean any of the things we talked about when we made love? Do you even care how much it hurts me that you used us all, hurt us all, just to win a Chess game?"

A look of sadness crossed Ginny's face. I could tell I had hit her hard, emotionally, with that one. Even in the mood I was in, wanting to hurt her, to strike her back as I felt I had been betrayed? That momentary, fleeting, unmistakable look of genuine sadness in her eyes? She couldn't have been faking that. Could she? I didn't know. But it pulled the rug right out from under my anger, and I instantly regretted saying it.