You Turn Me On I'm a Radio

Beth never believed she could find anything that satisfies her as much as chess, but then she ended up underneath Benny Watts – and on top – and it was as if a flip went off in her head. Before him, she didn't understand what all the fuss was about sex. At first, it felt like a rite of passage. After that, a sort of relationship currency. Sex was just something she did, not anything she particularly enjoyed. But then those speed chess games happened, and what happened after, and she got it.

And then Benny tells her it's never going to happen again.

"It was the beer and chess," he says the next morning.

"There's always beer and chess," she argues lightly. "I don't see what difference that made."

"It made a difference," he says. His voice is strangled. Nowhere near convincing, but he sticks to his story and she thinks, fine, try to pretend it won't happen again. It now becomes her mission to make sure that it does.

She uses all the usual reinforcements. The habitable bomb shelter, as she lovingly referred to his apartment, had worn away some of her finer inclinations, but she brings them back in full force. A touch of lipstick. Perfume dabbed behind her ears and just below the dip of her neckline. When she passes him in the apartment, she can see him tighten his grip on his coffee cup.

"You know that stuff gives you cancer," he says gruffly one afternoon.

"What stuff?"

"The perfume."

She stares at him. "It causes cancer? Where did you read that?"

"Somewhere."

"Somewhere," she repeats, nodding slowly. "What a reputable source."

"I know what you're doing," he says. "And it's not going to work. You can't seduce me."

"Who says I'm trying to seduce you?"

Benny walks past her to the refrigerator and says, "It's not going to happen."

One night they are at a local bar and Cleo stands next to Beth, both of them with their backs pressed against the bar. Benny had just left them, and Cleo says, "You two have slept together, haven't you?"

Beth looks over, surprised. "You can tell?"

Cleo grins. "A woman can always tell. How was it?"

Beth's cheeks flush and Cleo's grin widens. "Good boy. I am glad to see I taught him well."

Beth's eyes widen. "You and Benny..."

"Ancient history," Cleo says with a flick of her hand. "But, yes."

"Not that it matters," Beth says. "According to Benny, it is never happening again."

Cleo laughs and says, "Famous last words."

The training for Paris picks up and Beth forgets about her efforts to rediscover the post-speed-chess-coitus. They play chess at all hours of the day and night, Beth often collapsing onto the air mattress fully clothed, not even having enough energy to pull the cover up over her. Benny is a patient teacher, but even he can start to see that her nerves are fraying. He proposes that they take an afternoon off and they walk down to Central Park, the sunlight warming their otherwise pale faces on the cold afternoon. On their way back, it starts to snow and about a block from his apartment, the snow turns to sleet. They run the rest of the way and when they get inside, they are both wet and frozen.