Checkmate by Patrick Sean Lee (little bear else holmelund minarik .txt) 📖

don’t believe it, though.
“I didn’t want to hike all the way back out around the other end of the lake…decided to try and negotiate the hill. Get down to the shoreline. I was about to say hi when I slipped.”
I see the question mark in his blue eyes—nice looking eyes that maybe don’t want to lie, but that are perfectly capable of it I’m betting. He waits to see if I buy it, which I don’t, but I understand. I can say what I don’t mean when circumstances demand, too.
Frank is fiddling with his silverware, casually listening to us. Michael has his elbow on the tablecloth, chin in his palm. He is obvious in his eavesdropping. I hear someone—Mrs. Davenport I think from the heaviness of the footfalls. Now I smell…cooked meat. Disgusting. I’m okay, though, I’ll survive. I wonder if this guy eats animals? Really, I don’t care. I answer his explanation politely.
“I see, Mr. Ash.” I decide he’s had enough discouragement today and don’t call him Klutz. “First time in the mountains?”
“Actually, no.”
That’s it; not “…No, I’m a forest ranger in the Great Smokies, in fact…” or “…no, I love the mountains and hike all the time…”. That’s fine with me.
Mrs. Davenport it is. She arrives carrying a covered, black serving dish containing something I don’t wish to see—or smell. She sets it in front of Michael, who seems more than anxious to remove the lid and jump right in.
“Pot roast!” Mrs. Davenport exclaims. Michael claps with glee. Frank merely smiles and closes his eyes. She says to me, “I’ve made you a nice spinach and kidney bean salad, Isabella…enough for everyone, really. Would ya’ like Ranch, Italian…Roquefort?”
“I think Italian, or just vinaigrette, thank you,” I answer.
Mr. Ash must be trying very hard to redeem himself. He adds, “I’ll take the same, please.”
I wait for him to dish up a plateful of the pot roast, but he doesn’t bother even looking at the stuff. He waits for the salad, commenting on the beauty of the area to Frank, who agrees totally, and Mr. Ash fills him in how he fell “on the trail”.
When the salad bowl is brought in and Mrs. Davenport has left again, we all begin to eat. I’m very hungry from the two-mile trek, so I take more than I usually would. Reds, greens, yellows, and a few purples to round it all out. Italian dressing isn’t too poisonous or fattening, so I splurge and pour some on. Mr. Ash fills his plate high and saturates the hill with Italian, too. He’s mimicking me, though not once do I catch his eyes glancing across the table to see how a real vegetarian eats. How hard can it be to fake it, though? He most likely has excellent peripheral vision even though, I’m guessing now that I see him all dried out, he’s pushing fifty.
“What do you do, Mr. Ash?” I finally ask. It surprises me that we’ve been eating for five minutes and no one has bothered to ask him. I see him as a CPA, or CFO for some large firm back on the coast. His answer surprises me, and I wonder again about the truth of it, until the name clicks in my head. Ash. The author. Yes, of course, “Saving Isabelle”. Matthew Ash, winner of the 1996 something or other—Pen and Faulkner award—yes, I remember. I was twenty-four and so was his Isabelle in that book—a feckless sex fiend, the way I read it! The near-exactness of our names always made me cringe, and her hair was black! Now I’m certain I don’t like him, famous or not.
He looks kindly over at me. I stare him down while I chew on a piece of cabbage.
“I don’t think you told me your name,” he says, disregarding the black widow look in my eyes.
“Mine ends with an ‘a’, not an ‘e’.”
He doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Why I’m curt and have decided I will not like him no matter if he has sold a trillion books. His Isabelle—a prostitute, for gosh sakes! And he’s probably a pervert! Staring at me from across the lake.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I knew you wouldn’t make the connection. Isabell-ah

. Not Isa-belle, like in ding-dong! Isabella…like in Queen! And I never could understand why anyone would give you an award for that…that…thing

you claim is literature.”
“I agree,” he answers. “Honestly, I could never understand it myself.”
I’m shocked. This guy is pretty good, in an ancient sort of way. He’s trying to sneak in the back door after that disaster a couple of hours ago. He’s telling me he’s an Aries, and he wants to know my sign. I’m on to him. I stumble, though.
“Really?”
“Yes. I was blown away, of course. That’s a pretty prestigious award—it’s the Pen/Faulkner, by the way—and you’re right. I don’t think Saving Isabelle was nearly as good as everyone screamed it was. But what do we know, huh?” Mr. Ash looks straight into my eyes, and the funniest feeling overwhelms me. He’s handsome, okay, and his voice is pleasantly even, low, velvety, but…I shake my head a little and wonder if perhaps I should begin a new diet. One containing animal. I’m a little dizzy. The message begins to echo all over again.

“Believe this. Believe this, my heart…”

The words in my head are mine, and yet they are not. And then it hits me. The haunting voice I keep hearing could be this guy’s. It’s soft, anyway, like his. Jesus. I’m going crazy.
I might be crazy. Okay, I am. I’m all upset over Brad. Yes, that’s it. A little post-love wacky. Hey, I think, why am I bringing love into this? This disco-daddy sitting across from me has probably sweet-talked a hundred young women into his bed. That’s what he’s up to. The voice in my head be damned. I resolve to beat him at his own game somehow.

Believe this, believe this…

No way can he be connected to these haunting words I keep hearing.


Post-Dinner

Calyx. I smell her perfume, the same fragrance I bought for Allison two months ago for her twenty-sixth birthday. The salesgirl at Nordstrom swore by it. I placed a little golden chain with a diamond dangling from it inside the carrying case, and then wrapped it all up in green paper and a velvet bow. Her favorite colors, green and gold. Allison reacted the way I knew she would, which was a sexual romp that lasted into the wee hours of the next morning. It was a good choice of perfumes. I saw her admiring the diamond necklace often enough in the following days and weeks, but I’ll be damned if I ever smelled the perfume again—until a few moments ago on Isabella, the queen, not the ding-dong.
Not that I thought she’d follow me into the sitting room, out of earshot and sight of Frank and his lovely wife, but within minutes of my sitting down in front of the fireplace, in she comes. Isabella is freshly scented and stunning in her simple white shift and burgundy patent loafers.
When she walks past me, she says nothing beyond a cursory, “Hi.” She is elegant in white, with wisps of her black hair touching her cheekbones. I secretly wish she’d strike up a conciliatory, friendly conversation. Something a bit less abusive than the sparring match we endured during dinner a bit ago. I pretend not to see her, pay any attention to how she picks up the magazine and crosses one shapely leg over the other, but I find myself flashing my eyes over the top of my own magazine, an old edition of National Geographic. I know she doesn’t see me looking, I’m sure of it, as I study her with fractured glances. A second here, two or three seconds there. She is intriguing.
Her jaw line is almost square, and her mouth is small, thin, with some hue of red placed on it perfectly, practiced. Her nose is delicate, like her lips, and I begin to compare Allison to her with her close-cropped blonde pixie cut. And then I stop. That’s exactly what I did with Allison and my ex-wife five years ago. Allie won.
I glance across the room at Isabella one more time—swear to myself the last—unable to resist her in the snowfall of white. She looks up at the same instant and catches my eyes.
“What?” she asks.
Is it menacingly, or merely a question laced with disdain? Whatever it is it isn’t particularly friendly, that I’m sure of. I endeavor to rescue myself, caught, as I have been with my hand in the cookie jar—for the second time today. I decide to be blunt. What do I have to lose? Look how I am suffering here with my battered leg propped up on an ottoman, throbbing, all on account of trying to catch a glimpse of her unnoticed. If I could, I’d rise and stride toward her. Confront her like a lawyer in a courtroom, motion at her with my magazine waving like a purloined document discovered in her boudoir.
I am writing in my head again; living in a land of imagination, creating campy scenes. I can’t comfortably rise, and so I simply lower the magazine and address her.
“I don’t know what you think of me, but honestly I was just trying to get down to the lake’s edge. You