Game On
831 Words
CASSIAN
The white king was in trouble.
I had been staring at the board for twenty minutes, not because I couldn't see the solution but because the solution required sacrificing the queen and I was deciding whether it was worth it. It usually was. In chess and in most other things, the pieces that felt indispensable were rarely the ones that actually mattered.
My phone buzzed on the table beside me.
A message. No name, just the number I had given her.
Three problems with your timeline. Coming back at nine.
I looked at the message for a moment. Then I set my phone down and looked back at the board.
She had found problems I had left on purpose to see if she would catch them.
She had caught all three.
She arrived at nine exactly. Not a minute early, not a minute late, which told me the early arrival this afternoon had been deliberate too. She had wanted to catch me off guard the first time. Now she was done with that.
I opened the door before she knocked.
She walked in without a word, same jacket, document printed and annotated in red pen, coffee in one hand that was clearly only for herself. She went straight to the chair she had claimed earlier and spread the papers across the table like she owned the surface.
I sat across from her and said nothing.
She uncapped her pen. "You have us leaving the bar at eleven fourteen."
"I do."
"The bar tab closes at eleven twenty two. Eight minute gap. Webb will find it."
"Eleven twenty five," I said.
She looked up briefly. "I was going to say the same thing." She crossed out the time and wrote the correction. "Second problem. Gin and tonic."
"You were drinking something clear."
"Sparkling water with lime. I had already decided to drive home before Sophie left. I booked the room after." She said it without looking up. "If the bartender remembers, it doesn't hold."
I changed it.
"Third problem." She set her pen down and leaned back. "You have us going directly from the bar to the room. No stops."
"That's efficient."
"That's suspicious." She looked at me steadily. "We had just met. There would have been a moment of hesitation in the lobby. Something that made it look like a decision. People remember hesitation. It makes things feel real."
I studied her. "How long."
"Two minutes. Maybe three. You said something. I laughed. We got in the elevator."
"You laughed."
"It's more believable than the alternative." She picked up her pen again. "That I stood in the lobby with you and felt nothing. It's a performance. It needs to be convincing."
I watched her go back to the papers. The way she held the pen. The small line between her brows when she was concentrating. The fact that she had come back at nine on a Sunday night with printed annotations because that was simply how she functioned.
"What did I say," I said.
She looked up.
"In the lobby. You said I said something that made you laugh. What was it."
Something moved behind her eyes. Not quite amusement. Not quite discomfort. Somewhere between the two.
"I haven't decided yet," she said.
"You haven't decided."
"It needs to feel natural. I'll know it when I think of it." She looked back down. "I'll have something by the time Webb calls us in."
She went back to the timeline. I watched her work for the next forty minutes and said very little. She asked questions I hadn't anticipated. What side of the bed. What time the lights went off. Whether the television was on. Whether I ordered room service.
I answered everything.
At some point I stopped thinking of it as a lie and started thinking of it as a version of something that could have existed. A different Saturday night. One where neither of us had anywhere else to be.
I didn't examine that too closely.
By ten thirty the timeline was done. She stacked the papers neatly, tapped them twice against the table and put them away. She stood, put on her jacket, picked up her empty coffee cup out of habit.
"We should each go through this alone before Webb calls," she said. "Make sure it sits the same way in both our heads."
"Agreed."
She was almost at the door.
"You found all three," I said.
She stopped.
"The problems in the timeline. You found all three." I paused. "I left them there to see if you would."
She turned slowly. Those careful eyes finding mine across the room.
"I know," she said.
Then she left.
I stayed at the window for a long time after. City lights spreading out below, indifferent and endless. The chess board sat untouched on the side table, white king still cornered, queen still on the board.
I hadn't made the sacrifice yet.
I was starting to think I might not.
- Writer
