TUMBLING DICE

Macy leaned hard into the curves. The fuzzy red dice dangling from the rearview mirror swayed wildly side to side until they snapped off and turned up lucky seven on the floor of the new, sparkling silver 1963 Mistral Coupe.

She didn’t see the State Patrol car lurking like a cheetah in the pullout until it was too late. She’d been focused on the rearview, paranoid of pursuers after leaving Las Vegas hot following a string of bad luck. With no license, no registration, and no insurance, she floored it.

The road ahead forked—right, Steamboat Springs; left, unknown. The Mistral skittered left on two wheels.

The State Patrol car, far behind, careened right toward the sunset.

A mile on, Macy squirrelled the Mistral behind a rusty Quonset hut, its twisted double doors open and bent like a scorpion’s pincers. Inside, 17 men sporting navy blue suitcoats over baby’s-breath white shirts and thin, tuxedo-black ties paraded around a thick square table. There, young Bobby Fischer faced off against the stunningly handsome ghost of the Bohemian Wilhelm Steinitz, chess’s first, unofficial grandmaster.

It happened that Macy was a bit of a chess grand mistress herself, having conquered every rival at Elko High School, Las Vegas University, and the Nevada Ladies Auxiliary Amateur Chess League before running into chess’s Berlin Wall of chauvinism. There was also the scandalous accusation that she bet on a game in a tournament, then threw it by leaving her usually impenetrable defense open as a shucked oyster.

Macy surveyed the room. Her high heels echoed off the concrete, and a diamond the size of a peach stone refracted the light from the overhead bulbs into rainbows that bounced off the chess board’s white squares.

“Whose move?” she asked in a voice that made the word sultry feel lonely and inadequate.

No one spoke. The young Bobby Fischer kept his eyes on the board, looking annoyed. Steinitz floated briefly off his seat, looking intrigued.

“What’s the matter, boys? Bishop got your tongue?”

“Excuse us for being rude, princess. It is my move,” Steinitz said in a rich Czech baritone that jiggled the pieces on the board and quivered Macy’s soul. They locked eyes.

With Steinitz mired in Macy’s gaze, the timer tinged and Fischer’s corner declared victory by forfeit.

Macy took Steinitz by his airy, chess-chubby hand. She led him to the Mistral, opened the passenger door, and purred: “Like you said, it’s your move.”

Steinitz’s body flickered like a fluorescent bulb.

“Today was for fun and frolic, as I think you say,” Steinitz said. “It will be another 8 years before Bobby Fischer reaches peak chess. And that is when I would like to play him again.”

“In the meantime, let me give you the house tour,” Macy said, “and you can help me improve my French Defence.”

With that, she raced the Mistral deeper into the unknown.