Distraction

He came across the oldest house in town. The shack was so old that it had never been moved; it had been sitting in the same place for decades as the seas rose. The shack had once been a long and lonely distance from the beach, though now it was quite near the water. The building looked queerly haphazard, as if it had been banged together over a set of weekends by somebody’s brother-in-law.

Storms, sand, and pitiless Southern sun had stripped off a weary succession of cheap layered paints, but the shack was still inhabited. It wasn’t rented, either. Someone was living in it full-time. There was a dented postbox and a sandblasted mesh sat-dish on the metal roof, trailing a severed cable. There were three wooden steps up to the rust-hinged door, steps thick and grained and splintery, half buried in damp sand, with a lintel of sandblasted wood that might have been sixty years old and looked six hundred.

In the winter light of late afternoon there was a look to that smoky woodgrain that enchanted him. Ancient brown nail holes. White seagull droppings. He had a strong intuition that someone very old was living here. Old, blind, feeble, no one left to love them, family gone away now, story all over.

He placed his bare palm tenderly against the sun-warmed wood. Awareness flowed up his arm, and he tasted a sudden premonition of his own death. It would be exactly like this moment: alone and sere. Broken steps too tall for him to ever climb again. Mortality’s swift scythe would slash clean through him and leave nothing but empty clothes.

Shaken, he walked quickly back to the rented beach house. Greta was waiting there. She was wearing a hooded gray jacket and carrying a carpetbag.

Oscar hurried up. “Hi! Sorry! Did you catch me out?”

“I just got here. There were roadblocks. I couldn’t call ahead.”

“That’s all right! Come on upstairs, it’s warm.”

He ushered her up the stairs and into the beach house. Once inside, she looked about herself skeptically. “It’s hot in here.”

“I’m so glad you’ve come.” He was appallingly glad to see her. So much so that he felt close to tears. He retreated into the hideous kitchenette and quickly poured himself a glass of rusty tap water. He sipped it, and steadied himself. “Can I get you something?”

“I just wanted …” Greta sighed and sat down unerringly in the room’s ugliest piece of furniture, a ghastly thirdhand fabric arm-chair. “Never mind.”

“You missed lunch. Can I take your coat?”

“I didn’t want to come at all. But I want to be honest…”

Oscar sat on the rug near the heater, and pulled off one shoe. “I can see you’re upset.” He pulled off the other shoe and crossed his legs on the rug. “That’s all right, I understand that perfectly. It was a long trip, it’s difficult, our situation’s very difficult. I’m just glad that you’ve come, that’s all. I’m happy to see you. Very happy. I’m touched.”

She said nothing, but looked warily attentive.

“Greta, you know that I’m fond of you. Don’t you? I mean that. We have a rapport, you and I. I don’t quite know why, but I want to know. I want you to be glad that you came here. We’re alone at last, that’s a rare privilege for us, isn’t it? Let’s talk it out, let’s put it all on the table now, let’s be good friends.”

She was wearing perfume. She had brought an overnight bag. She was clearly having an attack of cold feet, but the underlying in-dicators looked solid.

“I want to understand you, Greta. I can understand, you know. I think I do understand you a little. You’re a very bright woman, much brighter than most people, but you have insight, you’re sensitive. You’ve done great things with your life, great accomplishments, but there’s no one on your side. I know that’s the truth. And it’s sad. I could be on your side, if you’d let me.” He lowered his voice. “I can’t make any conventional promises, because we’re just not conventional people. But the two of us could be great friends. We could even be lovers. Why can’t we? The odds are against us, but that doesn’t make it hopeless.”

It was very quiet. He should have thought to put on some music. “I think that you need someone. You need someone who can understand your interests, someone to be your champion. People don’t appreciate you for what you are. People are using you for their own small-minded little ends. You’re very brave and dedicated, but you have to break out of your shell, you can’t go on retreating and being polite, you can’t go on accommodating those goons, they’ll drive you crazy, they’re not fit to touch the hem of your shoe. Your gown. The, what the hell, your lab coat.” He paused and drew a shaky breath. “Look, just tell me what you need.”

“I was wrong about you,” she said. “I thought you were going to grab me.”

“No, of course I’m not going to grab you.” He smiled.

“Stop smiling. You think I’m very i

She stood up. “I’ll tell you what I need, since you want to know so badly. I need a guy who’s kind of cold-blooded and disposable, who won’t kick up a big fuss. He has to want me in this completely shallow, obvious way. But you’re not the kind of guy I want, are you. Not really.”

There was a ringing silence.

“I should have found some way to tell you all that, before you came down here, and took all this trouble. I almost didn’t come at all, but…” She sat back down wearily. “Well, it was more honest to be here face-to-face, and have it all out, all at once.”

Oscar cleared his throat. “Do you know the game of go? Go-bang? Wei-chi, in Chinese.”

“I’ve heard of it.”

Oscar got up and fetched his travel set. “Senator Bambakias taught me how to play go. It’s a core metaphor for his krewe, it’s how we think. So if you want to mix with modern politicians and accom-plish something, then you need to learn this game right away.”

“You’re really a strange man.”

He opened and set out the square-lined board, with its two cups of black and white stones. “Sit down on the rug here with me, Greta. We’re going to have this out right now, Eastern style.”

She sat down cross-legged near the oil heater. “I don’t gamble.”

“Go isn’t a gambling game. Let me take your jacket now. Good. This isn’t chess, either. This isn’t a Western-style, mechanized, head-to-head battle. Those just don’t happen anymore. Go is all about net-works and territories. You play the net — you place your stones where the lines cross. You can capture the stones if you totally surround them, but killing them is just a collateral effect. You don’t want to kill the stones, that’s not the point. You want the blankness. You want the empty spaces in the net.”

“I want the potential.”

“Exactly. ”

“When the game ends, the player with the most potential wins.”

“You have played go before.”

“No, I haven’t. But that much is obvious.”

“You’ll play black,” he said. He set a group of black stones on the board, crisply clicking them down. “Now I’ll demo the game a bit, before we start. You place your stones down like this, one at a time. The groups of stones gain strength from their links, from the network that they form. And the groups have to have eyes, blank eyes inside the network. That’s a crucial point.” He placed a blocking chain of white stones around the black group. “A single eye isn’t enough, because I could blind that eye with one move, and capture your whole group. I could surround the whole group, drop into the middle, blind your eye, and just remove the whole group, like this. But with two eyes — like this? — the group becomes a permanent fea-ture on the board. It lives forever.”

“Even if you totally surround me.”