Doug Meet reads Checkmate, Je t'aime! avec Utahna Faith TO DISTURB SO MANY CHARMS NYPL Staff-only Rare Book Conservancy September 31, 2019

Doug Meet

reads

Checkmate,

Je t'aime!

avec

Utahna Faith

TO DISTURB SO MANY CHARMS

   

New York Public Library

  staff-only rare book conservancy

            September 31, 2019. 8:49 pm

*Checkmate, Je t'aime!

    *This story has no prefiguration, no reference, no epiphany; and because it reveals no ending, it has  no
    dénouement.

    As such, this story is for the telling.

                                ...

        An elegant woman, she invented good ones, relaxes;  quiet park before her; AND before her too,
       her   rendez-vous.

        She smooths her tightly splayed, blue wool skirt to her knees,
then pushes imaginary strands of
        corn- coffee-colored stalky hair  from her eyes; 

and though there is not hair there, she busily pushes aside
the not-there hair 

(to be caught in a false move ... she will never do that).

        He, her rendez-vous,  surprises her  from  behind,  silent Gucci loafers, his Native footwear.

She revolves and extends her graceful shapely arm, its smooth hand strikes in one dynamic burst, a Nazi, lighting a cigarette; she  unlooses the  board from his armpit.

        They embrace, 

then miss-kiss, thrice,
        alternating cheeks; 

peripheral,  

proximate,

recall the Seven Lost Graces

with their cheek-meat faces.

        He, her 5-move-ahead  rendez-vous,
        maneuvers her
       windowless
        doppelverabredungs, where exist two secrets  too beautiful to touch.

        Twenty-five minutes on,  he SEES
    she's got him
        mated;
        5 moves.

       She will extend it to 10.
       
Just then, she visualizes him
        mated;
   3 moves,  a
        bus lane opens in her mind at rush hour.

Then
 
     5 moves are gone in 45 seconds.

5 seconds after,

she topples
        his King, 

a
        15th-century potentate, 

she
 murders in the park,

a silent coupe de grace,
 a draw-for-a-win.

          She thinks this ritual,  potent, kind, and merciful; thinks it
        theirs alone.

"Kill my King, not don't kill me," it's remarkably unexpressed.

Tomorrow she will meet him again, because,

        "There is    no victory       like        no victory."

Korchnoi vs. Karpov, 1978

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Position after 124.Bg7, stalemate^[1]

Fischer vs. Petrosian, 1971

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Position after 30.Qe2, after 32.Qe2, and after 34.Qe2, draw by threefold repetition^[2]

Timman vs. Lutz, 1995

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Position after 121...Rb5+, draw by fifty-move rule^[3]

Vidmar vs. Maróczy, 1932

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Draw. No sequence of legal moves can lead to checkmate.^[4]

(Mednis 1990:43)

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Draw. No sequence of legal moves can lead to checkmate.

Petrosian vs. Fischer, 1958

	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h
8									8
7									7
6									6
5									5
4									4
3									3
2									2
1									1
	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h

Position after 67.f7, draw agreed^[5]