Unknown - The Genius

THE DISTRIBUTION OF PRIZES—by which I mean the lump sum of $50, awarded to Joe by Joe—took place with little fanfare. One of the players, long knocked out of contention, left after losing his sixth game in a row, a streak that made me feel a tad less alone in my wretchedness, although as he stormed out I felt a twinge of concern at not being able to question him.

It turned out not to matter, though: everyone else knew Victor. They told me he had been a regular at the club up until a year ago. If I really wanted to know about him, they said, I should ask Joe, who was around more than anyone else. I found this puzzling, to say the least, as he had already disavowed knowledge. When I turned around to ask him what was going on, I discovered that he had disappeared.

The man with the Afro counseled me to wait around. “He’ll be back.”

“How do you know?”

“He has to lock up.”

I waited. One by one the rest of the players drifted out. From the window I watched them humping up the sidewalk through the snow or scrambling after the Q36. Two stuck around, playing additional games until eleven thirty, at which point I was left alone among the tables and chairs, listening to the fluorescent lights buzz and staring at a torn, crumby package of Lorna Doone shortbreads.

It was after midnight before Joe returned. He had to come back. I knew this not only because the man with the Afro had told me but because no true genius would ever leave the object of his obsession in disarray. I heard the key rattle in the gate below, heard him huffing and puffing to the top of the stairs. He walked into the room as though I wasn’t there and began stacking chairs. I got up to help him. We worked in silence. He handed me a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle and we wiped down the tabletops.

“I saw you in the paper,” he said finally. “You’re the one put up the show.” He tied off a trash bag with an elaborate knot. “Am I right?”

“That’s partly why I want to talk to Victor. I have money that belongs to him.”

“Partly why else.”

“What?”

“What’s the other reason you want to talk to him.”

“I want to make sure he’s okay.”

“That’s very nice of you,” he said.

I said nothing.

“How much money?” he asked.

“A fair amount.”

“How much is a fair amount?”

“Enough.”

“Any reason you’re not answering me?”

“At least I’m not lying to you.”

He smiled. He transferred the garbage bag from his right to his left hand; his body likewise slumped. He had terrible posture, and a tendency to lapse into a grimace when not speaking, the look of someone whose basal state is discomfort.

Outside, snow had again begun to fall. Joe tossed the bag into the alley and walked toward the bus stop. His limp seemed worse, his gait almost spastic. He also looked larger than before, as if he’d grown a layer of blubber. A breeze opened his coat, revealing a second coat, and protruding from its collar, the collar of a third.

“Do you want a ride?” I asked.

He looked at me.

“I’m going to call myself a car,” I said. “I can have it drop you wherever you need to go.”

In the distance the bus turned the corner. He looked back at it, then at me, and he said, “What I really am is hungry. You hungry?”

WE WENT TO AN ALL-NIGHT DINER. All I wanted was a cup of decaf, but when I said I was paying, he ordered fried eggs, bacon, hash browns, and a milkshake. Listening to him gave me heartburn. The waitress started to walk away, and he called her back to add onion rings and a green salad.

“Gotta get all the food groups,” he said.

He ate slowly, giving everything about fifty chews, until I couldn’t imagine he was tasting much more than mush and his own saliva. Long gulps of milkshake followed, his face stuck so far forward into the glass that his nose reemerged tipped with froth. He would then wipe his face on a napkin, crumple it, and drop it on the floor. All the while his eyes kept up a nervous hopscotch, to the door, to the counter, to me, the table, the waitress, the jukebox; his fingertips red and feathery with hangnails.

He asked when I had last played checkers.

“Probably twenty-five years ago.”

“I could tell.”

“I never claimed to be any good.”

“Victor’s a good checkers player. He’d be better if he slowed down a bit.”

This tidbit intrigued me, as for some reason I’d always pictured Victor as contemplative, at least when not drawing. I mentioned to Joe that the art had a strong gridlike feel to it, especially when assembled as a whole. He shrugged, either in disagreement or out of apathy, and went back to eating.

“You live around here?” I asked.

“Sure. Sometimes.”

I didn’t understand, and then I did, and when he saw that I’d caught on, he started to laugh.

“I could have you over sometime. We’ll have a sleepover. You like the great outdoors? Har har har.”

I smiled politely, which made him laugh even harder.

“You know what you look like,” he said, “you look like I just took a dump on your living-room rug and you’re trying to ignore it. Hell, I’m just messing. I don’t really live outside… . Feel better now?”

“No.”

“Why not? Don’t believe me?”

“I—”

“Yes I do, then. I sleep in the park. Har har har. No I don’t. Yes I do. No I don’t. What do you think?”

“I don’t know.”

He smiled, kicked back the last of his milkshake, and waved the empty glass at the waitress. “Chocolate, please.”

There were still a couple of onion rings left, as well as the entire untouched salad. With his new drink he resumed the process—chew chew chew chew swallow gulp gulp wipe—and I got the impression that he was obeying some weird ritual, that he needed to finish his food and drink at the same time. I had a vision of us sitting there until sunrise, ordering and reordering until a happy coincidence gave him permission to stop.

Either that or he was just really, really hungry.

He said, “You see that?”

His chocolate-tipped nose pointed across the street to an unlit church.

“They got a shelter,” he said. “Doors close at nine, though, so on game nights we finish too late.”

I didn’t need to ask why he chose checkers over a bed. It would have been insulting for me to ask. Instead I said, “Where did you learn to play?”

He wiped his face with a revoltingly soiled napkin. I handed him another and he wiped, crumpled, dropped. “The nuthouse.”

Again, I smiled politely, or tried to.

“Har har har, dump on the rug, har har har.” He forked his salad and held the dripping leaves up to the light before popping them in his mouth. “I love me some greens,” he said, chewing.

“When were you there?”

“Seventy-two to seventy-six. You can learn to do anything in there. Lots of time, you know? It’s like the best college in the world. I got my four-year degree, har har har. If you weren’t nuts before they put you in there, you’d go nuts from boredom.” He laughed and drank and coughed out some milkshake and wiped his chin.

“Sal told me you used to be world champion.”

“Coulda beena contendah. Har har har. Yeah, I won some fucking money. Not much money in checkers. They got a computer now that can’t be beat. The human being is obsolete.” He sat back, patted his stomach. It was hard to tell where all the food had gone. All that remained on the table was three fingers of milkshake, which he eyed spitefully. “You want to know something about Victor, buy me dessert.”

I flagged the waitress. Joe asked for coconut cream pie.

“We don’t have it.”

He looked at me. “I want some coconut cream pie.”