I was out on the balcony, teaching a ghost to play chess.
It began with a spiel,
just a general idea of the game,
and he interrupted me.
“I get it,” the ghost said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. No problem.”
He chose white and went first.
In five moves I had him in checkmate.
“Where’d you learn chess?” I asked.
“Where? From you.”
“No, no. You already knew how to move the pieces. I barely told you a thing.”
“I’ve been watching you play.”
“Me? When? I hardly ever play.”
“Your whole life.”
“No, every game?”
“Every game.”
“Get out of here.”
“You learned from a book with pictures. You read it in the bathtub.”
That was true. So, I had a chess ghost.
He looked around.
The downstairs neighbor’s kid was playing in the sandbox in the yard.
“Well, what can I do for you?” I asked him.
“Nothing really. I don’t have anything else to do.”
We decided to keep playing without the king,
and I finished him for real;
every straggling, struggling pawn,
one after another
with my queen and bishop,
until he had one piece left:
a solitary white horseman, a knight
in the corner.
The ghost looked over the board.
“And this,” I said, dragging the queen, “is checkmate.”
“Wait, what about here?” he said.
“No,” I said, pointing. “Check.”
“Here?”
I could see through his arm, which was nice.
“The queen,” I said.
"Fuck." He stood suddenly, as if he’d just remembered
that he’d left something cooking on the stove.
The little girl down in the yard was looking up at us,
her pudgy hands curled into fists at her sides.
“Whowuh awe youw talkin’ towuh?” she asked.
"Let's keep playing," I said.
“I want two moves every turn,” the ghost said.
I said OK
and whooped him five more times.
Then he said, “Let’s play without the pieces.”
He said he had a side full of knights.
I used only castles,
16 of them.
I barreled down like a wall.
Must have beaten him ten more times.
He seemed especially depressed for a ghost.
“What’s my record?" I asked. “I always wanted to know.”
“16 wins, 0 losses.”
"Not today. You know, all time.”
“Oh. Ghosts don’t have a special skill for remembering things," he said.
“Well, that’s probably why you suck at chess," I said.
He put his head down, but didn’t disappear, as I expected him to,
and I didn’t disappear.
The little horses didn’t start hopping around.
Then he said, “Let’s play without the board.”
I said, “Well, what the hell are you waiting for? Your move.”
Then he disappeared.