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Benny is five-years-old when he first discovers chess. For Christmas that year, he receives a checkers and chess combo set. His older sister Leanne gets a new coat, so he guesses he lucked out, out of the two of them.
“I use to play checkers with my buddies growing up,” his dad says, clapping him roughly on the back, “I’ll teach you.”
But it’s not checkers that interested Benny; it’s the chess pieces, the way they feel in his hand and how they move about the board. By the next Christmas, his dad is gone— left his wife and children high and dry for a typist in his office— but Benny’s obsession with chess only grows and grows, a snowball that becomes an avalanche as it builds speed and he devours every book he can find in the public library.
And on his more charitable days, he can’t begrudge his mom for the way things turned out— two young kids to suddenly raise alone on a switchboard operator’s salary, and a child too intelligent for their own good, she was trying to do the best she could. It was cheaper than finding a babysitter, signing Benny up for any and every chess club she could find, and it certainly kept him out of trouble. And when terms like child prodigy started swirling around, it not only changed his life but everyone around him as well. Benny stopped being a child. Instead, he became a meal ticket, the primary breadwinner for his family as just a pre-teen. He also became a show-pony, paraded around by wealthy masters interested in ‘mentoring’ him and the USCF and FIDE.
It isn’t until Benny’s sixteen that he feels he has any real control over his life. A high school drop out maybe, but quickly on his way to becoming a World Champion and Grandmaster. Foot on the gas, and he doesn’t look back— that is until Beth. Because it isn’t until rumblings of a fifteen-year-old girl from Kentucky start circulating around the U.S. circuit, does he realize how tenuous his hold on it all is. You’re only the best until you’re not, and Benny’s been the best for so long, he doesn’t know what comes next.
Suddenly he can’t see forward. It’s like he’s stalled as he watches Beth Harmon climb higher and higher. It allows him clarity, perspective in a way he’s never had before.
He can understand why his mother skimmed off the top for years until he was old enough to take financial control of his life; the strained relationship he has with his sister— the resentfulness and hurt that comes from having your younger sibling eclipse you so totally; the way the chess world blew so much smoke up his ass it felt like his feet didn’t touch the ground for years.
He can understand it all, hell he’s even made peace with it, well mostly. But it still rubs to watch it happen to someone new, especially when little Beth Harmon’s sad story is revealed on the glossy pages of Life Magazine— the austere Christian orphanage, the new adoptive mother who’s clearly enjoyed the jackpot she’s stumbled upon. He wonders fleetingly if that’s why Beth was adopted as a teenager.
Pilotfish clinging to the side of a great white shark.
The thought brings a sour taste to his mouth.
+
“I don’t want to set it up and think it out.”
A crack in her calm veneer, and it makes him smile because it’s like looking in a mirror— of course, she’s pissed, he would be too, especially when he was her age and someone had pointed out an error in his game.
You could do with a proper reality check. It would do your ego good, Leanne had said to him once, and he’d rolled his eyes. But it’s almost refreshing to have someone not blink slack eyed in admiration at him. It’s been a while since Benny’s had to really work for anything in the chess world, and Beth Harmon is clearly not a starry-eyed fangirl.
And fuck, when he finally gets her across the board, is she good.
It’s never been so fun to be someone’s rival.
He’ll reflect on it later, that he may have been a tad eager in Ohio, that maybe he’d laid it all on a bit thick, her cool indifference only fanning the flame higher as he practically chased her about. He needles her like a schoolboy, and despite the airs and graces she may give off, she still falls for it, still saunters into the Student Union in her slingback heels, her little coffee cup in hand like he can’t see right through her.
Because like him, she can’t resist it. They only want to play the best.
+
Benny would never admit it, but he almost expects Beth to turn down his offer to train her for her rematch with Borgov. She’s never responded positively to his unsolicited advice in the past, too proud to see it for what it is, shop-talk with someone in the game he actually respected— and he does respect Beth, maybe more than any player he’s faced. He read every printed copy of her games forwards and backwards; he even bought her fucking magazine covers. And, yeah, she just handed him his ass earlier in the day, so he could see why she might think herself above his tutelage.
It stings to no longer have a title he’s held for so long, but he can’t resent Beth for beating him. She’s too fascinating, too beautiful a player to not be a little in awe. He loves the game too much, not to marvel.
“Who’d you have in mind?” She asks in feigned ignorance, and sometimes it’s just too easy to goad her.
He’s had this thought for a few days now, that he would take Beth under his wing, so to speak, especially when he heard she did a brief stint of training with an amateur like Harry Beltik— utterly bush-league compared to Beth’s raw talent and what someone of his calibre could do for her game in comparison. Benny never had anyone like that when he was coming up through the ranks, someone to really help him, steer him in the right direction in managing the vast differences to domestic and international expectations of the game. He had nothing but his books and keen observation to guide him, the other players too resentful about losing to yet another child prodigy, particularly an American one at that. Beth is the best, but she could be magnificent, and he could get her there.
For all her wins, Beth is still, in many ways, a novice to the game. At least from a professional standpoint, which is something Benny has cultivated these last fifteen years or so. It’s not enough to just show up and win tournaments— you need sportsmanship, which Beth lacks.
Beth doesn’t do loss, and frankly, that’s something she’s going to have to get over. It’s not like Benny enjoys it either, but you take it for what it is, and hopefully, you learn something new. Beth is driven, but that creates tunnel vision, and the “little lady” persona she’d developed for herself quickly cracks in gameplay when things don’t go her way to expose her youthfulness in comparison to the likes of Borgov. She’s petulant, quick to anger and aggression on the board, almost like a child having a temper tantrum. Benny had never been so aware of Beth’s youth and inexperience as when he played her in Las Vegas. An hour in, and it was hard to ignore that the opponent fidgeting in the seat across from him was a seventeen-year-old girl.
But still, from what he's gleaned so far from her, Beth didn’t seem like the kind of girl to succumb to spontaneity— at least not off the board. On the board, she’s unpredictable, plays largely instinctively, which is staggering, really, when he thinks about how little time Beth has actually been playing compared to him, let alone the soviet greats.
So when she says yes, it surprises him, even if he never let it show.
Then she throws him for a loop with the soft brush of her fingers in his hair. If it’s a mind game, then it’s a very poorly thought out one, and if it’s not— well, that’s a whole kettle of fish he’d rather not deal with. So he chalks it up to a product of her inexperience and the alcohol and tries not to overthink it. Besides, it’s not lost on him that despite the ease at which she tucks back a few beers, she shouldn’t even legally be served them.
He’d later come to learn he’d read her wrong from the start. Beth Harmon is unpredictable period— chaos personified— it’s just cleverly hidden behind the precise flick of her eyeliner and the clean, feminine tailoring of her swishy skirts.
He should have known he was fucked from the start.
+
No, really. He should have known he was absolutely fucked from the start.
Benny underestimates his attraction. Beth is a beautiful young woman, he has eyes, he can obviously see that. But he knows lots of beautiful women, it’s New York City for christ’s sake. And he’s certainly not some virginal chess nerd creaming themselves at the sight of a girl in a snug sweater, nor is he some troglodyte who can’t control themselves when temptation beckons, like the outline of a woman’s naked body through his flimsy shower curtain in the early morning light.
No, it’s not that.
It’s when Beth stops being an opponent and starts to become a person.
A person who is, in fact, capable of laughter, which as it turns out is rather girlish and sweet, except the once when she laughs so hard she snorts and claps her hand over her mouth in embarrassment and surprise.
He enjoys putting her out of her comfort zone, a southern belle slumming it in his bomb shelter of an apartment, shifting awkwardly in her demure sleepwear and trying not to glance at his bare chest. Then she surprises him by how quickly she adapts, that she’s willing to get down to his level, books and pamphlets spread across the floor, as they deconstruct midgames from an Open in Vancouver in ’52 and the ’61 Glasgow International.
The smell of her before she goes to bed, the scent of toothpaste and Noxzema and her perfume clinging to her skin when she passed him as she exits the bathroom that first night.
“I’m pretty sure that toilet of yours could give me a UTI,” she throws at him, and he shakes his head in amusement.
A person who is fierce, whip-smart, and keenly observant, the way her eyes take things in with that slow blink of hers like she’s absorbing and dismissing him in equal measure. It drives Benny fucking wild when she does that.
And when that slow blink turns into a penetrating stare, it turns out he’s not above his baser desires as she unravels him in front of Wexler and Levertov.
When he puts his mouth on her, he listens as her startled little gasps build in intensity and sound till she’s crying out in earnest as she breaks, staring down at him in shock, like she can’t believe what’s happened, a flush spreading out across her upper body and face.
“Have you not done that before?” He asks, shifting back up her body, and she shakes her head dumbly, chest still heaving even as she pulls him down for a kiss.
Beth may crush Benny in chess, but he’ll conquer her here, he thinks smugly.
This is why he’d vetoed sex. Because he’d suspected even from the start that if they started, it would devolve into this— drunk on a heady concoction of fucking and chess, the days bleeding together in a hedonistic blur, that by the time they come up, blinking into the light, the time is gone. The gasped sucking sound she makes as he bottoms out inside her, yet still, she tries to pull him deeper, hands sliding from his hips to his back to his hair, long, elegant nails scratching at his scalp. Againagainagainagain she chants with each roll of his hips against hers. Twisting tighter and tighter till he’s falling like the long drop of a surrendered king as it comes to lay against the board in resignation.
He’d feared it’d be this good, and he hadn’t been wrong.
It’s more than sex, though, the slap of their bodies as they connect, pull apart and reconnect, chasing the win, a check and mate. It’s like if he presses his forehead hard enough to hers, breath moistening their cheeks as they pant into the other’s mouth, then maybe he can break through to her thoughts and sort through what’s really at the heart of this whole thing.
Her fascinating, mysterious mind.
And then she's gone, and the bed is cold once more.
And he waits, he fucking waits.
He waits for her to come back from Paris, then Kentucky, then whatever hole she’s crawled into to wallow in self-pity and alcohol.
Waits for her to want him the way he yearns for her, like he’s sweating it out of his pores, like a junkie strung out in the Village looking for their next hit. He wants Beth maybe even more than he wants a win, and that’s terrifying because, for the first time, he wants something he can’t study or train for— no book or game analysis will help here in the messy world of feelings and lo—
Eventually, he realizes that if he does any more of that, he’ll be sat like a chump waiting forever. So it’s easier to get mad, to feel rejected, used and betrayed that she only calls when she’s looking for advice like he’s her goddamn mentor, just another orphanage janitor or Harry Beltik, rather than— well, he doesn’t want to think about that.
“Don’t call me anymore.”
Fuck.
+
Benny,
You may wonder why I’m writing to you, I wonder myself honestly, but all the same, I’m hoping you can help. I don’t know if you’ve spoken to Beth recently, but I’m guessing you haven’t seen her—
Benny reads Harry Beltiks letter four times through, his coffee long gone cold, and feels like all the air has left the room.
Jesus, how did he not know? How could he have been so fucking blind? He’d known about the booze, had heard the rumours swirling even before he’s seen it for himself in Ohio. But she’d seemed okay enough on the phone anytime they’d spoken, more concerned about wallpaper swatches and planting annuals than her chess career.
Besides, she didn’t want him or his help. He’d asked her to come to New York, twice, and had met silence on the other end of the line, so if she wanted to drink away her career, that was her choice. He wasn’t her handler, her coach or her fucking boyfriend.
…mother had just died very unexpectedly, and Beth never showed or brought it up, but it was clear she wasn’t letting herself grieve…
God, in the whole time he’s known Beth, has she ever really been sober, or had she been tranqed just enough to slip by undetected. He’d been so angry, so hurt, that he couldn’t see beyond himself to what was clearly happening— that Beth was drowning, her phone calls a desperate last-ditch effort to keep her head above water, and what had he done? Wiped his fucking hands clean of her because she wasn’t able to meet him at his level. He’d cut her loose because it was easier to write her off as another disappointment than acknowledge the darkness in her that can’t be fixed with chess, the only cure he’s ever known.
But what can he do now? He can’t help Beth; he can barely keep himself afloat most days as the bills pile up and card sharks come circling. He doesn’t keep a knife to look cool or macho— it’s because it’s literally for protection, he’s fleeced more people than is good for him, and NYC has too many dark alleys. Helping her with her endgame strategy, her Ruy Lopez— that he can do. Helping Beth conquer her demons? That would be like throwing stones at glasshouses.
It’s too late, anyway. He’s burned his bridge. The scent of her has long left his sheets, and it’s not coming back anytime soon.
…I don’t want to be presumptuous here, but I know you trained her for Paris, and I’m aware how close that can make people…
And what the fuck does that even mean? Had Beth and Harry been close the same way he and Beth had? Is that what she was going to reduce him to, some sad sop former champion, pushing away the hours at some pedestrian job and some pedestrian life?
…she doesn’t want my help, but she’s in a real mess and only spiralling deeper. I’m worried about her, that I’m going to stop by one day and she won’t even be there anymore to ignore my knocking. She won’t listen to me, but maybe she’ll listen to you. I was never on her level, but you are. She respects you, and I’m sure she cares about you. She wouldn’t have stayed with you if she hadn’t.
Beth is the greatest chess player I have ever seen, better than any of us could ever dream of being. I’m sure you know that as well.
Please help her.
+
In the end, he’s decided he’ll wait.
Wait for her to come home from crushing the Iron Curtain. Back to the States, Kentucky, New York, wherever it is she finds herself.
She’s worth it.