set, Max has told her, belonged to his father, and his father before him. One of the original black pawns has vanished, replaced by a stub of charcoal, and Anna’s queen is missing her crown. She is also boxed into a corner.
Anna is not a complete novice at the game; she learned its rudiments as a girl, on the knees of her maternal grandfather. But Max’s tutelage during the past four months has enabled her to better understand the logical ways in which the pieces move together, the clever geometric mesh. He has reintroduced her, too, to the keen joy of unadulterated learning, which Anna hasn’t experienced since studying languages at Gymnasium. Now, as Anna falls asleep at night, she sees the board tattooed on her eyelids, rearranges the pieces into endless configurations. And she is improving.
But Max is so much better than she! Each match is still an exercise in humiliation. As, Anna is coming to feel, are her clandestine evenings here. Max is more complicated than the games they share. It is true that whenever Anna appears uninvited on his back doorstep, Max seems pleased to see her, invariably exclaiming, Anna, isn’t it funny? I had a feeling you might stop by. And Anna has caught him assessing her with the healthy masculine admiration to which she is accustomed. But Max confines his compliments to sartorial observations, commenting on a new dress Anna is wearing or a silk scarf that brings out the blue of her eyes. His behavior is that of a fond uncle. It is maddening.
He watches her now over the rims of his spectacles, amused.
Are you willing to concede? he asks.
Not yet, Anna tells him.
She studies the board. Her hand hovers over one of her knights. Then she gets up and goes to the stove, which exudes tired whiffs of gas.
May I make more tea? she asks, reaching for the canister on the top shelf. The movement causes her skirt to rise a good three inches above the knee. It is an outdated garment, the Pencil silhouette long since out of fashion, but it is also the shortest she owns.
You’re still in check, Anna, says Max. You wouldn’t by any chance be trying to distract me with that fetching skirt, would you?
Anna glances back at him.
Is it working?
Max laughs.
That reminds me of a joke my father’s rabbi used to tell, he says. Why does a Jew always answer a question with a question?
I don’t know, says Anna, busying herself with the tea. Why?
Why not?
Anna makes a face at Max and looks around his kitchen while she waits for the water to boil. Like the rest of his rooms behind the clinic, it is small but neat, each cup hanging from its proper hook, the spices alphabetized in the cupboard, the floor swept. There are even plants on a step-laddered rack against one wall, yearning toward a strange lamp that emits a cold purple-white light. But there are some housekeeping tasks that Max has either neglected or hasn’t spied at all: the diamond-shaped panes in the mullioned windows could use a good cleaning with newspaper and vinegar, and a finger run over the sill would come up furred with dust. Things only a woman would notice; this is definitely a bachelor establishment, Anna thinks, and she smiles fondly at her chipped teacup.
As the teakettle stubbornly refuses to sing, adhering to the maxim about the watched pot, Anna turns her back on the stove and wanders to the plants.
What is this one called? she asks, bending over a dark green leaf.
She hears the scrape of Max’s chair as he comes from the table to stand behind her.
That’s Monstera deliciosa, he tells her, the Swiss cheese plant.
Ah. And to think I thought cheese came from dairy farms. And this one?
Max puts a casual hand on Anna’s shoulder as they lean forward together. Anna catches her breath and looks sidelong at it, the long dexterous fingers with their square clipped nails.
An asparagus fern, says Max. A. densiflorus sprengerii.
Anna stares at a single frond questing toward the light, blind and sensitive and quivering under the onslaught of their mingled breath. When Max takes his hand away she fancies she can still feel its warmth, as though it has left a radiating imprint.
He points to another specimen with striped leaves.
Now this one, he says, glancing at Anna over the wire rims of his spectacles, is Zebrina pendula, otherwise known as a Wandering Jew. A donation from a former patient who is