Two Moons: A Freaky Chess Story

Two Moons

Chapter 1

I gotta tell you a freaky ass story. This is a true story. I'm going to change all the names and pretend it isn't me this happened to but it is me. But you'll forget about that once you get all into the story and stuff.

So there's this girl, she plays chess down at a weekly tournament in her town, oh, let's make up a name for it, let's call it Colorado Falls. Yea, that sounds ok. No. Let's call it Seven Falls. No Eight Falls. And she plays chess downtown there every Wednsday (I will never learn to spell this so let's change it to Monday) night at a cafe. She's been going to this cafe for years, it's called Rich Richard's cafe. And she's been a loyal customer there, she buys lots of coffee. Lattees. Is that how you spell that?

And this girl, let's call her Janey-Lou, she plays there, and then one day around Thanksgiving she notices someone comes in there and starts watching her play.

And I mean watching her. He gets as close as he can to her. And Janey-Lou, being the only female chess player she's used to this. Being watched. But this guy is taking it to a whole new level. He follows her from room to room. And Rich Richard's has a lot of rooms. It is a coffee shop and a book store, it's got at least six different rooms in it all laid out strange. You find yourself turning corners in there, reading books, reading about the Meddicci family one minute and getting a bagel with cream cheese the next. Only a lot of times they are out of cream cheese. So then you just get butter on it or something like that but it's not the same.

And you can buy toys there for your kids even, they've got puppets. They've got a place to do puppet shows. They've got a magic castle in the back. Well, it's not in the back exactly, it's around the corner and past the puppets and then you take a left at the great big mirror where you can watch yourself go by. You can watch yourself and try to make it look like you're not looking at yourself if you just glance as you pass. But then you only catch a glimpse.

You can only catch a glimpse unless you stare like this guy does. Staring with eyes that look like two big yellow moons. They never move either. Unless you move. Just like the moon. It moves when you move.

Don't you ever feel like the moon is following you?

Well, Janey-Lou did, she felt like the two moons in this guys head were following her, wherever she went. She began to lose chess games. She started hanging pieces, left and right, and I don't know if you know Janey-Lou, but she's not much of a good sport. And so she'd sit there losing her queen, losing her rook, getting red in the face, all the while the two moons watching her. She dropped her purse and all the contents spilled out all over the floor. All the other chess players shushed her. They didn't seem to notice what was happening to her.

She tried to make it obvious. She moved really really close to one of them at one point, hoping maybe two moons would think she had a boyfriend and go away, but all that happened was the guy she moved close to offered to buy her a hot chocolate.

"No thanks," she said, and then she moved her eyes to the right to point out Two Moons, and jerked her head to the right, hoping he would look over there and see it for himself but he didn't.

Two moons did this week after week. Every week she hoped he wouldn't be there but he was, along with the ambiance of the cafe, the great big white coffee cups, a little too big if you ask me, they start to make your hand look small.

Then one day...

Chapter 2

Then one day she, Janey-Lou asks these couple of friends to help her. She goes to them and she says, look, I have a stalker.

They say, “no you don’t, you don’t have a stalker. You just want to have a stalker. You’re jealous of all the other girls who have stalkers so you’ve made one up.”

“No,” she said, “no! I’m not making this up! This guy is stalking me. I have a stalker. Come to the Wed -- I mean Monday night tournament at Rich Richard’s. I’ll give you a ride.”

“Ok,” they say.

One of them’s named Peter Chris, and Peter Chris says, “I want to see your stalker. And please stop saying my name backwards.”

“Ok,” Janey-Lou says, “Do you need me to pay your entry fee?”

Because these guys they never have money. Chess players generally never do.

“No,” says Peter Chris, “I don’t need any money, I got plenty of money,” and he pulls out a wad of cash and lays it on the table. Five or six twenties.

“Wow!” says Janey-lou, and she’s thinking, “where did he get all this cash, cause I know he just quit his job to play video games full time.

But they live in Denver which is too far away from Eight Falls for her to go and pick them up so she says, “you guys can sleep on my couch, well, one of you can sleep on the couch, the other one will have to sleep on the Lazy Boy. I’ll leave the cartoons on for you.”

“Ok,” they said, and in the morning they had cereal. Captain Crunch.

Then came time for them to go and see her stalker.

They go and they sign up for the games. It takes a while for him to show up but sure enough just like clock work he does. Janey-Lou nods her head to the right and moves her eyes to the right to show them who he was.

And at the end of the night Peter Chris says to her on the way out after he lost to someone four hundred points lower because he dropped his queen and his rook, “he wasn’t staring at you, he was staring at me!”

“No,” says Janey-Lou, a little insulted now, “he was staring at me!”

“I think he’s warm for my form!” says Peter.

“Maybe he just has those eyes that follow you from room to room like those paintings in the haunted houses,” says Janey-Lou.

“No,” says the other guy. “He was watching you. When you left the room it looked like his soul left his body. He stood with his arms out to his side and gasped when you got up to use the restroom. Then he followed you.”

“No! He was following me!” said Peter Chris.

And stop saying my name backwards.

Chapter 3

So then this other guy, the guy who slept on the couch, he called Janey-Lou up the next day. He said, "go check your email."

So she checks her email.

He said, "don't worry, I took care of everything for you."

She read the email, and this other guy, let's just call him Wally, and by the way he ate the entire box of Captain Crunch. He has an email list of literally thousands of people. All chess players of course, although any time he meets anyone he asks for their email address and adds them to his list.

Everyone actually thought Wally had gone completely crazy a few years ago when he started doing this. Sending out free chess analysis to anyone who would give him their email. I hadn't seen him in years, and then I start getting these fifty page emails with chess analysis and it's not just boring chess stuff, it's got tons of personal stories and jokes and even some poems and junk like that.

Well, Janey-Lou gets one of his emails, which means five thousand other chess players from here to China got one too, and here's what it said. It said, "I don't normally talk about the strange guys who play chess, I figure they've got enough problems but this time I'm going to make an exception."

And he goes on to tell every chess player Janey-Lou has ever known what Two Moons is doing. And now she's thinking " I'll be getting messages from these chess players and advice on how to deal with it along with some jokes." Which she did. She started getting them immediately.

One guy said, "Hey now you can do a video on The Stalker" opening, and another guy, he said, "be flattered," and another guy said "oh, I know who that guy is, he's not staring at you! He's just hard of hearing," and another guy wrote and said, "he's handicapped! How dare you make fun of the mentally handicapped."

Well, needless to say she was furious with Wally!

She says, "Wally how dare you do this to me? I am getting emails from all these people now telling me unwanted advice! Where's my privacy? How could you?"

"I was trying to help!"

"How was that supposed to help?"

"I figured everyone would rally to your side!"

"In the chess community? You've got to be kidding! In chess, no one is on anyone's side! Now I gotta play chess with everyone having read this how embarrassing! Well, you must have done this to stop my from playing, I'll show you! I'll never stop playing!"

And so she did, she never stopped, and then next time, when she showed up at Rich Richard's on a Monday night...

Chapter 3 (The rewrite)

“That was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen!” said the other guy. Ok ok, I’ll tell you the other guy’s name. I guess he deserves a name, if he’s going to be this important in the story.

The other guy’s name is Wally and he weighs three hundred pounds.

I told you!” said Janey-Lou. Janey-Lou loved to say I told you.

“His eyes looked like two big yellow moons!” said Peter Chris.

“I told you!”

“I wonder why he’s doing that,” said Wally. Whenever he rode in Janey-Lou’s car he sat with his hands folded an stared straight ahead. “I’ve never seen anyone do that before. I’ve seen people stare at you, but then when you look at them they look away.”

“He wasn’t staring at her, he was staring at me!” said Peter Chris.

“That is not true!”

“He doesn’t even play chess,” said Wally., “what’s he doing there?”

“No, he just comes there to stare at me.”

“It seemed like he was watching the games too, some of the time” said Wally, like he had paused and thought about it, “mainly your game.”

Then it came time to drop Wally off, and he rolled out of the car and into his house.

After a couple of days Janey-Lou checked her email, and she had about twenty five messages from chess players, half of who she never knew of, and half of whom lived scattered across the country. There was even a message from Ireland.

The messages all said pretty much the same thing….

Chapter 4

"How could you do this?" screamed Janey-Lou int the phone, and if she'd been there in person with him, she might have even grabbed him by his shirt collar and yanked him around. Although it's not easy to yank a three hundred pound chess master around.

"I was trying to help!"

"Trying to help! Trying to help? I've got people from Ireland giving me advice about my stalker! I've got strangers who live in New York telling me I'm making it all up! I didn't even tell these people! You and your stupid emails," shouted Janey Lou. We might have, at this point, even been able to refer to her as Janey-Loud.

"I thought everyone would rally around you!"

"Chess players? Rally around me? When have you seen chess players rally around anyone let alone me!" she continued shouting, "All you ever see chess players rally around is a board, to watch the stupid game! Why do they all do that anyway? I would rather play chess than watch."

There was a silent pause on the phone. During this time Janey-Lou began reading more of her mail. Then she began yelling again.

"Here, listen to this guy! This is what you've inflicted on me with your incessant emailing! This guy tells me I should invent the Stalker opening, and do a video on it! Infuriating! Do you realize this means I have to play chess in an environment -- I wonder how many people who play down at Rich Richard's will have read this. I bet you did this to try and stop me from playing chess! Well, I won't stop! I'll show you!"

" I was trying to help! I thought maybe I could get to the bottom of this!"

"Here, here's another email. It's Peter. He's claiming that he's the one being stalked, not me! Grrrr!!! Well, I don't care! I'm going to play on Monday night in spite of this! OH no! Here's an email from the guy who runs the Monday night tournament! Oh, I can't believe this!"

"What does it say?" asked Wally.

Chapter 5

“It says… I can’t believe this,” Janey-Lou continued reading, but she was just reading the message to herself and huffing and saying, “I can’t believe this.”

“What!?” said Wally. “Tell me what it says!”

“He is lecturing me! He is telling me that I’m wrong about this guy staring at me, and that I shouldn’t have told everyone that he was doing this. That it embarrassed him.”

Janey-Lou madly started typing her response to him, which said, “I didn’t tell everyone about this! Wally did! And now I have to get lectures and jokes and…”

“I can’t believe you did this to me!” Janey-Lou shouted again, and then she hit send.

Within the time it took to give Wally another piece of her mind another email popped up.

“Oh my Gosh, he responded already,” she shouted.

There was a silent pause while Janey-Lou read the response, which included a lecture about telling things to Wally, whom she should have already known would send an email out to everyone.

“Well, that is true,” Janey-Lou said, more to her self than to Wally, “Anything I tell you I can expect to be broadcast to the entire world.”

So she was mad at her self. And because of this she decided it was just a waste of time to keep yelling into the phone at Wally. So she got off the phone and sat there shaking her head at her own stupidity and asking herself one question. ..

Chapter 6

Well, she was asking herself two questions actually.

The first question was “How am I going to go in there and play chess now? Everyone will be giving me either unwanted advice, or they will think that I think that this guy is stalking me, and they will tell me that he is not stalking me, which then makes me sound like I am conceited or something, that I think I have a stalker. How embarrassing.”

The more she thought about it, the more angry she got at Wally. In fact she got so angry she called him on the phone again, gave him another piece of her mind, and then hung up.

Which brings us to the second question she had to ask herself.

“If I know that Wally can be trusted to always tell everybody everything you tell him, why do I keep trusting him?”

And truthfully, Janey-Lou couldn’t answer either of them.

But she decided to go ahead and play chess anyway that Monday, and to refuse to tell Wally anything, ever.

So, she arrived at the Monday night chess club.

And there was Two Moons.

He was waiting for her right at the door.

“Hi!” he said.

“Um, Hi,” said Janey-Lou, and tried to quickly pass him. But he kept blocking her. It was like one of those dances you do with someone when you are both trying to avoid bumping into the other one. Only when she stood still he stood still. And when she moved to the left, he moved to the left. And his great big moon eyes looked really really happy to see her.

“You’re sitting right over here,” he indicated her board. “You’re paired against Steve!”

“Um, thanks.”

And at the end of the night, when somehow, in spite of him pulling up a chair and sitting two inches from her and staring not at her board but right at her face, she didn't know how but she still managed to win, at which point he, Two Moons, stood up and gave her a resounding round of applause. At which point she walked out embarrassed.

Chapter 7

“It’s true. It really did happen just that way,” she said.

“How did you manage to concentrate?” said Wally.

It was true. It happened just that way. And Janey-Lou nobly fought hard.

“Who were you paired against?”

“Dragon.”

“Steve Dragon?”

“Uh huh. And it was a tough game. I had the bishop pair but he was up a pawn!”

And Janey-Lou, she got into a tough endgame, hanging on to the two bishops against Dragon, all the while Two moons sitting two inches from her and staring right at her face. His eyes glowed yellow, even lighting up the board a bit. And Janey-Lou did this trick that chess players do, where they cup their hands around their eyes so they can’t see anything around them. And that way they can focus. And she shut out the bright glare of his stare, and the glare from the lights, and the noise from the coffee shop, the clinking of glasses and cups, the dull chatter from the restaurant next door, and the conversations near the books, the customers discussing revolutions and pastries.

“Steve Dragon is a tough player!” Wally said.

“He’s only 1400! I shouldn’t have to fight that hard against a 1400!”

“Yea, but he’s going up. And you had that guy staring. You should talk to him. Just talk to him. Find out what he wants!”

“What?! I don’t want to talk to him! Why should I have to talk to him?”

“Sometimes these people just want you to talk to them. Just sit down and have a cup of coffee with him. Then he’ll go away.”

“No WAY! You give such bad advice! There is no way I’m doing that! In fact, I have an idea.”

Chapter 8

“Put your arm around me, sit really close. Make sure there are no other chairs so he can‘t sit by me again,” said Janey-Lou.

So Elmer put his arm around her, and scooted his chair up close. And Two Moons stood across the table watching her game. Every now and then he would wander over and look at other games, but he orbited around hers.

“Psst, gimme a kiss on the cheek,” Janey-Lou whispered.

Elmer, otherwise known as Mr. Janey-Lou gave her a little kiss on the cheek. Then after five minutes she whispered to him, “you oughtta give me another one. So he gave her one more. That should be enough, she thought. That aughtta do the trick. (I wouldn’t normally misspell the same word incorrectly in two different ways but this time I think it’s warranted.)

Then the battery ran out on his laptop so he had to move over to the window that looked out onto the street. And the passers by, if they looked into the café would have seen Elmer busy working at his laptop, a row of chess sets and chess players concentrating, and Two Moons staring at Janey-Lou’s game.

“Psst.”

She looked around to see who pssted. She noticed Dragon staring from the other end of the tables, way down near Elmer, right by the glass window.

“Psst.” It was definitely Dragon who was pssting. So I, I mean she wandered over there and pulled up a chair, and when the wood made a screeching sound across the floor all the chess players looked over at me and all at once said, “Shhh.”

They sat near the end of the table near Elmer, who sat busy at his laptop.

The Dragon whispered, “do you know who that guy is over there?”

Janey_Lou looked in the direction the Dragon was pointing to with his eyes, and his head. He was pointing at Two Moons.

“I don’t know his name, why?” and Janey_Lou was thinking, “I thought the Dragon was on Wally’s email list.”

The Dragon looked around, lowered his head, and leaned away from his chessboard, where his opponent kept staring sternly at the two of us.

“I think he’s warm for my form!” said Dragon.

“Is he staring at you?” said Janey-Lou

“Nonstop! He goes and looks at other games but he always comes back to mine! Like he was orbiting it or something.”

“Really?”

“Yea,” said Dragon, and his eyes got real big and green when he said it, “his eyes look like two big yellow lanterns!”

“Lanterns? Yea, I see what you mean…”

And on the way home she asked Elmer, “do you think we accomplished anything?”

And Elmer said, “I don’t know, we’ll see.”

Chapter 9

Two policemen, Two Moons, and the owner of Rich Richard’s café stood waiting at the entrance when Janey_Lou went back the following Monday night for the tournament.

“We understand your boyfriend threatened this man?” said one of the two policemen.

“Wha…?”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“A husband.”

“The husband then, did he threaten this man?” and the policeman held up Two Moons by the collar, and his yellow lantern eyes were swinging.

“Elmer?” Janey-Lou gasped, “No way! I know he didn’t”

The policeman turned to Two Moons.

“Are you sure it was him?”

“Yes,” Two Moons exclaimed, and there was a note of panic in his voice, “It was her boyfriend.”

“Is he here tonight?”

“No! But I can get him on the phone.”

Janey-Lou called up Elmer and put him on the phone with the cops.

She could hear only one side of the conversation, and Two Moons was still talking to the other policeman. He was saying “It was her boyfriend, he did it, and he kissed her twice! He kissed her twice!”

The other policeman got off the phone and said, “Are you sure it was him? Are you sure it wasn’t just someone who looked like him?”

“It was her boyfriend!” he howled, “He kissed her twice!”

…..

Chapter 10

The two policemen stood there looking a little dismayed. They looked over at the book shelves, the section with all those history books, and the philosophy section a little ways down. There were wind chimes hanging, and in the awkward silence you could hear a few chimes here and there, as if trying to explain the situation.

There stood Rich, owner of Rich Richard’s, and he too didn’t seem to know what to say.

And then, behind Two Moons there appeared a large man with an even larger pair of glasses. They seemed to magnify everything about the situation. Even the ambiance. The yellow atmosphere.

Secretly I think it was this awkward moment that got the chess club kicked out of Rich Richard’s, even though it happened a few months later. I think Rich Richard’s sat in his dusty office in the back room behind the books and wondered how he could avoid such a thing ever happening again.

“After all they don’t buy anything,” he probably reasoned. “Who knew chess players were so cheap? And they don’t really add to the intellectual, cultural feel of the place I was going for. They just smell funny, most of them, and then to have the police called! I can’t have this. I’m going to tell them we have paying customers.”

But at least, that night, the police didn’t arrest Elmer. Of course, it would have been difficult, being as how he was only there in cell phone.

Because the whole thing got taken care of that night. After the man who appeared behind Two Moons came forward, demanding an explanation from Janey-lou, Wally stepped up and offered to buy him a cup of coffee. Then all of them left a short while later, Two Moons, the two police men, and the large man demanding the explanation.

“How did you get rid of them?” she asked Wally.

“Cup o’ java. I told you it would clear the whole thing up.”