“What is it?” he said. “Is something wrong?”

“That’s the King’s Gambit,” she said. “Morphy’s Attack.”

Something prickled at the back of his neck and he heard a tremor in his own voice. “Yes, it is,” he said.

“And the next move is bishop takes bishop’s pawn.” She turned and stared at him, her eyes wide and her lips trembling.

“Yes,” he said. “Bishop takes bishop’s pawn…. Not many people know that.”

“I’ve known it since high school,” she said. “Grover Cleveland High School. Where I was…”

“Captain of the chess team.” His voice was like gravel in his throat. His heart was pounding and his mouth was dry. “Ben’s mistake,” he said, whispering because his dry mouth made him whisper it “You’re Ben’s wrong body.”

And she whispered too. “I’m Arthur Franks,” she said.

“Oh Jesus,” he said. “Oh sweet Jesus.” He lay back in bed and stared at the ceiling for a long while. And then, later, when a calmness had come into him and he let his hand reach out slowly and gently and let it fall sensuously upon her smooth and cool thigh he felt, at exactly the same instant, her hand soft and sexual upon his own thigh. “Oh, yes,” he said aloud, softly. “Oh, yes.”

And he heard her say it too. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes.”

SITTING IN LIMBO

Sitting here in Limbo, I have found I can return to and make corrections in the life I once lived. I calculate that seventeen years have passed since I died in Columbus, Ohio; it was about two years ago that I learned to return to various parts of my life and change them for the better. The work is difficult but rewarding. And what else has a dead person to do with his time?

There are no physical discomforts here under this pale and sunless sky; the boredom and emptiness that make up my existence are not intolerable. In many ways it is not as bad as being alive was. There is no one to talk to here and nothing, really, to think about except that life of fifty-one years that I was permitted to have. From my present perspective I see it as a unity, like a complex circuit diagram or an abstract-expressionist painting. I see that a part here or there may be altered—a diode or a blob of color—and the pattern will be forever changed. From my birth in the Good Samaritan Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, to my death from a coronary in Columbus, it is all a single, sometimes baffling, entity. And I can change it now, a small part at a time. I have the distance.

It was quite by accident that I discovered I could go back there. I have seven chairs here on which I can sit; they have been here since I arrived. Each is different from the others. One of them is a hard wooden chair of varnished oak. I sit in it when I wish to be wakeful. Sometimes I let myself drowse in a reverie for days; at other times I sit upright, my body expectant, waiting. There is, of course, nothing to wait for here, but I take comfort in adopting the posture. The wooden chair is exactly right for this. It is high-backed and sturdy; it squeaks when I shift my weight from one buttock to the other. There are very few noises here in Limbo and I appreciate the contribution this chair makes.