That evening he finished his chess set and then made a board by ruling the sixty-four squares on a sheet of white, flexible plastic and darkening half of them with what seemed to be a Magic Marker. It was late and he was tired, but he set the pieces up, the white ones on his side of the board, and began to play King’s Gambit against the black, using Morphy’s way of sacrificing the king’s knight for a heavy attack on black’s kingside. It was strange to see his brown arm and hand moving chess pieces around on a board; he thought he had become used to his new color—even liked it—but it was a shock to see himself in this old context; he had been captain of his chess club in high school and when other kids had been out shooting basketball or stealing hubcaps or whatever, he had sat in his room at home working out variations of chess attacks. But with a thin white arm, a pale hand on the pieces—not this smooth and chocolate arm with the big and nimble hand at the end of it.

Outside the window was a nearly full moon in a jet-black sky. The window was open, and warm air, hinting of summer nights, filled the room. He could hear the shrill sounds of tree frogs and somewhere a cricket.

Then the door opened quietly and Annabel walked in. He turned to look at her. She was barefoot, dressed in a white robe. Her hair had been pulled back and was tied behind her head, framing her face. She was lovely. He felt tense, frightened. “What do you want?” he said.

“I wanted to make love the way I did before. I thought you would be asleep.” Each word came to him as if it had been spoken for him before, as if he had thought it just before she said it. Déjà vu. He shook his head, trying to shake it off.

“No,” he said, “I don’t want that right now.”

“I know,” she said. She took off her robe and sat on the edge of the bed. “I think we ought to start where we left off yesterday.”

He stared at her as she lay back, naked, against a pillow. “I don’t know if I can…”%

“Yes, you can,” she said. “That was only a barrier for us. We’ve crossed it now.”

“I was thinking something like that myself,” he said. He came over and sat beside her on the bed.

“Sure you were,” she said. “We’re really very much alike. We think the same things.”

He slipped off his sandals. “You’re really something,” he said.

“So are you,” she said.

***