ArtScene: Your early history has been the subject of much scrutiny—
Rhonda Barrett: It certainly has. (laughter)
AS: —but outside the confines of the chess community, I haven’t seen much discussion of your particular vision. 9
RB: The way I saw the board?
AS: Yes. Your mentor, Lewis Brinkman, has discussed your predictive chess ability in interviews, but in the course of doing research for this discussion today, I wasn’t able to find anything from your perspective.
RB: My father brought home a combination checkers/chessboard when I was eight. Of course, I was thoroughly disinterested in checkers. To win, you don’t move the pieces in the back, eliminating your opponent’s ability to be kinged. It took me all of three games to figure it out.
AS: Did you have checkers sight?
RB: No.
AS: You were able to figure it out on your own?
RB: It’s not hard.
AS: Of course. So, moving on, you began to play chess because you didn’t like checkers?
RB: That’s right. I liked the way the pieces looked—horses and castles and queens were far more appealing to me than stacks of same-looking chips.
AS: When did your sight first manifest itself?
RB: My very first game. My father explained how each piece moved, starting with the pawns. From then on, I could see a nexus of possibility attached to each one.
AS: Lewis Brinkman has used that word in past interviews, nexus.
RB: I didn’t have the vocabulary to explain what I was seeing at first, so I described each nexus as a maybe-crash: Maybe the pieces would crash. Maybe not.
AS: That’s not a bad description.
RB: As my father continued to explain all of the pieces and how they moved, each successive piece grew its own nexus.
AS: What did the chessboard look like once you knew how each piece moved?
RB: It was a glowing grid, full of possible trajectories and nexes. When I began to play, with my father, it wasn’t hard for me to keep track of the game because Dad didn’t have skills.
AS: He was not a worthy opponent.
RB: Exactly. He took books out of the library and learned openings, then showed them to me on the board. He was helpful in that way. He did the best he could, and I did learn names and strategies from him. But in a normal game I could beat him easily.
AS: Was he embarrassed?
RB: I don’t remember him ever expressing any [embarrassment].
AS: How long did you play with your father?
RB: He and I worked on openings and endgames until I quit.
AS: Perhaps I should rephrase the question: how much time passed between your first game and introduction to Lewis Brinkman?
RB: Probably three months. I found out later that Dad—my father spent some time at Le Petit Chapeau before he brought me. He wanted to make sure the people could be trusted.
AS: Do you know what made him decide?
RB: There was a woman who played chess there when I started. Luna Vallejo. My father told me he thought people who played chess in front of coffeehouses were either hustlers or homeless. He was surprised that there was a woman there.
AS: Do you think of her as a role model?
RB: Why would I? I beat her.
* * *
Amy was never late.
I agreed to move into Nine Northbrook to increase our efficiency. The little room in the basement packed with musty mattresses and filthy strips of old carpet wasn’t being used (it was supposed to be a kissing booth at one of the parties when Amy first moved in, but the smell killed it). Moving eliminated practice space expenditures and cut my rent thirty-three percent. The only downside I anticipated was living with six other people. I decided the savings would be worth any hassle.
Didier went back to France, and I moved in. Most everyone was on Max time—waiters and bartenders. I was already on my lunchbreak when they woke up, except for Crank who got up at six to bike downtown for early messenger assignments. The house was usually empty when I went downstairs to the basement.
Amy and I were older than everyone who lived there by at least seven years. They weren’t bad people, just young and new to the city. I did my best to stay uninvolved and out of everyone’s way.
The door opened. It was Amy. Black streaks cut halfway down her cheeks. Her eyes were puffy.
I lifted my snare so I could get out from behind my kit.
Don’t get out, she said. I’m fine.
I sat back down. Amy turned on her bass amp.
You think some broad is gonna make me cry?
I shrugged.
It’s work. People were horrible today.
Today?
What else am I going to do? I fucked around as an undergrad, so I can’t go back to school, and even if I could, I can’t afford it, and I don’t even know what to go back to school for. I can start at some other place and work shit shifts and make less money. There’s nothing else for me to do.
I said nothing.
We need to keep practicing and tour.
I nodded. She’s right, I thought. We need to get the first one under our belt.
Can we play now or what?
Sure, I said.
* * *
The two sheets of plywood went fast I cut them into strips in the basement eight one by four mixed spraypaint made a stencil it was going to be the Fogtown Burrito logo but it was hard to cut out wound up this twisted blob I gave away the first eight eight more in the basement. What a waste of plywood. That shit hurt. I don’t know why I didn’t practice convinced myself that it wouldn’t look so bad but it did what an idiot.
I got really bummed wanted to start tagging again didn’t want to get caught wasn’t going to steal more plywood they’d eat me alive in jail my friends all in bands banging away in practice rooms then in front of people clapping yelling. I never got that. Web pages are cool blogs but it’s not the same so the Dingo regulars not really my friends though all at practices but me took the same way home every night mostly to have something to do the long way down by the river mist coming off the water watching fog windows open over the ClearCola building. The bad nights I walked all the way into downtown the financial district miles abandoned mad how else would it end but cops stupid shouldn’t have waited so long to start twentysomething writing on lampposts cans I’m too scared to use years waiting could have been burning for real.
* * *
The mass exodus of Freedom Springs’ businesses left a district of warehouses vacant. In the course of his research, Ben discovered a failed venture into ‘artist housing’ by out-of-town entrepreneurs: the intention, he had read at the library, was to retrofit the former factories as lofts and live/work space. The developers’ initial investment had been funded (and financed) chiefly on speculation, and conversion had fallen with the market. On his walks though the district, he saw decaying scaffolding and abandoned pallets of construction materials. Such obvious signs would work in his favor.
He settled on one of the smallest buildings: a former auto supply storefront. He signed a hastily assemble lease (that, too, he thought, would work in his favor), and began the process of renovation and repair.
*