ZGo and love - 15. Lazy Bum part II

The club was unlike the club at the Cheese and Mints Café. It was open ten hours a day everyday in a strip mall. On the wall hung a sign, ‘no gambling and no smoking’. The Saturday crowd was full of smoke and money piled next to Go stone bowls. This was the club for strong players, those who relished unvarnished aggression, those who could face the bellicosity of beady-eye Asian men with their own patented brand of belligerence.

Hao pushed Luke ahead into the babel of Korean slurs. Hao palmed his nape and massaged it like he was preparing a boxer for the ring. Luke sucked in smoke and Hao’s glassy stare

Seo-won peeked up from his table of attentive players and beckoned for Hao. Luke knew him from the previous tournament as a 6-dan Korean professional. The stout man had a resolute comb over on his head. He stood up to greet Hao.

“And why weren’t you at the tournament?” Seo-won said.

“Busy.” Hao removed his corduroy coat, laid it on the table, and folded up his sleeves.

Seo-won broke into a short grin. Hao pointed to Luke, “That’s the student.”

“Since when did you start giving lessons?”

“Since I was bored.”

“Bored? Not enough dick?”

Hao pushed back a seat, and the sound of wood against tile neighed uncommonly loud. “Life is suffering.”

Seo-won colored around the temples. “Not making enough money?”

“The student pays me too little.”

“I saw his games at the tournament. Won three games, lost two.” Seo-Won said to Luke who only nodded sheepishly. “You play sneaky like this rich bastard—can’t believe you made me pay a thousand bucks the last time.”

Laughing in stride, Seo-Won arranged for Luke play a Japanese woman, Reiko. She sat with her arms closed together over her narrow lap as though rejecting the masculine brusqueness permeating the air. Intermittently, she coughed delicately to the surges of smoke.

Her game style matched her gentle demeanor, not overly aggressive but very thorough and deliberate. The game was a miserly exercise in territory hoarding—no whirlwind fights, no suspenseful invasions. She did not allow herself to be embroiled with his little traps all over the board.

Luke was less so frustrated and more distracted with Hao looking over the game. He had the dead look of hyper concentration, standoffish yet pugnaciously wanton. And then Hao walked off suddenly and asked Seo-Won for a game, leaving Luke to sputter fearfully. His heart gonged the death peals as he perused the board for his inadequacy over the sinuous strings of stones. Hao had always said the difference between good players and bad players was just a desire, a ruinous desire to win and prevail. Feeling preternaturally the rays of Hao’s presence behind him, Luke queried board long and hard for this titan desire to win, but came away empty and exhausted.

“You win by five points,” Luke said to Reiko.

“Good game,” She said with a fine small voice.

The pain of losing was slow to overwhelm curiosity or the uneasy strictures for good sportsmanship. Luke glared off Reiko’s starry eyes and said, “I don’t think I saw you at the tournament.”

“No, my husband thinks I play too much go as it is.”

Luke nodded, proceeded to clear the board, but Hao swirled in from his chair and stopped him.

“That white group,” Hao said, “that was too easily settled.” His trimmed fingers pieced together position without hiccup. “It’s a ko. Very dangerous one. You have threats all over the board. Luckily, she let it go easily.”

Ko was a situation in which the game position repeats forever. The rules demand that the board position cannot repeat the same position, and so the opponent has to play somewhere else before returning to play there again. In this case, Luke needed two eyes, of which one of them was indeterminate in ko. He would have had to choose between repairing the faulty eye in the ko situation or answering Reiko’s play in another part of the board. Skillful players would play a big move or a threat, too painful to pass. He would be left with a heavy choice, ignore the threat and save himself or answer it in which case Reiko destroys the half eye on the next move and the group is dead.

Luke gulped back nausea and wished for some god out there to grant him genius. Hao patted his hard knotty shoulders before returning to his game.

“You give me this look...I just wonder.” Seo-won said to Hao.

“Darling, it’s the I’m-going-to-kill-that-white-group look.”

Seo-won snorted. “You manage that, I just might let you kiss me.”

Hao raised his head and imagined the possibility. “I’ll take money thanks.”

“I’ll take kisses over money. But have it your way?” Seo-won popped over his wallet and counted his bills. Hao likewise counted bills in his wallet.

“Fifty bucks a point. Up till 500 bucks,” Hao said.

“I have three kids to feed.”

“I’m paying the snotty brat’s college tuition.”

“Oh yeah? My wife likes prime rib everyday.” Seo-won, smiling, counted five hundred bucks on the table.

Hao’s lips firmed up, not quite achieving a smile. He rubbed his fingers at Luke in a gesture for money. “You owe me ten bucks.”

“You taught me nothing today,” Luke said.

“I told you about your dead group. Get me a pack of cigarettes, will you?”

Before Luke could protest, Hao was deadly fixed on his game. Bewildered, Luke obeyed.

Seo-won helped himself to Hao’s cigarettes. He had a crude manner of blowing smoke in spurts and holding cigarette between his thumb and index finger. Hao, however, held the cigarette high in between the index and middle left hands and blew smoke in long, calming streams to his left. The gesture was familiar, stunning, and one that drew Luke’s eyes far away from the stones and to the trumpet lips.

Infrequently the images of a smoker’s tar lungs would intrude on Luke’s reverie, and he would return to game but stones had since lost reason and Hao’s sleepy eyes were still aggressively seductive and he was back to sucking whenever Hao sucked and swallowing whenever Hao swallowed and a warm glow glided down his throat and smoothed along to his groin.

Luke was hard, not obtrusively so, but enough to spark him consternation at the old man, who was not only a deranged taskmaster but a disgusting smoker and a liar.

Hao lighted another cigarette, eyes flickered at him a snapshot full of intention. Luke held cool and wondered just what was the truth about Ricardo. It could not be that Ricardo was around like he let everyone believe. Luke observed the cigarette slanting down Hao’s finger like a failing priapus and jerked on the thought of Hao vulnerable and raw. Hao was small inside, small in Ricardo’s presence, small about his small heart. Lies were natural to a small mind.

After the game, Hao drove Luke in the general westward direction. He chewed on a mint, rarely acknowledged Luke who was staring at his lovely ear. On the radio was news about the legalization for a certain herb. Luke switched the station to the classical music. Hao changed it back to the public radio station.

“Can’t stand Rachmaninoff, too prissy,” Hao said.

“I like his clean harmonies over say the gallivanting dalliances of Mozart.”

Luke thought he detected a secret smile behind his slight frown.

“At least Mozart understands music is meant to thrill, to entertain. He’s highly respectful of your short attentions. Music isn’t some profound slog of moroseness.”

“And what do you think of the baroque style?”

“I’d die for a good recording of Bach’s cello suites.”

“When I had to practice them, I settled on the Fournier recording—dark and muscular, I prefer it.”

Hao jerked the car to a stop at the light and shrank back to Luke. There was a pearl of wonder shimmering over him as he reached over and smooth back Luke’s short hair, palmed the soft smooth cheek. In an infinitesimal moment, Luke grasped in the draw of his touch, neither love nor romance, just assurance, a certainty that he could escape the morose bindings of himself and soar high.

The signal turned green and the brake lights were stretching away with the engines growling and his hand was sliding away its luscious cover, but Luke caught it and directed down to what had been percolating in him.

“What shall I do with you?” Hao redrew sharply and carried on the grim task of driving and Luke kept a hard frown and a hard cock as they ascended uphill and northward towards home.

Then they arrived at the quiet, chirpy neighborhood, then they sat in the dull-lit cave of the garage, restrained by reason’s vines. Like a pole star, the overhead compact florescent poked out of a ceiling. They ruminated at the dust filming the windshield, at the parking sticker dangling over the dashboard, then met eyes. Then Hao’s phone beeped most inconsiderately, inflaming him to smash a buttons at the phone and scurry it back into his pocket.

“Will your partner be home later?”

There was rapid movement underneath Hao’s left eye. “You want to meet him?”

“Not really.”

“Then don’t ask about him ever again.”

Hao, grunting hard, shambled out of the car. Luke held his breath still, reached to play with his beard, but the heating, reddening skin of his jaw disappointed his fingers. And a thought gripped him; now he understood exactly what had been Hao’s problem for so long. Light and giddy, he hopped after him then announced himself with a solid hand soothing the small of Hao’s back. And Hao responded forcefully, taking control of his little slip of his waist and pressing against him into the door. Luke did not mind the aggression nor did he mind the sudden bubbles of Jared forceful and needy fizzing up his overheating head. It all made sense as Luke’s hands raced up the furrowed smoothness of his cotton chest. Hao’s neck, trunk-like, damp in his hands, Luke shuddered before the suns, rising, beaming and impatient in Hao’s eyes. Hao’s breaths volcanic and thrilling over his neck, the sweet invasion of his tongue seeking of the deep heat, the tobacco and the mint, the far tones of chocolate and the tangy staleness therein. Kisses were not enough, achingly insufficient, like the miserable tatters during an artic night. And the hard ridge against his waist, tantalizing, unleashed his innermost hounds of death and decay, the guilt and the quest for oblivion. Luke scrambled against the belt buckle. Stupid, sly, it didn’t want to come off.

“Hold on a sec.” Hao, holding off Luke hands, was gasping for a slip of control.

Luke glowered at Hao staring at his hands like they were golden shackles. Hao lifted to study him, his chest heaving hotly against Luke’s.

Hao whispered, cradled his face. “It’s great to have a clear view of your eyes finally. But I can’t really see you in there.”

Luke felt no meaning in his words. “What is there to see?”

Hao shook his head, neighed a little laugh. “We’ll have to continue this upstairs.”

They kissed past the foyer, kissed past the Masai statues, but crystalline laughter jolted Hao to the sliding door opened to the swimming pool. Hao dashed outside and was just as soon arrested in his tracks; his mouth gaped. A woman, her nipples smiling at the sky, was floating on a pool lounge.