'Do you play chess? It's a game only two people can play,' the virtual stranger asked me having only been speaking together for about five minutes. I say virtually, for all I knew at that moment was his name which he offered to me as I sat down on the bar stool in a bar on B sector. Lucas Lantell he'd said offering his hand after I'd ordered my beer.
'Terry Dowding,' I replied, shaking the proffered hand and accepting my beer from the bartender at the same time.
'Do you live on this sector,' he asked as I took my first sip of the cold beer.
'No. I live on D sector,' I answered. 'D twenty.'
'I'm on D nine, just along from yours.'
With that, we talked for a few minutes, enough to learn that he was forty years of age and had decided to retire. At forty I had queried? He'd been a worker on oil rigs since the age of eighteen and had worked bloody hard and all the hours he could because the pay was high and had saved and invested as much as he could and was now comfortably off to stop that dangerous work. He had a house in England and had bought this villa on D sector a year previously and was now living in it. On asking if he was married, he'd said no for he'd found that he preferred the company of men rather than women. He'd tried living with a girl but couldn't handle the hassle that she'd brought into his life and so would rather stay single.
I in turn told him that I was sixty, a widower for the past two years just after having bought our house. Like him, I had enough money left in the bank to see me to the proper retiring age of sixty five and was enjoying my time here instead of working right up to that age.
Then he'd asked me if I played chess.
'Yes,' I said, 'though I haven't played it much over the past forty years.'
I then agreed to give him a game or two in the near future. We talked for another hour with him telling me of life on the rigs and I related my early years in the Merchant Marine as we drank a few more beers. After which I asked him if he had a car and he said that he would be buying one soon but had walked up to the bar. Now this was a forty five minute journey at the least on foot, so I offered him a lift back.
I pointed out my road and carried on to his and dropped him off with a cheerio and promised to meet him in the bar a few evenings later.
This I did and we seemed to get on well together so much so that I accepted his offer to go round to his house for a game of chess the following day.
It was early summer and quite hot already and so only wore a light shirt, a pair of shorts and sandals and found that he'd set up the chessboard out by the swimming pool under a large sun umbrella. I remarked on the high walls that surrounded the place and he said that the previous owner had built them for it was a re-sale. He brought a cool bag out with some beers in it and a kind of Styrofoam sleeve that your glass could fit into to keep it cool.
We played and I lost the first game quite easily from some stupid mistakes. He won the second one but had to take longer to do so. The third one finished up as a draw.
'Well I can see some of the skills coming back to you,' he smiled. By now we'd taken off our shirts and still we were covered in a fine film of sweat. 'With a bit more playing I can see a strong challenger in you.' I felt that too, now having to really use my brain for the first time in years, it was slowly coming back to me.
'How about a swim? To get rid of this sweat?' he asked as he stood up.
'I didn't bring any trunks,' I replied.
'Who needs trunks,' he said, using a toe on each foot to pry down the leather strap around his heels. 'With these high walls, the neighbour's can't see a thing.' He then pulled down his shorts and kicked them off and I saw that not only was his chest, hairless, a nice golden brown, but also the rest of his body. I noted too that he'd been circumcised as I had been, what, a few years previously.
He dived into the clear water and I watched as he did two whole lengths of the pool before coming up for air. I had slowly got up and divested myself of my sandals and shorts displaying the white middle parts between chest and legs. He shook his head clear of water and grinned at me as I dived into the cool refreshing water.
I surfaced quickly for swimming was not my forte. Paddling and doing the doggie paddle was about all I could manage.
'I thought all seamen could swim?' he asked as I paddled to the shallow end.
'What, in a six foot square canvas water butt?' I replied standing up waist deep. 'Where did you learn to swim?'
'Just came natural,' he said as he swam over to me. 'Though I did spend my first eight years diving off the rigs. Though for the most, I was in those big cumbersome suits with weights to take me down. That's where I earned most of my money. But then I just used to jump off the rig into the sea to swim for the sheer pleasure.'
He then submerged again and brushed past my legs as he did another two lengths beneath the surface.
We stayed naked in the pool for about half an hour before he got out and I watched his strong brown body move so easily across the tiles to an enclosed toilet and changing room that had been added to the original building. He came back with two towels, one of which he offered to me as I climbed out, aware of my growing paunch as opposed to his flat stomach. He dried himself as I did and he wrapped this small towel round his middle and got two more beers out of the cooler and went and stretched out on a lounger, indicating for me to take the other as he handed me a can of cold beer.
The towel was a rather small one and with my stomach, the two ends only just met to be able to be tucked in as I took the can and lay down opposite him as we popped the tops and drank some of the beer.
