She had a policy.

I heard about it through my girlfriend, who had heard it from another friend, who had picked it up in drunken conversation.

She would not sleep with any man unless he proved himself smarter than she was.

One day I brought my chessboard to school. I challenged her. Right there in the department lounge.

It was a risk, but a risk I had to take, for the thought that I could have had her, but never acted, was just too much to bear.

The game was tense. I was nervous. There was so much riding on it, even if nobody had actually said it out loud, and she was so goddamned beautiful sitting across the table with her big blue eyes her curly brown hair and her soft full breasts under her turtleneck sweater.

She was doing it on purpose to distract me, I was sure of it, sitting there, being beautiful, just to keep me from concentrating. She would smile at me and adjust her hair, and brush imagined lint from her sweater, her hand passing over the tops of her breasts and dangerously close to her nipples.

About half way through the game another guy wandered over to watch. Big guy, long curly hair, free-wheeling, easy-going, the self-appointed departmental ladies' man. She looked up at him and smiled.

I tried staring at the board, planning a strategy, really seeing the game, instead of just seeing her. But it didn't work. It couldn't work, not in the face of such overwhelming beauty.

When it became painfully obvious that I was going to lose, the other guy called winners. On my board yet. Winners. But I was just too polite to say no, and I figured maybe I'd get some satisfaction out of watching her distract him the way she'd distracted me, watch her behavior in the abstract, with nothing riding on the outcome. Perhaps commiserate with him after the game about opportunities lost and the wiles of women.

Graciously I stood, switched places with him, watched them set up their pieces, watched them play, anticipating an artful show.

But I did not see the show I was anticipating. Oh there was eye contact, and hand contact, and the furtive smile. But there was no preening, no lint brushing, no head tossing, no overt attempts at distraction. She would stare at the board studiously, but not too studiously, think about her turn, but not too long, and then make a move not obviously horrible, but certainly not the best she could have made, had she wanted.

He won. Of course. She let him win. And then they left. Together.