Frank, Lincoln, and Paul met over a chess board more than a decade ago. They didn’t share much in the way of circumstances, just a love of the game. After one of them disappeared, though, another of them checked in—and set in motion a chain of events that brought them closer together than any of them might have thought possible. John Leland has long specialized in telling the stories of everyday New Yorkers, and once again manages to make a city of eight million feel as tight-knit as a small town.
When he had no income, he moved into the apartment with an older woman whose name remains on the intercom downstairs. She put a curse on him, Paul said. “I was told by a spirit medium that in a previous lifetime I had known her, and we had had a friendship, and she wanted to make it a lot more serious than I did, such as marriage,” he said. “And that’s what prompted her to do what she’s done to me in this lifetime, preventing me from succeeding at anything, not only chess, but any endeavor.”
Though the woman died almost 20 years ago, Paul said, the curse remains in effect.
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