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Janice Fitzpatrick had won the city Scrabble championship for the past three years, and it was easy to see why. She knew an unfair amount of baffling and obscure but still-technically-legal science jargon and medical terminology; she probably regularly perused all of those intimidating texts in the bookshelf in the living room for the express purpose of picking up new Scrabble words. Her game-play strategy was half use of her massive mental dictionary, and half psychological chain-pulling - she would watch her opponents like a vulture and seem to always have her next move ready before they were finished with theirs.

This year saw no change in this. This year would be her fourth city championship. She was already planning how she would rearrange the family trophy case as she clicked and picked her way through one match after the next, collecting victory after sweet victory, even making a less levelheaded opponent tear his hair out over the legality of the word S Y Z Y G Y.

It was a real word, as well as one of her favorite words. She'd placed the tiles down with the same attitude one would have enjoying a gourmet dessert: slowly enjoying and savoring morsel after morsel, each clack of a letter against the board like another luxurious bite of gelato. And there was someone sitting across the table from her starving to death as they watched.

Needless to say, she had become no less confident than she was earlier when, finally, it was time for the final round. Hands casually folded behind her head, she gave the world a pleased grin as she waited for the moderator to bring her next opponent to the table.

Tallulah was right in that a match between Franz St. Germaine, who was not known for his Scrabble -- Franz's domain of hate and passion was the yearly Monopoly tournament, not this ballet of vowels and consonants -- and Janice Fitzpatrick, Scrabble kommandant, was not going to be pleasant. Why he'd entered this year was nobody's guess, but he'd made it through with the same menace he usually made it through his capitalist Monopoly tournaments, though he claimed to be beating it every year in order to "undermine the free hand of the Market." If Janice was surprised to see him, neither immediately had let on to Tallulah.

Franz had already greeted her with a baffling, "Arbiter," and had nodded his head in Janice's direction as "the Russian."

They drew.

Janice drew G. He drew P.

"Russian begins," said Franz.

They filled their racks, and then they looked at each other, for what seemed like a small eternity -- Scrabble was serious business, as they had proved with each other before on the playing field (as they had also proved on the playing field of Settlers of Catan and Connect-4). Maybe she was going to start off easy on him; maybe she wanted to lure him into a false sense of security; he watched Janice's quick, deft fingers as she began the web that would inevitably lure him to his destruction and his swift death as the American, playing the game of kings. Or at least the game of really bored people who loved their dictionary.

H8. The first step, center square, premium square.

C O U R T

Franz took a while. But when he did, his pieces were dropped slow and sure as Mahjong tiles.

- S H I P

"Emma Goldman," he said to Janice, smilingly, as though he was telling her the time of day. "So. I wonder. Do you come here often?"

"It's not an obsession," said Tallulah, and turned bright red. "It's... Players are not to engage in banter with the moderators."

She surveyed the board and tapped her toes against the tile. Franz building on a word the first turn instead of putting a new one down was aggressive, but now there were a full nine letters on the board to play off of. It really opened things up.

She scribbled down the scores. Center square was a double, carry the five...

Janice: 14.

Franz: 16. And he hadn't gotten any doubles. Interesting. Tallulah tried to keep her face blank. She was above fighting with a silly little girl playing with the big kids.

Stance. That was eight.

Janice: 22.

This was going to be interesting.

Janice was content and at ease, her chin rested lightly on one set of surgically-sharp fingers as she watched Franz smile as if he were a heavenly being sent as an emissary to her, slowly dropping the letters of his next move as if they were counted blessings. Her gaze followed his fingers down to the board, back up again, tapping down tile after tile, a rolling wave carrying little squares of beige. It had become a familiar sight by this point. It was a strangely soothing one, too.

Tallulah would have never seen this expression on the girl, in all her years butting heads with her. She almost looked as if she was doped up on painkillers.

She listened, as Franz calmly described the word he had just placed down, which both of them did fairly often.

Then he went on to describe the informal context.

And her composure cracked. She blinked once, twice, staring at the board, then at Franz, then the board again, then at Fra-- keep your eyes on the game, Fitzpatrick.

Janice took an unusually long amount of time looking through her own set of letters before making her next move.

A
D
D
I
N
G

Franz didn't hesitate: he dropped his tiles after Janice's, slipping them next to the D. D O T E. He didn't describe this one: just looked at Fitzpatrick with a wide, white grin, with teeth sparkling. He didn't look at Tallulah once: his concentration was all on Janice, leaning his chin in his hand in what could only be described as "coy", giving a slightly horrible wink at her when he put down his last tile.

At first, Tallulah thought Janice had just claimed the bonus for all seven tiles played, but no. She'd only put down six - the E had been there before. It was still an impressive word, but probably not as high scoring as it could have been.

She wrote down the scores and kept watching. Franz seemed awfully smug for someone who was behind by more than a dozen points. Then again, this was competitive scrabble and anything could happen in the blink of an eye.

Janice was mentally hitting herself for placing that word before it had even registered in Franz's vision. When she witnessed his reaction, the fresh set of sparks lighting up in his wide tangerine eyes, her own expression looked uncharacteristically defeated, desperate for some way to undo that move -- this is not what was supposed to happen, no, no, NO--

Faint flickers of something else entirely came and gone in her features as she stared at the board, struggling to keep her eyes glued to it. It wasn't enough of it to tell exactly what it was, but one thing was for certain: whatever it was, it was a look that had never crossed Janice's Fitzpatrick's face, ever, in her entire life.

It was a long, a painstakingly long two minutes before her eyes could unlock from that word on the board, and she stiltedly drew another tile.

L
O
V
E
L

She hesitated.

E

S

She stopped entirely, last tile in her hand, but her hand was pressing futilely against some unseen force above the final space.

"You heard the Arbiter," said Franz, whose chin was still rested on his hand -- and now he was smouldering. That was a definite smoulder. His eyes were half-closed, and Franz St. Germaine was smouldering at Janice Fitzpatrick, who had certainly never been smouldered at before, but there was a first time for everything. "That's not a valid word, comrade. And you know, Emma...

"...that will never be a valid word for me."

Then he smouldered more.