I stumbled into this cafe—situated on a relatively quiet block along the prominent Beacon Street—because it was late and it happened to be the only thing still open. The place occupied a mere slice in the endless chain of Boston-style brick buildings, bay windows and all, with its boundaries marked not by physical space, but chipped white paint and a small sign reading Knight Moves. 

It smelled like an old library, a real one that is, not some suburban Barnes & Noble. There were board games. Lots of them. Stacked up the wooden shelves until they almost touched the ceiling. An Andy Warhol frame reading The World Fascinates Me hung to my left. Oddly-shaped lamps and scientific microscopes, a mars globe and a grand piano found their places among the remaining empty spaces. The green-line train begrudgingly passed outside the window every so often. Boston transportation ran on its own time. 

Families, friends, and other groups whose connection I could not pinpoint coalesced around the varying tables playing board games. It made some sense now. Knight Moves, spelled not like night, but like the chess piece. It was a board games cafe that happened to also function as a public living room. My presence seemed to go unnoticed by those inside, everyone in their respective world, lost in the rules of some game I most likely did not know how to play. 

I have come to see Knight Moves as more or less a time portal to some alternate world. That time travels differently—maybe slower or maybe not at all—inside those walls. It is like a Las Vegas casino, but with more natural light and significantly less financial risk. It was not long before I learned that this strange yet mystifying time warp was the creation of Joanna Cutts. 

I met Joanna on my first, or maybe second, venture to the cafe. She worked Sunday nights, with a thick Eastern European accent, perfectly round glasses, curly brown hair often tucked behind a skufia, and a knack for language learning—fluent in three and literate in two more. She came from a medieval town in Poland, having studied nuclear physics and German studies before leaving Europe to marry an American. 

Joanna exuded an almost infectious intellectual curiosity, one that I can only characterize as an ability to observe the moments that usually go unnoticed. She wanted Knight Moves to be a place where people could sit and observe without rushing. And maybe after enough time, they too might learn to appreciate even the mundane, to find out that the little moments are more meaningful than often given credit to. I thought I would write down a few ordinary memories from my times at Knight Moves, memories that very easily might have slipped away had I not been paying attention. 

There’s a Nuclear Explosion in that Milkshake 

We take our seats in the backroom, my friend Charlotte across from me. She is tall like me—short brown hair like me too–but with a more indie-cool-girl music taste and an undefeated streak in Banana Grams. While I flip over the letter tiles, she races through a Duolingo lesson on Mandarin grammar.

I took pleasure in dragging my friends along with me to Knight Moves, partly because I enjoyed the company and partly because I wanted them to validate its other-worldliness. Charlotte happened to be one victim in my scheme. We sit there in silence, like an unhappy family staring at their phones in an Olive Garden, piecing together whatever words cross our stream of consciousness—rave, foot, tarot. 

The game takes a necessary pause when Joanna comes by with the chocolate milkshakes we ordered. She places the tall glasses on our table, long metal spoons leaning against the edge of the glass. It is then when she casually warns that we should not stir the spoon too fast, otherwise it might cause a nuclear reaction. 

Joanna walks away with the same grace she always has, but we are left uneasy, and truthfully, unable to continue our game. How can we? No sensible person consumes a drink on the brink of nuclear disaster without the utmost care, something Charlotte and I both understand. I look around. Everyone carries on with their games, oblivious to our perilous situation just a few feet away. They have absolutely no idea. 

Deadass

I do not own a detective-style recording device, but if I did, I forgot to bring it. Empty-handed and unable to time travel, I am left to make do with the second best option, my memory. 

In this makeshift transcript based on very true events, I recall a conversation I once overheard on an unassuming night at my usual spot in the cafe. It was late and I still had to write a character analysis on Milkman from Toni Morrison’s Beloved, but the exchange unfolding before my eyes turned too intriguing to disregard. Milkman could wait. But this, well, this was once-in-a-lifetime, never to happen again. 

In other words, this is all I have. I hope it will suffice. 

Two girls, both dressed in sweats, sit comfortably at the chess table. They are not playing chess. 

Girl 1: Do you remember my old history teacher?

Girl 2: No, but what about him?

Girl 1: Oh I don’t know. I just remember how nice he was to me, and, you know

Girl 2: No, I don’t know

Girl 1: Like he would always have me stay after class to explain things, and I was his favorite student 

Girl 2: Okay, what is your point

Girl 1: Well my point is, basically, we are kinda-sorta-maybe seeing each other

Girl 2: Like you’re dating him?

Girl 1: Like I’m his full-time sugar baby

Girl 2: Deadass?

Girl 1: Deadass. 

What in the Time Portal is this (Sad Version)   

I walk up the stairs, almost collapsing on my bed. The sheets have not been changed from how I left them in the summer, a time when I still optimistically believed college would be fun. It felt silly then, and it feels silly now, to picture myself there, throwing up the baggage I forgot to leave behind in my shoe box of a dorm room. 

Still lying on my bed, staring blankly at the plain ceiling, I realize I cannot recall anything from the last four months, as though I have woken from a coma rather than simply returning from college. My mind turns white and sterile—like those padded rooms they used to put mental patients inside—as my brain plays catch up with reality, inserting false memories to make up for the lost time. 

To solve this temporary amnesia, I put on the biggest coat I own and leave. I need to get out. From across the street, I can see the lights inside Knight Moves, illuminating the darkness. I trudge up the brick steps and pull open the door, my nose and ears blushing red from the cold. My amnesia, however, only intensifies upon entering—balloons, confetti, and frankly, too many people crowd the already compact room. My face immediately flushes from the heat spewing out the radiators. 

Yet even in this daze I realize that I walked in on some party. I am unsure how to proceed. So I stand there—more statue-like than human—as though these unknown guests are not really guests but aspiring art students, pencils in hand, waiting to draw my awkward portrait. I refuse to move, not particularly because I wish to stay, but because I cannot seem to walk away. 

It is precisely then that, in spite of all that changed, at least Knight Moves had not. It still smells like an old library. Andy Warhol is still there to greet me. The train still passes outside the window. My mind calms. Something in my memory returns—a version of myself I lost in college, one that I actually liked. I suppose this is how I am meant to find it again, standing in this cafe, crashing some unknown party. I let the tears well up, but not enough to let them fall. Maybe this party is for me. Then again, how did they know I would be coming home?