Oh now that. He hadn't expected that. She actually wished it had been different. Wished that maybe she hadn't left him that day. And he wished it too, of course he did. He'd loved her. And all that stuff she'd said, finding someone to abuse like he was used to, the yelling the recriminations on both sides, it had basis in fact just like everything else. But she'd liked it too, the fame, the championships. She'd loved being second to the champion. And sure she'd hated when he started on the press, hurling abuse at his opponents time after time. He didn't love being called a young Bobby Fischer and boy had that pile of crazy gotten worse. There. That was something he could focus on talking about without getting stuck on their relationship all over again. Nothing either of them wanted to talk about. "Fischer went nuts." he said, seemingly randomly. "In the eighties I mean, Bobby Fischer. Remember he kind of vanished in the last few years, when I really took off? Well apparently he went completely mad in the eighties and ninties, started blaming America for everything. Really lost it. Kind of sad really, used to get compared to the guy all the time, they kept comparing Merano to him and Spassky but yeah...no more comparing. I read it and I don't wanna be like that. I don't want to be remembered like Fischer is. Was it really that bad, the stuff I said to the press, Soviets did deserve everything they got, we both know it. I was just making sure they knew it too. So maybe I did grow. Maybe Fischer was a glimpse of what people thought of me..."
That was enough of that, she was being nice, telling him he'd grown as a person and she was happy and why couldn't she have been like this all the time and not such a...women about it all. All emotional and ranty cause the clock was counting down to too old. Why hadn't she just stayed with him. Maybe it'd be 2011 where they were and they'd have had kids, grandkids even. Maybe they'd have been happy. But no, she couldn't handle the pressure and she'd run cause thats what women did. "I still don't understand why you walked. I mean...you weren't happy but we could have worked on it." He hadn't meant to say it. He didn't want to say it but there the words were all the same. Out in the open.
"I'm sorry too, for how... for you not being happy. I thought you were. You got annoyed sometimes sure but I thought that was just how you were. I didn't think it was a bad thing. I didn't think it was the thing that'd break us. Tell me it wasn't cause of the press, or the commies, or...well okay, most of the commies."
He was doing this badly, and she was doing that thing she did with her lip that meant she was nervous. That she really didn't want to have the conversation that was being had. Maybe he should have invited someone else along to mediate. Jess who seemed to know just what to say in every situation, or Ron or Steph. Maybe it would have been better and not gotten so damn conflicted already. "Do you want to leave it. Finish these and leave the past in the past. Or would it fester if we don't talk about it. I don't want to hate you Florence, don't think I could if I wanted. I just want to know why? I'm not being entirely arrogant when I say I know you once loved me, so what changed. You don't just...stop. But you did. Or you say you did. So tell me why? What did he have that I didn't?"