The road to New York City, where I was introduced to a new board game in Union Square and bumped into the great Ray Davies at an Italian restaurant, began over drinks with Chief Low Dog — warrior poet of the Monrovia Tribe — at Howard's Subway Inn in Linthicum.

The hour was late. I'd just flown in from Tinseltown for a summer meal of Silver Queen corn, Eastern Shore watermelon and steamed crabs with my folks before heading to Gotham City to research a zombie movie.

Low Dog and I discussed writing in the second person — has it ever been mastered? — over midnight pizza at Howard's, a paneled-basement classic of 1950s America.

With the debate in mind — the second person point-of-view is treacherous, devouring better men than us — I was on an Acela train ($144 one way from the BWI rail station) to Manhattan.

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In New York, I stay at the Seafarers & International House in Union Square, a hostel for sailors and foreign travelers. The bathrooms are in the hall, but the rates are less than you'd pay to take your best girl to dinner in Little Italy.

Across from the boarding house is Union Square, with statues of George Washington and Gandhi and a plaque commemorating the first Labor Day observance in the USA: Sept. 5, 1882.

Alone in a sea of chess players sat Christopher Elis, a long-ago immigrant from Greece who invented and handcrafted a board game called “Give & Take.”

Think of a chessboard in which the playing pieces are identical, smooth obelisks of wood stained black and tan. The rules combine elements of chess, backgammon and checkers, with multiple jumps and peasants becoming kings.

Except for the especially curious, most people couldn't fathom it, and while Elis received a few glances, he mostly waited for challengers, as nearby chess hustlers took on all comers for a buck a game.

If Low Dog were writing the story, it might go something like this:

“You invent a beautiful game, but the world doesn't care. You imbue it with simplicity and elegance and diabolical plotting ... yet the depth of thought necessary to play well is beyond the reach of your explanations ...

“You sit alone on a summer evening in the most populated island in the United States, watching the hipsters amble by, waiting ...”

pawn@alvarezfiction.com