Page 83

He goes past me and outside.

I go back through the room and get the binder out of the top of my stall.

It’s a black three-ring binder with a broken corner that’s been in that stall or the one beside it for six years. Every shooter in the division. Twelve pages a team, hand-written, with the ones I’ve added since November. Where a man goes on his backhand. Who telegraphs the shot with his top hand. Which of the young ones on Detroit hasn’t gone five-hole in his life, and which one goes there every time under pressure. A page on Toronto’s captain that’s four years old and still right.

Emil is on the floor by the door, doing his hip openers with one earbud in.

I put the binder on the bench beside him.

“What’s this?”

“It’s the shooters.”

He sits up and takes the earbud out. He studies the cover without touching it. Then he opens the binder at random in the middle. Minnesota. He reads about nine lines before looking up at me with his mouth open.

“This is handwriting.”

“Yeah.”

“This is like six years of handwriting.” He turns two more pages. “Kieran. Kieran, I’ve asked you about this binder four separate times. You told me it was a phone book.”

“It is a phone book.”

“You’ve got a page on a guy who retired.”

“He’ll be coaching in a year.” I get my jacket. “Don’t lend it out and don’t lose it in Nashville. There’s nothing in there that’ll help you if your feet are wrong.”

“My feet are fine,” he says, and then, without looking up from the page, “Are you coming back?”

“Read the Toronto section twice. Their captain’s changed nothing in four years and everybody keeps expecting him to.”

He’s still on the floor with the binder open on his knees when I leave. He calls after me, but I don’t catch the words. I don’t turn around. The binder has lived above my stall longer than Emil has been in the league. I’ve never handed it to anybody. Leaving it open on his knees feels worse than hearing he has the next two starts. That’s how I know Nils was right.

Fin comes on Friday.

He doesn’t call ahead. Arturo rings up from the desk at half past six to say there’s a Doyle downstairs. I tell him to send Fin up. By the time the elevator reaches my floor, I have the door open. My brother stands in the corridor in a fleece dusted with drywall. He hasn’t shaved. His hands won’t stop shaking.

“Don’t say anything for a minute,” he says.

He comes in but doesn’t sit down. He goes to the sink, runs the water, and then shuts it off. Both hands go to the counter. He stands with his back to me, head down.

“There was a man at my house on Thursday night.”

The floor shifts under me.

“Fin.”

“I’m fine. Nothing happened to me. Nothing happened to me at all. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He turns around. “Your fella came. The financial one. At half six in a rental car. He told me to get in the back room and bolt it. I told him to come with me. He said no.”

“Sit down.”

“I’m not sitting down.” He puts a hand out flat. “He stood in the front door, Kieran. A hand on each side of it for half an hour in the cold. Then the other one came up the steps. I heard all of it through a wall about four feet from where I was sitting on the bedroom floor.” He stops and breathes. “He didn’t move,” Fin says. “He could have gone out the back. There’s a keypad there. He knew the code because he’d told the man himself. He could have walked into that field any second. He stayed in the doorway until he couldn’t stand up, and then he lay in it.”

I’m holding the back of a kitchen chair.

“How bad?”

“Three ribs and his face. The bone under the eye’s broken. They kept him in the hospital overnight.” He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I drove him. He told them he fell down the steps.”