Page 7
Four days before any of that, Mack, my linemate, has been trying the same entry for fifteen minutes and I’m beginning to take it personally.
On game nights, nineteen thousand people turn this building into a drum and you feel it come up through the bench before the anthem is finished. Empty, it just smells. Cold air, sharpened steel, wet gear, and beer that got into the walls sometime before I signed here and decided to stay.
“You planning to pass today?”
“You planning to get open?”
“I’ve been open. I could’ve furnished the place.”
Mack circles back toward the line. “You furnish like you dress?”
“Better. Less denim.”
“You wore a blazer on a plane.”
“To a city with a dress code.”
“It was Winnipeg.”
Rydell snorts behind us.
Sully, our coach, blows the whistle. “Again.”
I point my stick at Mack as I skate backward. “Try looking for twenty-seven. Good-looking guy. Excellent hands. Available immediately.”
“Big fucking mouth.”
“That’ll be him.”
“Can we run the drill before Riley starts charging rent?” Sully asks.
“No guarantee.”
The boys laugh. Good. Room’s awake.
Half of them were eleven years old when I signed my first contract. They have skincare and sleep data and a nutritionist they all share, and three of them have never in their lives taken a shift they were too tired to take, and I would swap places with any one of them tomorrow without asking a single question first.
On the next rep, I drag the defenseman toward the wall, cut behind him, and Mack finally sends the puck where I want it.
Backhand. Post. In.
“There he is,” Mack calls.
I tap my stick once.
“See how easy your life gets when you listen to me?”
“Keep talking.”
“I was planning to.”
We go again.
The next pass comes a foot behind me.
I reach.
My right arm stops.
