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Brick skates past me toward the tunnel and I tell him, “Bar owes you one.”

“Bar can fuck itself.”

“Good talk.”

He keeps going. I follow him off. The game sheet will say loss and the shift sheet will say eighteen minutes and change, and neither one of them cares how close the puck came to going in.

The room is louder when nobody wants to talk. Tape tears, Velcro rips, somebody drops a skate guard and leaves it lying where it landed.

Brick gets his gloves off first and shoves his stick into the rack hard enough that Roman’s comes out the other side and hits the floor.

Roman looks down at it, then at Brick. “Easy.”

Brick pulls his jersey over his head. “You worried about the stick?”

“I’m worried when you throw yours at mine.”

“Then move it.”

Roman stands up. Not fast, which is worse, and Brick turns toward him with his undershirt still twisted around his ribs.

Mack’s already moving. I am closer.

“Brick.”

He takes one step and I reach for his upper arm with my left hand, and my palm hits the sleeve, and my fingers stay open.

They go across the fabric and slide off it like I have never held anything in my life.

For one stupid beat I try again. Nothing. Brick keeps going because I have not stopped him, and Mack gets a forearm across his chest and drives him back two steps into the end of the stall row.

“Enough.”

“I’m fine.”

“Didn’t ask.”

Roman picks up his stick. “I’m done.”

“Good,” Mack says. “Stay done.”

For a second nobody in that room reaches for anything. Down at the far end the speaker reconnects with a soft electronic chirp and the music comes back low, and tape starts tearing again, and the whole thing is over.

I am standing there with my left hand open beside my hip. The fingers look like fingers. I tell them to close and they do it late, one after another, like men getting up off a bench.

Roman comes past on his way to the showers and his eyes drop once and he does not stop. Better.

I sit down in my stall and go at the left skate, and the lace takes two tries because I keep handing the job to the right hand without deciding to.

Mack shows up in front of my knees before I have gotten it loose. He’s breathing hard enough that the collar of his shirt is moving with it, and his eyes go to my hand and then back to my face.

“You’re playing good on eighteen minutes.”

“Three short.”

“Still good hockey.”

“Still three.”