"Carolina. He has to face Alexei on the ice. He has to do that himself. You can't do it for him. But you can be there after."
"How do you know about the Carolina game?"
"I googled the Reapers schedule the same night you told me about Nikolai. I have been tracking your games for three months. I have opinions about your power play that I am saving for a later conversation."
"You are terrifying."
"I am your sister. Same thing."
We hang up. I sit in the cold apartment for ten more minutes. The morning light has warmed from thin to gold. The apartment is still empty. The apartment is still cold.
But the teaspoon is in the mug. Four miles away, in an apartment that is clean and quiet and not immaculate, the teaspoon is in the mug.
Ava is right. Go first. After the game.
The speed is the thing. The going-first is the speed. The dramatic option at the right time.
I just have to wait for the right time.
NIKOLAI
The Reapers play Carolina on a Saturday night in Atlanta and Alexei Petrov is on the ice.
I see him during warm-ups. He is the same and he is different. The same cheekbones, the same skating stride, the same blond hair and Russian jaw. Different jersey. Different number. Three years older and the three years are visible in the way that three years are visible on a hockey player: the stride is half a step slower, the edges not quite as deep, the body compensating for the decline with positioning and the veteran intelligence that replaces speed when speed leaves.
He does not look at me during warm-ups. The not-looking is deliberate. I know it is deliberate because I spent eight months learning the vocabulary of Alexei Petrov's avoidance and the vocabulary has not changed.
The game starts. The puck drops. The arena is eighteen thousand people and the eighteen thousand people do not know that the man on their blue line is playing a game within the game, a private contest that has nothing to do with the score and everything to do with the three years between the last time these two men shared ice and now.
Alexei plays left wing. I play right defense. The matchup is inevitable. The coaching staff does not know about us (nobody knows, the secret was the architecture's first achievement) but the line-matching produces what the line-matching produces and the producing is this: Alexei Petrov skating toward my blue line with a puck on his blade and three years of silence between us.
He comes down the wall. The boards are mine. I position the way I position, the way I have positioned for eight seasons, the way my body knows to position without the brain's involvement. The gap is correct. The angle is correct. The stick is placed. The lane is closed.
He tries to go inside. I take the puck. The take is clean. Not violent. Not performative. The take is the hockey, pure hockey, the specific art of reading a man's intentions through the angle of his blade and the weight of his stride and taking the thing he is carrying.
He tries again two shifts later. Same wall. Same lane. Same result. I take the puck. The take is clinical.
In the second period, during a board battle, his mouth is close to my ear. The proximity is the hockey proximity, two men pressed against the boards fighting for a puck. The proximity is also the proximity.
"Your rookie," he says. Low enough that no one hears. Russian accent. The smile audible in the voice, the smile that cuts, the smile I remember from the phone call three years ago when he said "too intense, man" and meant "I am not strong enough for what you gave me and the not-strong-enough is your fault."
Two words. "Your rookie." The words are the weapon. The words are Alexei using the access, the old access, the knowledge that Nikolai Sokolov has someone and the someone can be diminished with a possessive pronoun and a label.
I do not react. I do not speak. I take the puck. I clear the zone. I skate to the bench.
The not-reacting is not the control. It is the opposite of the control. The control would have produced management: a response calibrated to minimize damage, a strategic deployment of silence designed to protect. The not-reacting is not management. It is absence. Alexei's words arrive and find no wall to hit because the wall is not there. The wall was built for Alexei. Alexei no longer warrants construction.
The realization arrives on the bench between shifts with a Gatorade in my hand and sweat cooling on my neck.
Alexei does not warrant the wall. Alexei is a man with declining foot speed and a two-year contract who said two words during a board battle and the two words bounced off nothing because there is nothing to bounce off. The wall I built for Alexei is unnecessary. The wall I maintained for three years is unnecessary. The wall I applied to Eli is unnecessary.
The wall was built for a man who is not worth it. The wall was maintained against a world that is not threatening. The wall was applied to a person who is not the threat.
Mars's sentence: a data point about him. Not about risk.
The data point is in a Carolina jersey skating with half a step less speed than he had three years ago, and the data point is small, and the data point was never worth the architecture.
The third period. I play the cleanest defensive game of my career. Not because of anger. Not because of the wall. Because the wall is gone. The wall was weight and the weight is gone and the gone is lightness and the lightness is speed and the speed is the best hockey I have played since the corridor, since the pasta, since the fortress opened its door.
