The ice opens in front of me and there is nobody between me and the goalie. The building sound lifts into something enormous and then it tips over into its own kind of quiet, the way a wave becomes still at the top before it breaks. I cannot hear eighteen thousand people. I can hear my blades on the ice. I can hear my breathing. I can hear the puck on my tape, the small scrape of rubber on composite that is the most specific sound I know.
My legs drive into the surface. My hands are steady. The goalie comes out, cutting the angle, his pads squaring. I pull to the forehand. He commits. I roof it. Glove side, the puck rising off my blade and into the top corner of the net, and the sound it makes hitting the mesh is the smallest, most precise sound in the building.
And then the building comes apart.
Marchetti reaches me first. His gloves grab my jersey and his helmet cracks against mine and his voice is in my ear, something about destiny or history or the future, I cannot make it out over the noise and it does not matter because his arms are around me and the ice is under my knees.
"Berger!" Hájek is there, slamming into the pile.
"Franchise history, baby!" Thompson, from somewhere.
The pile builds. The team around me and the noise above me and the puck in the net and 1:23 on the clock and we are going to win this game.
I look across the ice.
He is on the bench. His helmet is off. His hands are on the boards. His face is still and his eyes are on me and in this building of eighteen thousand people who are screaming, one man is sitting on the away bench and looking at me with an expression I have seen exactly once before. In a kitchen. Three days ago.
Nobody sees it. The cameras are on the pile. The broadcast is running the replay. Eighteen thousand people are looking at me and he is looking at me and they are not the same thing.
I hold it for one second. Then Marchetti pulls me up and the pile swallows me and the second is over and the game is not.
The final eighty-thre seconds are the longest of my life. They pull their goalie. Six on five. The puck in our zone, the shots coming, Lundy eating rubber, the building counting down because the math is simple now and the clock is the only thingleft to beat. Lundy covers the puck with nine seconds left. Faceoff. Jensen wins it clean. The puck goes to the corner and the clock runs and the buzzer sounds and the glass shakes with the noise.
2-1.
The celebration is a wave. The team pours over the boards and the pile in front of Lundy is twenty men deep. Helmets off. Sticks on the ice. Gloves in the air. Marchetti is screaming. Davis is screaming. Mäkinen has his hand on his forearm where the tattoo is and his eyes are closed and his mouth is moving and whatever he is saying is not in English.
And then it settles. The way it always settles. The referees signal and both teams line up and the ritual begins.
The handshake line.
Single file. Glove on glove. The words the same from every mouth. Good game. Good game. Hell of a game. Good luck. You look the man in the eye and you shake his hand and you move on. The ritual does not require originality. It requires you to be present and to mean it.
I go through. Face after face. Glove after glove. Men I played with a year ago and played against tonight.
And then his hand is in mine.
His glove meets my glove and the grip is firm and warm through the leather and his face is the real one. Not the careful version. Not the contained version.
"Good game," he says.
"Good game," I say.
His hand holds for one beat longer than the line allows. Half a second. His thumb presses once against the back of my glove. The pressure is small and specific and it carries everything his mouth cannot say in front of forty men and sixty cameras and a building full of people who do not know what they are seeing.
I press back.
He lets go. He skates toward the tunnel. His shoulders are set and his stick is across his body and his stride is steady and even. This is the last time Wes Mercer will skate off a sheet of professional ice and no one knows. He does not look back. He doesn’t need to.
The tunnel takes him. The Miami jerseys follow. The ice belongs to the Firebirds.
Marchetti grabs my arm. "Berger. Where'd you go?"
"Nowhere." I turn back to the ice. To the building. To the team. "I'm right here."
"Good. Because we have a series starting Tuesday and I need you loud."
"I'm always loud."
"Prove it."
The ice is still cold. The lights are still on. Eighteen thousand people are still on their feet and the season is not over. Marchetti is ahead of me, skating toward center ice where the team is gathering, and the next round is waiting and the ice is ours and I put my stick down and follow him into it.
The End
