"Yeah. I'll call you after."
"Okay. Talk later. Love you."
"Love you."
I hang up. The screen goes dark. I sit in the car for a minute. The conversation was fine. Two people who talk every day, checking in. The thing that is wrong with this is that I am sitting in a parking lot in a wrinkled suit and I just told him I was fine.
I pick up my bag. I get out and walk in.
The locker room is already moving. Hájek is at his stall taping his stick with the concentration of a man who believes the pattern determines outcomes. Jensen is two stalls over, scrolling through his phone. Marchetti's music is playing from the speaker he brought last month. Horns and a piano fighting for custody of the melody.
"Berger." Thompson is across the horseshoe, pulling a sweater over his head. His suit jacket is already on its hanger, pressed, the creases sharp. "Did you sleep in that?"
I look down at the suit. "I was busy," I say. "Didn't have time to press it."
"Busy doing what? You live alone."
"Busy being productive, Thompson. Some of us have processes. The suit is a temporary casualty of a larger initiative that is not yet ready for public review."
"So you were too busy to iron a suit."
"I'm telling you the suit is a temporary deviation from a standard that will be restored. Five-nine for my presentation this morning. Below average but within tolerance."
Marchetti leans around his stall divider. "You rated yourself?"
"For the suit. The rest of the package is carrying it."
"What point are you even making?" Thompson says.
"The point is that when you can put a number on a problem, the problem has boundaries. The suit has been numbered and noted. We can all move on."
"Yes, please let’s move on," Jensen says without looking up.
"Jensen, thank you."
Thompson shakes his head and laughs. Marchetti is watching me with his head tilted the way Marchetti watches things when his brain is working, but his mouth is smiling and the smile is what I need it to be.
Hájek glances up from his tape job. Mueller, arriving behind me, stops at the edge of the horseshoe.
"What's going on?" Mueller says.
"Berger slept in his suit," Thompson says and I let it go.
The room keeps filling. I sit at my stall. The tape is where I left it, two rolls, left of the gloves. Hangers separated by type. Toiletry bag at the right angle. Everything in the stall is where I put it because I check it every time.
Marchetti appears at the edge of my stall. "You good?"
"I'm good. Why?"
"No reason. You seem a quiet today."
"I'm conserving energy for the game."
"Right." He grins. "Okay."
"I'm good, Marchetti."
"I hear you." He pushes off the divider. "We're getting food after the game. Fonty found a Vietnamese place in Buckhead. He says the pho is legitimate."
