"Whatever it is," he said.
That was a complete sentence, for Hartley.
Then: "Fix it."
I waited.
"You're making the ice cold."
He left.
The door closed behind him.
The room continued. Somewhere behind me, Kieran had found his second wind and was explaining something to Mivo. Reeves laughed. The normal noise of a room returning to itself, the post,practice frequency I had lived inside for years , familiar, specific, beautiful in the way Shay had once said something was beautiful and I had made a note of it and filed it in no column.
I picked up my gear.
I walked to the showers.
The water was hot.
I stood in it for a long time. I was not doing anything. I was not running a version or mapping a sequence or adding a column. I was standing in hot water while the room emptied out beyond the wall and the rink sat quiet on the other side of the building and the system , all of it, the whole careful architecture , was failing with the silent, structural certainty of a thing that had been holding too much for too long.
Whatever it is. Fix it. You're making the ice cold.
Hartley, who had communicated with me primarily through nods and meaningful silence for three seasons. Hartley, who had never once offered an unsolicited opinion about anything that wasn't directly related to defensive zone positioning. Hartley, who had seen enough ice to know the difference between a manhaving a bad week and a man who was doing something to himself.
The ice knew.
I had told myself , for weeks, for months, for the better part of two years if I was being precise, which I was always being, even when I didn't want to be , that I was making a rational decision. That the distance was a cost I had calculated and accepted. That the alternative was a set of risks I had assessed and declined. That I was a professional with a system and the system was working and the things I wanted were in their designated columns and the columns were holding.
The ice knew.
Mivo's face when the words had landed wrong. Kieran's mouth closing around a joke that had deserved to land and hadn't been allowed to. Coach at the boards with his clipboard and his expression of a man who had been here before. Shay across the room, performing easy, performing fine, performing the version of himself that held the room together while I stood at the blue line after a loss and couldn't put the game down.
He's protecting you from the cost.
I stood in the water.
I thought about a couch on a Tuesday. I thought about both hands. I thought about the hair in the equipment room and the motion my arm had made before I'd authorized it and the way I'd looked at my own hand afterward like it had done something without me , which it had, which was the point, which was the thing I had been refusing to examine, which was that some part of me had stopped waiting for the rational version to catch up.
I thought about three seconds of eye contact I hadn't broken first.
I thought aboutnot everyone does.
I thought about the water stain on his ceiling. The irregular shape. The nothing it looked like.
I turned off the water.
I stood in the quiet for a moment.
The room was empty. Everyone had gone. The rink was on the other side of the wall, keeping its ice perfect for tomorrow, the refrigeration units doing their patient, reliable work.
I got dressed.
I did not run a version.
I did not open a column.
