Now, Daniel wanted a sit-down.
Varga would do his media at his stall and be funny in two different languages with a face he had not had at midnight. I would do mine and say eight things, seven words apiece. The Rook and Varga Show would do what it did. The room would close. We would go to practice. Nothing in my external life, between now and the end of the day, was going to give him any sign that anything had changed.
“Heads up, gentlemen,” Mark called from the door. “Five minutes. Doors at 9:15. Stalls.”
“At my stall?” Varga called back. “Mark. I live at my stall, where else would I —“
“Goodbye, Lucas.”
The room laughed. I did not. I reached for a stick I did not need to tape and taped it anyway.
Our media availability was as dull and occasionally painful as always.
Three reporters at my stall, with usual questions.How’s the body, Rook? Markel’s system in year three, any tweaks? Mikkelsen on Varga’s wing—what are you seeing?My answers,in order:fine. We’llsee;camp went well. Kid’s going to be a problem.The first three laughed at the last one. The fourth—Sun-Times,thirty years on the beat—had heard me say a version ofkid’s going to be a problemabout eleven different rookies over the life of my career.
Eight feet from me, Varga was on his third group and talking about his face.Gentlemen, gentlemen, it’s not a story, it’s not a story, it’s a face, it’s a regular face,and the reporters laughed about the player they were going to file the easiest twelve hundred words of their week about. He gave them theplay pretty / look prettyline twice.
Half an hour later, the doors closed.
The room exhaled. Cross, who had come in off the ice halfway through and done his media damp-haired and unhurried, stood and walked to the showers without a word. Mark gave the room a thumbs-up from the doorway and disappeared.
I glanced over at Varga. He was scrolling his phone, his thumb moving fast. The new face was sharper than the old face at this angle, and I had the old ache in the bottom of my chest, of seeing a man I loved in the room but not being able to touch him.
He sensed my gaze, and he looked up, but his face didn’t change. He tipped his head about four degrees to the left, his version of asking the question,you good?
I tipped my chin down a quarter inch, my way of sayingyes.
It wasn’t entirely honest.
Tonight,I thought.Tonight, with the door closed, I will fix this. The request. He’ll know I had a question from Mark. I’ll say a reporter wanted a sit-down, I said I’d think about it, I’m leaning no. True enough. Tonight.
I watched Varga leave the room. He was either headed for the lounge or the weight room. I picked up my phone.
One message.
Varga:old man. you’re gonna make me eat lunch with Rafe alone, aren’t you?
Chapter two
Varga
The bagger at the Jewel-Osco put my eggs in their own bag, unprompted. I took it as a positive sign for the day.
I took the long way home, past the high school where the kids played pickup basketball two weeks into hockey season. It was sixty-two degrees at the end of September, and I had the windows down listening to “Hey Ya!” on the radio. The groceries rode shotgun, and the eggs got the footwell.
I thought about Rook the entire drive. By the time I pulled into our driveway, I’d rerun the small grin he gave me through the tape on his stick that morning at least five times. Whatever else happened today, I had that.
The garage door went up on the second tap. The first tap had been doing nothing for three weeks. Rook had said he would look at it, which meant he was going to replace the opener on a random afternoon without mentioning it. I pulled in slowly, waited for the door to come down behind me, and killed the engine.
“Honey, I’m home.” I shoved the door open with my hip. “I bought duck.”
I was already mid-sentence when I saw him. Rook was at the island in his pajama pants and the black T-shirt with a hole at the hem that he refused to throw out. He had half a glass of water in front of him, next to his phone. It was lying closed. His right hand was flat on the marble with the fingers spread, as if he were holding the house down.
He looked up and smiled. It was a genuine smile that shook a little at the corner.
I set the bags down, eggs first, and kept my story running at a lower volume.
“The meat guy was named Eric. He hadcarpe diemtattooedon his bicep and convinced me about the duck. He said a very competent home cook could do it justice, and I said I lived with one. Then he saidohin the voice of a man who assumed I was a bachelor.”
