He laughed. It was a good laugh, the kind that came from the chest without stopping to ask permission. “Ilyin. He says the puck was cheating. He says he has video.”
“I do have video,” Ilyin said from across the table, with complete sincerity.
“Nobody wants to see it,” Renaud said, without looking up from his drink.
“I want to see it,” I said.
Ilyin pointed at me. “This one. This one understands.”
It was that easy, which was the thing I hadn’t been prepared for. Not that it was all easy—I was still conscious of the two months, still aware that I was the new entry in a social system that had been running without me, and there were momentswhen the conversation moved through references I didn’t have and history I hadn’t been present for and I had to let it pass without pretending I understood. But nobody made it difficult. Nobody made it a thing. Varga refilled my glass without asking when it got low, and Keegan passed me the bar menu with a look that said order something, and Morozov turned out to have extremely strong opinions about the neutral zone trap that aligned with mine in a way that opened up a twenty-minute conversation I wasn’t expecting to enjoy as much as I did.
By the second round, something in my shoulders had come down from where it had been living for two months.
Not all the way. I wasn’t ready for all the way. But enough that I could sit in a booth in a hotel bar in Chicago, in the city where my career had been taken apart and reconstructed into something I didn’t recognize, and feel something that was at least adjacent to comfortable.
Renaud caught my eye once across the table. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me with that steady, cataloging gaze of his, and then he looked back at his drink, and somehow that was enough—the simple acknowledgment of a man who had decided to do a thing and was satisfied to see it done.
Around ten-thirty, Keegan was in the middle of a story about a road trip to Edmonton that I was fairly certain was missing some critical details on purpose, and I excused myself and went to find the bathroom.
The hotel bathroom was down a short hallway off the main bar, past a coatroom that smelled of damp, because it was raining, through a door that swung shut behind me and cut the bar noise to a muffled hum. I used the urinal, then washed my hands and looked at myself in the mirror for a moment—the same face I’d been looking at for twenty-three years, a little more tired around the eyes than it used to be, but present. Still present.
Two assists. Taz’s one tap. Renaud’s voice in the corridor:there you are.And now I was sharing a beer with them all. Well, not all. Coach wasn’t here, and I swore silently to myself and shook my head as if to get the image of those gray eyes out of my mind. I’d deliberately not thought about him. I did my best not to think about Kincaid. Just kept my head down, washed my hands, ran cold water over my wrists and let the noise of the bar fade into the background. If I stood there long enough, maybe my face would stop feeling hot. Maybe the memory of that smile would just burn itself out like the rest of me had learned to do.
I dried my hands on the scratchy paper towels. The mirror didn’t improve. My hair was still a mess, my eyes a little red from the beer and the day. I shook my head and turned away. The bathroom lights were too bright, anyway.
The door swung open and hit the stopper with a thud. Three guys—Grizzlies’ fans in team jerseys and ballcaps pushed in, the way people did when they’d been drinking since before puck drop and were still riding whatever had carried them through the game. They smelled like beer and the cologne you bought at the drugstore. One had his arm around his buddy’s neck, and they all shoved at each other just a little bit too hard, not angry but looking for a reason to be. Which was crazy because they’d won.
I didn’t make eye contact. Didn’t see the point. I slipped past them, head ducked, and reached for the door.
“Hey, wait up,” one of them said.
I ignored it. It was easier than you’d think, ignoring things. You just learned to keep moving. My hand was on the door when another voice, louder, cut through.
“Hey! You’re Russo? The fuckin’rat.” I ignored them. Didn’t attempt to explain that transfers were just done, and I’d found out about it afterwards. I could have kept going. Should have. But old habits were hard to kill, and I turned and looked back.
There was a moment—not a big one, not the kind that changed everything, but a small hitch in the air. The three of them just stood there, the shortest of the bunch leaning heavily against the sink, the biggest one with his sleeves rolled up like he wanted someone to notice the tattoo on his forearm.
I said, “Just here for a drink, man,” because it was the kind of thing you said, and started to leave, pulling at the door.
“Yeah, sure,” said the biggest one. He stepped forward, blocking my exit with his arm. “Didn’t you guys just lose?”
He grinned. His teeth were too white, and there was something in his face that said this was the part of the night he’d been waiting for. The other two laughed, but it was the laughter of people who’d grown up punching something softer than themselves.
I could have done a dozen things. For a second, I just stood there, watching him try to fill the space.
“Not looking for trouble,” I said. My voice sounded flat in the tile-and-fluorescent-light way of bathrooms everywhere. “Just heading back to my table.”
The big one leaned into the space between us. He was close enough that I could see the stubble on his chin, the way his eyes were a little shiny. “That so? Didn’t look like you were doing much for your team out there.” He smiled, wide and slow, like he’d thought of something clever on the way to the punchline. “Thought you were supposed to be the big trade. What’s your name again? Russo?”
He knew my name. Of course.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, and tried to move past.
He didn’t budge. He just stood there, filling the doorway, suddenly very certain of himself in the way people got when they thought the world was watching, and I glanced at the CCTVcamera pointing at the open door from the hallway and absently noted at least someone was.
The third guy, who’d been quiet until now, made a noise and stepped to the side. “C’mon, let him go,” he said. “We’re not getting banned from another bar tonight.”
But the big one wasn’t done. He put his hand flat on my chest and gave a little shove. Not hard. Just enough to make the point.
