“Yeah,” I say. “It’s been — yeah. Good.”
The reporter waits. Reporters always wait. They know if you leave air, someone fills it. I fill it.
“She’s —”
I stop. Start again.
“The program is rigorous. Very data-driven.”
“Do you find it helpful?”
“I find it?—“
I pick up the water glass. Put it down.
“Yeah. Helpful. She’s, uh?—”
In the back of theroom, Anthony Dudek has appeared from nowhere. He is standing next to Toni. He is watching me at the mic table with an expression of pure anticipation.
“She runs a tight program,”
I say.
“Any special changes to your game you’d attribute to the work?”
“The—yeah. The read in the third period. That was … she had a drill. For that specific situation. So…”
I sound like a man who just forgot what words are.
Sully is writing notes on his clipboard. I suspect it is my obituary.
“Would you say it’s changed how you approach the game?”
I look at the back of the room again. I shouldn’t. Toni has looked up from her screen now. She is watching me at the microphone with the professional expression, the one that gives nothing away.
Except her left shoulder is slightly higher than the other one.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s changed things.”
The way I say it isn't the press conference voice. Different register entirely. I realize it as it comes out. So does Sully — pen stopped. So does Anthony, whose grin has achieved a width I didn’t know his face permitted.
Toni looks back at her iPad. Her left shoulder stays where it is.
“Thank you, Max,”
the moderator says, and moves on.
Sully leans in. Very bluntly. “What was that.”
“Press conference.”
“The last part.”
“Still the press conference.”
He scribbles on the clipboard and shows it to me. It says: MEDIA TRAINING. MONDAY!
In the back of the room, Anthony has his phone out. He’s texting. I can see from here it’s the team group chat. By the time I get back to the locker room, Fuze has already responded with fifteen fire emojis and a GIF of a man falling off a cliff labeled MAX AT THE MIC.
