“I travel half the year. We’re in the playoffs right now. And the apartment is the way it is on purpose. I keep it empty so there’s less for the brain to chew on, and a cat isn’t less. A cat is a moving object with opinions that knocks things off counters at four a.m. for sport.” I have the rest of the list ready. Litter. Vet bills. Theroad. The list I build so I can counter any argument before it costs me anything. She watches me build it.
“All true.”
“So it doesn’t work.”
“I didn’t say it works for you. I said there’s a name for what the cat did to you.” She lets it go where she lets things she wants me to carry out the door. “You don’t have to do anything about it. I’m naming it because you walked in here still thinking about a cat who sat in your lap days ago. You don’t keep things unless they’re holding something up.”
“It was a good night.”
“So it was a good night,” she agrees, and writes nothing. Then, because she’s done this for years and knows exactly when to turn the conversation. “How many times have you watched the goal?”
“Which goal?” We both know which goal she’s asking about.
“Julien.”
“...some.”
“Some?” Her eyebrow arches up. And she waits for my answer.
“Forty. Around forty.”
“And what does the forty-first watch give you that the fortieth didn’t?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know yet.” I run my fingers through my hair. “That’s the whole reason I need to watch a forty-first time.”
“There’s always a forty-first. That’s the trap, and you know it’s the trap. We’ve named it more times than you’ve watched the goal.” She leans back. “The watching feels like it’s walking you toward certainty. It isn’t. It gives you temporary relief. Then the relief fades, and the forty-second time becomes the one you think will give you certainty. You keep mistaking relief for certainty at three in the morning. ”
“I know.”
“You knowing has never once stopped your hand from reaching for the tablet. So here’s the assignment you’re going to hate. Watch the goal twice more this week, with intent. You watch it twice. And the third time the hand goes for the tablet, you let the reach not finish. You sit in the not-knowing. You let the chord hang unresolved and you don’t die of it.”
The chord is the right word, which is why she uses it. There’s a sound a song makes when it stops one step short of finishing. The whole body leans after the note that doesn’t come. My brain spends its nights leaning after that note about a goal that changed nothing in a game we won.
“I hate that assignment.”
“I know. You’ll do it anyway, because you’ve put in more reps than anyone who sits in that chair, and the practice is the only lever this thing respects.” She lets that be the last of it. “We won, Julien. We are leading the series two to one.”
“The number’s never been the point and you know that better than anyone.”
“I do. I just like saying it. Humor an old woman.”
We do the rest of the work. The slow kind. By the end, the goal is a little quieter, the way it goes quiet when I’ve handed it to the one person who doesn’t tell me it doesn’t matter.
In the car afterwards, I sit a minute before I start it. Then I text Berger.
What happens in that building stays in that building. I won’t say anything to anyone.
The dots come and go twice.Appreciate it.
I’m setting the phone down when it goes again.And if you ever want to not say anything in person, I do that too. There’s a place near the rink that doesn’t ask questions.
I look at it a while. Two guys who found the same door from different hallways, and he thinks he’s the one with something to hand me.
Anytime,I send. I start the car. I drive home through a city that has no idea any of this is happening. The routine is waiting. The tablet is waiting. I’ll watch the goal twice, with intent. The third time I’ll sit on my hands and let the chord hang in the dark and not die of it. Somewhere across town a cat I don’t own is asleep on a chair that isn’t mine, holding down a corner of my head it never agreed to give back.
Chapter 6: Lundy
Tikh picks the coffee place. That’s the first thing that hits me. Tikh doesn’t pick things.
