"Recently."
The food comes fast because the food always comes fast here, and the woman who brings it calls Matty by his first name and calls me le tranquille, the quiet one, which is what she's called me since I was sixteen and sat in this booth doing homework while Matty argued with the owner about hockey and ate fries off my plate.
We eat. Matty eats like he plays, which is fast and with intent and too much energy for the space available. He takes up the whole side of the booth. His knees hit the underside of the table twice before the sandwich is half gone.
"How's the series from your side," he says. It isn't a question. The way Matty asks about hockey is how other people tell you about their day. He already has the answer and is checking whether you've caught up.
"We're fine."
"You're better than fine. Your defense is playing twenty minutes over their weight class and your goalie is standing on his head."
"You watch a lot of tape for a guy on the other bench."
"I watch everything. It's called preparation." He steals a fry off my plate. "Papa says the same thing. He says your goalie reads entries earlier than anyone he's seen since the guy in Winnipeg, the one with the bad hip."
"He said that?"
"He said it to Maman and Maman said it to me. Same thing." He shrugs. "Lundy's good. I'm not being nice. I need him to not be good for four more games, but he's good."
Hearing Matty say Lundy's name feels like two rooms colliding. The room where I grew up and the room I've been building, and they aren't the same architecture.
"He went to the house," I say.
Matty's hand stops over my plate. "Lundy went to the house."
"For dinner. Maman wanted to feed him. You know how she is."
"I know how she is." He pulls his hand back. "How'd that go."
"Fine. She fed him. Papa interrogated him about ice conditions. They liked him."
"Of course they liked him. He's likable. That's his whole thing." Matty says it flat, the way he says things that are observations and not compliments, and takes a bite. "Did he do the thing."
"What thing."
"The thing where he already knows what you need before you ask for it. The showing-up-with-the-right-answer-before-the-question thing. Did he do that at the house."
I look at him. He is not looking at me. He is looking at the sandwich, which is the Matty version of looking at the thing he is talking about.
"He was a guest in our parents' house, Matty."
"I'm not asking about the house. I'm asking if he ran the room."
There it is. The thing he came here to say, arriving sideways, the way everything arrives in this family.
"He didn't run the room. He was polite. He dried the dishes."
"Because you handed him the towel."
"Because I handed him the towel. That's how dishes work."
"That's not what I'm asking, Jules."
He puts the sandwich down. When Matty puts food down, the conversation has changed weight classes, because Matty doesn't voluntarily stop eating for anything less than a fire or a feeling he can't talk around anymore.
"He's at the house," Matty says. "Fine. Maman's got the bowl out and Papa's checking the door and the whole system isrunning, the whole production, and Lundy's sitting there and he sees all of it, right? He sees how it works."
"He's observant. That's not a crime."
