"You did it on the worst road trips all year. You never skipped it. Now you're skipping it." He sets the skate down. "I'm not asking. I'm telling you I see it. His shoulders are still up when he finds you now. They used to drop. You used to be the thing that dropped them. You taught me to read it. I read it."
"You read it."
"Two observations. No interpretation. Just data. When you see the thing, you don't have to fix it. You just say it once so the other guy knows it's seen. You did that for me. Pizza for two or three. You never made me explain. I'm doing it back. That's the whole sentence. You know where I am."
He goes. He's right about the shoulders. I've watched it three nights running, Soucy coming into a room, finding me, the shoulders staying up where they used to drop. I don't know if I'm not allowed to fix it or if I'm only afraid to try.
Soucy comes past my stall with his bag on his shoulder.
"Glove was quick tonight," he says.
"Their kid telegraphs."
"Six times far side. I had it on the bench in the first."
"You could've told me."
"You had it by the third on your own."
"I had it by the second."
"You had it by the third." He shifts the bag. "Their D-pair gets tired around the twelve-minute mark of the third. Both pairs. They change late. There's a window if you push the pace there."
"I'll tell Bodie."
"I already told Bodie. I'm telling you so you have it in the net."
"I have it."
"Carpool's at eight forty for the morning skate. I'll be downstairs."
"Eight forty."
"Eight forty," he says again. The number twice. He's gone down the tunnel.
That's the most we've said off the ice in nine days, and most of it was a scouting report. It was almost enough to make me believe the path between the stalls is still there if either of us would walk it.
Game 3 is forty-one minutes old and I own it. I've owned it since the warmup, every read early, every angle true, the puck slow and big and arriving where I already am. We're up two. Their half-wall kid finally changed it up, went glove side, and I had that too.
Karl is behind their bench with his arms folded and his face doing nothing, the face that means he's three plays ahead. The puck goes hard around the boards to the far side, their winger driving the back door, and I push.
It's a push I've made ten thousand times. Post to post. The lateral drive my mother's studio built into my hips before I knew what it was for, the thing that gets a goalie across the crease faster than a puck can cross it. I've made this push in my sleep.
I make it now, and somewhere in the middle the inside of my right leg comes apart.
There's no sound.
That's the part nobody tells you. You expect a sound and there isn't one. The push doesn't finish. The leg goes out from underme the way a leg is never supposed to go. I am down. Not in a save. Just down. The puck is in the net behind me and I don't turn to look at it. The net is the smallest thing in the building right now. The biggest thing is that I can't make my right leg do the next part.
The whistle goes. Zay is there along with the other trainer. The building drops into the hush a building drops into when it understands before the people in it do.
"Don't get up, Lundy. Don't get up. Talk to me. Where."
"Groin. Right. It's the groin. I felt it go. It went." My own voice is calm, which is wrong. The steady hand reporting on its own failure like it belongs to someone else.
"Okay. Okay, stay down."
They get me up between them because I can't do the part where I get myself up. That is the part. My arms over two sets of shoulders and my right leg taking none of me. The building begins to clap, the clap that means we see you and we're sorry and please be okay.
