She goes back to her notebook.
I go back to the film.
She’s right about the defensemen.
I’m not going to tell her that.
She already knows.
I sit across from her.
She puts the phone down.
We’re quiet for a minute — the good kind, the kind that doesn’t need managing — and then she says: “Show me.”
I look at her.
“The Enforcers message,” she says. “Show me.”
I pick up my phone.
Hand it to her.
She reads it. Takes her time. Puts it face down on the cushion between us.
“You already know what you’re going to do,” she says.
Not a question.
“Yeah,” I say.
She nods.
Doesn’t ask what it is.
Doesn’t push.
Just nods. Like she trusts the thing I said in the lobby to still be true up here.
It is.
I pick the phone up.
Put it in my pocket.
We drink our coffee.
Conference Final Game 1.
The building is loud in a way it hasn’t been before — four seasons of building toward something and the city finally believes it’s real. I can hear it warming up from the tunnel. That specific frequency that means something is different tonight.
I tape thirty-one on.
Thirteen wraps. Left to right.
Roll my right shoulder.
The ghost is quiet.
