She got on at the arena with the rest of the press pool — laptop, camera bag, the same scuffed boots she always wears on travel days — and she didn’t look at me when she sat down and I didn’t look at her and that’s not what it used to mean.
I look out the window at the Strip going past.
Catch her in the reflection looking at me.
She drops her eyes.
The bus goes through an underpass and the lights kill the reflection and I don’t see her again until we get to the hotel and she’s at the elevator with the rest of the press and we don’t get on the same one.
That’s the protocol.
We’ve been on the road four days.
The protocol holds.
My suite is on twenty-two.
I open the door and stand in the doorway for a second because somebody decided the visiting goalies needed a living room.
Aliving room.
A sectional couch. A coffee table the size of a face-off circle. Floor-to-ceiling windows facing the Strip — the actual Strip, not a sliver, the whole moving lit-up thing that Vegas does at night. A bar I’m not going to use. A dining table that seats six that I’m not going to use either. Beyond the living room: open doorway to a bedroom. King bed. More floor-to-ceiling. Beyondthat: the bathroom, doors propped half-open, and I can already see the marble.
I drop my bag inside the door.
Walk through the living room into the bedroom.
Stop in the bathroom doorway.
I have not stood in a bathroom like this in twelve years of road hotels.
Cream marble floor — heated, I can feel it through my socks. A shower the size of my kitchen back home with cream marblewalls and clear glass and dual rainheads mounted in the ceiling and a teak bench built into the back wall. Separate freestanding tub by the window, the kind you fill up and lie in for an hour. Two sinks. A toilet behind its own door. A pile of towels folded into shapes I don’t have names for.
I stand there.
“That’s a lot,” I say to nobody.
Brick would have opinions.
I go back into the bedroom. Take the suit jacket off. Hang it. Take the dress shirt off. Hang it. Stand by the window in my undershirt looking at the Strip and run the second period in my head — the wraparound attempt I tracked across the crease, the breakaway in the third where I came out three feet and got the angle right.
Good game.
I should be asleep.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
I look at it.
Nova:
I can’t sleep.
I look at the Strip.
Look at the phone.
Sit on the edge of the bed.
