Page 73 of Home Ice

“Chet didn’t say that.”

“You don’t know whether or not he said that.” I spotted a half-smile.

***

The next night the crowd did its thing. They had it down to a science. Booing when I had the puck and cheering my teammates. When I scored, half of them grudgingly appreciated it.

We won 2-1, and I gave the media my ninety seconds. I praised my teammates and felt for our road-weary opponents. Mark interrupted, and I headed for the exit.

I was in the truck with the engine warming when the team chat lit up. A run of messages stacked up.

Heath: oh no.

Rook: somebody get his coat.

Trier: let him cook.

Kieran: Varga stayed?

I sat in the truck and watched it all unfold.

Kieran had caught it all on video with his phone. Varga went back to the hallway, showered, dressed, and alone. He planted himself in front of the cameras.

“Okay. I keep hearing a question this week, and tonight I answer it. Not to a single reporter. To everyone at the same time. Listen up. I’ll only say this once.” He’d had his jacket over his shoulder, but he put it on before he continued.

“The pass from Mikkelsen in St. Louis. Everybody thinks they’re so smart about it. They say he gave away a hat trick for marketing. They say it was calculated.” He sneered when he said the word.

“Okay. I was on that ice. There was an empty net, and I was wide open. You know how often I am open like that? Never. For my entire career, I’ve been yelling and nobody passes, because the yelling is a decoy, everybody knows—“ two reporters laughed, and he pointed at them, ”—no. No laughing. This is a lecture. I’m Professor Varga.”

They stopped laughing.

“He passed me the puck because I was open. That was the right play. The open man is the guaranteed goal. That’s it. That’s the entire—“ He stopped and started again, louder. “I have played this game with men who would run over their own mothers on skates for a hat trick. Lovely men. I love them. They would do it. Their mothers know.”

He started to turn, but then he changed his mind. “If you want to write that the nice guy is fake, then fine. Write it. That also means you need to explain the pass. You can’t. You don’t fake decisions at full speed on the ice. If this were marketing, we needed the other team in on the plan. They are fake, too.”

He turned and called once more over his shoulder. “Now I’m going home. My fiancé is holding dinner, and he gets grumpy.”

He walked out of the frame, and there was silence.

I watched it all over again, and then I sent a message:

Rafe: thank you, Lucas

The reply came in seconds.

Varga: good assist tonight. sleep.

I sat there for a while longer. The garage emptied around me, headlights sweeping the pillars one vehicle at a time. The phone buzzed again.

Niko: Saw the clip. Max sent it with fourteen exclamation points.

Niko: He’s loud, and he’s smart. He leads with the wrong foot on purpose. Max wants to know if he gives media lessons.

I drove home with both hands on the wheel, and the building was behind me, and the clip was out there doing whatever it was going to do. It didn’t make the week weigh any less.

I ate leftover Italian beef and then sat on the sectional, pulling up the thread with Max. Nothing past you okay? I’d sent days ago.

I started typing. It came out longer than anything I’d ever typed into a phone. I mentioned that nobody had gotten hurt until somebody did, and that the papers had made him the victim and me the machine, and both of us knew that wasn’t the truth of it. I said I needed to know which kind of quiet this was, and that whatever the answer was, the dinners were real, and everything about him was fun.