Page 41

Kiss Me and Feel Nothing

The arena at midnight sounds like a held breath.

I let myself in through the visitors’ tunnel, where the night crew never locks the side door, and walked down the long concrete corridor with my skates over my shoulder. The emergency lights were on, red exit signs glowing at the corners like tired eyes. Somewhere far off a Zamboni was idling. My boots echoed. I felt like a burglar in a cathedral.

Then I came out into the bowl, and stopped.

The ice was empty except for one man.

He was skating alone in the dark, in slow big loops from end to end, with his hands loose at his sides and no stick, no puck, and no helmet. He wore a black training sweater and black pants. The red glow of the exit signs slid along the ice in long ribbons, and he passed through them like a ghost through wallpaper. He didn’t push, and he didn’t seem to work at all. Every stride was a single long breath, and the blades made a sound I’ve never heard from anyone else, not a scrape but a hush, like silk being pulled slowly through a hand.

I’d watched that man play for six days. I’d hit him and cursed him and called him every name I could think of. And I had never once seen him skate.

That’s the thing about being an enforcer. You spend your whole career learning how bodies fall down. You forget how beautiful it is when one doesn’t.

“You are staring,” said Maksim, without turning around.

“You don’t know that.”

“I can hear your heart from the other end of the building.”

“That’s a creepy thing to say.”

“It is also a correct thing.” He swung in a long arc and came to a stop at the boards with a tiny spray of ice, ten feet from me. He was not out of breath. He was not, of course, doing anything as human as breathing. “You came alone. You did not bring a stick. You are wearing the expression you wear before you lie to a referee.”

“I don’t have an expression.”

“You have several.”

I sat on the bench and laced my skates. My hands were steady, which surprised me. It was my stomach that had gone to pieces.

“I have a thing I want to test,” I said, when I was done.

“Test.”

“You said I have all the time in the world. That you wouldn’t follow me. That I didn’t have to decide anything.” I stood and stepped out onto the ice. It took my weight with a small, familiar creak. “I’ve been thinking about that all day. And the thing is, I don’t believe it.”

“Which part?”

“That there’s a thing in the universe that decided who I’m supposed to want. I hate that.” My voice came out louder than I meant, and the arena took it and threw it back. “I’ve spent my whole life being told what to do by people who thought they knew better. My father. My coaches. The league. Nobody gets to do that to me anymore, and I’m not letting a smell do it either.”

He said nothing. He simply stood at the boards with his hands in his sleeves, listening to me the way nobody ever listens.

“So here’s what I want,” I said. “I want to kiss you.”

I heard him go still. Not just quiet. Still, the way water goes still before it freezes.

“And I want to feel nothing. That’s the test. I do it, it’s nothing, and then I know. It’s the Jäger, or the bread, or some weird chemical, and it’s over. You stop looking at me like that. You stop folding my underwear.”

“I did not know that was a crime.”

“It’s a serious crime.” I skated a little closer. “And if it does something, I want to know that too.”

“And then?”

“And then I don’t know. We figure it out.”

He looked at me for a long time. His face was calm, but he had put one hand very carefully on the boards, and I saw the pale knuckles go white.