Page 98

“Yeah.” A flicker. “That’s why it’ll be perfect.”

He was right. I hated that he was right.

I took off my gloves.

The crowd gave one great rolling roar. It was like standing at the base of a wave. I saw the referee, a stocky man with a gray mustache, put up his hand and slow to a stop, resigned, letting us have it. I saw the Kings’ bench on its feet. I saw Jason Reyes at the boards with both hands on his helmet, his mouth open in a silent shriek of what I believe was joy.

Lex took hold of my jersey with his left hand.

I took hold of his.

“Hard,” he said, in my ear. “I can take it. Don’t hold back.”

“That,” I said, “is the one thing I cannot do.”

His fist came round in a fast, ugly, beautiful arc.

I will describe this as a man who has trained his whole life for restraint.

He hit me. It was a real punch, thrown by a professional, and I let it land on my cheekbone with a crack that rang in my teeth. I did not flinch. My head turned with it, as a human head would, and I made a show of shaking it off. The crowd howled.

Then I hit him.

I hit him once, in the ribs, glancing, calculated to the fraction of an inch, with perhaps one-fortieth of my strength, and I felt the air go out of him and heard the little grunt that meant he had taken it well. His grin was red and delighted. He came back at me with a hook, and I slipped it, and he grabbed a fistful of my jersey and dragged me half around, both of us skating, the ice spitting up from our blades, and the noise of the building rose like surf.

It was a good fight. I must say so. It was, by any measure, a wonderful fight, fast and intimate and rough, two big men trading shots at the center of a white circle while the world roared. His nose was bleeding by the time it ended. I had a cut over my eye that would have been a scar on anyone else. Every blow I threw, I threw with a kind of shamed tenderness; every blow he threw, he threw as though he wanted it, all of it, every ounce of the thing inside him that had been looking for a place to go.

It was the first time I understood him.

He was not violent. He was full. He carried a weight of feeling too large for the ordinary channels, the way I carried mine, and the ice was the only place in the world where either of us was permitted to set it down. In that sixty seconds, I saw the whole of him plain. And I thought, with a clarity like a bell: I could never be afraid of this man. I would meet him anywhere.

The referee stepped in. The linesmen took hold of our arms. As they pulled us apart, Lex turned his head and looked at me.

I was still gripping his jersey. I had not noticed. My knuckles were white.

You okay? his eyes said.

I gave him the smallest possible nod.

He grinned, bloody-toothed, wonderful, and let the officials take him away.

The penalty boxes at the Halden Arena sit side by side, divided by a single pane of scratched Plexiglas and a strip of rubber matting no wider than a man’s hand. It is one of the small comedies of the sport. Two men who have just tried to break each other’s faces sit five minutes in a space the size of a closet, staring at their skates, listening to each other breathe.

I sat in mine. He sat in his. Neither of us looked up.

The crowd was still on its feet. On the ice the game had restarted, someone had pulled a puck from the corner, the referee was blowing his whistle in the far end. Over the din, I could hear his heartbeat, fast, a little uneven, and the small wet sound of him swallowing blood.

“You’re bleeding,” I said, not looking at him.

“You’re bleeding.”

“I do not bleed.”

“You’ve got a cut, ice prince, it’s right on your face.”

“It is a cosmetic effect.”

He laughed. It came out thick. I heard him wipe his nose on his sleeve. Then, through the Plexiglas, in a voice so low that only I could hear: