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She left the room and my phone buzzed. I frowned at the screen. I hadn’t gotten a call from this number in years. And it had been a real thorn in my paw. I considered pushing it to voice mail, but I knew he wouldn’t leave a message.
“I need to take this,” I mumble.
Megan looked surprised, but quickly smiled and waved me out of the room.
“Hello?”
“Sounds like me and you are running into each other on the recruiting trail.” The boisterous voice of my once colleague, Sam Hirschfeld, rings in my ears.
“Sure seems like it,” I say, forcing a good-natured laugh.
“Do we need to talk about this?”
“I don’t know,” I say, keeping to the side of the hallway so a nurse could push an EKG machine to a room. “Do we?”
“Fuck, man,” Sam says, laughing. “How the hell are you? I haven’t heard from you in ages. I think it’s been since we were at that tournament in Vegas? Remember that?”
My chest tightens. The tournament was less memorable than the after-party in which we both got tanked in the party suite and then paid two women in cash for their services. It was the first and last time I used someone I hadn’t vetted.
“It’s been a while,” I say, leaning against the wall and stare at my sneakers. “What’s the occasion?”
“Come on, man. I can’t call my old colleague?”
“Of course you can,” I say.
“Look, I don’t want any trouble. Do we need to have a system here? Last thing I want is to snag a defenseman from Naperville out from under you when you’ve been working him for the past two years.”
“Sounds pretty specific,” I say.
“Kid has talent.”
“I know he does.”
“How do you want to do this?”
I can practically see the toothpick he’s probably chewing, poking out from beneath his brown mustache.
What he was asking wasn’t within the rules. There were times when coaches made personal pleas to other coaches over certain athletes. But it was all strictly under the table. And it was rife with potential for scandal.
“I think we let the guys decide where they want to go.” I keep my voice even as a nurse rolls an ultrasound machine up the hall, stopping just outside the door of the room Megan is waiting in.
“Come on, man,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“We’ll just be getting started in here, Mr. Carroll,” the nurse says, shutting the door behind her.
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
“At least give me a heads up if there’s a kid you want me to back off of.”
“That sounds a lot like a rules violation.”
“Well, it’s not like you’re a real rules follower, now, are you?” He laughs in short, sharp chuckles that has me wanting a shower. The way he lowers his voice makes it clear he’s not talking about hockey anymore.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“Look, I would never say anything, but we both know about your predilection for a certain type of woman.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, pinching the bridge of my nose. I’m quiet for a long moment as he lets his words hang in the air.
