Blueline Baby (Seattle Puckaneers)

1. Jack

JACK

SHENANIGANS

The night starts as most of my off nights do. With shenanigans.

“Let’s go to the club.” My roommate, Jude Donovan, suggested after our practice ended late that afternoon.

Normally, this would be a bar, or an actual club.

Instead, what we’d figured out a few weeks ago during an away swing is that unlike a car key the golf cart key that I still have on my keyring from high school works on any golf cart as long as the brand matches.

This means our first stop of the night is the country club pro-shop which has been dark for hours. There’s a line of golf carts parked in neat rows utterly free for the taking and it takes Smitty, my d-man, barely two minutes to find a cart that still has keys in the ignition.

We’re not stealing them, we’re borrowing them and temporarily relocating them to the seventeenth fairway at one in the morning with every intention of returning them when we’re done.

I floor mine, which on a governed golf cart is essentially the speed of a slow jog, when Jude pulls up next to me anyway.

He’s got two guys hanging off the back of his and tries to run me off into the rough, so I cut the wheel, clipping his front tire.

We both slide sideways across the green, ripping massive gouges out of the grass.

From somewhere behind us Smitty is screaming. “Donuts!”

I crank the wheel hard as I reach the next green, spinning the little cart in a full circle until the back tires slide out from under me. My open beer can launches out of the cupholder and the entire course echoes with the sound of six guys absolutely losing their shit.

The best part are the bunkers. Specifically, the steep sand trap guarding the last green.

If you hit the lip of it just right all four wheels of the cart will leave the ground for one adrenaline rush of a second as you make the jump.

The landing is brutal. Last time we did this it threw Jude clear through the windshield of his cart so we’ve learned to bail out right before the nose buries itself in the sand.

I’m rolling clear of the wreckage of mine, covered in sand as Smitty hits the ramp behind me at an angle that sends the cart flying over my head and for one very brief moment I think there’s no way he’s going to clear me.

The cart slams into the sand barely a foot past my head and I’m laughing so hard my chest hurts. Come sunrise, some poor groundskeeper is going to stand at the edge of this mess and reconsider all his life choices.

Headlights swing across the trees near the clubhouse. Security or the cops.

“Time to go,” I yell and we sprint for our cars parked on the side street.

The bar we’ve been frequenting for years has a bouncer named Barry who works the door most nights.

And six months ago Barry decided that due to circumstances that were largely out of my control I should no longer be allowed back into the bar.

I test my luck with him every few weeks.

I’ve offered him game tickets, signed jerseys and sticks, a private puck shooting session.

You’d think any one of those things would help.

It doesn’t. The second he spots me on the sidewalk his hand goes up.

“No,” he says. “Absolutely not. Not after last time.”

“Barry. Come on man. That wasn’t me.”

“Is there some other NHL player named Jack Anderson? An alter ego roaming the streets of Dallas that I’m unaware of?”

“Name one thing I did wrong.”

He crosses his massive arms. “The dartboard.”

“I told you what happened. All I was trying to say is that the angle of the throw is similar to the angle of a wrist shot and if you’d just let me have one more chance–”

“Go home,” he tells me. But he’s fighting a smile and I count that as a win.

We definitely don’t go home because Jude knows a place a few blocks away that doesn’t have a dartboard and hasn’t kicked me out more than once.

Ten minutes later we’re sitting at the corner of a bar and two girls have already started eyeing us. I wink at the blonde on the left and lift my beer. “Careful,” I tell her. “My coach warned me about girls who look like you.”

She laughs and leans in closer. “Look like what?”

“Like the reason I’m going to have a terrible practice tomorrow.”

It’s an awful line as far as pickup lines go, but delivery is everything and I deliver like it's the gospel truth. They’ve migrated to our end of the bar less than two minutes later and Jude pairs off with the friend while I’m busy getting the life story out of the blonde.

I won’t remember her name in the morning, but right now she has my undivided attention.

“Give me your number,” I tell her.

“You don’t have a pen.”

I flag down the bartender and point at the permanent marker he keeps by the register. Then I roll my sleeve up and hold out my forearm. “Right here. That way I won’t lose it.”

She laughs the whole time she’s writing it and when she’s done, her friend grabs the marker to write her number right underneath it. By last call, there’s a third number scribbled near my elbow in completely different handwriting. I honestly have no idea how that one got there.

My arm looks like a dive bar bathroom stall when we finally leave. I have zero intention of calling a single one of them.

Jude throws an arm around my shoulders out on the sidewalk and squints at the ink running up my arm. “You’re such an idiot,” he says.

“Barry started it.”

“Barry did not start it.”

I hold my arm up under the streetlight and try to read one of the numbers but they’ve all started to blur together.

By tomorrow morning, half this ink is going to be permanently transferred to my bedsheets anyway.

Standing there at three in the morning, I decide that's definitely for the best. "Come on," I tell him. "Let's go find some tacos."