Chapter 1
Chapter one
Rook
Istood at the kitchen island in my socks and smiled at the coffee maker because Varga had loaded it last night before he’d joined me in bed. He did that on skate mornings. He had been doing it for five years without being asked.
I poured the coffee into the UMaine Black Bears mug he had pulled down for me last night. The mug had been in my life longer than Varga. I’d earned it in college and carried it through three apartments to this kitchen.
Upstairs, the house was quiet. Varga slept hard after games.
He’d returned home at midnight buzzing from his second-period primary assist and the win, and he had narrated from the bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth—the kid had it on a platter, Rook, on a platter.
All I did was put the puck where his stick was going to be, that’s a Mikkelsen goal with a Varga assist. The kid is going somewhere.
He’d spat, rinsed, and climbed into bed in his shorts.
After telling me three more things, he was asleep before I turned off the lamp.
I sipped my coffee.
6:47. Twenty-eight minutes before I needed to be in the truck. He’d sleep for another half hour. I knew the rest of his morning by heart.
Through the window above the sink, the backyard was still in shadow. On the stove, the cast-iron pan sat clean. I had bought it in our second year. Varga used it every morning for eggs and had never asked where it came from. He had simply, at some point, started reaching for it.
I rinsed the mug and climbed the stairs for one last look.
The bedroom was dim with the blinds drawn.
On the bed, a long dark shape lay under the gray duvet, breathing slowly.
I stood in the doorway with the tug in my gut to cross the room and kiss the side of his neck before I left.
It would wake him halfway, and he would mutter in Hungarian and pull my hand down to his chest for ninety seconds before letting me go.
I did it. His heart beat slowly against my palm.
In the kitchen, the coffee maker clicked itself off behind me. I stood for a second with my hand on the doorknob to the garage and thought: I love that man. I love this house. I love this morning.
I merged onto the Edens Expressway as the Chicago skyline rose ahead of me. I drove past one of Cross’s billboards, thirty feet of jaw above the words YOUR SEASON STARTS HERE, and waved.
After taking the exit toward the Performance Center, I threaded through the warehouse blocks and the new mid-rises that had gone up over what used to be a foundry.
The Center sat low and long on the river, no signage on the street side.
I drove around to the back, badged in at the players’ gate, and rolled down into the underground garage.
I rode the elevator up and stepped into the corridor leading to the locker room. The light was on in the video room as I passed, which meant Coach Markel had been at his desk since six. I passed Cal, twenty-three and two years in from the AHL pipeline. He was still apologizing through doorways.
“Morning, Rook,” he said.
“Morning, Cal.”
The dressing room was half-full. The rookie, Mikkelsen, sat at his stall two down from Varga’s, looping his skate laces. Two of the younger guys were in the corner, on their phones. Through the rink door, I heard blades; Cross was already on the ice.
Varga’s stall, two down from mine, was empty. I hung my jacket and sat, pulling my gear from my bag. I had taped one stick and was halfway through the second when my phone buzzed in my jacket pocket. I dug it out.
Varga: where’d you go old man
I checked the clock above the door. 8:04. He’d woken up four minutes ago, looked at his phone, and saw I was gone. Before he made espresso, he’d sent me five words to tell me he’d reached for me first.
Rook: rink. coffee was on. go back to sleep.
Three dots appeared and then disappeared.
Varga: can’t. bed is wrong without you in it.
Rook: see you in an hour.
Varga: forty-three minutes.
That would peg his arrival at 8:47. Coach Markel tried to move him to 8:30 three years back, but he failed. Varga insisted on making a solo entrance. Being late was the easiest way to do that.
I put the phone down, and the locker room door opened. It was Heath. He wore a gray hoodie and found me across the room, nodding slightly, and I nodded back. Three seasons of that nod. He walked to his own stall on the opposite wall and started taking his skates out of his bag.
Varga rounded the corner at 8:41, six minutes early. He was already mid-conversation, or I should say monologue, with Kieran.
”—and I’m telling him, sir, I don’t care what kind of avocado you grew up with; this is the avocado that exists in the Jewel-Osco on Clybourn. It’s the avocado available to us, and you and I are going to make guacamole with this avocado, or we are going to go without—“
Kieran peeled off without comment. Mikkelsen looked up and listened. Varga had his bag on one shoulder, his jacket on the other, and he placed a hand on Mikkelsen’s shoulder, as if he were steadying a boat at the dock.
I didn’t look up. I had a stick between my knees and tape between my fingers. Looking up at Varga’s entrance every morning was the kind of small thing the room would have noticed. He knew I’d heard him from the door. That was enough for both of us.
”—the kid can’t be twenty-three, he’s wearing a vest, he’s having a moment about Hass versus Fuerte—“
“What’s a Fuerte?” Mikkelsen asked. It was the first words I’d heard out of his mouth all morning.
Varga squeezed his shoulder. “What’s a—Rafe, look at me. We’re going to fix this together.”
I couldn’t help looking up, and I immediately saw that Varga had shaved.
He had come to bed last night with his usual beard—the one he said made him look like a real hockey player. At some point this morning, after I was gone, he had taken it off cleanly, and the face he was wearing into the room was one I had not seen on him for at least three years.
I looked back down at my stick.
“Varga,” Trier said from the end of the long wall. “What happened to your face?”
The question was an invitation. He put his hand on his jaw and held it there, stricken. “What?”
“Your face.”
“My face is a face, Trier.”
“The beard.”
“Ahem…the beard is gone, Trier, I have liberated it, I have moved on and entered a new—“
“Why?”
Varga stopped. He stood there with his bag still on his shoulder and considered the question. “New season,” he said to the room. “New me. If I’m going to play pretty, I might as well look pretty too.”
The room groaned. A roll of stick tape arced through the air and hit him in the thigh. Pratt, in his stall, did not look up.
“Pretty,” Trier said. “He says pretty. Pretty what?”
“Pretty everything. Beautiful, if you prefer that.”
“Cross is going to put you on waivers.”
“Cross adores me. Cross is going to write a song about my —“
“Varga,” Pratt said from the stall. He said it once, at the flat volume he said everything.
Varga stopped. He looked at the goalie. “I’m pretty.”
“Sure,” Pratt said.
The room laughed. Varga, vindicated, dropped his bag at his stall, peeled off his jacket, and hung it with two-handed care. It was reverence he reserved for a gift I’d given him on his last birthday.
He stood and approached my stall.
“Rook,” he said, mid-stride, “I need tape.”
“You have tape.”
“I need your tape.”
“It’s the same tape.”
“It’s not the same tape.” He was already reaching up over my head to the shelf where I kept my rolls, and his chest came within four inches of my face.
I smelled the cologne—the leather-scented one I’d told him I liked in our second year together.
He didn’t wear it often, but he wanted me to know when he did.
Varga smelled of cologne, toothpaste, and a faint underlayer of espresso. In other words, he smelled like our bathroom in the morning.
He came down with two rolls of tape.
“Stay out of grocery stores,” I said, into my knee pad.
He pointed the rolls of tape at me. “You,“ he said, “are anti-produce. You are part of the problem.”
“Move.”
“I’m moving.”
He grinned at me with a private grin. It lasted for about a second and a half. Then we were the Rook and Varga Show again, as he walked back to his stall with two rolls of tape held aloft in victory.
“I am going to make Rafe try guacamole tomorrow,” he announced. “Rafe, you’re going to lose your mind.”
“I’ve had guacamole.”
“You’ve had guacamole, but you haven’t had mine.”
Rafe smiled at his laces.
Mark, our PR director, walked into the room, clipboard in hand.
He worked the stalls counterclockwise from Cross’s empty one. He was friendly without being warm and came to all the home games, sat in the family box, and didn’t talk about work there.
He stopped at Varga’s stall first. Varga had his skates in front of him, checking the steel. He looked up and gave Mark a wide, unfiltered smile.
“Lucas. The —“ Mark gestured at his own chin.
“Don’t you start, Mark.”
“I was going to ask if I needed to put out a press release.”
“Go ahead and put it out. I love a headline.”
“I don’t think they’ll write about that. Hawks Magazine. They want a ten-minute chat for the season-preview piece. Probably going to ask you about Mikkelsen.”
“They want to know if Rafe’s real? I’ll confirm he’s real.”
“I’m real,” Mikkelsen said, not looking up.
“He’s real. Tribune also wants you on the bench mic Thursday.”
“Easy. Done. What else?”
“That’s it.”
“That’s all you’ve got, Mark? I have a new face—“
“Goodbye, Lucas.”
Mark moved on, hit Rafe for a thirty-second exchange about a rookie podcast, and then he was standing in front of me with his clipboard.
“Rook. How’s the morning?”
“Fine.”
“Good.” He scribbled something. “Quick thing, if you’ve got a second.”
“Shoot.”