Chapter 1 #2
“Got a guy from The Athletic angling for a sit-down. It’s a veteran piece. He wants to hear about the Markel system and the defense. He asked for you specifically. Said he wants to do it right and doesn’t want a canned forty-five minutes.”
“Hm.”
“He’s good. Long-form. You’ll like him.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Sure. No rush. He’s pitching it for late October. We’ve got some time.”
“Who is it?”
“Kovac,” Mark said. “Daniel Kovac.”
My gut tightened.
The unease didn’t show in my face, and I took ten seconds to compose my voice.
“I’ll think about it.”
“Sure. No rush.” Mark made a small mark on his clipboard. “I’ll let him know we’re considering.”
“Cool.”
“Thanks, Rook.”
He moved on.
Daniel Kovac.
I felt my hand want to do something, close or clench, but I didn’t let it happen because Varga was eight feet away.
He was whistling something he had picked up off the radio, and there was no version of the next ten minutes in which I was going to let any part of my body tell my man that something was wrong before I had decided what to do about it.
Six years ago in March, we had a game in Toronto. Two hours later, I found myself alone, four blocks from the team hotel, in a place a guy I’d never met had recommended on Twitter.
I sat at the far end of the bar, and a man my age took the stool two over from mine. He said he was a writer and covered hockey. Somewhere between the second and third drinks, he asked me what it was like playing the way I played, and going home to nobody.
I said I’d spent fifteen years watching the other guys go home to somebody and told myself I’d get to it after I was done. He asked if there was anyone I had in mind for after. I said not yet.
He asked what she’d be like. I said he, and then I didn’t take it back. I knew I’d said it to a reporter, and I kept going anyway. It was the most I’d ever said to anyone.
He shook my hand at the door and said, take care of yourself, Mr. Rook. He walked in the other direction down Queen Street with his hands in his pockets. I went back to the hotel and lay awake until four a.m.
I never told another reporter.
Now, Daniel wanted a sit-down.
Varga would do his media at his stall and be funny in two different languages with a face he had not had at midnight.
I would do mine and say eight things, seven words apiece.
The Rook and Varga Show would do what it did.
The room would close. We would go to practice.
Nothing in my external life, between now and the end of the day, was going to give him any sign that anything had changed.
“Heads up, gentlemen,” Mark called from the door. “Five minutes. Doors at 9:15. Stalls.”
“At my stall?” Varga called back. “Mark. I live at my stall, where else would I —“
“Goodbye, Lucas.”
The room laughed. I did not. I reached for a stick I did not need to tape and taped it anyway.
Our media availability was as dull and occasionally painful as always.
Three reporters at my stall, with usual questions.
How’s the body, Rook? Markel’s system in year three, any tweaks?
Mikkelsen on Varga’s wing—what are you seeing?
My answers, in order: fine. We’ll see; camp went well.
Kid’s going to be a problem. The first three laughed at the last one.
The fourth—Sun-Times, thirty years on the beat—had heard me say a version of kid’s going to be a problem about eleven different rookies over the life of my career.
Eight feet from me, Varga was on his third group and talking about his face.
Gentlemen, gentlemen, it’s not a story, it’s not a story, it’s a face, it’s a regular face, and the reporters laughed about the player they were going to file the easiest twelve hundred words of their week about.
He gave them the play pretty / look pretty line twice.
Half an hour later, the doors closed.
The room exhaled. Cross, who had come in off the ice halfway through and done his media damp-haired and unhurried, stood and walked to the showers without a word. Mark gave the room a thumbs-up from the doorway and disappeared.
I glanced over at Varga. He was scrolling his phone, his thumb moving fast. The new face was sharper than the old face at this angle, and I had the old ache in the bottom of my chest, of seeing a man I loved in the room but not being able to touch him.
He sensed my gaze, and he looked up, but his face didn’t change. He tipped his head about four degrees to the left, his version of asking the question, you good?
I tipped my chin down a quarter inch, my way of saying yes.
It wasn’t entirely honest.
Tonight, I thought. Tonight, with the door closed, I will fix this. The request. He’ll know I had a question from Mark. I’ll say a reporter wanted a sit-down, I said I’d think about it, I’m leaning no. True enough. Tonight.
I watched Varga leave the room. He was either headed for the lounge or the weight room. I picked up my phone.
One message.
Varga: old man. you’re gonna make me eat lunch with Rafe alone, aren’t you?