Chapter 3
Chapter three
Rook
I didn’t look directly at him. He was in my peripheral vision, like a compass pointing north.
Cross came down the boards on me slower than he could have. He dropped the puck back to the defenseman at the blue line, who shot. Pratt caught it clean at the far end and tapped his stick on the post without looking up.
I skated to the bench. Varga was circling back, grinning at something. I glanced at him, then looked back at the ice and kept skating.
The decision arrived as I sat on the bench, pulling my glove tighter. It had been loose since the second drill.
I was going to speak with Kovac.
Two rotations later, Heath came down the wing on Trier’s side, and I closed on him at the blue line.
He had a step on me—not much, the step a smart winger gives you when he wants you to commit your hips and then takes the inside lane the second they go.
I didn’t commit my hips, and the lane wasn’t there.
The drill ended. Markel said good work. It was his version of a standing ovation. We headed for the tunnel.
I caught up with Varga halfway down the rubber matting. He was talking to Mikkelsen over his shoulder. “The trick is the head, Rafe, the head sells it, the puck doesn’t sell anything, the puck is just along for the ride.”
Mikkelsen said, “Yes, sir,” under his breath.
“Your gap was lazy,” Varga said, turning his head toward me.
“Your hands were lucky,” I said.
He returned his attention to Mikkelsen. “My hands have never been lucky in their lives, Rafe—Rafe, listen to me—my hands are a gift. They are what this team is paying for, and the old man over there is jealous because he needs reading glasses to type a text message—“
“Your hands were lucky.”
Varga went silent.
I stopped at the trainer’s door, having a quick word with Marco about my left shoulder, and I spoke briefly with the equipment kid about a stick.
By the time I got to my stall, Varga was already half-undressed and telling Trier something that involved the words Brussels sprouts and garlic and had a punchline on the way. I changed without listening.
As I left, Mark caught me in the hallway outside the video room, clipboard against his hip.
“Hey, Rook. The Kovac thing. You said you’d think about it. No pressure, but he’s asking when works.”
“Tell him we’ll talk by phone,” I said. “Whenever he wants. I’ll do it from home.”
“By phone. Sure. He’ll probably be fine with that. You don’t want to sit down with him?”
“Phone is fine.”
“Got it. I’ll set it up.”
“Thanks, Mark.”
He made a small check on the clipboard and went back into the video room. I left through the players’ tunnel to the garage.
The garage was empty when I pulled in. Varga was still at the rink. He had said something at breakfast about a voluntary skate with Rafe at one—the kid had asked.
I went in through the garage and dropped my bag in the laundry room. I made coffee and took it with me down the hall to the office, closing the door behind me.
The desk had a stack of mail and a printout of a defensive-zone report Markel had emailed me at six the previous morning. I hadn’t finished reading it. I moved both to the side. The small dish on the desk had a single key in it.
I unlocked the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet.
It held the cleaner’s NDA and the lawn-service NDA. Beside them was an insurance folder with Varga’s name on three documents.
Tucked in the back was a box. It was covered in navy-blue velvet with a hinged lid. I set it on the desk in front of me.
I’d bought it on a Wednesday afternoon in May. I’d stopped in a store in Lincoln Park on my way home from a dentist appointment. The man at the counter was older than me by at least twenty years. He didn’t ask any of the questions I’d been bracing for.
Plain gold, I told him. I didn’t want a stone. It was for a man’s hand. I gave him the measurement I’d taken one morning with a piece of butcher’s twine, while Varga slept on his side with his hand open on the pillow.
The jeweler brought out three. I pointed at the middle one. He wrapped it in tissue, put it in a small bag, and I paid in cash. I put it in the drawer that afternoon and hadn’t opened the box since.
I put my hand flat on the lid. I wanted Luki to have it.
The maple in the back corner of the yard was visible through the window above my desk. It cast a shadow across the box.
Varga’s mother had sent the sapling in a pot from Minnesota, with a card in Hungarian that I could not read. I asked Varga to translate, and he had said it said for your house, but it was a lot more words than that.
The tree was eight feet tall now.
I put the box back in the drawer, closed it, and turned the key. I put the key back in the dish.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. It was a text.
Kovac: Mr. Rook, this is Daniel Kovac with The Athletic. Mark Bellinger passed your number along. I appreciate you considering the piece. If you have a few minutes today, I’d love to talk through logistics. Whenever suits you. No rush.
I read it twice.
Rook: Whenever works. Now is fine.
The phone rang within a minute.
“Daniel Kovac.”
“Daniel. This is Mattias Rook.”
A pause. Just enough.
“Mattias, thanks for taking the call. I appreciate it.”
“Mark said you were pitching a piece for late October on the Markel system.”
“That’s right. Veteran defenseman piece, third year in the system, you specifically. I’m pitching it to my editor next week. I wanted to see if we could find a time that works.”
“I’m open and by phone is fine,” I said. “Mark mentioned that, I think.”
“He did.” There was a long pause. “Mattias, I appreciate it. Truly. If it’s all right, I’d like to maybe do it in two pieces.
One on the system if you’re up for it, and then a shorter one that’s more about the veteran piece of it.
Your career and longevity, and relationship to the rest of the room.
Forty minutes apiece, maybe? That’s less exhausting than two hours in one sitting. ”
“Sure,” I said. “Send me dates through Mark.”
“I will.”
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s it. Thank you for taking my call. I know you’re busy.”
I hung up and put the phone down.
He was the same man from the bar who had been careful with me then and was careful now. He mentioned the veteran piece and the rest of the room, thinking he could use them to ask me how my life had gone since he sat across from me in a bar.
Or—and the thought arrived as I stood up from the desk—maybe he was just careful. Maybe that was who he was. Maybe the bar had been six years ago for him too, and not the thing it had been for me.
I might have been making it more than it was. He might have been just a man doing his job, reporting on hockey.
I didn’t know which Kovac was true. I wouldn’t know until the interview.
I closed the office door behind me and went to the TV room.
The couch had a dent in it where Varga always ended up, left side, one cushion in from the arm. The throw blanket his sister had sent was draped over the back. Two books he had started in August sat on the coffee table.
I sat down and turned the TV on. The Netflix home screen came up with three profiles. One said Rook, and I never used it. RV was for the two of us, when we watched together. Then there was the Varga profile. He insisted on having a clean representation of what he watched on his own.
I clicked the Varga profile.
Looking at the continue-watching bar was like strolling through a small museum about my man.
There was a Hungarian crime drama three episodes in, which Varga’s mother had recommended over Christmas.
He told me twice that he loved it. There was a baking competition.
It was offering the ninth season, and I was sure he’d watched the previous eight.
I scrolled past a documentary about goalies that he said he watched ironically, and then watched two more times.
And Pose. He’d watched all three seasons.
I hadn’t known when he watched it. He didn’t mention it. It must have been on planes or in hotel rooms.
I went back to the home screen and clicked RV.
The continue-watching bar had another baking show on it. We’d watched four episodes together. I clicked on one of them, and it was the one with the man whose pastry never set.
He kept apologizing to the judges. Varga had pointed at the screen halfway through and said, “That man needs a husband.”
I let the episode play to the end. Then I turned the TV off and walked to the kitchen.
I put a pot of water on, salted it, and started a sauce. It was a quick one with tomatoes, garlic, and the basil from the pot on the windowsill. Varga bought it in June. I said it wouldn’t last a week, but four months later, it was still refusing to die.
When I had nearly finished, I heard the garage door go up.
Varga came in with his bag on one shoulder and his face still slightly flushed from the rink.
He set the bag down. He looked at me at the stove, and his face did the thing it did at 4:12 when nobody was watching—the public mouth softening half a degree, the eyes going from the room I’d cooked in to me in it.
“You cooked.”
“Pasta. It’s not cooking. It’s water.”
“You salted the water?”
“I salted the water.”
“Then it’s cooking.” He came around the island and put his hand on the back of my neck. I closed my eyes while he kissed the side of my jaw. “What’s in the sauce?” he asked.
“Tomato. Garlic. Some of the basil from the pot before it dies.”
“I bought that basil in June, Rook. You said it would die in a week.”
“It has lasted four months. I was wrong.”
“You were wrong with confidence. I kind of like that about you.”
“Noted.”
“I love you,” he said, as he opened the cabinet to pull out plates. He said it that way sometimes. No unneeded fanfare.
“I love you too.”
“How was your afternoon?”
“Quiet.”