Chapter 2 Wes
THEN
The garlic goes in last. That's the rule with sofrito and I learned it from a woman at the Calle Ocho farmers' market who told me I was burning everything and then spent twenty minutes showing me why.
Eight years in Miami and the best cooking lesson I ever got was a stranger telling me I was doing it wrong.
The pan is good. The oil is right. I drop the garlic in, and the kitchen fills with that sweet smell. The peppers are cut thick enough to hold their shape through the braise. The pork shoulder has been cooking since midday.
Kevin lets himself in. Austin and Grant are behind him, Austin carrying wine he didn't need to bring and Grant carrying nothing, which tracks.
"Smells incredible," Kevin says. He puts his keys on the counter. "The pork shoulder?"
"Since noon."
"He's been in here since noon," Kevin says to Austin.
"Shocking," Austin says. He sets the wine on the counter and opens the cabinet where I keep the glasses. "Red or red?"
"Red," Kevin says.
"Bold choice. Grant?"
"Whatever's open." Grant has already settled onto the couch in the living room, one leg over the arm, shoes off. His foot is on my coffee table near the camera I left there this morning. He picks it up, turns it over, sets it back down. "You take anything good lately?"
"The water this morning. Overcast. Sun didn't come out."
"So no, you didn’t."
"So no."
I check the oven. The meat is ready to pull.
"All right," I say. "Kevin, you're pulling."
"I'm always pulling."
"Because you're good at it."
"I'm good at everything, but go on."
"Wes, am I pulling?" Austin asks, already pouring.
"You're pouring. Stay in your lane."
"I'd like to point out that I am doing nothing," Grant says from the couch, "and I am very comfortable with that."
"This is Grant's leadership style," Kevin says.
"Delegation," Grant says. "Look it up."
We shred the pork at the counter, two forks each. Pull, pile, pull, pile. Austin brings the wine over and lines up the four glasses on the counter next to the cutting board.
"You ready for training camp?" Kevin asks me.
"I've been ready for camp since June."
"That's the thing about you," Austin says. "Most people take the summer off."
"I took the summer off. I ran. I cooked. I took pictures of water that didn't come out."
"That is the saddest summer I've ever heard," Austin says.
"It's called being an adult," I say.
"It's called being boring," Kevin says. "No offense."
"He's boring," Grant says. "But the food is good, so we tolerate it."
We eat at the table because I own a table and I think adults should eat meals at tables. Kevin thinks this is a character flaw. He eats standing at his own kitchen counter over a paper towel.
"Mercer, pass the wine," Grant says, reaching across the table with his empty glass. I pour for him and set the bottle back between us.
"This is better than last time," Austin says, halfway through his plate.
"Last time was good."
"This is better than good. This is the pork shoulder you make when you're going to open a place on Calle Ocho."
"I'm not opening a place."
"You could if you'd stop putting everything in one pot," Kevin says. “You can’t play hockey forever.”
"The one pot is the point. Hockey has been good to me but there isn’t time for much else."
"Spoken like a man who owns one pot."
Kevin has a case at work he can't talk about except he's been talking about it for weeks. A deposition that went sideways. He does the voices now, leaning back in his chair, both hands working.
Austin starts on the boat. The new cleats came in for the deck.
"Nobody cares about your cleats," Kevin says.
"The cleats are critical. The cleats are what keep you from going overboard."
"Nobody has been on the boat, Austin."
"Wes has been on the boat."
"Once," I say. "And I spent most of it thinking about when I could leave."
"That's hurtful," Austin says, but he is grinning.
I pour a second round of wine. Somewhere between the cleat argument and Grant reaching for the serving plate, I mention it. I'm scraping the last of the crispy bits off the bottom of the pan.
"Chapin called me last week," I say. "He has a Swiss player. Twenty-two. Got traded to us from his first pro team. He asked if I'd keep an eye out for him, help him get his bearings."
I say it the way I would say anything. The pan. The plate.
"Swiss," Austin says. "What position?"
"Left wing."
"Twenty-two," Kevin says. "Baby."
"They're all babies now. I'm old enough to be a much older brother at this point."
"What's his name?" Grant asks.
"Berger. Luca Berger."
"And Chapin asked you. Specifically."
"Chapin asks me about every new kid on the roster. He likes having a veteran in the room who isn't going to haze them or ignore them. I'm like the welcome committee."
"Okay." He goes back to his plate. Kevin looks at Grant, then at me, and the moment closes.
"Tell him about the cleats," Austin says to Kevin.
"I'm not telling him about the cleats."
"The cleats are relevant to his life."
"The cleats have never been relevant to anyone's life."
I lean back in my chair and drink the wine and let them go.
The kitchen is warm and the windows are open and the August air is heavy and wet the way is in August. These three men in my apartment on a Tuesday night who eat my food and drink wine Austin didn't need to bring and argue about boat hardware nobody cares about. Eight years I’ve played in this city, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Grant helps me clear the plates. Kevin and Austin move to the couch. Austin will be asleep inside of fifteen minutes because Austin falls asleep on couches the way other people fall asleep in beds, fully and without warning.
At the sink, Grant hands me a plate and says, quiet enough that the other two can't hear, "You going to be all right with this kid?"
"It's a mentorship thing. Chapin does this every year."
"I’m not asking about Chapin. I'm asking about you."
"I'm fine."
He nods. Hands me the last plate. "Okay," he says. And doesn't say anything else, which is Grant. He asks the question once. He takes the answer. If the answer is wrong he files it, and he comes back to it later, weeks or months from now, when you have forgotten he asked.
They leave by ten. Kevin takes the leftover pork in a container because Kevin has never left my apartment without taking something from it. Austin blinks himself awake on the couch.
"Did I miss anything?" Austin asks.
"You missed the dishes," Grant says.
"I always miss the dishes."
"That's not an accident," Kevin says.
"It's a talent," Austin says.
"It's a lifestyle," I say, and Grant steers him toward the door with a hand on his back. Grant grips my shoulder at the door, brief and firm. "Good night, Wes."
I lock the door and stand in the kitchen with the lights low and the apartment going quiet around me. The version of this place I know best. The place when the three of them have gone home and the food is put away and the camera is still on the coffee table where Grant set it back down.
Chapin sends me the kid's number and I sent him a text earlier.
Hey, it's Wes Mercer. Chapin passed along your number. Welcome to Miami.
I have a reply waiting from him when I check my phone. Full sentences, correct punctuation, a twenty-two-year-old making a good first impression.
Thanks so much, that's very kind of you. I'm still in Seattle packing up. Flying down next week. Any recommendations on neighborhoods?
I send him three neighborhoods and a restaurant.
He sends back a paragraph about the restaurant's online menu that includes a scoring system I don't recognize but can tell is rigorous.
He asks about parking at the facility. I answer.
He asks about the weight room. I answer.
He asks about the team's coffee situation and gives his opinions on Seattle coffee, and I realize I've been sitting on this couch answering his questions instead of watching the documentary I turned on an hour ago.
The texts go on leading up to training camp. He asks real questions and he listens to the answers. I offer the guest room once. He declines. Says he's booked a hotel until he finds a place.
On the first day of training camp, I'm at my stall by seven, lacing up in the quiet of early arrivals.
The room is doing what it does before coffee hits: tape, phones, the low ambient of guys who aren't ready to talk yet.
The ice will be good this morning. It is always good the first week of camp, when the legs are fresh and the plays haven't started to grind yet.
The kid walks in at seven-thirty.
I raise my head as he's passing through the threshold with a bag over one shoulder, moving toward his stall with a face that is working carefully to look like he belongs here.
He's leaner than I expected. Tall enough, six-one or close, but narrow through the shoulders, a frame built for speed and angles.
Light brown hair pushed back off his forehead, messy in a way that doesn't look planned.
Clean-shaven. He looks young. But when you hit thirty-four, anyone younger than twenty-five seems like a kid.
He sets the bag down and starts unpacking.
Skates first, set on the floor aligned with the stall frame.
Helmet to the shelf, visor forward. Gloves hung on hooks, fingers down.
Tape, two rolls, placed left of the gloves.
The bag itself gets folded and tucked under the bench, zipper out.
Nobody else in this room sets up a stall with this precision.
The kid has been here less than five minutes and what he's built is deliberate, specific, entirely his.
He looks up. When his gaze lands on me, I see the spark of recognition. He crosses the room toward my stall.
"Hey." He stops a few feet from me. "Mercer, right? I mean, I know. Obviously. Just…" He runs his hand through his hair. "Hey."
"Hey, Berger." I lean forward on my knees. "Welcome. You find the place all right?"
"GPS sent me to the marina."
I chuckle. "I should have warned you about that. Everyone ends up at the marina the first day."
"Good. I thought my phone was broken." He's grinning now and then lifts one finger. "I have a question about the Cuban place you sent me."
"What about it?"
"You described it as solid. So, what’s your definition of solid?"
"Solid means I'd go back," I say.
"That’s it? That’s the whole of the evaluation?"
"I’d eat there again. That sums it up."
Berger’s grin doesn’t fade. "See, that’s binary. It lacks nuance."
"It's a restaurant, Berger, not a courtroom."
"We’ll need to do a proper autopsy on that menu later. I suspect we have very different ideas of what constitutes a passing grade," he says, his tone turning mock-serious. He nods once and turns back toward his stall.
I watch him cross the room. He settles back into the stall and picks up where he left off, adjusting the gloves on the hooks, tuning what he started building the second he arrived.
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