Chapter 16 Luca
One block separates the bar from the hotel.
Dark wood, brass rails, a television behind the bar showing highlights from games nobody in here played in.
The team has pushed three tables together and the noise is right, the post-game frequency where winning sounds like beer glasses and retold shifts and Thompson's voice carrying over everything.
Mouse has enough food for two days. She will not forgive me for three.
I am ranking the bartenders before we've finished our second round.
"The one on the left has technique. Watch the pour. Consistent wrist, no wasted motion, respects the glass." I point with my beer. "The one on the right is improvising, and it shows."
"Berger, we've been here ten minutes," Thompson says.
"And in those ten minutes I've gathered sufficient data for a preliminary assessment."
Mueller leans back and looks at the bar. "The one on the left is faster."
"Faster is not better, Mueller. I'm evaluating craft."
"You're evaluating bartenders."
"There is no difference," Mueller says, flat, and drinks his beer.
Marchetti is in the center of the table telling the story of his goal for the second time. The second telling adds a detail about the defenseman's face that I am not sure happened.
"His eyes, though. He knew. He saw the puck leave Hájek's stick and he knew it was over."
"That's not what happened," Thompson says. "You scored because his partner was out of position. The eyes are fiction."
"Brooks. You saw the eyes."
Brooks shakes his head. "I'm off the clock."
"Your goal was beautiful and the eyes are unverifiable," I say. "Seven-point-nine. Docked for the fiction."
"You can't dock my goal."
"I just did. The spreadsheet will reflect it."
"That's a good score, though."
"That is a very good score, Marchetti. Accept it."
Hájek asks about my wing sauce spreadsheet.
"A ranking matrix. Every wing sauce I've encountered this season, scored across five categories. Heat, complexity, viscosity, aftertaste, and what I call 'return factor.'"
"Viscosity," Thompson repeats.
"It matters. A sauce that slides off the wing is a sauce that has not committed to the wing. I don't reward that."
"He has a viscosity category," Marchetti says to Brooks.
"The jurisdiction is mine," I say. "The spreadsheet is a public service."
The table laughs. The room is warm and the beer is cold and I am here, inside the noise, filling it.
My phone is face-down on the table next to my glass.
It buzzes against the wood and I pick it up.
The screen lights. Blue water, white railing, palms. The wallpaper holds for half a second before the notification slides down.
ESPN. The Tempest won tonight. A line underneath the score: W. Mercer, 1 G, 1 A, 24:32 TOI.
Twenty-eight points. The best season of his career and every week the number climbs. The slope changed in September. The day I left for Atlanta.
I put the phone face-down. The notification is gone but the number stays and I order another drink.
Marchetti tells the story of Parker's war with the bathroom sink. The table laughs. Hájek is delighted. Thompson disputes a detail. I am watching the dark liquid swirl around the glass.
"Berger." Brooks. Easy, careful. "You good?"
"Good."
The next drink I order without saying anything.
The room gets louder and further away at the same time.
Marchetti is telling another story and the table is moving around it and I am not inside the noise anymore.
I am next to the noise. The glass is wet and the coaster is soft and my jaw is tight and has been tight for longer than I can track and the tightness is holding something behind my teeth that is not a sentence I can give to anyone at this table.
Twenty-eight. The number is still there. He is in Miami tonight and the building went up for him and someone clapped his shoulder and he went home to the apartment with the balcony and the ocean and he is fine. Every number on that line is the distance working.
The check comes. Then the lobby is bright. Too bright. Mueller and Hájek toward the elevator. Thompson looks at me and I can feel the judgment landing but I cannot argue with it because I cannot argue with anything right now.
"You got him?"
"We got him." Marchetti. His hand on my arm. Brooks on the other side. Thompson goes.
The elevator. The polished doors. My reflection is in them.
"I want Mercy."
Marchetti's arm tightens. "I know, man. You feel like shit. We'll get you water and you'll feel better."
The doors are closing. The elevator is moving.
I can feel it in my stomach or maybe the feeling in my stomach is not the elevator.
The floor I am on is not fourteen. The floor I am on is lower than fourteen.
The floor I am on is the distance between here and the balcony and the ocean and his hands on my face in the morning when neither of us had anywhere to be.
"I want Mercy." Quieter. My head drops against Marchetti's shoulder because he is warm and he is solid and the elevator is moving.
The hallway. The thick carpet. My room key. Inside, they lower me onto the bed. Someone angles me on my side.
"Berger. Where are we?"
Brooks. His face above me.
"Who am I?"
"Brooks." The words are slow. "The one who won't rank the restaurants."
A light in my eyes. A hand on my chin. Water against my mouth. Some runs down my chin and a hand catches it.
His hands were warm. In the mornings. The balcony was cold before the sun came up and his hands were warm and he put them on my face and said my name, not the name they call me in the locker room, the other one, the one that is mine, and I could feel the ocean fourteen floors below us and his hands on my jaw and the morning everywhere.
"Please." The word comes out rough and small and stripped of everything I have used to fill rooms for three months. "I need Mercy."
The room goes soft. Marchetti is on the edge of the bed. Brooks is in the chair by the window. They are talking and the words are far away.
My eyes close. The phone is on the nightstand, face-down. Blue water and white railing and palms that no one can see from this angle.
Twenty-eight.
I go under.
?