Chapter 30 Luca
The bar is a block from the hotel. Different city, different wood, same brass rails, same television behind the bar running highlights.
The team has pushed tables together and the noise is right and I am in my chair with a glass of water and the ice in the glass is melting at a rate I could calculate if I cared about the math.
I don't care about the math.
The game was bad. Not team-bad, not a loss anyone will replay in the morning.
Me bad. Second period, a turnover at the blue line that gave their winger a clean breakaway and I was the last one back and I wasn't back enough.
The puck went in. The bench was quiet when I came off. Nobody said anything. Nobody had to.
Thompson is telling a story about the hotel gym. Mueller is drinking a beer with the steady focus of a man who has earned exactly one beer and will drink it at the pace he has decided. Marchetti is beside me.
I turn my glass on the coaster. The ice shifts. I know it’s better for me to be here and not alone in my hotel room. But the game is still playing in my head and the turnover is still in my hands.
"Berger." Marchetti looks at me. "You okay?"
I haven’t told him everything that happened but some. He was worried and deserved some answers. He doesn’t know about Gwen but I will tell him when I’m ready.
"Tired. Long game,” I say. Marchetti keeps watching me. "The turnover was mine."
"It was. I let a D-man get around me in the first. Every guy here can point to a mistake they made and want to do over.”
“Not everyone got scored on.”
“No, but there have been lots of nights where you didn’t let that happen. We have another game tomorrow. Let it go."
"Working on it."
He nods. He doesn't push. The table starts to thin and we walk back to the hotel with Hájek, who has said four words all night and whose silence beside me is companionable, not worried.
"Good night," he says at his door.
"Good night."
The hotel room is like every other hotel room. Clean sheets, heavy curtains, the thermostat set to sixty-eight. I sit on the edge of the bed and pull out my phone.
The wallpaper is still the Miami balcony. I should change it. Gwen and I talked about that last Thursday. I told her I wasn't ready and she said that was fine. I told her I'd know when I was ready because the picture would feel like a picture instead of a window and she wrote that down.
I open Instagram. I don't know why. My thumb moves, the muscle memory of a habit I have been trying to break. Three swipes down the feed. Team posts. A sneaker ad. A reel from a food account I followed in Miami that I keep meaning to unfollow.
Then a picture Grant posted.
Wes. Kevin. Austin. Grant. A booth at Carmelo's, the Cuban place in Miami.
Kevin is mid-laugh. Austin's arm is on the back of the booth.
Grant is holding up a drink. Wes is at the end of the table with a half-smile and a beer and his arm resting along the booth in the way I know means he is comfortable and settled and present.
They are at Carmelo's without me.
They are continuing. The city kept going.
The booth at Carmelo's kept going. The four of them are there and I am in a hotel room in a city I will not remember the name of in a week.
I was never part of that life. Not really.
I was a guest, a temporary addition to the booth.
They have filled the space where I sat and the space doesn't miss me.
I put the phone face-down on the nightstand.
My hands are on my knees. My jaw is tight. The tightness has been building since the turnover and the picture cracked it loose.
Nobody in that photograph is thinking about me. Nobody at that table said my name tonight. I was useful in Miami and now I’m not in Miami. The useful version is gone and the version that’s left is the one who turns the puck over at the blue line and sits in hotel rooms and—
I hear it. I hear the voice doing what it does. The absolutes. Nobody. Never. Not really. I hear it and I know what it is because I have sat in an office on Juniper Street four times now and named it each time. The depression is talking.
The depression is telling me I was never part of that booth but it’s wrong.
I was part of that booth. I sat in that booth and ordered the ropa vieja and rated the plantain chips and Wes's hand was on my knee under the table and Kevin told the story about the fishing trip and I laughed until my ribs ached.
The depression is wrong and I am tired and both things are true.
I pick up the phone. Not to open the picture again. I open the text thread with Gwen. I type: bad night. Can we set up an extra session by video?
I don’t expect her to reply this late at night. I put the phone down and get ready for bed and the picture is still in my head. The depression is still talking at low volume and I fall asleep with the sound of it underneath the hum of the hotel air conditioning.
Gwen responds by the time I wake up and has a window at two.
Practice is at ten. The turnover from last night is still in my hands and I run the drill wrong twice and Coach pulls me aside and says nothing that matters and I nod and go back to the line.
At one-fifty I am sitting on the hotel bed with my laptop open and a glass of water on the nightstand. Gwen's face appears. The purple hair. The rainbow glasses. The bookshelf behind her with the small pride flag propped against the books.
"Hey, Luca."
"Hey."
"How are you doing?"
"Okay, I guess.” We both know if I were okay I wouldn’t have asked for an extra session. “I'm on a road trip. I had a bad game last night and then I saw a picture on Instagram that messed me up."
She tilts her head. "Tell me about the picture."
"Wes. His friends. At a restaurant we used to go to in Miami. They were at our booth." I stop. "It's not our booth. It was just a booth."
"What did you feel when you saw it?"
"That they were continuing without me. That I was never really part of it. That the space I used to take up had been filled and nobody noticed."
"Were those your words?"
The question lands the way it always lands, slightly ahead of where I expect it. "The depression's. I think. I could hear it doing the thing. The absolutes. Never really part of it. Nobody noticed."
"But you caught it."
"I caught it. Not in time though. It still landed."
"Noticing it and it staying with you can both be true." She adjusts her glasses. "What did you do after you saw the picture?"
"Put the phone down. Sat with it. Texted you. Went to bed."
"Two weeks ago, what would you have done with that picture?"
I think about it. Two weeks ago is the version of me who would have opened the picture again and again until the other voice was the only voice in the room.
"Kept looking at it," I say. "Stayed up. Let it run."
"And last night?"
"I put the phone down. I asked for a session."
"You recognized you could use some extra support and asked for it. How did that feel?"
"Bad. And correct."
I get the Gwen smile, which is more of a shift in the glasses. "Bad and correct. I like that."
"Don't write it down."
"I'm absolutely writing it down."
The laugh comes out before I can stop it. It is small and rough and surprises me.
"Luca. The picture of the restaurant and your friends," she leans forward. "What's the story your telling yourself?"
"That I'm replaceable. That the life in Miami kept going and I was the part that could be removed without anything changing."
"And what's the fact-based version?"
"That they're having dinner. That Wes has friends and those friends are having dinner and I'm not there because I live in Atlanta and that's…That's geography. Not replacement."
"Can you say that again?"
"It's geography. Not replacement."
"How does that feel to say?"
"Like I believe it about sixty percent."
"Sixty is more than zero."
"Sixty is not enough."
"Sixty is where you are today. You don't have to be at a hundred today.
" She sits back. "I want you to notice what you did last night.
The picture hit you. But you were able to notice the negative thinking.
Not as the truth. Not as your own thinking.
That distinction is the work, Luca. That is exactly the work. "
I don't say anything. My hands are on my knees and the laptop screen holds her face.
"Still good for Thursday?" she says.
"Yeah, Thursday."
"Call me if you need to before then. That's what the number is for."
"Okay."
"Bye, Luca."
"Bye."
The screen goes dark. I close the laptop and sit on the bed for a while. My phone is beside me, face-up, the Miami balcony holding steady underneath whatever notifications have piled up during the session.
I pick it up and call Wes.
"Hey. How was the game last night?"
"We lost. I had a rough shift."
"Rough how?"
"Turnover. Blue line. Cost us a goal."
"That happens."
"I know."
A pause. I can hear his apartment behind his voice. The ocean underneath, or maybe the air conditioning that sounds like the ocean from this distance.
"How are you?" he says. The question is careful. Not careful the way it was a month ago, when careful meant afraid. Careful the way Wes is careful with things he wants to hold without squeezing.
"I'm okay. I had a session with Gwen today."
"On the road?"
"Yeah."
"Good. I’m glad you reached out to her." Another pause. "You sound tired."
"I am tired."
"Road trip tired or a different tired?"
He is asking without pushing and asking the right question. I could tell him about the picture and that I fell asleep thinking about it. I could tell him all of it.
"A little of both," I say.
"Do you want to talk about it?” He’s been doing that. Asking if I want to talk about what comes up with Gwen. Opening the door. Sometimes I do, but not today.
“Maybe some other day.”
“Okay.” He doesn’t push, but let’s me decide what I want to share. “Good luck with Toronto tonight. Call me tomorrow?"
"I'll call you tomorrow."
"Love you."
"Love you, Wes."
I hang up and the room is quiet. The phone is on the pillow beside me, face-up. I did not tell him about the picture. Gwen would say some things belong in the chair on Juniper Street, not on a phone call in the middle of the day. Maybe figuring that out is the work.
The thoughts are still here. Not louder than yesterday. Not quieter. The same thoughts at the same volume, except now I notice.
I see Gwen again in two days. Wes is in Miami and the distance between us is geography, not replacement. I sixty percent believe that.
?