Chapter 5 Pratt
Chapter five
Pratt
Iwoke to silence on the other side of my condo wall. No music bleeding through the drywall and no footsteps. Sully's place was quiet. That was data.
Game day.
I looked up at the ceiling, staying where I was.
Two minutes, maybe three, on my back, eyes open, running the crease.
It wasn't previewing the game tonight; it was checking the geometry: angles, depth, the left post to the right, and the arc of coverage from one edge of the blue paint to the other.
My father had called it setting the house in order.
Next, the sequence. Shower first. Then I made the bed. I hadn't slept in it, but that wasn't the point. The point was that it was made, corners pulled, surface flat, the same as every other morning whether or not I'd used it.
The meal followed, breakfast or not: chicken, white rice, and roasted carrots, assembled in thirds on the plate without overlapping. I had not broken the pattern in six seasons.
Last step before my gear. Ten seconds of "More Than a Feeling." The lift into the chorus. I let it run once, matched the timing, and cut it before the second line.
My gear check took eleven minutes. I didn't rush it. Rushing introduced errors you didn't find until they mattered.
I was through the kitchen and almost out the door when I glanced at the counter.
The spare key sat where it had been since Sully dropped it in my palm the night he walked through the wrong door. I hadn't moved it. For weeks it had sat to the right of center, and I'd walked past it twice a day.
I picked up my bag and stepped into the hallway.
The elevator opened, and Sully stepped out.
He was in a knit cap and gloves, carrying a paper grocery bag from the corner store. He'd come in from outside. His cheeks showed it.
"You've got the face on. The serious one. I mean, the other serious one."
I opened my mouth.
The bag gave out.
Not dramatically, just the handle separating at the fold and the paper tearing clean. The bottom dropped out. One orange went left, and another went right. One rolled straight for the gap between the elevator door and the floor.
I moved my foot. The orange hit my shoe and stopped.
Sully stood over the wreckage, holding a box of crackers to his chest and two oranges in his left hand, doing a brief inventory of what remained.
I crouched, collected the one near the elevator, and straightened.
With my other hand, I tugged a plastic bag from my coat pocket and dropped the orange inside.
"You carry bags for emergencies?"
"Works." I handed him the bag, and he dropped the crackers inside.
"This feels important," he said.
"It could have been inconvenient."
Sully grinned. I adjusted the bag strap on my shoulder. "Good luck tonight," he said.
"Thanks."
I took the elevator down. In the garage, I sat in the car for thirty seconds before starting it. I drove north and focused on the game ahead.
Two weeks in, Holt was a better fit than any would have expected.
It wasn't seamless. Tampa had worn specific instincts into him, but he was a smart player and he'd done the work.
By Thursday's practice, the gap was narrowing.
He asked good questions and didn't ask the same one twice.
I'd corrected his angle positioning on the left side twice in two days.
Both times he'd adjusted before I finished the sentence.
It was an important game. We were third in the division. Third was the last playoff spot. Nashville was only two points behind."
Varga was mid-sentence when I entered the locker room, tracking Holt's statistics. "Forty-two percent puck-battle win rate in the defensive zone last season. That's genuinely not bad. I looked it up." He paused as if he expected someone to dispute it.
Holt, pulling on his gloves, said, "You researched me?"
"I'm thorough," Varga said. "Always want to know who I'm playing with. Isn't that normal?"
"It's something," Cross said. "It's not like he arrived yesterday." Varga opened his mouth and then decided to save it.
I did my post taps, left then right, heel of the stick, and moved through my crease reads. For the first period, both teams were cautious. I tracked Holt through every defensive rotation in my zone. The gap was still there when he had to choose fast, but it had almost disappeared.
We scored midway through the second. Kieran threaded a pass through traffic to Cross in the high slot, and the fans roared. I celebrated for three seconds and refocused.
Forty-one seconds after the face off, the left side opened.
It wasn't wide, like the six-foot gap in Detroit, but it was enough. The lane existed for less than two seconds, but the shooter found it and fired.
I was already there. It came in hard on the blocker side, and I deflected wide.
Holt saw the whole thing from eight feet away. I said nothing.
He adjusted on the next shift and the one after that. By the third, he was arriving early enough that I stopped tracking the gap specifically and let it fold into my general read.
We won 2-0. I handled the reporters in the post-game corridor. One asked about the second-period coverage rotation. I told him what had changed and when.
Heath and Kieran were in the tunnel near the equipment bay.
Heath was still in partial gear, one shin pad off, holding it like someone had interrupted him mid-thought.
He looked up when I passed and said, "Nora poured me something last night I still can't identify.
I think it had mezcal in it. Are you sure your neighbor's bar is the right environment for a person with a job? "
I picked up my bag. "Carver's," I said. "South of us on LaSalle."
Heath pointed the shin guard at me. "I know where it is, Pratt. That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking about your neighbor."
"I know what you're asking."
The garage was quiet by the time I got to my car. I started it and pulled out. I stopped at a red light on LaSalle.
The bar was a block south.
The light changed.
I parked in the garage and took the elevator up. As always, when I arrived, I drank sixteen ounces of water and stood at the counter, letting the adrenaline continue its decline.
There was no sound from the other side of the wall. Sully would be home within the hour, maybe less. There would be music. Almost always there was music.
I moved away from the counter. I was in bed, blanket pulled to my chin, when I heard the two raps on the door. I waited, and there was no other sound, no door opening.
I got up.
Sully was in the hallway in his work clothes and sock feet, holding a takeout container. His keys were not in evidence.
"In my defense," he said, "I was carrying soup."
I had the spare key in my hand already and entered the hallway. I inserted the key into Sully's lock.
The door opened.
He looked at me, then at the open door, and then back at me. I followed him inside.
Sully's condo was warm, not in temperature but in the space's quality. I took it in from a step inside the door. I'd heard about the too-large rug and the printer box in the corner.
A dish towel hung from the oven handle at a crooked angle. One lamp was on, and a vinyl album sleeve lay face down on the coffee table.
All of that was clear at first glance. I turned my attention to Sully.
He'd moved to the kitchen counter and set the soup container down.
"You've got soup," I said.
"I've got soup." His voice was a fraction lower than usual. "You want some?"
I could have said no. I nearly did. It was late, past midnight.
He pulled out two bowls without waiting for my response.
I stayed.
The soup was a starting point.
Sully reheated it on the stove. It was tomato, and he added things he pulled from the cabinet. There was a shake of something red, a small pour of cream, and a grind of black pepper. He measured nothing, stirred it twice, and let it heat.
"Grilled cheese," he said, pulling bread from the top of the refrigerator. "Non-negotiable. It's a lockout tax. You don't get to opt out of the grilled cheese."
"I didn't agree to a lockout tax."
"You hold the key. That's an agreement." He was already at the stove, buttering bread slices. "It's in the small print. You should have read the terms."
I leaned against the counter and watched him work. He was less polished than at the bar, but his movements still signaled confidence.
The bread went in. He pressed it flat with the back of a spatula.
"Do you always look like that after a game?" he asked.
"Like what?"
"Like you're still in it. Still running the—" He waved a hand. "The whatever it is you run on the ice." He tapped his temple briefly with one finger and turned back to the stove.
"The adrenaline declines after."
"How long?"
A couple of hours. Depends on the game."
"Is that why you're awake when the bars let out?"
"Partly."
"What's the other part?"
"It's a sequence. The night has a sequence and sleep is at the end."
Sully flipped the sandwich. One corner was darker than the rest. He looked at it, decided something, and reached for the bread knife to address the situation. "Do you watch it back the same night? The game."
"Only if something needs correcting."
"What if nothing does?"
"Then I don't."
He sliced the sandwich, plated it beside the soup bowl, and slid it across the counter toward me. He poured soup into both bowls and leaned his elbows on the opposite side of the counter.
"So, let's say you had a good game," he said, "do you get a treat? Or just less self-loathing?"
"I don't hate myself."
He looked at me as he sipped a spoonful of soup. "Of course you don't."
I picked up my sandwich. We ate. The kitchen stayed warm from the stove while Sully talked.
There was a regular at Carver's who ordered a sidecar every Thursday and called it a Cosmo without awareness that they were different drinks. He'd stopped correcting her in week two. Now he just made it right and let her have the name.
"Does that bother you?" I asked.
"Nope. She's happy. The drink's correct. What's the argument?"
I didn't have one.
He refilled his soup without offering me more. He'd clocked that I was nearly done.
A few minutes later, unprompted, he said: "I used to think I was a night person. Turns out I just don't like the end of the day."
When I set my bowl down, he collected it and stacked it on my plate.
"Thanks for the key thing," he said.
"It was the practical solution."
"Still." He turned to the sink.
"Goodnight, Sully." I let myself out.
Back at my place, I drank a tall glass of water and went to bed.
In the dark, I ran back through the game. Holt narrowed the gap. I didn't have to correct for it. All of it sat cleanly in my mind. The system worked.
What I had nowhere to put was the rest of the night.
A single knock came from the other side of the wall. Not the two-rap signal. Just that.
I closed my eyes. I'd fully accounted for the game.
I wasn't even close on the rest.