Chapter 9 Pratt
Chapter nine
Pratt
The knock came at twelve-eleven. It was one knock, not two.
Two meant the lock. One meant something else, and I lay in the dark for three seconds, deciding. I got up, pulled on sweats and an Ironhawks t-shirt, and opened the door.
Sully stood there in a wrinkled shirt and jeans, with no shoes and hands loose at his sides. "I don't have a reason," he said. "Just so you know. I'm not locked out."
"I know. It was one knock, but at the door, not on the wall."
"Okay." He held still for a moment. "I was lying there and then I wasn't."
I stepped back from the door. He came inside.
The condo was dark except for the lamp in the corner.
"I won't stay long," he said.
"You don't have to rush."
Sully turned to face me. Then he put one hand against the side of my jaw and kissed me. I kissed back, parting my lips. His other hand held onto the front of my shirt. I put my hands on his waist, steadying him. His body was warm through the fabric.
"Hi," he said.
"Hi."
He smiled.
"Bad news, though. Road trip starting tomorrow," I said.
"Yeah, I know. I track the schedule. I wasn't—" He stopped and started again. "I just wanted to."
He let go of my shirt.
"Four games."
"Ten days." He took a half-step back. "I know the schedule, Pratt."
He exhaled. "When you get back," he said.
"Yes."
Sully nodded once. He pushed his hands into his jeans pockets and looked at the lamp one more time.
"Good luck," he said. "Not that you need it."
"I'll take it."
He crossed to the door and let himself out. I turned off the lamp and went to bed.
***
The media focused on Cross.
They had both his goals in their production queue. I'd seen it on a laptop near the equipment bay. Cross stood at the center of a five-reporter circle, answering each question in few words without decoration.
I moved past the edge of the cluster. No one turned or lifted a recorder toward me.
That was my goal.
I had nineteen saves, with no goals allowed. My performance didn't require explanation in a story. It was consistent, repeatable, and invisible.
I pushed through the locker room door.
Varga was already at the center of the room, narrating a game recap to Lindqvist, who was half-listening while he unlocked his stall.
"—Kieran in the second period is what I'll remember.
He tested Columbus and shook them up with that shot.
" A considering his own words. "That's how you get to a three-one win. "
"Three-one," I said.
"Right." He pointed at me. "Exactly. Three-one. See, Pratt gets it."
I was dressed, bag packed, and in the corridor while Varga was still mid-narrative in the locker room.
My exit was clean. I walked to the bus. The engine was already running, a low vibration through the step when I climbed in. I took my usual seat, set my bag at my feet, and leaned back against the window.
The Columbus crowd followed patterns. They built pressure in the second period, not the first. I'd observed it during film review and confirmed it in our game.
The noise arrived in waves that peaked on power plays and bottomed out in the neutral zone.
It was predictable, and Kieran's goal reduced it to a low hum.
Every building had a version.
The crowd in Pittsburgh directed their noise and made it personal, interested in making sure I understood they were present. They tried to unbalance the game with pointed shouts. I focused on the crease.
Early in my career, I kept a small notebook. It was a series of figures: post depth, crease width, and the distance from the top of the paint to the face off circles. They were numbers I knew by heart, but writing them down settled something inside.
I stopped carrying it in my third NHL season. I'd fully internalized the numbers. They lived in my body now, instead of on paper.
The hotel rooms on road trips were interchangeable.
Each had a bed pushed against the wall, a desk opposite, and a window with blackout curtains I pulled within thirty seconds of arrival.
Temperature controls varied, but I aimed for sixty-six degrees, whether I needed heating or cooling to reach it.
The texts started in Columbus. I was in the room forty minutes after the final horn. I lay in bed with the blanket pulled up to my chin. My phone buzzed on the nightstand at 11:48.
Sully: Carver's was a disaster tonight. Not in a bad way. The kind where something minor goes wrong early and every decision after that is slightly off. We ran out of garnish by nine. Nine, Pratt! That's a structural failure.
I read it and considered my response.
Pratt: What garnish?
His response came in four minutes.
Sully: Citrus. Cherries. The decorative scaffold of the entire operation.
I put the phone down and went to sleep. Another message came at 12:33 am Pittsurgh time.
Sully: Still awake?
Pratt: Yes.
Sully: Good game. The third period looked tight from the bar camera.
Pratt: It was acceptable.
Sully: That's your language for good, right?
Pratt: Yes.
In Nashville he sent a voice memo by accident and followed it immediately with:
Sully: Ignore that. Wrong person. Do not listen to it.
I told him I hadn't listened to it.
Sully: You're very honest for someone who definitely listened to it.
Pratt: I didn't.
A long pause. Then:
Sully: Okay, I was recording an argument with a guy at the bar about whether you can make a proper sidecar with VS cognac. For the record, I was right. You can't.
Pratt: What did he say?
Sully: He said the French don't care.
Two minutes later:
Sully: Which is somehow also correct. I hate it when that happens.
Pratt: That's fascinating.
Sully: See, this is what I mean about you.
I didn't ask what he meant. I set the phone on the nightstand and went to sleep.
The practice facility in Nashville had two ice sheets and a weight room that smelled like rubber and dried sweat. We had the smaller sheet for the morning skate.
I came off early. My edges were sound, and there was nothing to correct.
I was in the locker room unlacing when Heath came in with his helmet still on. He sat two stalls down and started on his skates.
"The grilled cheese place you mentioned," he said. "On LaSalle."
"I didn't mention a grilled cheese place."
"You mentioned a grilled cheese. Kieran and I tracked it to a place."
"You tracked it? I said Sully made it."
Heath laughed. "Just yanking your chain, Pratt. Loosen up." He looked at me. "The bartender next door," he said. "How's that going?"
It wasn't so much a question as an observation for me to verify.
"Fine," I said.
"Fine, like excellent fine, or fine, like you're way too nosy fine."
"Fine, like it's a developing situation, and I don't have a full read on it."
He was quiet for a moment. "The night we went to Carver's. He had the entire bar to look at, and he was watching you. I think that's already developed."
"He watches everyone. That's the job."
"Sure." He pulled off the second skate. "Except when he was watching you, the job stopped."
I folded my tape into a tight roll and dropped it in the bin by the stall.
"Also," Heath said, "you look different."
"I look exactly the same."
"You look the same but act different. I can't explain it better than that. It's not a bad different. Actually, kind of good to see." He stood, skates in hand. "Kieran noticed too."
On the other side of the room, Kieran was at his stall with his back to us, already half-changed, in no apparent hurry. He hadn't looked up once during the exchange.
"Kieran," I said.
He looked over.
"Do I look different?"
"You've been on your phone," Kieran said. "Someone must be on the other end."
Heath pointed at him. "That's it. That's the thing." He walked toward the showers. "You've been on your phone on the bus for almost every ride on this trip. It's new."
I changed into street clothes and went to find something to eat. Two blocks east of the facility, I found a nondescript diner.
It was just starting to fill with an early lunch crowd. I ordered eggs and toast.
Sully's text came in while I was finishing up. He'd sent it at 10:19. He would have just climbed out of bed.
Sully: Do you ever miss anywhere? Like not a person. Just a place.
I thought about the question properly. There was a pond fifteen minutes from my house growing up, down a service road that ran along a soy field before opening into a clearing. It froze solid in November and stayed that way until March.
It was always empty. No boards, locker rooms, or Dad running drills. Just ice and the sound of my blades.
Pratt: There's a pond outside of Mankato. Off a service road. It froze before the official rinks did every year by about two weeks. I skated on it before I was supposed to.
Sully: Before you were supposed to meaning it wasn't safe yet, or before you were supposed to meaning someone had a rule about it.
Pratt: Both.
A short pause.
Sully: That's a good place to miss.
I stayed at the counter for another four minutes after I'd finished eating. After a quick glance around, I left a tip, folded the receipt, and walked back to our hotel.
After the game, I was back in the room by eleven. It was the last game of the trip. I had my duffel sorted.
No new messages. Sully would still be at Carver's. It was Thursday, his second-longest shift, and Chicago was a time zone behind me.
I set the phone on the desk and opened Spotify.
I had three playlists for the road. One was warmup tempo. The second was post-game cool-down. A third was miscellaneous songs I'd accumulated because they sounded like something I should keep.
I skipped all three.
Instead, I typed into the search bar "Fleetw," and the autofill did the rest. I selected "Don't Stop" and placed the phone face up on the desk.
After the last notes, I fell asleep and slept soundly.
***
On the team plane, I took my usual spot by the window, fourth row from the front. I settled in, bag overhead, and coat on the empty seat beside me. I opened the altitude display on the seat screen before boarding finished.
Across the aisle and one row forward, Cross had a folded newspaper on his tray table and was doing the crossword. He wrote in ink, not in pencil. It was a Cross-style commitment.
I watched him solve three clues in the time it took the plane to finish boarding.
Two rows behind me, Heath had already claimed Kieran's shoulder. Kieran had a book open. It had the fin of a whale breaking the ocean's surface on the cover.
Varga was two rows back on the aisle side, talking into Rook's headphones from the seat beside him. Rook still had the headphones on. Varga's hands moved as he narrated. The trip had given him material, and he was processing it at full speed.
The engines pitched upward. As the city slowly disappeared behind clouds, the altitude display read thirty thousand feet and climbing.
Forty minutes later, Chicago appeared as we descended through the clouds. It created a clean line at the edge of Lake Michigan.
The runways at O’Hare came into view, long white strips crossing at angles. Traffic flowed toward them in steady lines, red and white, not stopping. The Kennedy ran straight in toward the center, packed at all hours. The river cut through the grid and bent hard near downtown.
I knew the approach well. The skyline assembled itself in the same order every time, as fixed as anything in my crease geometry.
I was returning to something beyond the city. Something unpredictable. I was looking forward to being home.
It was the side of my wall where the music lived, from disco to Fleetwood Mac. I looked at the altitude display and watched the descent continue. Chicago came up to meet us.