Chapter 11 Pratt
Chapter eleven
Pratt
The ceiling was not mine.
It had a different trim. It was lighter molding, with the corner joint slightly off. The angle of the incoming light differed from my bedroom.
I was in Sully's bedroom on the left side of his bed. His side was empty.
I took stock of the room. A stack of three paperback books, suspense novels, sat on the nightstand, and the dresser held a hairbrush, deodorant, and what looked like a fragrance stick diffuser.
Above the dresser, a frame hung level and centered on the wall. It was dark wood with clean lines, the kind you'd put around something of value.
Inside the frame was a turkey made from seeds glued to the back of a paper plate.
The plate had warped slightly at the edges, gone the color of old paper, and at least a third of the seeds had migrated from their original positions.
Someone small had written a name at the bottom in the large, careful letters of a child who had recently learned how to construct letters.
I looked at it for longer than anything else in the room.
My clothes were on the chair in the corner. I'd left them on the floor—I was certain of that—but they were folded now, stacked, with my shoes set parallel to the chair leg. I got up, tugged on my jeans, and then pulled the shirt over my head. My phone screen was blank; no missed calls.
Sully was already in the kitchen. Two mugs of steaming coffee sat on the counter. I heard the sizzle of bacon dropped into a skillet. He turned when he heard me.
"I'm glad you're not a disappear-by-dawn guy."
"I didn't have a reason to."
I picked up the closest mug.
"Stay for breakfast?"
"I've got about thirty minutes."
"Perfect. Bacon, scrambled eggs. Are you an English muffin man?"
"No."
"Good, because I don't have any."
Sully plated the eggs and laid the bacon beside them, grabbing two forks from the drawer on his way to the counter. He set one plate in front of me.
He picked up his fork and then put it back down. "I'm going to ask you something, and you're allowed to just eat your eggs."
I waited.
"Is this the part where you decide it was a bad idea?"
"No." He nodded once, picked up his fork again.
"Okay."
I finished and carried my plate to the sink. I rinsed it and set it on the rack.
Sully was still at the counter when I turned around. He didn't move to intercept me. When I reached him, I stopped. He stood and kissed me once, unhurried.
"Good luck with the angles."
One night on the road trip, I'd walked him through coverage gaps with text messages. He hadn't asked me to stop. He'd asked a question that showed he'd understood.
"I'll text." He was still smiling when I let myself out.
***
Morning skate started at nine.
I was on the ice at eight forty-three. It was early enough that the surface still held the Zamboni's last marks, clean arcs across the face off circles, with the blue paint sharp at its edges. I ran my edges along the boards first, left to right, getting the feel of the ice.
By the time the forwards came through the gate, I'd set myself.
The first drill was straightforward. Kieran moved the puck low along the boards, and the shot came from the right side later than the setup suggested.
I was ready when he fired, trying to catch me between adjustments.
The puck hit my pad and went to the corner, where Holt collected it without breaking stride.
The second run I tracked the puck through two screens without losing it, set my angle, and the shot went wide. Holt had closed the lane earlier than the drill called for. His instincts were right.
Third was the setup we'd flagged in film — weak-side, where the half-second gap had been opening. Holt stayed on his man. I didn't need the extra quarter-second of adjustment I'd been building in for weeks.
I moved on.
Cross ran the power-play unit through two cycles at the other end.
Varga was talking, "—every time, every single time, he drops his left shoulder before he shoots.
Doesn't matter if it's a slap shot or a wrister, the shoulder goes first. I saw it twice in October and once in the preseason, and I'm telling you it's a tell, it's a genuine tell, you can set a clock to it. "
Rook listened the way he always did. He faced forward and processed the words without acknowledging receipt.
I completed the final drill and skated to the crease.
Tapped the left post and then the right with the heel of my stick, not the blade. I used the same pressure in the same order, no variation permitted. It didn't require thought, only execution.
The session ended, and I skated off the ice.
The locker room was at its usual volume.
Varga had concluded his hockey analysis and moved on to the Pittsburgh hotel breakfast. "—the iron was set to medium.
Medium. Who sets a waffle iron to medium?
You get this gray, sad, limp situation that is not a waffle; it's a waffle's lesser cousin, and I told the guy, I said this to his face, I said, 'You have one job in this entire breakfast operation and the one job is the temperature—'"
Cross ate a protein bar and nodded at intervals. Rook was at his stall with his back to the room, removing tape from his stick.
I worked through my post-skate routine.
I took my gloves off and set them on the upper shelf. My helmet lived on a hook, with the visor facing out. The pads were in order: left before right. I emptied my water bottle, rinsed it, and placed it open-mouth-down on the towel at the back of the stall.
Heath was across the room. He was at his own stall, with one skate off while working on the second. His shoulders were relaxed. Beside him, Kieran had his phone out, scrolling.
I was folding my jersey when Heath looked up. He looked directly at me, and then he smiled. It was brief, took only a second, but I caught it.
Varga finished, apparently satisfied with the verdict he'd reached, and crossed the room. He stopped at my stall and stood closer than necessary. He dropped his voice low to a level that was technically private.
"You got laid last night." He said it the way someone else might say nice save, factual and approving. "Good job, man." His shoulder bumped mine.
I pulled my jersey over my head. He was still there when I emerged.
"Oh my God." His voice went up slightly. "You did. Damn."
He bumped my shoulder one more time and walked away requiring nothing further from me.
I finished dressing and headed for the parking garage. Heath and Varga had clocked something and reached the same conclusion. One of them knew for sure who I'd been with.
I drove home. The hallway was different. When I placed my key in my door, I heard Sully's voice next door and multiple other voices. I unlocked my door and went inside.
Standing in the entrance to my condo, I listened to the sound coming through the wall.
It was laughter at overlapping intervals, at least four people, maybe six, not counting Sully.
His voice cut through the rest like it did at Carver's when the bar was loud.
The Bee Gees' "You Should Be Dancing" pulsed underneath, periodically buried by conversation stacking on top.
I hung my keys on the hook and put my coat in the closet. I checked my phone; no texts.
Sully had people in before. I knew the sound of his condo at full capacity. What was different was the position it put me in now. Before last night, I'd assumed a clear functional line between what happened on his side of the wall and how my evening would unfold. That line was hazier now.
I went to the kitchen. The container I'd assembled before practice was in the fridge, labeled. I pulled it out and set it on the counter.
My next steps weren't as clear as usual. I hesitated about putting the container in the microwave and waited, listening.
A woman's voice rose above the rest, building toward something. I caught fragments: and then he said and I swear to God. Briefly, the room grew quieter to let her finish. The punchline landed, and three people responded at once. Sully's laugh came through cleanest.
"Stayin' Alive" followed, and they all joined in with fractured harmonies on the chorus.
I considered leaving. I could find food in the neighborhood and come back when the noise level had changed.
Or I could knock. I didn't. I stayed at the counter.
While I was still considering my options, the noise ended. It wasn't a subtle fade by degrees. It ended with Sully's door opening and closing three times. The music landed on low, Fleetwood Mac again.
Nine minutes after the last voice, when I had the microwave door open, a knock sounded at my door. It was one sharp rap. I opened it.
Sully stood there with two takeout containers stacked in one hand. He'd pushed his sleeves to the elbow. "Lunch?"
I let him in, and he continued talking. "I know it's a weird time to have people over, but it's my schedule. I should have looped you in. It was a work thing that became a bigger thing. Then, they all had to leave." A brief pause. "I didn't do anything wrong. Did I?"
"No," I said.
He watched me for a beat. "I have the day off," he said, and nudged the containers toward me. "These need heat. It's good Thai. I'm your problem for the day."
"You're not a problem."
"You say that now." He laughed and placed the containers in the microwave that still stood open before pulling out two sets of chopsticks and setting them on the counter.
We ate standing. He'd ordered from a place on Randolph. He said they arrived while he had the people in. The food was good.
We finished. Sully collected the containers and folded the chopsticks inside them without being asked.
"Shedd Aquarium," I said.
He turned. "What about it?"
"Have you been?"
"No." He studied me for a beat. "Have you?"
"A few times. I have a friend—"
Sully interrupted. "Are you asking me to go to the aquarium with you?"
"Yes."
It took him a beat to adjust. "Yeah," he said. "Okay. Let me get my coat."
The drive took twenty minutes. Sully started talking immediately.
"I had a guy last week try to tip me in cryptocurrency," he said. "Not like, offer to. He just did it. He sent me a QR code across the bar, like that was a thing you could do."
"What did you do with it?"
"I screenshotted it and then ignored it until it was someone else's problem." He shifted in the seat. "It was eleven dollars in crypto. It's now either four dollars or forty; I genuinely do not know."
A light on Michigan changed, and I drove forward.
"There was a seagull," he said, "last summer on the lakefront. It followed me for three blocks. I had no food. I told it I had no food, but it didn't care."
"What did you do?"
"I went into a CVS and waited it out, but it was there when I came out. Then, this tourist family came along, and a little girl started tossing popcorn. I left the lakefront."
I said, "I had a defenseman in my second season who ate the same pre-game meal for eleven months. Exactly the same. Same restaurant and same table if he could get it."
"It sounds like there's a punchline. What happened?"
"Someone told him that the restaurant had changed ownership."
Sully turned his head to look at me. "Had it?"
"Six months earlier."
We both laughed.
The aquarium wasn't busy on a weekday in late February. We paid and went in.
The main hall was cool and dim, with the light shifting to blue-green the way it does when you're surrounded by water on three sides. Sully slowed down where I hadn't expected. He stopped and watched a freshwater display of catfish as they browsed the tank's bottom.
"Love the whiskers."
"They don't grow so well on me."
Sully laughed. Next, he stopped at a display of moon jellies, floating in a light current. "They don't have brains," he said.
"No hearts either."
He considered my comment. "Living the dream."
We finally arrived at the beluga tank. We came around a corner and I saw Kieran first. He stood close to the glass, peering under the surface of the water. He turned when he heard us.
"Pratt." Then, to Sully: "Kieran Mathers. We met at your bar."
"Sully O'Reilly." He shook Kieran's hand. "You're the one closing the coverage gaps."
Kieran raised one eyebrow and looked at me.
"He texts," I said.
Kieran turned back to the tank. "You volunteer here, right?" I asked.
"I do." He said it simply, without elaboration.
A beluga swam up to the glass—close enough to its face, mouth turned slightly upward in what many people mistook for a smile. It turned in a slow arc, eye tracking us.
"This is Ansel," Kieran said.
"You know him?" Sully asked.
"He knows me." Kieran placed one hand flat against the glass. Ansel held his position, eye steady. "He's been here for a long time. We connect."
Sully stepped closer to the glass. Ansel shifted his position slightly. Sully didn't move. He stood and let the whale look at him. Most people would have tapped the glass or moved quickly, trying to generate a response. Sully just waited.
Ansel drifted closer.
Sully raised a hand and placed it flat against the glass, beside Kieran's. Neither of them spoke.
I stood slightly back and watched the three of them—Kieran, Sully, and Ansel—still in the blue light. It was a good afternoon.