Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Pratt
Iwoke at five thirty-three, before the alarm.
The ceiling came into focus first. My bedroom was the right temperature, and nothing in the room was out of place.
My phone was face down on the nightstand, where I'd left it. I turned it over and read the message.
Sully: At Nora’s.
I'd sent Are you at work first. In the ten minutes before the reply came, I built five explanations that would have made his absence understandable, including short staff at the bar, a schedule change, and Sully having left his phone there. When the answer arrived, it didn't fit any of them.
Sully had never mentioned going to Nora's. He told shift stories with enough detail that it would have come up if he'd ever gone to her place, and he would have set a story inside it.
I checked the thread a second time and then set the phone back down.
My shower ran for four minutes. The heat brought my shoulders back to baseline and loosened the stiffness in my hands.
I made coffee and set the mug at its usual spot on the counter. I ate standing, a simple breakfast of eggs and yogurt.
After that, the morning continued in its usual order. I gathered my keys, wallet, and phone, set my bag by the door, and ran ten seconds of “More Than a Feeling.”
Sully’s door was quiet when I passed it.
It was not quite seven, which meant he would still be asleep on his day off, if he were home.
I thought about him lying diagonally across the mattress with one hand thrown above his head.
I'd seen that enough times now for it to lodge in my head as standard Sully.
In the elevator, I shifted to my hockey brain and ran the coverage rotations for the morning skate.
Our session ran short.
I was on the ice twenty minutes early, before Rook came through the gate. I'd already made two passes along the boards and settled into the paint by the time the forwards started gathering at the blue line.
Kieran came in from the right on the first rep and moved the puck low along the boards to Cross. The shot came from the dot, low, blocker side, tight enough to beat a guess. I wasn't guessing. The puck hit my pad and deflected into the corner.
"Again," Coach called.
It was the same setup, one beat faster. I was ready before the shot left Kieran's stick.
On the fourth rep, Kieran changed his release point, getting the puck away a quarter-second earlier. He'd leaned into his front skate on the shift, a tell, and I got my glove up in time, barely. The puck hit the webbing hard enough to ring through my wrist.
"Good read," Heath said behind me on the reset.
I moved back to the top of the paint.
They sped it up.
Kieran went low to Cross. He snapped the puck back across the grain, and Heath cut through the crease as the shot came. I tracked it through the screen and caught it clean at chest height.
There was a pause after that one.
Coach Markel didn’t call the next rep immediately. He stood at the boards with his arms folded, watching us reset.
"That’s it," he said after a second. "That’s the read."
Kieran circled out of the zone, tapping his stick once against the ice.
"You’re early on everything today," he said as he passed.
Coach looked down the line once more, then back at me.
"We’re done," he said. "No point chasing it after that."
In the locker room, Heath was already at his stall with one skate off. He glanced up when I came through.
"What's Sully saying about Nora's new cocktail?"
My hand stopped with my gloves halfway to the upper shelf.
"The one named after her? Haven't tried it yet."
"Kieran went Wednesday when I was fielding an emergency call from Pickle about Croc repair. He said it's good." Heath reached for his tape. "Figured you'd have the report by now."
"I haven't had a reason to try it."
He nodded once and began unlacing the other skate. I finished placing my gear in its order. I didn't check my phone until I was in the car.
There were no new messages.
I set it in the cup holder and drove north.
***
I heard music before I reached our doors.
It wasn't loud, the way it was when Sully had people over. It wasn't Fleetwood Mac either.
As I entered my condo, the music kept going through the wall. I wasn't completely sure, but I thought it was Steely Dan, one of Dad's favorites.
I drank a glass of water standing and rinsed it. Then I returned to the hall.
Two knocks.
When Sully opened the door, he was wearing a dark blue t-shirt and the jeans that sat low on his hips. He'd pushed his hair back off his forehead. There were dark circles under his eyes that hadn't been there the last time I saw him.
"There he is." The smile arrived the way it usually did: the left side first, and the right just behind it.
"You're home."
"Day off. You knew that."
"I did." I looked past him. The coffee maker was on. "Steely Dan?"
"Look at you. Pulling that name out of thin air."
"Dad liked them."
He leaned against the frame with one hand still on the edge of the door. It's Aja. This is a day for it.
I waited for a story, but it didn't come.
"Good skate?"
"Fine."
"Just fine?"
"Cross was quick. They tried to push me, but I blocked everything. Coach sent us home early."
"And more details. I asked, and you delivered."
"I did."
"Come in?" Sully asked.
"I can't at the moment. I haven't eaten. Practice was lighter than usual, so I didn't stop anywhere on the way home."
"Sure." He straightened off the frame. "I'll be around."
"Later, maybe."
"Yeah." The smile came back, just slightly slower than before. "Later."
***
Sully knocked at seven, and when I opened the door, he was already talking.
"— so I went to Min's on Randolph, and Min asked where you were, which means you've made an impression. That means the next time you have to compliment a dish because she is tracking you now."
He came past me holding up a bag, with his coat half off one shoulder. He set the bag on the counter before I'd closed the door.
"Drunken noodles," he said, pulling containers out and lining them along the counter. "Green curry, because you said you liked it. Pad see ew, because I like it. Love those thick noodles. Spring rolls because they had the good ones today, and I couldn't skip that."
"That's a lot of food."
"That's a lot of food for one person. Normal for two. You're an athlete. I factor in that you eat like you're training for something, and you are."
He opened the first container and handed me chopsticks. I retrieved forks from the drawer.
"Plate?" I asked.
"Sure, but let's go to the living room. We can use the coffee table as the dining table."
Sully was already gathering containers two at a time, one in each hand, heading for the living room.
"I had a regular last year who spent a semester in Kyoto and came back convinced that eating off a low table is the only civilized way to do it.
He called it the Japanese way. Said Americans eat too high.
I told him most of the Japanese people I know own chairs, and he said I was missing the point. "
"What was the point?"
"Never established. He tipped well, though, so I let him have it."
He set the containers down in a rough arc across the coffee table and sat cross-legged on the rug. I followed with the spring rolls and the last of the curry and lowered myself to the floor on the other side.
"See," he said, opening the drunken noodles. "Civilized."
"So Tomasz hired someone new. It's a kid named Devon. He's confident. Maybe too confident. He was making a mojito for a four-top, and the mint and sugar were wrong. He poured the rum like it was free."
Sully shook his head. "Nora was at the other end. She saw it and said nothing. She just walked the full length of the bar and took the shaker out of his hand mid-pour. She fixed the whole drink without looking at him, handed it back, and walked away."
"Did she say anything after?"
"Not a word. That's the Nora method. She corrects you, and that’s the end of it. You don’t argue with her."
He slurped down a noodle. I was halfway through a spring roll before he picked up again.
"Then around nine, this guy comes in. Mid-sixties at least, alone, sits at the bar. Asks me in a serious tone if we have a drink named after his ex-wife."
"A drink named after his ex-wife?"
"That's what he asked. I asked him what her name was. I thought maybe he married somebody named Margarita or Mary. He said, 'Doesn't matter, just make it complicated and expensive.'"
I laughed. "What did you make him?"
"An Old Fashioned. Top shelf. It was twenty-two dollars. He said it was perfect."
"That is complicated and expensive."
Every story landed, and every pause sat right. He picked up whatever I gave back and kept the thread moving. It was the rhythm I'd been missing.
I set my fork down for a second and leaned back against the couch.
"Quiet in here," he said, gesturing with a spring roll. "You should have music."
He pulled his phone out before I could respond. His thumb moved, and through my speaker on the bookshelf, the first chords of "More Than a Feeling" came in clean.
"You know how—"
"Doesn't take a genius, Pratt. We're listening to the full album this time."
The song rolled into the chorus. After it wound down, the next track started. I'd bought the song on iTunes years earlier and never listened to the whole album.
Sully caught my face.
"Oh my God. You've never heard track two."
"I don't have the rest of the album."
"You've been listening to 'More Than a Feeling' your entire adult life, and you have never heard 'Peace of Mind.'"
"It's called that?"
"It's called that. 'More Than a Feeling' is the track on the movie soundtracks. 'Peace of Mind' is where the album tells you what it's actually about."
"The chorus works for me."
"The chorus is the trailer. This is the movie."