Chapter 11 #2
"The Oscar."
I looked at the tank. The fish looked back.
"You named him."
"The owner named him. I just maintained the usage."
"Kieran."
"Fine. I named him." He capped the brown bottle and set it back in his kit.
"There was a volunteer at Shedd when I first started.
Melvin Osei. Sixty-something. Retired CTA driver.
He came in three mornings a week to help with the touch tanks, those shallow exhibits where kids can handle starfish and sea cucumbers. "
"Okay."
"He didn't know who my father was. I don't mean he was being polite about it. I mean, he genuinely did not know. He'd never watched a hockey game in his life. He called me K and asked me to hold the bucket."
Kieran wiped his hands on a rag.
"On the first day, I introduced myself with my complete name.
Force of habit. He said, That's a lot of letters for a kid holding a bucket.
And then he showed me how to tell when a sea star was stressed.
He said the trick was to watch the animal in front of you instead of the animal you expected to see. "
The bar hummed behind us. Someone fed the jukebox. Van Morrison "Moondance."
"He volunteered for six years. Then his knees gave out and he couldn't do the mornings anymore. On his last day, he brought doughnuts for the staff and told me I'd be fine as long as I kept watching."
Kieran looked at the tank. The Oscar drifted toward the glass again. "So, Melvin."
It wasn't a joke or a quirk.
"Diagnosis?" I asked.
"Parameters are perfect. Melvin's just being an asshole."
I crouched beside him. "You do this a lot, right? Not only Shedd. House calls."
"Six tanks around the city. Seven, if you count my condo."
I winced slightly. Kieran was still too nervous about being seen to show me his home. "You have a tank at your place?"
"Thirty-gallon reef. Couple of clownfish. A cleaner shrimp named Gerald."
I stared at him. "You have a shrimp named Gerald?"
"The clownfish are Patty and Selma."
"After—"
"The Simpsons. Yes."
I laughed, too loud for the bar. The bartender glanced over momentarily and then went back to his crossword.
The image of Kieran Mathers—first-round pick and legacy defenseman's son—going home to a reef tank populated by Simpsons characters and a shrimp named Gerald was so completely him.
"When do I get to meet Gerald?"
"Whenever you want."
He offered me a hand. I took it. His grip was warm and damp from tank water.
We walked out together. The sidewalk was empty.
Behind the bar, in the small parking lot, we stopped at the edge of the glow cast by a security light. Our cars were in opposite corners.
I reached for the open collar of Kieran's jacket. Not pulling. Holding.
He leaned in.
"Donnelly! Mathers! What the hell!"
The voice arrived before the person did.
Varga rounded the corner of the building at full stride, grinning. "—I was at Sal's, two blocks over, and I saw Mathers's slick vehicle, and I thought, that's interesting—"
Kieran stepped back from me.
One moment he was leaning toward me, and the next he was three feet away with his test kit repositioned between us like a prop.
The ease that had lived in his body inside the bar folded itself away, and the version of Kieran Mathers that the world recognized stood in its place.
"Fish maintenance," Kieran told Varga, holding up the test kit. "The bar has a tank. Owner called me."
"You maintain random bar aquariums? That's the most specific hobby I've ever heard."
"It's not a hobby."
"I'm not judging. It's kind of sweet. Like a fish doctor." Varga continued. "You two hang out a lot outside the rink, huh?"
The question didn't come with an agenda.
"He has a car," I said. "I have feet. The overlap is coincidental."
Varga laughed and kept talking, filling the cold air with a story about Sal's wings and a bet he'd lost to the bartender. Kieran stood at a professional distance from me.
Varga noticed nothing.
I noticed everything.
After Varga left, the lot was quiet again.
"He didn't see anything," I said.
"I know." Kieran's voice was flat. "That's not the point."
He turned and headed for his car, calling back over his shoulder, "I'll see you at practice."
I watched his taillights exit the lot.
As I approached my car, at the far edge of the lot, an engine turned over.
Pratt's. I recognized it immediately. Dark blue Impala. I hadn't noticed it when we walked out, which meant it had been there the entire time.
The headlights came on. He passed within fifteen feet of me.
Pratt's window was down an inch. He looked straight ahead. He turned onto the street, and then he was gone.
Pratt said nothing the next day. Not at practice or in the locker room. He stopped a puck I redirected into the crease during a drill and cleared it with his usual economy.
"Good screen," he said.
That was all.
When I returned home, my apartment was dark, and I left the overhead light off.
I sat at the kitchen table with my phone flat on the surface. Calculator app. The monthly budget I kept updated.
I added the surgery. Forty-two thousand. Round up for contingency. Forty-five and let the calculator spit out the expense totals.
Next, I looked at the numbers from my contract. Remaining paychecks. Performance bonuses I was tracking toward. Subtract rent, insurance, groceries, and the monthly transfers home.
The math worked if I stayed.
Then, a new thought arrived.
A trade.
A different team. One further down in the league hierarchy where I could be more valuable. Potentially more money. Enough to cover the surgery and build a buffer that didn't depend on sixty-game streaks of uninterrupted good fortune.
The math was clean. The logic was sound.
The cost was Chicago.
The cost was Kieran, the Northbound, and Markel placing me on one of the best first lines in the league.
I set the phone face down.
The pipe cleaner figure on the coffee table leaned forward in its permanent stride. Elbows out, committed, hard to knock over. I'd started talking to it on bad nights.
Two futures. A trade that solved the money and broke everything else. A stay that preserved everything and gambled the money.
I went to bed. The sheets were cold.
The numbers ran through my head. They were still running when I fell asleep.