Chapter 7 #2
“Kept you alive.”
“For this?”
Petrov, pale, retrieves his phone. He types hastily, reads, straightens in his chair, and delivers his findings to the room. "I am… bereft."
"Correct usage," I say, before I can stop myself.
He points at me, grateful, eyes wet. "Thank you. I have been improving."
There’s some movement at the mantel. Jinx has taken down the framed photo of Washington hoisting his first division trophy and is arranging the four candles around it in a square, with a folded cocktail napkin underneath, and the overall effect is not subtle.
"I'm not dead, Jinx."
"The candles are preventative."
"Preventing what?"
Jinx adjusts the frame a quarter inch and doesn't answer, on the grounds that saying it aloud invites it.
The television comes on by itself, which is to say Becker has crawled to his laptop bag, and white letters fill the screen:
LIFE AFTER DAD: A SUCCESSION PLAN.
"You prepared a deck for this?" Kane asks.
"I prepared for everything. One per scenario.
" Becker's voice has gone thick, but his trackpad finger stays true.
"This was scenario three. I hoped so hard it was scenario one, Kane.
Scenario one was a boat purchase." Slide two arrives: an empty organizational chart under the heading WHO GETS CUSTODY OF THE GROUP CHAT.
"We need continuity of government. I'm nominating myself as interim dad. "
"You're the reason we need a dad," Ace says.
Snooze raises one hand from the loveseat. "Black armbands. Home and away."
"On it." Hammer already has his phone out. "Matte or glossy?"
"Matte," Jinx says from the memorial, in the tone of a man who has priced them before.
"Nobody is wearing mourning gear to my games," Washington says. "This is a retirement, not a diagnosis."
Through the noise, Ace leans forward with his elbows on his knees, and for a moment he's the veteran forward the league sees on game nights. "Hey. It's your call, Cap. You've earned it, and we're behind you. Whatever you need."
"Completely," Groover says, nodding along. "One hundred percent. It's your career."
The maturity lasts for eleven seconds. I count them.
"But like—" Ace's face does something hopeful. "What if we win the Cup? Does that reset it?"
"Yes!" Groover spins to Mateo. "That's a thing, right? Guys un-retire off a Cup all the time."
"Retirement is a career choice," Mateo says gently, working his thumbs into Groover's shoulders, "not a condition you can treat with a parade."
But the room takes the idea and runs. Becker adds a slide titled REVERSAL SCENARIOS in real time. Petrov proposes they simply not tell the league office. Jinx reaches for a lighter, and whatever the candles are about to become, it has bylaws.
Washington doesn't raise his voice. He puts his glass down on the mantel, click of glass on wood, and the sound lands like a whistle. The lighter goes away. The trackpad goes still.
"I love you idiots," Washington says. "Which is why you're going to let me say this part."
Leila's hand hasn't left his back the whole time.
"I've got one more season, and I want it. All of it. One more real run with this team while my knees still bend and my wife still recognizes me without a helmet—"
"Most days," Leila says.
"—and then I walk away on my own skates.
" His voice stays even, but slower now, laying each word down where he wants it.
"I've watched this room take care of each other my whole career.
That's the team. Not the standings. So no candles, no armbands, no succession committee.
You want to send me off?" He looks around once more, and the grin that comes up is the one he saves for overtime.
"Win. You idiots are going to give me a proper send-off by winning. "
The room comes back to life the way a bench does after a big penalty kill, everyone up an inch taller.
And while the noise builds I stay where I am, because my brain has already skipped ahead without authorization and set up next October: Washington’s locker, the one by the door with a different nameplate, the room before a third period without his voice in it.
Years of bring it in and then a morning where nobody says it.
Washington's eyes find mine over the top of it all. Maybe because I'm the only one not talking.
"Okay," I tell him. “Then, we win.”
He nods like I've said something much longer.
"Now is correct occasion," Petrov announces, standing, and Boris is unveiled to the room. Vodka. Becker objects that the moment calls for champagne and is overruled on the grounds that champagne is, per Petrov, "anxious wine." Leila produces shot glasses.
The first toast is to Washington. The second is to Leila, proposed by Leila. The third is Becker attempting to toast "the concept of fathers" before Kane gets a hand over his glass and marches him off toward water.
Jinx is permitted to dismantle the memorial under Washington's direct supervision, one candle at a time, in an order that matters to exactly one person present. Hammer's armband order dies in the cart.
That's when my phone buzzes against my thigh.
I know before I look. Some frequencies you learn.
P.G.: Co-chair sync, tomorrow, 8pm? Video call. Logistics.
I read it once. Then again, in case the second read locates anything unprofessional in it. Which it doesn't, because there's nothing unprofessional there. Two co-chairs. A campaign with real money in it, a gala that won't plan itself. Logistics.
Across the room, Washington is pinned in a group hug he's pretending to tolerate while Devon and Mateo negotiate its terms. Leila watches from the mantel with her almost-full glass. Becker is hydrating under supervision. Nobody's looking at me.
I check anyway. Both directions, one over each shoulder, a man with nothing to hide performing a full perimeter sweep of a living room.
Me: Eight works.
I set the phone face-down against my leg, where it sits with warm, radioactive patience.