Chapter 6
NIKOLAI
The morning after the elevator, I make coffee and I do not make it for him.
The routine is lying. The routine knows it is lying. I know it is lying. The coffee knows it is lying and the coffee is just a liquid.
"Morning," he says.
"Morning."
He looks at my coffee. He looks at the coffee maker. He looks at the absence of a second mug.
"So we're doing this," he says.
"Doing what."
"Pretending that if you act like a disappointed nutritionist, the elevator didn't happen."
"The elevator was a lapse in judgment."
"Your hand was in my hair."
"I am aware of where my hand was."
"And now your plan is to make one coffee, stand at the counter like a man reviewing tax documents, and act like the kissing was a clerical error."
"I do not review tax documents at the counter. I review them at the desk."
"Nikolai."
My name in his mouth. Two syllables. The same two syllables from the elevator, except in the morning these syllables are not breathless.
These syllables are frustrated and direct and carrying the specific weight of a man who was kissed against a mirror and who is now watching the kisser drink coffee alone.
I do not respond. I drink my coffee. The coffee is hot and bitter and the bitterness is appropriate.
He pours his own coffee. He does not ask for a mug.
He finds one (second shelf, left side, the shelf he should not know the location of after five days but that he knows because Mercer maps spaces the way he maps ice: instinctively, comprehensively, in the first five minutes of entering them).
He pours. He drinks. He looks at me over the rim with an expression that is not the grin.
The not-grin is worse than the grin. The not-grin is the underneath, and the underneath is disappointed.
We drive to the facility in silence. The silence is not the safe silence I offered him in the kitchen the first night.
The safe silence was an invitation. This silence is a wall, and the wall is mine, and the wall is doing the thing walls do when they are built in response to fear rather than need: they keep out the things that should be in.
At the facility, I am professional. I am impeccable in my professionalism.
I skate with precision. I execute drills with the mechanical efficiency that eight NHL seasons have encoded in my nervous system.
I do not look at Mercer during practice.
I do not look at Mercer in the cafeteria.
I do not look at Mercer in the corridor where the fluorescent lights hum and where, five days ago, our fingers touched on a folder and the touching changed the molecular composition of my life.
I do not look. The not-looking is the control, operational.
Mercer skates well. I know this because I am not looking at him and therefore my peripheral vision, which does not follow the control's directives, reports his movements with comprehensive detail.
His crossovers are cleaner. His forechecking decisions are smarter.
He takes the elite option twice and both times the option produces results.
He is getting better every day, and the getting-better is not relevant to the control and is therefore not something I should be tracking, and I am tracking it because I cannot stop.
The day passes. Practice. Film. Treatment. The structure of a professional hockey day, which is the structure I depend on, which is the control made schedule.
At 8:17 PM, the structure fails.
I am in the apartment. The apartment is clean.
The apartment has been cleaned twice today because the first cleaning was insufficient and the insufficiency was not about the cleaning.
The insufficiency was about the fact that Eli Mercer's things are gone (he moved to his own apartment this morning, two trips, the duffel bag and a grocery bag of items that had migrated into my space over five days) and the gone-ness of his things has made the apartment cleaner than it was before he arrived and the cleaner-than-before is the problem because the cleaner-than-before means the apartment noticed his presence and the apartment is not supposed to notice.
The knock is at 8:17. I know the time because I check the clock because the checking is the control, the documenting, the filing.
I open the door. Mercer is in the hallway. He is not grinning.
"Right," he says. "So we're doing this."
"You said that this morning."
"I'm saying it again because you spent eight hours acting like the elevator happened to someone else, and I am done pretending that your version of processing is healthy."
"My version of processing is my concern."
"It became my concern when you kissed me."
He walks past me into the apartment. The walking-past is the Mercer method: forward, at speed, without waiting for the space to be offered. The space is taken. The taking is the chaos and the chaos does not respect the control and the not-respecting is the siege.
"You kissed me," he says. "Not a peck. Not an accident.
You braced your hand against a mirror and you put your mouth on mine and your fingers were in my hair and your breathing was not controlled and your body was not controlled and for one minute in that elevator you were not performing the discipline and you were not managing the proximity and you were not protecting yourself from whatever happened to you that made you build this.
" He gestures at the apartment. The clean apartment. The controlled apartment. The fortress.
"And then you woke up and put it all back. The coffee for one. The silence. The not-looking. Like the kiss was a malfunction and the control is the fix and I am the thing being managed."
My jaw is tight. The tightness is the control's physical manifestation. The tightness is the last line.
"Be careful," I say.
"With what?"
"With me."
"I'm a little done with that, actually. I've been careful with you for five days.
I've been patient. I've been the guy who says goodnight instead of pushing.
I gave you last night. I walked to the guest room after you kissed me like the building was on fire and I gave you the night because you needed it. I'm not giving you another one."
"You do not understand what you are asking."
"Then tell me."
"I am telling you that if I touch you the way I want to, I will not stop at one kiss."
For one stupid second I hear a different voice, three years old and smiling while it cuts: too intense, man. Too much. The memory is enough to make my hand curl.
The sentence lands in the kitchen like a detonation. The sentence is not flirtation. The sentence is a confession delivered with the flat, Russian-accented precision of a man who has calculated the trajectory of his own desire and found it unmanageable.
The kitchen is quiet. Not the safe quiet. The loaded quiet. Two walls looking at each other across four feet of hardwood, and the four feet are the neutral zone, and the neutral zone is failing.
"That's exactly the problem," I say. "That is exactly the problem.
I do not do this. I do not lose the control.
The last time I lost the control, the person I lost it with used the losing against me and the using was.
.." I stop. The sentence has a destination I have not traveled to out loud.
The destination is Alexei. The destination is the eight months and the access and the betrayal.
"The using was enough to rebuild every wall.
And the walls have held for three years.
And you have been in my building for five days. "
"And they're cracking," he says.
"Yes."
"Good."
"It is not good."
"It is good because the walls are not protecting you.
The walls are keeping you in a clean apartment drinking coffee alone at six in the morning and cleaning things that are already clean and not looking at me during practice because looking at me would mean the elevator was real and the elevator was real, Nikolai.
The elevator was the realest thing that's happened in this building since I got here. "
He steps forward. He fists the front of my T-shirt.
The fisting is the chaos. The chaos takes the fabric and the fabric is the control and the control is being gripped by a twenty-two-year-old with brown eyes and no grin and the absolute, unwavering certainty of a person who has decided that the fortress is coming down and that the coming-down is not destruction but rescue.
"Then stop me," he says.
I do not stop him.
I kiss him hard enough to drive him back into the counter.