Chapter 4
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Wes walked into the Penalty Box at two-fifty-five.
The Penalty Box was, on any normal afternoon, four tables, a counter, a chalkboard menu, three booths along the rink-facing window, and a barista named Bridget Halligan who had grown up two doors down from Wes and had been to Wes’s twelfth birthday party and could be relied on to call him Wessie in front of any third party who happened to be present.
The Penalty Box was also, on any normal afternoon, the listening post for everything that happened inside the Barn and an alarming amount of what happened outside it.
Wes had ordered a black drip from Bridget and was halfway to the booth at the back when Sully Petrov pushed through the door in a Pilots-issue practice fleece with his stick over one shoulder and his hair very wet.
“Berglund,” Sully said.
“Petrov.”
“You are sitting at the back booth.”
“I am sitting at the back booth.”
“You never sit at the back booth.”
“Sully.”
“At the back booth. At three in the afternoon. The day after Pete had his weekly afternoon panic. Berglund, are you about to be ambushed by something or are you about to ambush somebody, because either way I would like to —”
“Sully.”
“What.”
“Go away.”
Sully went away. Sully went two booths up the row and sat down loudly with a sandwich Bridget had not yet made him, and pulled out his phone, and pretended to look at it.
From this booth, Sully would be able to see most of Wes’s booth, hear at least half of Wes’s conversation, and report on the experience to the entire dressing room by tomorrow.
Wes sighed. He took a long, slow sip of his coffee. He waited.
The bell over the door rang. Ada Halloran came in.
She had her hair down today, which was a thing Wes processed with the same neutral attention he gave to everything else he was not going to comment on.
She had a thick canvas jacket on over a sweater the color of cream.
She had a leather notebook tucked under one arm.
She had, he noticed, slightly more makeup on than she wore for class. A small, careful armor.
She nodded to Bridget, who nodded back. She did not look at Sully. She crossed the floor of the Penalty Box at her usual deliberate pace and slid into the booth across from Wes.
“Berglund.”
“Halloran.”
“Sully Petrov is two booths up pretending to be on his phone.”
“I noticed.”
“Are you going to ask him to leave.”
“I asked him to go away. He went away to the next booth. This is what Sully Petrov calls leaving.”
She did, this time, fully smile. It was small, but it was a smile, and Wes filed it.
Bridget came over, set down Ada’s tea, and said, “Wessie, you want anything to eat.”
“No.”
“Ada, anything to eat.”
“No, thank you, Bridge.”
Bridget looked between them. Bridget had, Wes saw, drawn her own conclusions about the booth at the back at three in the afternoon. Bridget did not say anything. Bridget went back behind the counter and pretended to clean a milk jug.
Ada opened her notebook.
She did not, Wes noted, open it dramatically. She opened it the way a person opened a notebook when they had been carrying notebooks since they were eight. She set a pen on the page. She uncapped the pen. She looked up at him.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” he said.
“I want to say something first,” she said.
“Go ahead.”
She tapped the pen twice on the page, lightly. Click, click.
“I have not done this before,” she said.
“I have not been fake-engaged or fake-dated or fake-anything for a sponsorship. I have done many other kinds of professional appearances and a number of staged emotional moments. So I have — I have a clear sense of what I am willing to give a camera. What I am not is — I do not have a process for the part where the other person is also a person.”
She paused. She looked at him. Direct.
“You and I do not know each other,” she said.
“We work in the same building. I respect the way you handle the youth program. You have been, for two years, the most polite version of a coworker I could ask for. That is the foundation we are building on. I would like to be honest with you about that, because I think we will both get further if we don’t pretend to a foundation we don’t have. ”
Wes nodded.
“Agreed,” he said. “Cleanly.”
“Good. Then — rules. Tell me yours first.”
He had not expected to go first. He took a beat to compose them in his head.
“All right,” he said. “One. No physical contact off-camera. We hold hands when the camera is on, we let go when it isn’t.
That includes the obvious — no arm around the shoulder in the parking lot for no reason, no hand on the small of the back when we’re walking out of the rink with no one watching, none of that.
The performance is for the performance.”
“Agreed.”
“Two. No overnight anything. I’m not sleeping at your house, you’re not sleeping at mine.
If the schedule requires us in Portland the same night, we get separate rooms with separate keys at the sponsor’s expense.
Marin Pell wants two separate rooms; I checked.
We’re not the first couple campaign Tidemark has run. They expect to pay for two rooms.”
“Agreed.”
“Three. Any text from a sponsor representative goes to both of us. No back-channels. If Marin texts me and not you, I tell you. If she texts you and not me, you tell me.”
“Agreed.”
“Four. If at any point in any appearance you need an exit, you say a word and I get you out. You pick the word. It can be — it can be anything. You say waltz in a sentence, I get you out.”
She tilted her head very slightly.
“Why waltz,” she said.
“You play one in the lobby some mornings. It’s not a normal word for a January conversation. If you put it in a sentence I’ll know you mean it.”
She looked at him for a moment. Sully’s head, two booths up, had not moved, which was itself a sign that Sully was eavesdropping with his entire spinal column. Wes did not let his eyes flick over to Sully. He held hers.
“Okay,” she said carefully. “That is — that is a good rule. We’ll do that.”
“And five. The hip.”
The pen stopped.
It stopped completely — not a pause, a stop — and the booth, which had been a negotiation, became for one second a room with a wire in it.
“What about the hip,” she said.
Her voice had gone to a flat register he had not heard her use before, and he understood, too late, that he had walked into a place he had not been invited, with the confidence of a man who had spent too long being quietly observant in a lobby.
“Nothing about the hip,” he said, carefully. “The rule is: it is yours. You share what you want or you share nothing. I will pace you if you tell me what you need. I will not improvise pacing for you. I will not, ever, in front of a camera or off it, tell anyone go easy on her.”
“You’ve been watching my warm-up.”
“I work in the building.”
“That is not an answer, Berglund.”
“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
She looked at him for a long, cold three seconds, with the pen flat on the page, and he sat inside the three seconds and did not try to buy his way out of them, because there was nothing for sale that would have helped.
“Rule five is accepted,” she said, finally.
“And amended. You do not hand me your arm unless I ask. You do not lean on doorframes for my benefit. You do not manage me, quietly, from across a room, and congratulate yourself on being subtle about it. If I need you, I will say waltz. That is what the word is for.”
“Amended. Agreed.”
She did not say thank you.
He noted that she did not, and respected it, and was, in a small way he would not examine for another five weeks, slightly ruined by it.
He took a sip of his coffee. The coffee was too hot. The coffee was helping.
“Your turn,” he said.
She looked at her notebook. He had the sense she had written down a longer list than she was going to read aloud, because she scanned and then crossed something out and then looked back up.
“One,” she said. “We do not lie to each other in private. If I ask you whether something is bothering you, you can decline to answer, but you don’t tell me no, nothing.”
“Agreed.”
“Two. No PDA my mother can see.”
“Define PDA.”
“Anything that would cause my mother to set down a piece of bread.”
“Got it.”
“Three. We agree on a public origin story now and we both tell it the same way. We’ll pick something boring.
We’ve known each other through the rink for two years.
Spent more time on the same shift over the holidays.
It started slow. No invented romantic firsts.
No invented dates. No invented anniversaries.
If someone presses, we both default to we’d rather keep that part of it private. ”
“Agreed.”
“Four. Theo is not a topic. Not with me, not with Marin, not with Bridget, not with anyone. If anyone brings him up, we deflect, we do not engage. If anyone tries to draw me into a comparison, I will handle it. You do not need to defend me, and you do not need to fight for me, and you do not need to be cool about it. Just — let me have my own deflections.”
He watched her carefully.
“Agreed,” he said. “Cleanly. With one footnote.”
“Footnote.”
“If he says anything to you in front of me that I think is over a line, I might reposition my body.”
“Reposition your body.”
“Stand up. Step half a foot to the right. Refold my arms. Goalies do this. We make ourselves big in a frame on purpose. I’m not going to fight him. I’m not going to speak to him. But I might stand up and make the room smaller for him. That’s the footnote.”
She studied him for a long second. Her face went through three things he could not name and then arrived at, of all things, a very small, almost amused, almost rueful settling.
“Footnote accepted,” she said. “Now five.”
“Go.”